[ { "id": 204458, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "Hakka kept themselves to themselves in different villages and there has been a general antipathy between them until recent times.\n\nWhether Punti or Hakka the villages were inhabited by clans: either in villages in which there were only persons of one clan descended from a common ancestor; or in villages in which lived several groups of families of different name, that is several clans, having come there together or at different times. Examples of both kinds of villages, large and small, are to be found all over the New Territory. Both Punti and Hakka clans have a history of wandering from the north throughout the last ten centuries at least and it is clear that for all the families who came to what is now the leased territory it was the end of the line, the end of a chapter of wandering that was often interrupted for centuries in some location elsewhere in the province.\n\nAt Fan Pui, for instance, a small village on Lantau Island, the FUNG clan5 arrived there in the eleventh generation after the first ancestor had entered Kwangtung province. The twenty-second generation are living there still in an adjoining bay, having had to make way for the Shek Pik reservoir scheme. The family came from Ma Tau Wai in Kowloon and had made their way there from Nam Hung district in the extreme north of the province after spending some time in Hok Shan district on the way south. Their neighbours the TSUI clan* of Shek Pik claim twenty-seven generations in Kwangtung and fifteen in Lantau: that is, nearly four hundred years. The first ancestor came from a village in Nam Cheung district in Kiangsi province and settled in Tung Kun district. Eventually, following the example of other members of the main branch who gradually moved southwards, a TSUI of the thirteenth generation came to Shek Pik and was buried there. Their clan history mentions that members of successive generations before the move to Lantau were officials and military officers who won the imperial favour in the Ming dynasty, whereas the FUNG genealogy gives no such claims to fame for its progenitors. Both these clans are Cantonese.\n\nThe condition of the peasantry impressed Lockhart favourably on the whole, \"The inhabitants, though by no means wealthy, seem to be, as a rule, comfortably well off and able to earn\n\nPage 80\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n81\n\nweddings and funerals, repairs to the ancestral temple, and so on. In \n\nAnother and less formal method of securing these aims is the setting aside of joss and oil fields, sometimes known by the obscure title of ching sheung 1, whose proceeds, again, are used for the proper observance of ancestral rites and other family needs.1 One need hardly emphasise the integrating effect of these land measures,\n\nTo understand the people and their outlook and background it is necessary to see to what sort of government they were accustomed.1 The government of the San On district was essentially Confucian, like that of every other administrative division; by which I mean that Confucian principles were ostensibly followed. This was sealed by the state worship of the sage. In every district city there was a temple to Confucius styled a man miu in which the District Magistrate, his senior staff and the local gentry paid the customary respects to the sage and his seventy-two disciples on his birthday (twenty-seventh day of the eighth moon) and at the spring worship or chun chai 1 in the second moon. The same thing happened at the prefectural and provincial capitals. At the head of the San On district was the District Magistrate whose superior was the prefect of the Kwang Chau prefecture which embraced at least five large districts. He was subordinate to the provincial governor and he in turn to the Viceroy of the two Kwang Provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The nature and duties of the provincial officers had been established since the T'ang dynasty and for well over a millennium the pattern of government had been cast in an identical mould. The District Magistrate was usually a scholar who had taken one of the metropolitan examinations at Peking and he was always a native of another province than his native one, this being a long standing rule. He spent three or six years in one post and was then moved elsewhere, and was promoted in due course to be prefect or to higher office through merit, connections or good fortune. Some persons began and ended their official careers as District Magistrates.\n\n1\n\nThe District Magistrate's duties were many and his competence was most extensive. He was, in truth, the father-mother official1 of the people so called by them and also so styled in official documents because of his authority over all their affairs, criminal or civil. He certainly regarded himself as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204461, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "82 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\n10 \n\nstanding in loco parentis to the people of his district. An instance of this outlook is a proclamation issued by the Canton Viceroy in April 1899 in which he told the people of the New Territory that the English government had agreed that \"the people are to be treated with exceptional kindness \".10 On the reverse side of the medal the magistrate could also, like his followers in the tribunal, use his authority to evil purposes and be referred to as being as (fierce as) a tiger\" 如虎 or a dog-official\"35 whose extortions and venality were a byword \n\n44 \n\nin the district.1 \n\nC4 \n\n+ \n\n17 \n\nIn his government the Magistrate was usually assisted by an indoor and outdoor staff. The former might consist of personal adherents from his own home district who followed him from post to post, and partly of local personnel of the tribunal or yamen4 such as a legal adviser, secretaries, and land clerks, whose local knowledge it would be difficult to dispense with. All these were entirely dependent upon the magistrate for their livelihood, and upon what they could pick up in the course of their duties. To maintain his position and put food into the mouths of the members of his personal staff and their families the magistrate was given an inadequate salary by government. There were in addition the outdoor staff which comprised a considerable number of police, watchmen, runners and the like, who may have been paid by Government despite what Lockhart says to the contrary, but used their opportunities as they came, \n\nIn the San On district the Magistrate's yamen was at Nam Tau, which lies beyond the northern or further shores of Deep Bay on the far side of the Nam Tau peninsula. This was the district city where the treasury, jail and examination halls were also situated. It also contained a Confucian temple. The seat of government therefore lay outside the borders of the New Territory which, however, was served by several of his subordinate officers. He was assisted by an assistant magistrate10 whose office was at Tai Pang north-east of Mirs Bay and outside the New Territory and two deputy magistrates, one of whom was stationed within the walled city of Kowloon. They had power to make arrests and conduct preliminary enquiries but were bound to refer most cases to Nam Tau for final decision. The Kowloon deputy, like his colleagues, had a lock-up for detaining persons pending trial and there was also one each for the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204462, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n83\n\ndivisions of the district, or tung, several of which were within the present boundaries of the New Territory.\n\nThere were also military officers in the district, a battalion commander at Tai Pang, who also had quarters at Kowloon in which he was more often to be found. He had subordinates with him at Kowloon City and also in the Islands, at Tung Chung and Tai O on Lantau, whilst there appear to have been other subordinate officers on at least Lamma and Cheung Chau.20\n\nIn addition to the military posts (Lockhart does not mention any naval forces) there were the police, of which there were two kinds. First, there were the chai or runners, of whom there were about sixty, stationed in Nam Tau under the direct control of the magistrate. “They are sent, as occasion requires, throughout the district for a variety of purposes, including the making of arrests, the collecting of the land tax, and acting generally as the eyes and ears of the magistrate. They receive no pay from Government, but manage to earn a fair livelihood by illicit squeezes,” says Lockhart. There were also village constables, from two to six, according to the size of a village, appointed by the village and paid by village contributions levied according to the size of land holdings. Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power of arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village.\n\n**\n\n7\n\n**21\n\n+\n\nThe elders played a great part in maintaining the status quo. Together with the headman of the village and the local gentry, they formed a local tribunal which dealt summarily with all minor matters in the tung and heung into which the district was divided.22 Inside the villages, the headmen and elders acted likewise. A form of genuine local self-government existed in 1898. Its raison d'être was probably nothing more high-flown than because the District Magistrate, traditionally an overworked official, would have been completely swamped with work of a trifling nature had they not existed.\n\nTo quote Lockhart,\n\n“The gentry and elders in the village council determined summarily cases of theft, disputes about land, domestic squabbles, and cases of debt. As a rule, the decision of that council is accepted as final. But if either of the parties to a case is dissatisfied, he can appeal to a council of the Tung,”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n99\n\nthree districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally \"sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come\" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in\".\n\n12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited.\n\n20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station,\n\n21 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west.\n\n23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says \"The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety\". He calls him \"often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities\". His is experienced and impartial testimony.\n\n24 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. \"The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204480, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n101\n\nSee paras. 38 These feuds, often of long standing, persist to-day. 77-79 of Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's annual administrative report for 1955-56 as District Commissioner New Territories for a good instance of traditional hostility. For other cases see paras. 97 and 43 of the annual departmental reports for 1957-58 and 1958-59.\n\nSee Smith Village Life in China p. 286, also p. 222 \"The local Magistrates take care not to intervene too soon or too far, lest it be the worse for them. When the fight is over the officers put in an appearance, arrests are made, and the machinery of government recovers from its temporary paralysis\", and pp. 282-86 for a northern instance of clan violence.\n\n40 According to Dyer Ball Things Chinese (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903) p. 326 \"a dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and the Punteis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties\". See also pp. 369-70 of B.C. Henry's Ling Nam (London, Partridge, 1886),\n\n41 From information supplied by elders of Ho Chung village who were at school during or before 1898.\n\n42 See the section on Disasters in the San On Yuen Chi.\n\n43 See stone tablet outside Tin Hau temple, Kat O, Tai Po district.\n\n44 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/4/26 (1777) at Yuen Long Old Market.\n\n45 From a stone tablet dated Chia-ch'ing 7/3/23 (1802) at the Tin Hau temple, Kat O.\n\n46 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/lucky month, lucky day (1777) at the Hau Wong temple, Tung Chung.\n\n47 From a stone tablet dated Tao-kuang 21/7/19 (1841) at Tin Hau temple, Peng Chau.\n\n48 From a stone tablet whose date is uncertain, at the Tai Wong temple, Yuen Long Market.\n\n49 Variously, as above.\n\n50 Reminiscences of Mr. TANG Kiu Fong of Fui Sha Wai near Yuen Long, in an article in the New Territories Weekly for January 1962.\n\n51 Tree spirits are quite common in the New Territories where many old trees have joss sticks and red paper inscriptions placed under them on a rough altar. There is, in particular, a very large old banyan tree at Long Kang a few miles east of Sai Kung Market which must surely be the oldest tree in the Southern District. This is visited regularly by devotees. From personal experience of every part of the old Southern District I can say with confidence that belief in tree and earth spirits still exists to-day, and might indeed be said positively to flourish.\n\n52 An ancestral temple is not open to the public: it is for the private use of the clan, for whom alone it has any meaning. Most villages of any age and consequence have ancestral temples, and in multi-clan villages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204624, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n14\n\nphilanthropic work, probably one of many such, since the Po On tablet (1866) also mentions that \"our Tung Kwun natives are flowing in for business\". The lists of donors on the various tablets in temples and old buildings underline Cheung Chau's business and kinship links with the outside world. The local members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong seem to have maintained close contact with their parent body in Nam Tau; and, in much the same way, persons who had come to Cheung Chau to farm or do business, and had prospered during their stay, kept in touch with their families and friends in San On, Tung Kwun, Wai Chau, or from whichever district of the province they happened to come.\n\nRelations with the minor officials in the immediate area also seem to have been close, as one might expect. The officers of the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the regular land forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts throughout the eastern half of San On, seem to have contributed quite often to various repair schemes, whilst the salt, stamp, and Customs posts on the island automatically became victims for the collection of funds.15\n\n17\n\n1G\n\nSome of these contacts were useful when it came to collecting subscriptions and also when it was necessary to contact or bring pressure upon the district government; in this case the district magistrate of San On, whose yamen was at Nam Tau, the seat of their own WONG Wai Chak Tong. Fortuitously, the tablet in the defence bureau provides an instance of an approach to the district government. Four graduates, three of them almost certainly members of the Tong, and the managers of four large shops, besides other persons, petitioned the district magistrate WU16 when piracy and lawlessness threatened the lives and property of island people in the Hsien-feng reign (1851-61). It is interesting to note that they did not request the magistrate for direct assistance, but asked only that he issue a public notice urging the people of Cheung Chau to unite and provide \"brave and strong village guards\" for the defence of their island. One of the reasons why the magistrate was approached when this security organisation was being debated was very likely because his permission was required to raise and arm any body of men for defence purposes.18\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106\n\n¦\n\nF", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n36 shops from Hong Kong, 28 from Peng Chau and 15 from Tai O contributed to the Po On study (presumably all or mainly of Tung Kwun origin); a few outside shops sent donations to repair the Tin Hau temple; hardly surprisingly no outside shops contributed to the Defence Bureau; but the subscriptions for the Fong Pin hospital came from a wide area and the list included over 20 shops and 40 individual persons (including 2 tongs from Tung Kwun and Hok Shan), from Canton, Pun Yue, Tung Kwun, Nam Hoi, Shun Tak, Macau, and other areas of the province,\n\nMost of the temples still contain tablets and other dated items which record their repair from time to time. However, the series is far from complete and many tablets have been lost. A typical instance is the loss of commemorative tablets from the Tin Hau Temple at Tai Shek Hau (the local place name). A prominent citizen remembers seeing a whole row of them fronting an outside wall when he was a young man, about thirty years ago, but they have now all vanished without trace.\n\n15 For mention of these Cheung Chau posts see the following tablets: salt (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), stamp (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), customs, e.g. tax on kerosene (Fong Pin). There was also a customs post on Lamma (Fong Pin), and there were various patrol boats (both tablets). The officer in charge of the military post on Cheung Chau is mentioned on the Tin Hau tablet, whilst the Fong Pin tablet lists eight officers of the Tai Pang battalion.\n\n16 Only the defence bureau tablet gives donors their official ranks, though comparison with others shows that some of the graduates are mentioned there without their titles, i.e., persons mentioned in these tablets may also have been graduates. A comparison of the Tong's genealogical record with the names on the tablets is at first sight disappointing. The genealogical record does not record titles for the later generations, i.e. those of the generation whose names appear on the tablets. An additional confusion is that the clan generation names may not have been used on the tablets where business or personal names may have been recorded instead. However, I think we can be fairly certain that most of the WONGS on the tablets belonged to the Tong.\n\n17 I have translated \"WU\" as \"petitioned the district magistrate\".\n\n18 See Kung-Chuan HSIAO Rural China; Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1960), pp. 294-306 for defence organisations in this period.\n\n19 His precise title was described on the Cheung Chau tablet as 城鎮 *which was probably the equivalent of colonel. A few years later he presented a large painted wooden commemorative tablet to the Hau Wong temple outside Kowloon City, on which his rank is described as tsung-ping or brigadier-general (see Ralph L. Powell The Rise of Chinese Military Power 1859-1912 (Princeton University Press, 1955) pp. 15 and 367). \"The brigadier-generals were semi-independent, yet their units were scattered and practically sedentary,\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204900, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "20th January \n\n9th March \n\n23rd March \n\n27th April \n\n9/10th May \n\n25th May \n\n22nd June \n\n2nd September \n\n27th October \n\nMr. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, M.C., M.A. \n\n\"The Macartney Embassy Through Chinese Eyes\". \n\nProfessor J. K. Fairbank \n\n\"The Western Response to China”, \n\nAnnual General Meeting \n\nProfessor F. S. Drake, O.B.E., B.A., B.D., \n\n\"The Jewish Colony at Kaifeng and its Relation to other Monotheistic Faiths in China”. \n\nSymposium on Social Organization of Villages in the New Territories, including visits to villages in the New Territories. \n\nMr. Michael Lau, B.A., PID.ED.(H.K.), M.A.(HARV.) \"The Fung Ping Shan Museum”. \n\nDr. Marjorie Topley, B.SC.(ECON.), PH.D. \"Some of China's Little Known Religious Sects, and Their Migration Overseas”. \n\nMr. Tom Harrisson, D.S.O., O.B.E., \n\n\"Living Cultures in the Niah Context of Prehistory\". \n\nPeter Scott, Esq., C.B.E., D.S.C. \n\n\"The Conservation of the World's Wild Life and Wilderness”. \n\n16th November Professor Chao Mei-pa, B.A. \n\n\"A Brief Sketch of Chinese Music\", with instrumental illustrations by Dr. C. K. Wong and folksongs by Barbara Fei, Winnie Wei and Lee Bing. \n\nOf particular interest was the enthusiasm and the spirit of inquiry that were exemplified in the Symposium held on 9th and 10th May on the Social Organization of Villages in the New Territories which was organized and conducted by Dr. Marjorie Topley and Mr. R. E. Lawry with the active participation of two anthropologists from the University of London and District Officers of the New Territories, whose work had brought them", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205174, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n125\n\nto raising pigs and poultry. His daughter used to go to the vegetable fields at Tai Shek Kwu nearby where, in return for helping others to water their fields, she was given the outer leaves and spoiled vegetables to take home for pig food. Pig rearing, it appears, was as chancy a business in the 19th century as now,21\n\nAs a rule, however, the villagers produced crops and produce for the Hong Kong urban populace and for the growing townships in Kowloon itself, such as Yau Ma Ti and Hung Hom. It was fortunate for the village people that the Colony's rapidly increasing urban population required the three basic staples of rice, firewood, and vegetables.22 As Wells Williams wrote in 1883:23\n\n\"The supplies of the island are chiefly brought from the mainland where an increasing population of Chinese... find ample demand for all the provisions they can furnish.” The arrival of vegetable boats from Kowloon has for long been a feature of the Hong Kong waterfront.\n\nThese three staples, then, provided local people with the means to a livelihood; but they also had a wider effect. If they could summon the effort, villagers from further afield could and did share in meeting the urban demand, whilst local charitable and community organisations in Kowloon got part of their income from public weighing scales used for measuring vegetables and firewood destined for Hong Kong. Above all, the staples provided an opportunity for social advancement to those villagers with the necessary talent to exploit the business opportunities offered to them.24\n\nThe Colonial Government administered Kowloon with a loose rein. So far as I am aware, there was no seconding of administrators or magistrates there in the 19th century, and the police and other government departments with personnel available in Kowloon seem to have been on call when necessary in emergencies such as a fire, armed robbery, and serious crimes against the person, but were not otherwise obtrusive.25 The government did not see fit to appoint district officers to look after the people, as it was to do later in the New Territories. The advantages of doing so were suggested by a Land Commission in 1886, but never acted upon.26\n\nIn consequence, the internal management of these villages appears to have been much the same in Old Kowloon as it was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205276, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung\n\n31\n\nThe original site of the village is believed to have been somewhere southwest of Sung Wong Toi Hill. According to the report of Mr. Wu Pa-ling (A) who had carried out research in that area, the village situated at the foot of the northern tip of the Er-huang-tien Hill was formerly occupied by some two hundred people, mostly by the surname of Lee and living in about twenty or thirty houses. In 1927 or 1928, they were evacuated by the Government and the whole village, together with a Temple of the Northern God (Pei-ti) at the front of the village, was levelled to permit the construction of modern roads and buildings. Henceforth, there was no trace left by which to locate the original site of the village. The temple was removed to a nearby place by the side of the present Tam-kung Road where there is a street by the name of Pei-ti (Northern God),15\n\nMy own study on the subject has led me to the conclusion that it is highly probable that the royal party did visit that place or stay there in some house or houses which, in accordance with Chinese tradition, were subsequently called by the honorific name of palace (kung or tien). After their departure from Kowloon, people came in later times to settle down at the same place. More houses were built from time to time forming a village called Two Emperors' Palace Village and the hill by its side was also called Two Emperors' Palace Hill, which was really the hill on the northern tip of the eastern pincer of the Kuan-fu Mountain.\n\nThe most difficult problem in this study, however, is to know where exactly the original site of the village was, as every written record has omitted the location and no one who has visited it could tell precisely. After many years of painstaking and unsuccessful research, I finally found the right solution as late as 1962 when I was able to obtain some old maps of Kowloon Peninsula through the kind co-operation and assistance of officers of the Crown Lands and Survey division of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong Government. On one of them prepared in 1903—Sheet 6 in Number 2 Survey District—the exact location of the village is indicated and the name is given below. It is, however, misspelt \"Un Wan Tun\" probably due to linguistic difficulty on the part of the foreign surveyor. It is on the eastern side of the northern part of the Kuan-fu Mountain to which the colloquial name of Two Emperors' Palace Hill is also not given.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 95\n\nHe also had land interests on Lantau outside his own village and entered into a business speculation with two other persons, who were probably his fellow merchants in Tai O. Land was purchased wherever it could be obtained by sale, or mortgage leading to possession, from needy farmers some of whom were very likely their customers - and registered in the name of a Tong (). In 1899, this Tong owned over twelve acres of farmland in various parts of the island and still exists today. An account book for the years just before the Japanese war is extant and shows that the Chans' share of the rents was forty per cent of the whole. Their shares were sold by degrees during the Japanese Occupation after being in the family for about a hundred years.\n\nIn due course Chan Fu-shing's growing wealth enabled him to devote himself to public duties such as the management of village affairs, the arbitration of local disputes and the organisation of small public works. One of these was the repair of the village temple in 1852. A tablet commemorating the work shows that he donated a considerable sum to its repair, in addition to being the leading spirit in the work. This self-made man set the seal on his position by purchasing the title of chien sang () or \"Student of the Imperial Academy\" for which he would have paid the Provincial Treasury upwards of 100 ounces of silver. This title would have given him standing among the gentry of the San On District, and enabled him, if so inclined, to mix on favourable terms with the civil and military officers of the local administration. This bears out Professor Ping-ti Ho's estimate that \"in late Ming and the entire Ching period it may be said that men of above average economic means almost invariably purchased at least an Imperial Academy studentship... by which they could acquire the right of wearing students' gowns and caps and exemption from corvée, thus differentiating themselves from ordinary commoners\". If, however, chien sang were two a penny elsewhere it was not so on Lantau. The island was a poor place and there were very few other chien sang to steal Fu-shing's thunder there.\n\nCHEUNG KWONG-CHUEN ()\n\nThe second of these local notables, Cheung Kwong-chuen (c.1850-1916) was a Hakka from one of the smaller villages of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205345, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "100 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nFifthly, land was indirectly of the greatest importance for a man's emergence as an area leader. Through acquiring land other than in one's native village a man became known outside it. If he was a landowner renting out the land and clearly a person of ability and presence the way was paved to an extension of his sphere of influence because the local people would, in time, call on him to assist in solving disputes in which no decision could be reached. In a mountainous island where bad communications resulted in the growth of isolated communities the purchase of land or operation as a money lender was almost the only way in which personal influence could be extended without a charge of unwarranted “interference\" being made. This much is obvious on a moment's reflection, but it is not always apparent without personal knowledge of an area and its geographical characteristics.\n\nSixth and last, it is probable that the rural gentry of Lantau Island in the earlier part of the Ching dynasty were similar in origins and career to these men.\n\nThis closes the main part of the article, but I would like, as a postscript, to mention the external and more formal side of their activities; that is, their relations with other gentry of the whole administrative district and with its civil and military officers. There is a distinct lack of definite information with a local content. One imagines, however, that they would have been on good terms with the officers of the military garrison and the naval patrol vessels that called at the island from time to time, combining with the village leaders and the shopkeepers of the market town to entertain them on certain festivals and on public occasions. By way of a return, the officers contributed to local repair projects such as the reconstruction of village temples and gave something towards the cost of local opera shows and festivals. This much is certain because many repair tablets and commemoration boards show this pattern. Besides, the basic nature of government in rural areas has changed very little to this day, being founded on the creation and retention of goodwill wherever and however possible as true for the Hong Kong government today as for the Chinese district government 70 years ago.\n\nThe position is much less clear on the civil side. There were usually four councils of local gentry in any administrative district, for the East, South, West and South sections or Tung (M), as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205360, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n115\n\nThe Wai are of two kinds: the one comparatively of small size, is used, as stated above, merely as a place of refuge in times of danger, and is not a permanent residence, except for a few of the poorer class who build in it as a waste place; it is in fact a fort. The other would more properly be called a fortified town; it is of much larger extent, containing within its walls many dwelling-houses, which are generally of a superior class, and are occupied by rich men, who esteem themselves more safely and more agreeably located here than in the open village.\n\nThe Cities (i.e., places fortified by government), are four in number, viz: The district town, San-on, ✯✯, also called Namtow; Tai-pung, at the eastern extremity; Kow-loong, opposite Hongkong; and Tung-chung, on the island of Lantao. It must not, however, be thought that these are the most important and populous places in the district. They are the seats of Mandarins, and with the exception of Sanon (which has about 8,000 inhabitants), the population within the walls is very small.\n\nThe Population of the entire district cannot be given with certainty.\n\nA census at the time when it was first created a district, gives only 34,000 inhabitants. In 1819 it was estimated to contain 240,000, of which number 150,000 were males, and only 80,000(7) females. To these must be added 13,000 strangers (with their wives and families) who served as soldiers, inferior officers, and as labourers in the Imperial rice and salt fields. When Sanon first became a district, about 3,000 king of land paid Imperial taxes. A king, is equal to from 13 to 15 acres. In 1662, the tax-paying lands had increased to 4,000 king. Their present number I have not been able to ascertain.\n\nThe district is governed by seven civil Mandarins. The chief of these is the Chi-yuen, or district magistrate, and he resides within the walls of Sanon. He is addressed by the title of \"Ti-ya” great or venerable father. Second to him is the sub-magistrate, \"Yuen-shing,\" who resides at Tai-pung. This office was first created in the first year of the Emperor Yung-ching. This magistrate's jurisdiction extends over 104 villages, besides the city of Tai-pung. Sixty of these villages have Pun-ti inhabitants, and 44 Hak-ka.\n\nThe two mandarins next in rank to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "116\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\n. \n\nThe preceding, are the \"Kau-yue\", and the \"Fan-to\". They have nothing to do with the government of the district, but may be called Inspectors of Education. They register the graduates of the district, and present them for examination at the provincial city, and they inspect and superintend the private schools of the villages and towns.\n\nThe fifth and sixth officials bear the title of \"Tsun-lin-tzu\", or chief officer of a township. One of them resides in the market-place called Fuk-wing-ak, on the shore of the Hap-lan-hoi. His jurisdiction extends over the whole plain of San-keaou, and comprises 185 villages; 31 only of these are inhabited by the Hak-kas.\n\nThe other officer resided, when history first makes mention of his office, in the neighbourhood of Kow-loong. Subsequently he transferred his residence to Chik-me, bordering on Deep Bay; but since the first war with England, his chief place of residence has been Kow-loong, except during the autumn of 1854, when his official residence having been burnt by the rebels, he was obliged to reside again at Chik-me.\n\nHe rules over 492 villages, of which 298 are Pun-ti, and 194 Hak-ka. Each of these two officers has a military force of two soldiers at his disposal.\n\nThe seventh officer, the lowest in rank, is the \"Teen-le\" — director of police. He resides with his superior the Che-yuen, and has under his jurisdiction 73 villages (of which only six are Hak-ka), in the immediate neighbourhood of Sanon.\n\nGlancing at the names of the mandarins, who, during the present dynasty, have been at the head of affairs in Sanon, we find that among thirty Chi-yuens, four only have been of Manchu extraction, and the rest all Chinese.\n\nOf these thirty, we find that, on first starting on their political career, ten held the rank of Tsin-tze-it, six that of Keu-jin-A, and nine that of Seu-tsai of the first degree, whilst the remaining five could only boast the title of Kam-shang, which is the lowest bestowed, and which was probably purchased by them.\n\nAmong these last there was only one Chinese, the other four being Manchu.\n\nThe office of Sub-magistrate has seldom been held by a Manchu; most of those who held it were either Seu-tsai or Kam-shang, and received the appointment for good services rendered to the State.\n\nNo Manchu ever held the office of Kau-yu or Fan-to in this district.\n\nThe office of Kau-yu - inspector of schools — is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205362, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n117\n\noften held by a Keu-jin or a Sew-tsai, whilst a Keu-jin very seldom accepted the office of Fan-to.\n\nThe chief officers of a town-ship were generally such as had purchased a low rank, and who frequently had been long in the service of high mandarins. Throughout a long list of these officers, only two Man-chu names appear. During the Ming dynasty, graduates, even Seu-tsai, thought it beneath their dignity to accept this office, as they might fairly hope for higher employment; but at present the sale of places has reached so great a height, that even this low office is not bestowed on them gratuitously; and accordingly we find that, as the most learned are not always the most affluent, many meritorious men are lost in obscurity.\n\nWe must now proceed to cast a glance at the Military Mandarins and their establishments. There are two Ying-pun camps in the district: the one at Nam-tou, the other at Tai-pung. At the former place the force consists of one “Yau-kik”, or Lieutenant-Colonel; one \"Shou-pe\", or Major; two \"Tsing-tsung\", or Lieutenants; four “Pa-tsung”, or Sergeants; and five \"Ngai-wai\", or Corporals. They are in command of 995 soldiers, of whom 20 are cavalry, 293 infantry, and 682 garrison soldiers.\n\nThe pay of the whole establishment amounts to 14,000 taels per annum, with an allowance of 3,650 piculs of grain, and 15,000 bundles of straw, (principally used as fuel.) Extra emoluments are derived from the Imperial rice-fields, which are cultivated by the soldiers. This force is employed in garrisoning the district town and three forts, one of which is in the neighbourhood of Sanon, and the other two occupy the promontories of the bay of Chik-wan. It has also to supply men for twenty-four guard stations. The three forts above mentioned are ordered to have a garrison of twenty men, and to mount six guns each. I have visited these three places, but found neither guns nor soldiers, and the places themselves showed no signs of fortification, save a dilapidated wall.\n\nThe guard stations should be furnished with from two to six soldiers each; they are scattered over the whole western part of the country, and are intended to serve as a check against the frequent highway robberies. I never found one of these stations", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205363, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "REV. MR. KRONE\n\n―\n\noccupied by soldiers. At Tai-pung, the force consists of a \"Tsam-tseang\" - Colonel; one \"Shau-pe\" two \"Tsin-tsung\"; four \"Patsung\", and seven \"Ngai-wei\" with 800 soldiers, 190 of which are infantry, and 610 garrison soldiers. The annual pay of the whole of the officers amounts to 574 taels, that of the soldiers to 10,866 taels, with an allowance of 3,100 piculs of rice, and 8,640 bundles of straw, besides the income derived from the cultivation of the Imperial paddy-fields.\n\nThese troops have to garrison Tai-pung, Kowloong, Tung-chung on Lantao, and a fort on one of the Ladrone Islands; these four places are supposed to mount 168 guns. There are besides nine guard stations. One of these on the mountain pass behind Kowloong is really occupied by four soldiers, who carry on a profitable trade in selling tea and refreshments. Their duty is to keep the road clear of robbers; but the only object for which they employ the arms they wear is the protection of their own store of cash.\n\nSince the first war with England, a \"Hip-toi\", or Commodore, has been ordered to reside at Kowloong, and to keep a watchful eye on the barbarians at Hongkong. I have not been able to ascertain how many war-junks the Hip-toi has under his command at the various stations of the district. The record of Sanon, “Sanon-che”, only says they are of the utmost importance to guard against the French and other barbarians. Several of the war-junks usually anchor at Namtow, others a little to the N.W. of Ku-shu. The Mandarin at Fuk-wing has one war-junk at his disposal, but his revenue not being enough to support the expense, he was in the habit of letting out the vessel for hire for mercantile purposes. The hirers however converted it into a pirate boat, and it was seized by the Chi-yuen, and the Fukwing mandarin had to bribe his superior officer to avoid further punishment and degradation.\n\nThe amount of taxes and other duties I have not been able to ascertain. They are, however, with few exceptions, regularly paid. One instance occurred a few years ago, when a village, for what reason I do not remember, refused to pay the amount due to government. The Mandarin however had sufficient force to compel them to comply with their demands, and in order to teach them a lesson for the future, he closed and partially defaced their ancestral hall.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205375, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "130\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\ntwenty-five feet in height, twenty feet thick at the base, and ten feet at the top, but they are in many places in a dilapidated condition. There are four gates, but one of these is built up with bricks, and its opening would be regarded as of calamitous import to the mandarin; for the story goes, that about 200 years ago, a party of rebels entered by that gate and put the mandarin to death; it has been closed up ever since, and the magistrate is very careful not to have it opened lest a similar misfortune should befall himself. On the sea face there is a deep moat, and this front is farther protected by an embankment close to the shore. It is to the suburbs of this city that the name of Nam-taou is more properly applied; they stretch along the sea shore and are much more populous than the city itself, containing nearly 20,000 inhabitants. Within the city walls are the dwellings and offices of the civil and military mandarins, the magazines, the temple of the tutelary deities of the city, the hall in commemoration of chaste women and dutiful children, and other temples of less importance and pretence.\n\nThe most spacious, best preserved, and most remarkable for architectural beauty, is the temple of the tutelary deities; opposite the eastern gate is the temple dedicated to Confucius, the dignity of which is shown by the yellow colour of the tiles; this is a notable and spacious building, and connected with it are several halls, in which the names of the ancestors of Confucius, the ancient sages, celebrated mandarins of the district, with other officers who have distinguished themselves, and the good and wise people of the district, are worshipped.\n\nIn the hall where the names of those mandarins who have distinguished themselves are worshipped, there are two tablets commemorating their names; their virtuous deeds are recorded in the Sanon-che, the work to which I have so often referred. We give some instances: Wong-fan was Tou-tai in the year 1520, when there arrived certain lawless FrenchmenM, who, under pretence of bringing tribute, committed depredations and plundered the district. Tun-mun, near Castlepeak, and Macao, are said to have been particularly infested by them. They are accused of having butchered and devoured young children. Wong-fan gathered together a force of braves, and, regardless of wind and weather, made his wise plans and vanquished them. He did not appropriate the spoil to himself, but distributed it among the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205377, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "132\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nTo the left of the temple of Confucius, is the temple of “Kwan-kung”關公—the God of War; and on the right another one dedicated to \"Man-tai\", the God of Literature. Behind the latter is the hall Ning-lun, in which the public examinations are held. The literati and elders meet here on special occasions. In the vicinity of these edifices is the temple of “Sha-nung”神農—the God of Agriculture; and before it extends a piece of ground, on which the chief magistrate has to plough a few furrows at the beginning of spring, in accordance with an ancient custom. Near the sea-shore is a large space of ground, which serves for drilling the military, and on which the military examinations are also held. On it also a hall is erected for the accommodation of the officers.\n\nNot far from this place is a Buddhist temple, which contains images of the three Buddhas, and of the eighteen Lo-hou, which are Buddhist demi-gods. In front of the three Buddhas is a tablet, before which the devotees worship the reigning dynasty. On this tablet is the inscription \"Ten Thousand years!\" Farther above this is another tablet with the characters \"Protect my black-haired people.\" The chief magistrate is obliged to repair here once a month, and to prostrate himself before these tablets.\n\nOther edifices worthy of notice are, a five-storied pagoda, a temple to the well-deserving mandarins Wong and Lau, and an altar to the Gods of Land and Grain. Outside the town is the execution ground, and here, in 1854, many rebels were decapitated, and there might be seen at times the heads hung up in baskets as a warning to the people.\n\nThe fort and city of Kowloong are sufficiently known, and there is but little to say of them. The low walls and miserable forts have often been visited by foreigners. The environs of Kowloong contain some curious mementoes of history, of which the rest of the district is destitute. Ping-tai, the last of the Southern Emperors of the Sung dynasty, fled with the remnant of his faithful adherents to the province of Canton. Near Kowloong he attempted to build himself a palace, which however he was unable to complete, and the situation is now marked by a temple to \"Pak-tai”北帝—the God of the North. One of his high officers died here, and his tomb is situated on a hill, which is called to this day Sung-wang-tai. These three characters are engraved on\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n135\n\nthree rows of houses, one behind the other. The centre one contains the principal tablets of the ancestors. Separate tablets commemorate the names and titles of the graduates and officers, which the clan has at different times produced.\n\nThe second class are the Tangs, which belong to families who set up in them their private tablets of their ancestors. They are much smaller, consisting of only one edifice, with two small out-houses, but they are neatly decorated according to the Chinese taste.\n\nThe Temples\n\nare in general inferior in size and beauty to the ancestral halls. The largest, most elegant, and most renowned is that of Chick-wan, which is dedicated to \"Teen-hau\" — the Queen of Heaven. The building may be seen from the entrance of Deep Bay. Imperial officers sent on a mission to Siam or Cochin-china, were in the habit of worshipping at this temple before starting, and if they returned safely from their perilous voyage, endowed the temple with rich offerings. By these means spacious buildings were gradually erected, and about six Taouist priests are supported on the income derived from the possessions of the temple. No Chinese vessel passes this way, without making some offering to \"the Queen of Heaven.\"\n\nSecond to this temple is the one in Man-chau, near San-keaou, which is also dedicated to the same goddess.\n\nThe most popular idols to which temples are erected in Sanon, are \"Teen-hao\" — the Queen of Heaven; \"Quan-yin\" — the Goddess of Mercy; \"Kwan-tai\" — the God of War; and \"Pak-tai\" — the God of the North.\n\nIn Sai-heong there is a considerable temple dedicated to a man who was once a high official at Canton. The following is the history of his apotheosis: The Emperor Kanghi once gave orders that the people should retire from the sea-shore, and settle some miles further in the interior, so that the pirates would be unable to carry on their depredations. This man interceded with the Emperor, and succeeded in getting the decree repealed. Out of gratitude to him, numerous temples were erected along the coast, in which he is worshipped.\n\nAltars are erected before the villages, in the fields, under green trees, and upon the hills, and are dedicated to the worship of the tutelary deities. They are the Gods of Land and Grain,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "28\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nThe following short description of how some sects related to territorial units comes mainly from my own investigations and examination of sectarian documents in Singapore and Hong Kong. The groups I studied are off-shoots of a widely ramifying system sometimes called Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao, \"The Great Way of Former Heaven\". It contains many sects going under different names. The sects of this religion were found in many parts of China and copied the State system of territorial administration in dividing up areas for administration with lodges descending to the level of the district. Below the district, however, the groups had other centres for members and based, as in Buddhism and Taoism, on pseudo-kinship organization. Provision was thus made for China-wide organization, although it is doubtful whether any sect extended over the entire country at any time.\n\nThe system appears to have worked as follows: administrative lodges existed usually, and where feasible in the face of campaigns of suppression which were waged from time to time against them, in the chief towns of provinces, counties and districts. The \"capital”, however, was not necessarily the same as the imperial capital but might be the town where the sect developed originally or to which it had been forced to remove its head office because of State activity against it. Until the late '50s of the nineteenth century, sects were headed by a patriarch who ideally resided in the main lodge but sometimes lived in another remoter place to escape attention by the State. In the records of some of the sects, the patriarch is compared to an emperor. It is often claimed he was an incarnate Buddha. Under the patriarch, there were various officers administering the branch lodges. All administrators had to hold degrees known as “lotus degrees\" to be eligible for such posts, although not all \"degree\" holders were administrators. Examinations for these degrees were in religious knowledge and techniques, which included knowledge of their own sutras (sometimes written in code) and Taoist type \"hygiene\" and Ch’an Buddhhist type meditation. Degrees have elaborate titles in many of the sects and are likened in their literature to degrees for State examinations. Administrative posts are sometimes compared to those occupied in the State administration by governors, judges and magistrates.\n\nMany sects are \"vegetarian\", that is to say they require degree-holders to practise permanent vegetarianism and also sexual", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "166 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\ntions and answers produced an interesting picture of life among the soldiers at the Fort in the few years before they withdrew from it after Lantau and other parts of the present New Territories were leased to the Hong Kong Government in 1898. Put together they amount to this: \n\nI was 24 sui when the British came to take over Lantau. Tung Chung Fort had a permanent garrison of Chinese troops before then. I can't remember exactly how many troops there were or what the rank or title of the officer-in-charge was, but they were none of them local people. Their families lived at Tung Chung too, in several rows of brick houses outside the Fort and some inside the walls also. There was a house nearby in which soldiers or their family members were put when sick, with a burial ground behind. The garrison's provisions were brought in by ship, though they bought fish and vegetables locally at Tung Chung. There were military boats at Ma Wan Chung [where the main stream empties into the sea], about 7 or 8 of them of different kinds, but they were not under the command of the Tung Chung officer and came and went between such places as Canton [the provincial capital], Nam Tau [the district city], Shum Chun etc. \n\nThe soldiers at the Fort had a big parade each year on the 1st day of the seventh moon. It was held on the level ground beside the Hau Wong temple (1) near the beach. Inspecting officers came from Nam Tau, Shum Chun and Canton, I think. There was much drumming and noise on that day, and the troops paraded with all their weapons. The soldiers had uniforms of all sorts, and many kinds of weapons too, but there was no uniformity of clothing or equipment. \n\nThe soldiers were generally well-behaved and gave no trouble to us local people, though they did not have much to do as they didn't cultivate any fields, inside or outside the Fort. They did not ask for money, but kept watch. There was a guard station at Ma Wan Chung, though there were rarely soldiers in it. There were lots of robbers and pirates in this area when I was young. They came from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205751, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n51\n\nA third letter explains the reasons for posting forces to Castle Peak and to Sha Kong, near Deep Bay. \"A strong force must be posted at Tai Po in order to resist with our full force. The two posts at Castle Peak and Sha Kong should have many flags flying in order to mislead the enemy. A force of the stronger men of your district should be detached to take part in the engagement [at Tai Po]. Sixty per cent should be retained for self protection. If troops arrive from Ngan Tin [Pan Tin] they should all be sent to Tai Po.\"66\n\nMonday, 17th April, began quietly for the British at Tai Po. H.M.S. \"Humber\" and H.M.S. \"Peacock\" arrived during the morning and anchored off-shore. A conference was held on the mat-shed hill and General Gascoigne indicated that he hoped to establish a new base camp, in the Lam Tsuen valley, by Tuesday evening. These leisurely plans were not realized. Shortly after three o'clock Chinese forces moved onto a hill some 3,000 yards away and commenced firing. The British artillery returned fire and 250 men from the Hong Kong Regiment moved off in an attempt to dislodge the militia.\n\nThe British force — Indian troops commanded by British officers — entered the Lam Tsuen valley and began to work to the southwest. The valley is about half a mile wide and two miles long. A narrow path ran down its centre and much of the level ground was devoted to rice. The militia of Kam Tin, Pat Heung, and Shap Pat Heung had taken up positions on the higher, wooded slopes. When the British moved into the valley, the militia opened fire. According to one British participant, they had \"chosen their positions well, and if they had fired well, the British troops would have fared badly.\" The Chinese had assumed their opponents would advance along the path down the valley and placed their guns accordingly. But immediately they came under fire, the soldiers abandoned the path for the hillsides and \"drove back the enemy from hill to hill and working admirably, like true Indian Frontier fighting men, took full advantage of cover.\"\n\n68\n\nIn spite of their initial mistake, the militia fought well and vigorously. They \"fired almost incessantly for one and a half hours, pouring in round shot 3.4 inches in diameter from muzzle loaders and dropping musketry fire all about our men. Fortunately", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n53\n\nlocal recruits. The venture was rumoured to be the work of the Ming Lan Tong, a literary society of Tung-kuan city. Additional credence was given to the reports when it was learned that some officers of the Tong were members of the Hsin-an Tang clan. Police on patrol in the New Territory also noted that women were leaving their villages. By 10th May the exodus had reached major proportions.\n\nIt was evident that the Sham Chun river was not a defensible frontier and that the best way to forestall attack was to occupy the area from which it was to be launched. On 16th May two columns, numbering 1500 men in all, landed from Deep Bay and Mirs Bay and marched on Sham Chun. That evening the Union Jack was hoisted over Sham Chun market, to the accompaniment of a 21-gun salute. A proclamation was issued declaring that Sham Chun was British territory and that the Viceroy had no further jurisdiction in the district. There had been no resistance and no sign of forces massing to attack the New Territory.\n\nThe occupation of Sham Chun was confined to an area within five miles of the Sham Chun river, including Sha Tau, Sham Chun, and the road between them. Neither civil nor military jurisdiction were extended further. However, in the hinterland the occupation of Sham Chun and the proclamation which accompanied it were interpreted as a prelude to the occupation of the entire district. In particular, the Tangs of Pan T'in feared a punitive expedition against themselves.\n\nMuch of the information about subsequent events comes from one source. The Rev. Martin Schaub* of the Basel Mission had a station at Li Long, near Pan T'in, in the north of the district. Rev. Schaub wrote periodically to the officer commanding at Sham Chun and his letters convey a vivid impression of the activity precipitated by the occupation. Late in May he wrote that the leaders of Pan T'in had asked the larger villages to help in resisting the British. He said money was being collected and that armed men were making their way toward Pan T'in.\n\n* The printed documents call him \"Hart\", but this must be in error for Rev. Martin Schaub of the Basel Mission. A photograph and brief biography are given at pp. 16, 438 of Marshall Broomhall, The Chinese Empire: a General and Missionary Survey, London, [1907]. Perhaps hand-writing was responsible for the wrong transcription into the printed documents, Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "44 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nHong Kong, needless to say, was not Africa, and the Hong Kong cadet did not spend his working life in the bush adjudicating the disputes of unsophisticated natives. He worked mainly, unless one of the District Officers in the New Territories, in a many-layered urban society, in which were to be found a number of extremely rich and some highly erudite Chinese. The population of Hong Kong was related in terms of race, language and culture to that of China, the home of an ancient civilisation; and cadets spent two impressionable years learning the language of that country and something of its splendours, and its miseries as well. I suspect many cadets were deeply impressed by their contact with the culture and civilisation of the Chinese, that a process of 'mandarinisation' often took place, especially among those working in the Registrar-General's Department (the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs) where official documents were published in the same form and style as those of the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy.31 I suggest that cadets were paternalistic towards the local population, but that their paternalism was Confucian in spirit and understood by Chinese. Their background and training, in its historical context made this era of cadets not unacceptable to, though not necessarily liked by, Hong Kong Chinese with memories of the behaviour of Chinese officials across the border. British officials acquired in Hong Kong, then, a gloss from the population they ruled. Sir Frederick Lugard, 'in gentle derision', called cadets 'the twice-born';32 and Reginald Stubbs, on a special mission from the Colonial Office to Malaya and Hong Kong, exclaimed in 1910 that they were prepared to advance claims to act for the Almighty'.33 Exposure to life in an English public school and then to life in an Eastern Colony, led not unexpectedly to this consummation of belief. \n\nThe contribution made by cadets and ex-cadets to sinology and scholarship in general is impressive. One has only to take note of the publications of such officials as Alfred Lister, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, R. F. Johnston, G. R. Sayer,34 S. F. Balfour,35 Walter Schofield,36 Soame Jenyns,37 R. A. D. Forrest,38 and K. M. A. Barnett.39 Many were also members of learned societies; and a substantial number acquired not only compulsory Cantonese but a knowledge of other Chinese dialects, such as Hakka and Mandarin; a few specialised in Japanese; and those who worked in the Police, Hindi or other Indian languages.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "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": 206120, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n193\n\nThe barracks are at present occupied by the 1st Battalion, The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, the old 33rd or 1st Yorkshire West Riding Regiment of Foot, raised in 1702 for the War of the Spanish Succession. It is one of the last surviving regiments of British Infantry to retain its individual identity. The Commanding Officer, Lt.-Col. D. W. Shuttleworth, the well-known Army and England Rugger International, has very kindly allowed us to take tea in the Officers' Mess where the Colours and some of the Regimental Silver will be on display. Some officers of the Regiment will be on hand in civilian clothes to act as hosts, to explain the Silver and to answer visitors' questions.\n\nStanley Military Cemetery\n\nThere are 663 graves in this 2.5 acre cemetery,* some of them dating from the 1840s and 1860s when there was a permanent garrison at Stanley (on the site of the present St. Stephen's Boys School) and others from the 1939-1945 War and the period of civilian internment at Stanley Prison. The cemetery pre-dates even the Colonial Cemetery, having been opened on 21st July, 1843. Note the large grave stones to some soldiers killed by Chinese Pirates in Stanley Bay in the 1840s.\n\nHong Kong, October 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nTHE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI\n\nIn last year's Journal (pp. 141-148) Dr. Ronald C. Y. Ng contributed an interesting article on this subject, reprinted by kind permission from the Geographical Journal Vol. 135, Part 2 (June) 1969.*\n\nNoting the bilingual nature of the map which used English and Chinese characters for place names Dr. Ng concluded that the document 'was intended primarily for English-speaking users' and described it as 'simultaneously a map and a gazetteer of the District'.\n\n* Readers may be interested to learn that the Australian National Library at Canberra has made available for sale Xerox copies of this interesting map from an original copy in their collection. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206252, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n63\n\nassociations, the district and dialect associations also embody economic objectives, since very often the members of each district and dialect group are engaged in the single occupation peculiar to their group. \"This close identification of a particular job... means that the various dialect associations have a definite economic raison d'être.\" Protection of economic interests may take various forms, with the associations taking the role of trade unions among small businessmen, and among laborers in particular lines of native industry. In many cases, the associations act as employment agencies, exchanging information on job opportunities and sponsoring job recommendations. It is a general practice among the associations to favour nepotism in job placement.\n\nThe main voluntary associations are also responsible for the welfare and social adjustment of the Chinese immigrants. They meet the new comers upon their arrival, accommodate them and help them to find jobs. They open Chinese language schools for the education of the immigrants' children and for the general upkeep of the Chinese cultural tradition. They open recreational centres (including gambling rooms) for the workers. They provide mutual aid benefits, relief funds, free loans, funeral and burial services. A very important feature of the work of the chambers of commerce, the district and the dialect associations is in their acting as spokesmen for Chinese interests and as intermediaries between the authorities and Chinese people. Specifically, this means that the associations, through their officers, intercede for individuals and groups who get into difficulties with the government. The associations present proposals and petitions to the authorities on major and minor policy issues touching Chinese interests; and very often the governments also seek the advice and even the prior consent of the associational leaders in matters regarding the Chinese communities.\n\nThe economic, social and political functions of the three major voluntary bodies have evolved during the process of adaptation of the Chinese people to their new environment. In most of the overseas Chinese communities (except in Malaysia and Singapore) the Chinese people are not only a numerical minority among the local population, but also a sociological minority dominated by the superior social and political status of other racial groups.\n\n* Ju-k'ang T'ien, op. cit., p. 17.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206330, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n141\n\nin the Colony. In 1948 they were taken over by the Medical and Health Department.\n\n58 G. W. Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Yale University Press, 1958, p. 79.\n\n59 James Michie wrote: \"The means taken to conciliate the Chinese (in Hong Kong) must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colony Legislature and on the Commission of the Peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government.\" The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood, 1900, vol. 1, pp. 280-1.\n\n60 The Labour Advisory Board was established in 1937 and consisted of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Secretary and Cashier of His Majesty's Naval Yard, the Assistant Director of Supply and Transport of the China Command, a representative of the Public Works Department, the Manager of the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, the manager of the Hong Kong Electric Company, and the manager of the Taikoo Dockyard. The members consisted entirely of representatives of large government departments and employers of labour. The board rarely functioned.\n\n61 The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1896 principally by Ho Kai and Wei Yuk. It was called at first the Chinese Merchants Bureau. In 1913, after a period of decline, a new building costing $40,000 was erected in Connaught Road. After 1913 the Chamber became one of the most influential bodies in Hong Kong, and many members of the District Watch Committee served at one time or another on its executive committee. The Chinese Club was founded in 1899 by Sir Robert Ho Tung and modelled on the European Hong Kong Club. A description of the Club's premises is to be found in Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1902, p. 323: \"We were taken by the Committee into an upper room, where European comforts of curtains and cushioned arm-chairs were judiciously intermingled with Cantonese elegances of black carved wood and landscape marble.\" Mrs. Little was a member of the Anti-Footbinding League or Natural Feet Society.\n\n62 See G. William Skinner for a detailed analysis of Chinese associations. See especially ch. 6 of his Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand.\n\n63 For Overseas Chinese associations, see important works by the following: Maurice Freedman, \"Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth Century Singapore,\" Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1960, and Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London, H.M.S.O., 1957; G. W. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1957, and Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1958; William E. Willmott, The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London, The Athlone Press, 1970; and Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1965.\n\n64 See Wilfred Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, London, Oxford University Press, 1969.", "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": 206840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE \n\nNEW TERRITORIES \n\nKAM T'IN 錦田 \n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG \n\nKam T'in is one of the oldest villages in the New Territories. During the dynasty of Hau Chau (後周) A.D. 951-959 most of the villagers belonged to the family of Ch'an (陳) and the place was called Ch'an Tin (陳田) meaning Chan's field. In the 6th year of Hoi Po (開寶) A.D. 973 of Sung (宋) dynasty Tang Hon Fat (鄧漢黻) who is said to be the first Tang (鄧) ancestor to come to Kwangtung (廣東) settled in the village, and built the first house at the bottom of a hill called Kwai Kok Shaan (龜角山) about ¼ of a mile away from the present Kam T'in. It was at first called Sham Lei (岑里), but later on they cultivated the surrounding country and the name was changed to Sham Lei T'in (岑里田) which was soon shortened to Sham T'in (岑田) meaning fields surrounding a small hill. The present name of Kam T'in (錦田) or ornamental fields, was given to the village in the 15th year of Maan Lik (萬曆) A.D. 1587 of Ming dynasty (明朝), and it came about in this way. \n\nAt that time there was a very bad famine in the San On district (新安縣), and the district magistrate Yau T'ai K’în (游大乾) was obliged to open the government granaries and distribute the rice to relieve the people. But when it was finished they were still in need, and the magistrate then sent his officers to all the rich men in the district asking them for donations to help the poor. Most of them contributed a few piculs of rice, but none of them more than a hundred. Then Tang Yuen Fan (鄧元藩) of Sham T'in was visited. He was the richest man in San On district, and was noted for his generosity. He owned over 10,000 Chinese acres of cultivated \n\n*There are six sections to this long article, each printed in different numbers of The Hong Kong Naturalist. In this reissue the separate parts will be indicated by figures within square brackets. The first three sections, given here, appeared in the issues for December 1935 and April and June 1936. The rest will follow in the next issue of this Journal. \n\nThe romanizations used in the original included figures to indicate tone values. These are now excluded. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206844, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 115\n\nand is on a hill named Hau Tei (#) king crab ground, near the village of Ch'ai Waan Kok (A) Ts'uen Waan ( ) district. The tablet has a poem engraved on it written by Paak Yuk Shim (1) a poetical genius of the Sung dynasty. He was also famous for his paintings which were highly admired among Chinese Scholars. Legends have attributed to him magical powers, and he is supposed to have appeared and disappeared in all the famous mountains from Tung Koon, San On and to the east of Kwangtung.\n\nHe received the title of \"Tsz T'sing Chan Yan” (**^^) from the emperor Sung Ning Tsung (#). Biographies of him were recorded in Tung Koon Yuen Chi (£) Ch'iu Chau Foo Chi (M) and many other books. The poem on the grave was remarkable for the curious allusions that were made in it to the future. It runs:-\n\n1. 長伸左手接星羅,\n\n2. 走攬青衣濯碧波,\n\n3. 深夜一潭星斗現,\n\n4. 裏頭容萬船過。\n\n5. 有人下得朝陽穴,\n\n6. 十三年內登科,\n\n7. 若是世人尋不得,\n\n8. 囘頭轉問釣魚哥。\n\nThis can be roughly translated as follows:\n\n1. \"Put out the left hand as far as Sing Hill,\n\n2. running as far as to Tsing I island wash it in the green waves.” These two lines refer to the position of the grave.\n\n3. \"In deep night one harbour all the stars appear.”\n\nAlluding to the lights of Hong Kong harbour in the future.\n\n4. \"Inside harbour there will be ten thousand ships passing to and fro.\n\nThe trade that was to come to Hong Kong.\n\n5. \"If any one can find the proper site of the grave\n\n6. in thirteen years' time his descendants will pass the highest degree of Government examinations.\"\n\nThis came true in so far as the Tang family were very successful in passing examinations and some of them became high officers and men of rank.\n\n7. \"If people in the world try to find, and are unable to find it\n\n8. turn your head round and ask the young fisherman.\"\n\nReferring to the grave again. When Tang Foo was finding the place for the grave the local villagers pointed out to him a stone known as the Fishing Stone which helped him to decide on the site.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206847, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "118\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\n() as they were called, with themselves ruling almost independently of the Emperor. When the Five Dynasties ended, and the Sung dynasty began, the emperor Sung T'aai Tso (in), in the 3rd year of Kin Loong (1) A.D. 962 made an attempt to unite China and break the power of the generals. He sent certain able and trustworthy men from his own court at the capital, to be responsible for the different districts. They were appointed for three years only, and were called Ling (†). A year later, in the 1st year of K'in Tak () A.D. 963 more civil officers were appointed to take charge of the “Chau” (#) which in the Sung dynasty were as large as provinces although later on they became as small as districts. These officers were called Chau Sui (H}}) or T'ung P'oon (*), and had full power to control the military administration and civil administration of their own Chau. Such officers were under, and reported directly to the capital, and were independent of the generals of the feudatory states, and on an equal footing with them. Thus the generals were gradually deprived of their power, and little by little their armies were taken from them until they were no longer a menace to the crown. It will be seen then, that Tang Foo was a man of considerable importance in his time, having been firstly a \"Ling\" of a district, and then a “Sui” of Naam Hung Chau.\n\n[2]\n\nKwai Kok Shaan where Tang Foo built his school is one of the five famous hills of San On, and is mentioned in the book of \"To Shue Chaap Shing\". The name was originally Kwai Kok (±✩), Kwai meaning sceptre made of jade; but later it was changed to Kwai Kok (⇓), being the Chinese name for olea fragrans, a flower that is considered to be very lucky. There is an old saying, Shim Kung Chit Kwai (#), \"eager to break a branch of the Kwai from the Palace in the Moon.\" Shim Kung means Toad's Palace. According to an old Chinese legend the moon was inhabited by a toad, who was originally Sheung Ngoh () the wife of a feudal prince and famous archer named Ngai (#) who lived in the time of the Emperor Yiu (4) B.C. 2357. Ten suns are said to have been in the sky at that time, and the heat was so great that all the grass was burnt up. The emperor commanded Ngai to shoot the suns down which he did, and as each sun was inhabited by a large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206851, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "122\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nwho her father really was, and Yuen Leung was very troubled as to what to do with her. However when she became of marriageable age the elders of the village advised him to marry her to his son Tsz Ming (A) which, as she was quite willing, he did.\n\nMeanwhile the fighting between the Tartars and the Sungs had ceased. Peace was made, and Hong Wong had now become the Emperor Ko Tsung, who ordered that enquiries should be made concerning his daughter. All the district officers throughout the Empire were instructed to help and when the official notice was posted up in the vicinity of Kam T’in, Tsz Ming was much frightened at having married the princess without the emperor's permission. But the princess said, “Do not fear. My life was saved by the Tang family and I have willingly become your wife. Go and tell the District officer who I am.\" When the official heard the news he came at once and did obeisance to the Princess, and then sent a petition to the Emperor. Ko Tsung ordered Tsz Ming and his wife to come to the capital, where they stayed for about a year, but the princess pined for Kam T'in and begged to be allowed to return to the place of her adoption. So the Emperor let her go, but first he bestowed on her many wharves in the district as \"powder expenses\"; and a large area of hill and forest land as \"toilet expenses\". On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the 8th year of Siu Hing (2) A.D. 1138 they started back for Kam T’in. When they got there, the princess gave orders that the hills and woodlands should be thrown open to the public, so that anyone could make graves on her land without paying tax. In the 51st year of Hong Hei (‡) of Tsing dynasty, A.D. 1712, when the princess' grave was repaired, her dowry was still being used by the country people for a free burial ground. In the 5th year of K'in Lung (†) A.D. 1169, the princess gave thirty-six wharves to the Tsz Fok Monastery (*) the oldest monastery in Tung Kwun. Among these wharves was that of Shek Kit (5) near Shek Lung. When the history of Tung Kwoon was revised in the 12th year of Sung Ching (†††) of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1639, only three out of ten of the wharves were mentioned as still being in use, but Shek Kit is still in existence now.\n\nIn some books the princess is referred to as Sung Tsung Kei (***). Sung being the name of the dynasty, Tsung meaning royal, and Kei high lady. She is known, however, in the Tang family as Wong Kwu (2), the Emperor's Aunt, as her nephew became", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207141, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge dwellings and godowns. It was a pleasant area. Two of the properties were especially noted for their gardens. A Parsee merchant, Framjee Jamsetjee, in advertising his property for sale in 1845, stated that it was \"beautifully situated by the water side with a fine view of the Bay, surrounded by a garden, stocked with the choicest plants which have been imported at great expense, and now is in a flourishing condition.\" The other gardened property was called Spring Gardens, and for a number of the years the name was applied to the area. The name is preserved today by Spring Gardens Lane which marks the eastern boundary of the original property. The dwelling was also known as \"Old Government House\" for at one time it had been the residence of Governor Bonham [1848-1854]. Advertisements mention its \"ornamental grounds\" and \"fine well of spring water with powerful iron pump\".\n\nWhen the military gradually bought up and occupied the area between Central District and Wanchai in the 1840s and 1850s, the two sections were separated and Spring Gardens area lost most of its commercial activity. Decline set in, reinforced by a business depression, and a number of godowns and dwellings stood empty. Several of the properties reverted to Government through non-payment of Crown rents. Others were foreclosed by mortgagees. The military took advantage of the empty premises to use them as barracks and officers' quarters.\n\nPoor Chinese settled as squatters both on the west and east fringes of Victoria. To accommodate these on the east the Government put up for sale in 1847 a range of lots at the foot of Hospital Hill along the present Wanchai Road. These were used for small shops, trades, and family residences. The population, however, tended to remain poor and unruly. With the influx of displaced people during the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1850s several of the European properties were redeveloped with Chinese housing.\n\nThe area near Queen's Road East and Ship Street was probably the site of a small settlement before the British occupation of the Island. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong states that the Hung Shing Temple on Queen's Road East existed before the cession. The pattern of the lots also suggests that there may have been previous occupants. When the military rented some vacant properties nearby for barracks, several brothels were established on Ship Street north of Queen's Road East. To the south, up the hill on Ship Street, there were several small dairies operated by Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207147, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsurvey. Sir E. Belcher, accordingly, landed on Monday, January 25, 1841, at the foot of Taipingshan, and on the hill, now occupied by the Chinese Recreation ground, Captain Belcher and his officers, considering themselves the bona fide first British possessors, drank Her Majesty's health with three cheers, the spot being thenceforth known as Possession Point. The Point remained an open space and came under the management of the Chinese Recreation Ground Committee created in 1890.\n\nIn 1887 there was a rearrangement of streets to the south of the Recreation Ground. With the change there was a renaming. The western terminus of Hollywood Road was shifted from the present Possession Street to what was known as Gap Street, so that Hollywood Road emptied into Queen's Road on the south side of the Recreation Ground rather than on its east side.\n\nOn the south side of old Gap Street across from the Chinese Recreation Ground the original St. Stephen's Anglican Church opened in 1866. Here also the Baxter Memorial School was built in 1872 in memory of Miss Sophia Harriet Baxter. She had come to Hong Kong in 1860 and until her death five years later established schools for Chinese, Eurasians and orphans. St. Matthew's Anglican Church now occupies a part of the original site granted to the Church in 1864.\n\nThe neighbourhood could have been regarded as a good missionary area for it was dominated by establishments devoted to pleasure. Nearby was a theatre, and the present Possession Street was lined with brothels in the nineteenth century. It was also, however, near a more sobering district.\n\nThe hillside between Possession Point and West Point was used as a Chinese burial ground. The I-tsz Temple, built to house commemorative tablets for Chinese residents who died without a family to remember them, and, temporarily, for those whose families were in their home villages in China, was behind Possession Point on Tai Ping Shan Street. It adjoined the burial ground and thus, in accordance with Chinese practice, was in a convenient location to be used as a depository for those who were about to die. Publicity regarding conditions at the temple started a movement to provide better medical services for the Chinese community. This resulted in the formation of Tung Wah Hospital. It was opened officially in 1872 across the street from the I-tsz Temple, occupying land that was a part of the old burial ground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "94 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nemployment; but few stayed with the department. Most took to their gypsy life again, once they had accumulated a few dollars, and left for either Shanghai or Singapore, or simply went to earth in Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai until disinterred by the police, always on the look out for European destitutes. \n\nThere were always some troops on garrison duty in the colony or manning the various fortifications designed to repel a seaborne invasion. The garrison normally was small and numbered usually less than 1,500 men. But numbers fluctuated markedly at times. In March 1860, for example, over 14,000 troops (10,000 British and 4,000 French) were being drilled in a vast tented camp on two square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, leased from the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and awaiting transportation to the theatre of operations in the north. A witness of these events wrote that 'the streets of Victoria were thronged by soldiers and sailors; commissaries and staff officers were to be seen everywhere; all as busy as mortals could be'.7 \n\nIt was a policy of the government and the military to keep troops if possible out of European Victoria—the central commercial district—and to confine their debaucheries to special areas of the colony. Thus five brothels were specially opened at Wan Chai in the 1850s when soldiers at that time were prohibited by their officers from entering the central districts of the city. For soldiers on outpost duties access to Victoria was difficult in any case: \n\nGarrison life at these outposts is usually melancholy; society is impossible, as the fortifications are eight miles by water from the city, and communication over the mountains is arduous. It is not a question of which is the better of the two, but which the worse, to be of the British Garrison Artillery or the Chinese Lighthouse Service.& \n\nThere were usually more sailors than soldiers ashore in Hong Kong, or afloat in the harbour, at certain times of the year. During the three winter months, the British China squadron was stationed in Hong Kong; in summer most naval vessels left Hong Kong for the north and other stations. The large number of sailors, who at times outnumbered the civilian European population, was supplemented by merchant seamen of many nationalities; for by the 1890s Hong Kong had become, after London, Liverpool, and Port Said, the fourth largest port in the world in terms of seagoing tonnage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207674, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Teochiu ethnicity in urban Hong Kong\n\n47\n\nThere are no comparable local level organizations in the urban areas,* though the government has encouraged the development of local-level urban neighborhood associations (Kaifongs), which are presumed to reflect local opinion and to be effective in influencing government decisions affecting the local area. The Kaifongs in resettlement estates with which I am familiar currently fulfill neither of these functions and are hardly considered organizations worthy of much effort to control. Teochiu have primarily been \"isolationist\" in devoting attention and effort to developing their own associations into what are clearly the most active and representative organizations in the local area. The local Kaifongs have thus not become an important focus of interethnic competition. Kaifong associations in other areas of Hong Kong are at times more active in local affairs. They appear to be particularly active when organizing local protest against new governmental policy which would adversely affect local residents. Hong Kong's newspapers periodically carry stories telling of the efforts of particular Kaifongs to mobilize support of local residents against new policy.\n\nThe primary functions of Kaifongs have been to provide social welfare services, serve as a communication channel to government, and to provide prestigious positions for ambitious local leaders (Kan, 1970:95). Kan describes the general image of Kaifongs in the following manner:\n\nthe more 'generalistic' orientation of the Kaifongs is more amenable to the government than is the 'particularistic' orientation of the clan, district, and dialect associations. For this reason, the majority of the population as well as the government itself have believed that the Kaifongs may become the most effective intermediaries between government and people. (Kan, 1970:94).\n\n*The City District Office scheme, initiated in 1968, is intended to bridge the communication gulf between the masses of people in urban areas and government. City District Officers are charged with assessing the overall impact of government policy, and with maintaining contact with all local organizations. In effect, the purpose of the scheme is to \"provide the public with a local manifestation of the Government... (The City District Officer Scheme, 1969: title page).\n\nFor brief discussions of divergent government policy in the New Territories and urban area, see Report by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, The City District Officer Scheme, 1969; Wong, 1975; and Miners, 1975.\n\nSee Annual Departmental Reports of the District Commissioner, New Territories, for brief descriptions of the Rural Committees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207820, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 208, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\nOther field workers, both British and American, are likely to follow them.\n\n4. My own work would have been impossible without the generous help of many officers of the New Territories Administration; I should like to thank them collectively, expressing my gratitude in particular to the District Officer Tai Po and his staff. I have also the pleasure of thanking many officers in other branches of the Government; among them my thanks go especially to Mr. K.M.A. Barnett, Mr. J.W. Hayes, Mr. K.W.J. Topley, and Mr. P.K.C. Tsui; I am in the debt of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, the Department of Co-operative Development and Fisheries, various officers of the Courts, and the Colonial Secretariat Library. To my host in Tai Po, Mr. Tsang For-piu, I am specially obliged. I should like also to thank my colleague Dr. Marjorie Topley for much guidance and several teachers at the University of Hong Kong whom I had the privilege of consulting.\n\n5. In what is to follow I shall discuss the general background to social research in the New Territories, report on some of the problems I have myself looked into, and suggest what further work could be done (and how it might be done) to promote the interests of both scholarship and administration.\n\n6. Until the advent of the Communist regime in China the New Territories did not interest social scientists. (It can also be argued that they were of little interest to anybody outside the New Territories Administration). Chinese scholars could not be expected to concern themselves with territory under British rule, while scholars from the West were far too preoccupied with China to consider the claims of a stretch of the Chinese countryside which, from their point of view, was no more than the railway route into Kwangtung. And of course it must be remembered that the number of social scientists working on Chinese themes was, before the Second World War, extremely small. Since 1949 the New Territories have come increasingly to be appreciated as a field for research: they have been politically accessible and have had the advantage of offering for study perhaps the best living example (however much affected by British rule and modern changes) of traditional Chinese country life. So far three anthropologists have completed field studies in the New Territories: Miss Barbara E. Ward, from London, who was primarily concerned with Tanka fishermen in the Sai Kung area (and who will probably be revisiting the New Territories this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "214\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ning, for they are now cut off from the intensive study of a period in which British administration and Chinese law and society were mutually adjusting themselves). Many disputes must have been dealt with in the communities within which they arose, and the remoter villages may in fact have had little to do with the Administration directly; but over a large area of the New Territories it came to be accepted that the administrator was a sure and final arbiter of major differences. In his report on the Northern District for 1913 Ross wrote: 'Some years ago by tacit consent parties did not bring forward cases relating to the \"tso\" and the settlement of ancestral property. Now a large number of cases heard are applications for a declaration as to the parties entitled to share in the property of a common ancestor...\n\n39. The powerful role of the pre-war administrator in social control has left a legacy which weakens the effectiveness of modern attempts to divert the settlement of disputes to other channels. The Rural Committees are now expected to take over a large share of the burden of mediation. In fact, the tendency still seems to be that differences which cannot be composed within a village (where the Village Representative and the other elders are often incapable of exerting the authority to settle the matter) pass first to the District Officer whence they may be referred to the Rural Committee, sometimes returning to the District Officer when the Rural Committee finds itself unable to produce a settlement. And in some cases a settlement is never reached, because as matters have stood in the last couple of years, the District Officers no longer exercise many of the judicial functions with which they were formerly endowed. Land and small debts cases now fall within the competence of the new District Court.\n\n40. Two questions are raised about the operation of the new court. First, is it so court-like in comparison with the informality of the old system practised by administrators that it attracts to itself the unfavourable attitudes which Chinese traditionally displayed towards the yamen? As well enter the jaws of hell as pass through the gates of the yamen.\n\nSecond, are the subtleties of Chinese custom likely to be taken account of in the new court as they were in the days when justice was administered by officers trained to study and respect these niceties? It is of course too soon to say anything definite about the first question; the reactions of people to the court will need to be watched over a period of years; but as\n\n+ + + + +", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "far as I can see, it is not fear that keeps people away from the court so much as unfamiliarity with technically administered justice and reluctance to become involved with professional lawyers.\n\n41. Through the courtesy and co-operation of the Registrar of the Supreme Court, the Registrar at the Kowloon District Court, and the District Judge, I was able to collect some information on recourse to the Fanling District Court (which covers most of the New Territories) since its establishment. From 27 Sept. 1961 to 19 April 1963, 1,741 cases were heard (436 in 1961, 1,179 in 1962, and 126 in 1963). The cases can be seen to fall mainly into four classes: 'goods', 'loans', 'possession', and 'dishonoured cheques'. In round figures the 'goods' cases amount to 280, 'loans' cases to 1,170, 'possession' cases to 70, and cases of 'dishonoured cheques' to 60. The 'loans' cases, which account so heavily for the business of the court, owe their great number to the activity of the Director of Agriculture and Forestry in claiming his due. It is the 'possession' cases which bring us into the traditional field of New Territories disputes: land. But in fact these cases seem to be largely about tenancies held by immigrants, the terms on which land is to be let for vegetable-growing and poultry-keeping (particularly with respect to the termination of leases) not yet having become standardised to the point where there is a generally recognised custom. The only other classes of cases where numbers rise to any significant degree are 'rent' (18 cases), 'wages' (29), 'wages in lieu of notice' (24), and 'tax' (16). So that, on the whole, the business of the court appears to be largely bound up with the relations between government and individuals and between long-settled residents and outsiders with whom they have become commercially engaged. Matters touching 'Chinese law and custom' have hardly yet reached the court. The extent to which lawyers were involved in the cases is worth noting. In 151 cases solicitors acted for plaintiffs; but only 3 defendants were so represented. (There are no solicitors outside the urban area and no sign yet that rural practices may develop).\n\n42. The second question raised at the beginning of paragraph 40 has already been answered in part: so far what has been regarded as falling within the province of 'Chinese law and custom' has barely been in question in the court; but the court is so constituted that if such cases do arise District Officers and other experts can be asked to sit with the judge, and it will be interesting to see whether cases of this kind do arise in the future in any considerable number.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207843, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "216\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nFor the time being disputes in the New Territories continue to be essentially a matter for mediation by the District Officers, the Rural Committees, and the ‘elders', and if in default of settlement a case drags on, no effective and generally accepted machinery can at the moment be brought into action to force it to a conclusion. (A number of important aspects of the legal situation have necessarily been ignored in this brief discussion. Some civil cases involving large sums of money fall within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The kinds of cases dealt with by the New Territories Magistrate would be an interesting matter to look into. The whole realm of family law—marriage, divorce, maintenance of wives and children, adoption, and inheritance—requires to be treated in detail).\n\n43. I come now to a point made by this discussion of some aspects of the political and legal situation in the New Territories. An approach to the study of leadership could conveniently be made by collecting some basic information on the Village Representatives. This task, it seems to me, might be discharged by the District Officers if they have the time to undertake it. A sample of Village Representatives could be drawn by a simple statistical procedure and the following data collected in respect of each of the men selected: his age; his birthplace; where he lives; where he lived before he became a Village Representative; whether he has ever lived outside the New Territories, and if so where and for how long; the length of time he has been in office; whether he was elected, and if so on what franchise; his occupations, main and subsidiary, past and present; his education (kinds and where acquired); the number of people living in the area he represents; the number of households in this area; the numbers of 'new population' in these last two figures; details (surnames and numbers of members) of the clans in the area represented; the number of men in the most senior surviving generation in his own clan; the age of the oldest man in this generation; the ages of the ten oldest men in the clan; the names of the previous Village Representatives, including the man appointed under the Japanese and any men acknowledged to be 'headmen' before the war; his precise kinship relation to these men; the number of his brothers; his birth order among them; their occupation; the ages of his sons and daughters; the education they are receiving or have received; their occupations, if any. The answers to these questions (some of which must already be known to the District Officers) would provide an indication of the position", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207844, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n217\n\nof the Village Representatives in their communities, and, taken together with other available information, would furnish a basis for assessing the kind of men who have come forward as leaders.\n\n44. But leadership cannot be studied simply by enumerating characteristics. The Village Representative operates within economic, legal, religious, political, and 'social' fields all of which need to be examined; and he is enmeshed in complex relationships with people both inside and outside his community. These are matters for detailed field studies and they can most conveniently be examined in the course of investigations concerned very broadly with the life of particular communities. And it is to be hoped that a large enough variety of communities will be studied for all major variations in leadership patterns to emerge.\n\n45. In the old days, as we have seen, there was much scope for the exercise of leadership in intervillage relations; the central government being remote, the responsibility for local affairs fell on gentry and elders. The field for the deployment of local governmental talents has now contracted, but it becomes all the more important to discover just what it is that extra-village politics entails. In the study of this theme the Rural Committees (and perhaps ultimately the Heung Yee Kuk) must take first place, but these are not the only wide associations to be looked into. Chambers of commerce, the associations for particular businesses, co-operative societies, sports clubs, and so on, are bodies within which certain men take the initiative, rally support, and—since we are dealing with a society in the full flood of change—direct group activities along new paths.\n\n46. I have touched on the role of the Village Representative in settling disputes. To understand the present legal situation in the New Territories it would be desirable to begin with an analysis of the relevant work of the District Officers and Rural Committees, and I suggest that it might be of interest to the District Officers to undertake a survey of the cases that have come before them in recent years, classifying them by their nature and describing the typical courses they have taken. This work could then be brought into relation with material on the cases heard in the various law courts to which New Territories people have recourse. Again, such field studies of communities as may be made by anthropologists would show how differences are settled at the local level or passed to outsiders for mediation or judgment. If a field study were made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "218\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\n(as I hope it will be) of the relations between a market town and its surrounding villages, then there will be in the course of it the opportunity to see how local leaders acting in concert may attempt to deal with disputes brought to them.\n\n47. I turn now to a different subject. Fung shui is very much in the administrator's mind and I was pleased to have my own growing interest in Chinese geomancy reinforced by the interest shown by the District Officers. I should explain that before I began my survey in the New Territories I had not dealt with fung shui as a field problem and that the only analysis I had made of it from the literature was concerned with the significance of quarrels over grave sites. (My Lineage Organization deals briefly with this matter at pp. 77f.) I had therefore much to learn while I was in the New Territories and there remain many points I have yet to study. The following account, as a result, is an exploration and only the beginning of an analysis.\n\n48. I shall open the discussion with a bald statement that any view of the situation is misguided which starts from the assumption that the inhabitants of the New Territories are parties to a great cynical conspiracy seeking to exploit the tender concern of the Administration for the religious susceptibilities of its charges. This is a view held by many city people who, in a mixture of envy and condescension, gaze on their country cousins from afar, and by some outsiders in the New Territories whose distance from the local people is to be measured socially and not in miles. True, the Administration has shown itself to be zealous in the protection of Chinese religion (and more tolerant of it than the preceding Chinese regime, whose officials were required to suppress unorthodoxy); and there are undoubtedly cases where a government with a less tender attitude might with impunity have overridden geomantic objections which, in the event, have cost the Administration time, annoyance, and money. But in fact the success of many country people in getting their way in fung shui matters has necessarily rested on their belief in it; for were people to be generally cynical the system of action could not go on unchanged. There are sceptics, some of whom may behave as though they were not in order to benefit from the rewards for belief. I have already suggested that Village Representatives may disbelieve in the validity of their constituents' claims and yet press them for political reasons. On the other hand, it is not always easy to be sure that the expression", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207849, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "222\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\n53. Graves and dwellings are placed in accordance with such elementary principles and by means of an elaborate scheme of ideas based upon and extending them. But fung shui is not only Winds and Waters. Other principles are involved. The stars must be taken into account. The geomancer's compass shows, by the number of circles on it, a given sum of criteria by which a site is to be selected and oriented. Over and above all this, there comes from the tradition of the Book of Changes an idea of the cosmos (of which man is an intrinsic part) in a perpetual state of flux; that which is so at one point in time is not so at another. Things, and the fortunes of men with them, change. So that within cycles of time, definable by well-recognised principles (the sexagenary system of 'stems and branches' among them), the virtues of any site may change, however expertly it was chosen in regard to the ‘landscape'. Geomancy becomes a body of learning the complexity of which is represented to the layman by the compass, the books, and the experience of practitioners. Ordinary men know a little, and they know that they do not know enough to rely in important matters on their own judgment. The fung shui lo, as he may be called behind his back, or the fung shui sin shaang, as he is addressed, enters the scene. And he is very much in evidence in the New Territories. District Officers meet him from time to time. The field worker with a little patience can enjoy his company.\n\n54. The complexity of fung shui is a guarantee of its continued credibility. If it works it works. If it fails to work, a neglected principle, an ignorant geomancer, an undetected alteration to the landscape can be held responsible. From the point of view of the outsider geomancy may seem completely irrational, but once grant that man, dead or alive, is part of a universe with which his fortunes are inextricably interwoven, and the reasoning of geomancy can be seen to fall into a logical pattern. And the surviving strength of the appeal of fung shui to the minds of Chinese rests precisely on what seems to them to be its reasonableness; the more rational the minds the greater the degree of rationalisation produced to support what only extreme rationalism rejects. Fung shui is not like most of the rest of Chinese religion; no reliance on the will of a deity is involved; there are no gods to serve and placate; it is not superstitious for it is based on self-evident propositions; the principles which regulate the cosmos are fixed, known, and subject to exact treatment by experts who, in the performance of their duties, are like", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 229\n\nher grave was on the head her descendants would be very great men: but if on the tail they would be more humble people, perhaps officers of low degree, and, although prosperous, none would succeed to high rank.' The princess chose the tail because she preferred her descendants to stay humble, she herself having suffered so much. See Sung Hok-p’ang, ‘Legends and Stories of the New Territories”, IV. Kam T'in (continued)', The Hong Kong Naturalist, vol. VII, no. 1, April 1936, pp. 34f.)\n\n62. The term fung shui is often used to mean simply a grave, and there is no need to stress the point that burial lies at the heart of geomancy. But in fact fung shui covers all aspects of men's dwellings on earth. Every territorially defined unit of society has its fung shui, from the household up to the state. The residence of the head of the state affects the prosperity of the country. (For this reason great emphasis is often placed on the geomantic excellence of Government House). The fortunes of cities, towns, and villages depend on their physical arrangement and dominating buildings. Political units take their fate from government offices. (The fung shui of the new Fanling District Court has impressed many locals). The fung shui of an ancestral hall determines the fortunes of members of the clan. (For this reason it is hardly ever to be found inside a wai, a walled enclosure; it must have free access to its site). A house shapes the destiny of its master and those for whom he is responsible. Consequently, geomancers are often employed to advise on the siting, orientation, certain architectural features (especially height), and work—and opening-dates of domestic and other buildings. Indeed, there appears to be some specialisation among fung shui sin shaang in the New Territories, some of them putting themselves out to be experts on graves and others on buildings.\n\n63. Burial and the fung shui associated with it differ markedly in city and countryside. Only the rich among the people in the urban area can afford to escape the regimentation of their dead in cemeteries and seek geomantically favourable sites in private plots. (Some in fact acquire the right to bury their dead in land forming the traditional preserves of village communities. They may have to pay dearly for the privilege. Along one of the main roads in the New Territories there stands a pavilion, now many years old, which was put up as part of the compensation to the local people for the geomantic disturbance caused them by the burial in their area of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207863, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "236\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nworking). As long, then, as village life remains the kind of community life it has been, fung shui is likely to continue undiminished. But in fact, life in the New Territories cannot remain unchanged; industrialisation and the blurring of community limits by the penetration of newcomers have already gone too far. So that there is a prospect that, just as in the city today, so in the New Territories tomorrow, geomantic ideas will survive (affecting the behaviour of people striving for status and providing a retrospective explanation of fortune and misfortune) without involving everybody in a sharp geomantic response to a challenge to his rights.\n\n71. My analysis, as I have stressed, is provisional, and I should certainly hope that it will be checked by later research and against the experience of administrators. Once again, I should like to suggest the possibility of District Officers systematising the data they have in their files, so that, by comparing the situation in different areas and at different points in time, we may get a clearer picture of what is afoot and the likely direction of change. Of course, any field study by an anthropologist which sets out to analyse the life of a community will almost certainly produce case material on fung shui, but there would be no point in suggesting that the subject be made the centre of an extended anthropological enquiry unless a specialist in Chinese religion were available and willing to undertake the task. There is certainly a need for a broad enquiry into religious life in the New Territories—ancestor worship, cults, spirit-mediumship, temples, and so on—but it would take a mature and experienced research worker to do it.\n\n72. There is a third and final problem I propose to discuss at some length: emigration and its effects. It is generally assumed that there are some 20,000 Hong Kong men in the United Kingdom at the present time, most of them in the restaurant trade. (The figure may be larger; the head of the biggest travel agency in the New Territories puts it at 25,000). Most of these men are from the New Territories. In addition, men have gone to other parts of the world to seek a living. It is known that the money remitted home is a sizeable portion of the annual income of the New Territories. I write without a copy of the 1961 census before me, and I am unable to calculate very accurately how large a proportion the emigrants must form of the relevant sector of the population; but if we remember (a) that very few of the emigrants are men from the city,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208043, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "66\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nFinally, a word on economic development. Equilibrium in the tenancy system in no way implied stagnation in the economy. We have already noted the benefits which tenants derived by extending the surface value. The clans, restricted in the amount of rent-value collected, expanded economically into two areas, regulation of trade and monopolization of tax collection. It was at the level of periodic marketing that the landlord clans \"reasserted control” over the tenants' surplus; moreover, the landlords were able to extract increasingly large amounts of revenue, as taxes, while both trade and agricultural production increased. In this way, perpetual tenancy gave impetus to the rise of taxlordism, which we shall consider in the next essay.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Hugh Baker, Sheung Shui, A Chinese Lineage Village, p 8.\n\n2 See, for instance, the Kwang Tung Nung Yeh Kai-K’uang Tiao-ch'a-pao-kao Shu Hsuan-pien (*), Vol. I, p 185.\n\n3 Hung ch'i represented officially recognized ownership of land. Pai ch'i (é) denoted unregistered ownership, mortgage, and the like. Tenants might possess pai ch'i, or they might not.\n\n4 It is very difficult to give a realistic estimate of the amount of land worked by tenants in the early nineteenth century. Existing records (including Government CSO reports, sessional papers and cadastral surveys) suggest a very high degree of tenancy. A survey taken by Potter in 1960 indicates a tenancy rate of 83% in Ping Shan (); this coincides with my observations in Kam Tin.\n\n5 Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, p 52.\n\n6 In the first tally of cultivated land conducted at the beginning of the Ch'ing Dynasty, 4039.567656 mow of land were liable to the payment of taxes. By 1819, this amount had shrunk to a total of 3815.94836965 mow. (Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8). Lockhart, in the Extension papers, writes of the land registers: \"The land registers of the district, which ought to be a reliable guide, are worse than useless, as they contain not more than half of the land under cultivation.\" (p.48).\n\n7 See Tung-Kuan Hsien-chih (*), ch'uan 39, for an account of the problems raised by this situation. In the early years of British administration, officers were often informed by cultivators that plots of 3rd class land (see below) were exempt from tax in certain areas.\n\n8 Kwang-chow Fu-chih ( ), ch'uan 4:46b-47a.\n\n9 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 2.\n\n10 James Hayes, \"Old British Kowloon\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 6, 1966, gives some data on Kowloon. The Hakka Tangs of Pat Heung apparently arrived in the neighborhood of Kam Tin during the migration years.\n\n11 Wan Lo, “Communal Strife in Mid-19th Century Kwangtung” Papers on China from the Regional Studies Seminar, p 93. See also N.B. Dennys (ed), The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (1867), pp 20-22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208054, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n77\n\nadministration\" was first implemented in the Sheung Yu Tung (**). The Land Court recognized the status of fourteen tax-lords, and granted them a total of 252.33 acres of unclaimed crown land. The taxlords, however, were in no hurry to select the land, and it was only after considerable prodding (over a period of several months) that they made their choices. The problems which arose over the plots selected were to plague district officers for years. Information regarding potentially profitable land was secured from bribed government clerks, with the result that speculation on railway land became rampant. Another problem arose when taxlords staked claims to \"fung shui\" groves and proceeded to extort and blackmail neighboring villages by threatening to chop down the trees for firewood. As a result, taxlord schedules for the tung were not completed till August, 1909; references to taxlord claims crop up in CSO reports well into the 1920's.20\n\nBy the time the Land Court got around to hearing the Un Long claims, little sympathy existed in the colonial service for the compensation plan. It is not surprising, then, that the Tang claims were dismissed as invalid, a decision which elders in the neighborhood still relate to the fact that the Tangs led the resistance. Official records regarding this decision have apparently been lost;29 thus, our only data on the nature of taxlordism refer to Sheung Yu Tung.*\n\nThe most complete account of the taxlord settlement is provided in CSO6269 of 1909. Of the fourteen taxlords compensated throughout the tung, nine are dealt with in this file, which was compiled over the period 1904-1910. The table below summarizes these nine settlements.\n\nTable II: Taxlord Settlements, Sheung Yu Tung\n\nTaxlord\nAmount granted\nLocated in:\n\nTang Yung Peng\n45.0 acres\nFan Ling\n\nLiu Yin Yu\n13.0 acres\nMan Lai Ngam\n\nMan Fung Chi\n9.5 acres\n\nTang Yui Shan\n16.0 acres\n\nPang Shin Han\n65.0 acres\nFan Ling, Hau Yeuk Fan Ling\n\n9.0 acres\n\n60.0 acres\nHo Sheung, Lam Tsun Luk Yeuk\n\n11.0 acres\nHau Chak Wing Hang Chung Hin\n\n4.8 acres\nMan Cham Tsum\n\n*The claims by Tangs over Tsing Yi Island were originally labelled.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208448, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "156\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThe plans of the Nationalist Government call for the organization of local self-government in rural districts along republican lines which will fit into the scheme of a thoroughly democratized state. The years between 1930 and 1935 have been designated as a period of political tutelage during which the new organization is to be effected.\n\nThe smallest unit of organization is to be the Lin (鄰), composed of five families. This unit will be controlled by a president and vice president elected by the citizens. Five Lin constitute a Lü (閭), which will have similar officers. Villages, Hsiang (鄉), and market towns, Chên (鎮) are composed of at least 100 families or four Lü. From twenty to fifty of these villages, in turn, form a county, Ch'u (區), while an undetermined number of counties form a Hsien (縣) or district under a district magistrate or Hsien-chang (縣長). This whole system of organization, it will be seen, is based upon very ancient Chinese forms. What is different is the democratic and republican form which the government is supposed to assume.\n\nThe machinery of rural self-government is supposed to operate from the smallest unit, the Lin, upwards to the district or Hsien. The rights of election, recall, initiative and referendum are conferred first upon the smallest units. Because of an untrained citizenry, however, the attack has been made first upon the largest unit. And District magistrates, during the period of tutelage, are not to be elected by the people but are first to be examined and then recommended by the provincial Government and appointed by the National government. In the meantime, the plan of the Central Government calls for training schools for county chairmen, and provinces and districts are supposed to form training schools for preparing the personnel of the smaller units of local government.\n\nThe only available report as to how this process of organization works in practice is that given in the survey of Ching Ho, and unfortunately this village is not typical of rural districts. Ching Ho is a town composed of a number of villages, and has a population\n\nFor the statement of the plan for rural government as given here, see: China Year Book 1932; p. 687, and Tyau, Min-ch'ien; Two Years of Nationalist China, p. 76-78.\n\n2 Ching Ho: a Sociological Analysis. This study was made during 1928 and 1929, and therefore is by several years too early to give a picture of the situation at present under the slowly strengthening National Government. But it is valuable because it indicates the reaction of a town on which the new, external forces of change are operating.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208449, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n157\n\nof approximately 2437 inhabitants. It differs from typical rural villages in at least three respects: it is very young, having a history of only about fifty years; it is rather a grain market town with many stores than an agricultural community; and it is really a suburb of Peiping, lying just north of the former capital, and its whole economic, political and social life is highly colored by this fact.\n\nAt present there exist in the town two sets of political organizations: the old type established by the people themselves, and a more recent type set up by provincial or Kuomintang authorities. The two sets of organizations function simultaneously, and each seems to be weakened by the presence of the other. Of the first type is the village self-government of the traditional kind, a Chamber of Commerce composed of the leading merchants, and an Association of Farmers for the Protection of Crops.\n\nIn 1915 a district self-government movement was started. The term is not exactly accurate, however, since all the officers were appointed from among the various heads of villages by the county government or by the governor of the capital district of Peking direct. This organization worked with the cooperation of the traditional village governments, and seems both to have supplemented and coordinated them.\n\nIn 1919 the provincial authorities decided to remodel the system of self-government after the Shansi plan. According to this system, which is almost identical with the plan adopted later by the Central Government, five and twenty-five families were to be gathered into groups each with a chief. One hundred families or more were to constitute a village with a village head. Above the village there was to be a district office under a leader who would serve as a link between the self-government of the villages and the officials of the county government. This district head was also to serve as chief of the local police.\n\nThis theoretic plan was not so democratically carried out. In Ching Ho the selection of the village head was not made by popular vote in a mass meeting, as was supposed to have been done. Only the leaders of the village were present, no vote was taken, and the office was assumed by the associate of the former village head. Nor was the district head elected, his office being taken temporarily\n\n1 Ibid: chapters seven and eight, p. 96-121. The following description is taken from this section of the book.", "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": 209352, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "Chinese University's History Department and editor of our 1981 Journal, spoke on Saikung district during World War II: the district being a regular escape route for prisoners of war from Kowloon.\n\nAfter a summer break we began again in October with Professor Shih Hsio-yen, Head of Department of Fine Arts at Hong Kong University, talking on recent Chinese archeological finds and how the Chinese on the mainland look at their origins. In December Dr. James Hayes led a tour of the New Territories, which included Sam Tung Uk village built in the eighteenth century and scheduled as a museum and cultural centre, and Tsuen Wan, with a vegetarian lunch at the Yuen Yuen Hok Yuen, Tsuen Wan, a temple complex belonging to a Chinese syncretic religious group. Also in December, Professor Rulan Chao Pian, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Music at Harvard, and currently visiting Professor of Music at the Chinese University, spoke on traditional forms of dance narrative in North China. Her talk was illustrated with video tape material. Finally, in January Dr. Graham Johnson, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, talked on the Chinese in Canada, discussing their history from the early rural migrants who worked in the goldfields and on the railway, to the more sophisticated urban migrants going to Canada after 1967, many from Hong Kong.\n\nThere was very poor response to the two overseas tours offered through, or by, the Society during the year. The tour to India had to be cancelled through lack of sufficient numbers, and the tour of the Pearl River Delta consisted of six persons only, including the leader, Dr. Michael Lau, to whom I express my thanks. This year about seven members will be joining a tour arranged by Dr. Brian Shaw for late March-early April. The group will witness the annual sacred masked dance festival at Paro in Bhutan and also visit other places in Bhutan, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Other tours may be arranged by Dr. Shaw during the coming year, and Mrs. Craig will also be offering tours to members, who will be kept informed.\n\nAs the year progressed we found it increasingly difficult to obtain bookings at the Volunteer Officers' Mess due to heavy\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209366, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN AN URBAN ORGANIZATION: THE MUTUAL AID COMMITTEES\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT*\n\nThe Mutual Aid Committees (MACs), or as they are more commonly known in Hong Kong, were first established in June of 1973. They are organizations composed of residents of a building, or more rarely, a group of buildings, and have the dual aims of promoting a sense of friendship and mutual reliance among all authorized tenants and of cooperating to promote better security, a better environment and more effective management generally (City and New Territories Administration 1982:1).\n\nWhy are Mutual Aid Committees established? Investigations and interviews with government officials carried out during 1976-1978 suggested the following reasons. The first was the desire of the Hong Kong Government to improve communication with the people of Hong Kong. The MACs were originally created under directives from the Home Affairs Department, and came under the jurisdiction of the City District Offices, themselves set up under the City District Officers Scheme of 1968. As one writer described this Scheme:\n\nThe CDO Scheme was announced at the beginning of 1968, but the first CDOs were appointed in the middle of that year. The Scheme divides the urban areas into ten districts: four on Hong Kong Island and six in Kowloon. A City District Commissioner on each side of the harbor coordinates the work of the CDOs, each of whom has liaison and other duties.\n\n* Dr. Janet Lee Scott is a member of the Department of Anthropology, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research on the Mutual Aid Committees was supported by a grant from the Institute of Social Studies of the Chinese University. Doctoral dissertation research carried out during 1976-1978 was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, an N.D.F.L. fellowship awarded through Cornell University, and a grant from the Cornell Center for International Studies. The author wishes to express her appreciation for such generous financial support.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209369, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "4\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nneighbourliness is already developing in some multi-storey blocks where mutual aid committees have been set up, and people are now getting to know their neighbours in a way which seemed impossible before (Government Information Services 1974:9).\n\nThat the Mutual Aid Committees were believed to be succeeding in these endeavours, and for that reason were being promoted by the Hong Kong government, is suggested by evaluations made of the Scheme early in its history. Apparently, public opinion towards the committees was so favourable during the first years that an early decision was made to continue the formation of the MACs.1 In 1974, it was stated that \"Mutual Aid Committees should be regarded as a permanent requirement in helping to ensure a stable society and that the legal requirement for registration, i.e. exemption from registration as societies under the Societies Ordinance provided they were approved by the Director of Home Affairs (or the Secretary for the New Territories, outside the urban area), would be continued\" (Director of Home Affairs 1974:5). Such official support was to continue. During interviews conducted in 1976 and again in 1978, liaison officers of the City District Offices of the Wong Tai Sin and Mong Kok Districts were still expressing their satisfaction with committee operation. Further confirmation of committee success, in terms of organization, can be seen in the increased number of committees formed. At the end of their first year, 1973, a total of 1,214 MACs were formed (Government Information Services 1974:9), but by the end of 1981, this figure had risen to 3,573 (Government Information Services 1982:248). At present (to the end of February, 1983) the figure has risen to 3,752.\n\nIf the Mutual Aid Committees have been considered as valuable organizations by the City District Offices, they have been equally valued by others. Since their inception, the Mutual Aid Committees have proved themselves useful settings in which to investigate such diverse topics as the adjustments of the elderly (Ikels 1983), the delivery of community health services (Grandpierre 1978), and the dimensions of women's participation in urban organizations (Scott 1980). Other scholars have chosen to study the Mutual Aid Committees because they are neighbourhood associations, and thus can be used to explore the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209374, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "9 \n\nA similar \nplan to go back and establish a new committee. 13 situation exists at Block #9, which has already been converted. However, it is not yet fully occupied and a committee cannot be established until all units have been taken. When this is done, the District Office will begin its visits. A different situation exists in Block #13, for its MAC has been in suspension since 1978. The reasons why were not entirely clear, for the suspension was enacted before the tenure of the present liaison officer. Block #13 contains both the Housing Department office and the office of the Neighbourhood Police Unit, so it is possible that the residents did not see the need for an MAC. In January of 1983, the staff of the District Office planned to make new visits to assess the situation at this block. It seems that their efforts were successful, for on April 15, 1983, the residents held a special meeting and voted to set up a new Mutual Aid Committee. While dissolution is a serious matter, if a committee is dissolved, it can be re-established at a later date if the residents change their opinions.\n\nPrivate housing blocks, it might be added, have another alternative—the owners' corporations—and some MACs disband when one of these is established. The owners' corporations were established under the Multi-Storey Building (Owners' Incorporation) Ordinance, passed in 1970. Normally, the two kinds of organizations do not co-exist in one building, although there are some examples of change over long periods when both continue to function. Some officials (for example, many of the liaison officers I interviewed while conducting research in the Mong Kok District) considered this change desirable and viewed the process as one of no committee, then a Mutual Aid Committee, then an owners' corporation. Of course, no such alternative is available at Lok Fu, as owners' corporations cannot be established in public housing estates, or in some private housing estates with management systems governed by Deeds of Mutual Covenant.\n\nA Question of Data\n\nHow large are Mutual Aid Committees and what is their internal arrangement? While this question seems quite straightforward, gathering the information necessary to answer it is not always easy. Because of conflicting sources, it is difficult to assess", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209375, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "10\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\naccurately the exact size of some committees and their internal arrangements. For example, data obtained from the interviews with MAC chairmen may be incomplete, as some chairmen are not always clear about the structural details of their own committees. They omit the names of some of the committee subdivisions, or are not clear about the exact number of people participating. Such variations in data are not the result of a lack of knowledge on the part of the chairman; certainly, most chairmen (unless they have recently moved to the block) know their blocks and committees very well. Rather, it is likely a result of the chairmen's counting up only those members who are active in the actual day-to-day working of the committee. This is encouraged by the fact that members join and resign as residents move in or out of the block. For the same reason, subdivisions of the committee may also not be mentioned.\n\nA minority of the committees hold banquets or inauguration ceremonies for new officers and on these occasions, the printed invitation cards that are sent contain the names and positions of all the members of the committee. They are for that reason a valuable source of information. But, as just explained, only a small number of committees hold such ceremonies. The Tung Tau Sub-office of the Wong Tai Sin District Office keeps records on the MACs of Lok Fu Estate, but these records are kept only for the officers, not for the details of the committee itself. Therefore, since both invitation cards and District Office records are incomplete, the only recourse is repeated questioning of the chairmen. For this reason the following account of committee structure, while accurate both in general outline and substantive detail, may be subject to minor revision.\n\nCommittee Size\n\nAs would be expected, the greatest variations in committee size and structure are due partly to the size of the building and the number of residents. What is the population of Lok Fu Estate by block? Block #19, with a population of 1,923 people divided among 337 households, is the largest block, while Block #9, with a population of 224 people divided among 48 households, is the smallest. In all, six blocks house below 500 people, seven blocks house between 500 and 1,000, five have populations of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209378, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "13\n\nofficial information. Floor representatives also participate in their MAC's subcommittees, if there are any, and so do much of the work of organizing and carrying out activities.\n\nOfficeholders\n\nHow many officeholders are there? The basic committee structure consists of three officers: chairman, secretary, and treasurer. Section VII of the 1982 Model Rules (Composition of Committee) explains that, \"The MAC shall consist of at least three key office-bearers namely a Chairman, a Secretary and a Treasurer, and such other office-bearers as may be elected\" (City and New Territories Administration 1982:2). The three officers (and, of course, any additional officers) are required to show their identity cards and register at the District Office along with the committee itself. The registration practice, which is now standardized for all City Districts, involves giving certain personal data for recording in the District Office. The information recorded is: name, address, telephone number, identity card number, sex, date of birth, age, educational background, occupation, nationality, and C.C.C. number.15 All of the officers of all committees must register. However, the District Office does not keep records on any other members of the committee, nor does it record the structure of the committee itself.\n\nIn addition to the three officers mentioned above, most committees add extra officeholding positions to assist in the running of the committee. While government regulations do not state clearly what positions these might be, all the Mutual Aid Committees in Lok Fu Estate have vice-chairmen. Most have only one, but three committees have two vice-chairmen, one has three, and one has four. Committees have vice-chairmen because they recognize the need for someone to assist the chairman, on whom falls much of the responsibility for the affairs of the committee. Sometimes, there is too much for one person to do. Three more committees have either vice-secretaries or vice-treasurers, and two committees have both a vice-secretary and a vice-treasurer. The chairman of one of these committees explained that these extra vice-officers were the secretary and the treasurer of the previous term and were kept on to advise and assist the newly-elected secretary and treasurer. This ensured", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "14\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nboth continuity and smooth operation, the desire for both being a common reason for electing vice-officers. One of the committees listed above as having two vice-chairmen, did so because one of these officers was soon to move to another estate and the second would be available to take over the position after he left.\n\nIn June of 1982, a decision was made by the District Offices to add auditors as appointed members of the Mutual Aid Committees. This was done on the advice of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which believed that, although the MACs and their financial transactions were small, it was nevertheless a good idea to prevent any possible mishandling of funds.16 Any person living in the block who is not already an officer can become the auditor, but the MAC can, with the agreement of the residents, ask residents of other blocks to serve as their auditor. At the end of March, 1983, seventeen of the Mutual Aid Committees of Lok Fu Estate had appointed auditors, and one of these had also added a vice-auditor.\n\nThe largest committee in Lok Fu Estate, that of Block #15, has eight officers: one chairman, three vice-chairmen, two secretaries, one treasurer, and one vice-treasurer. The next largest, that of Block #12, operates with six officers: one chairman, two vice-chairmen, one secretary, and two treasurers. Block #19, the third largest, has also elected six officers: one chairman, two vice-chairmen, two secretaries and one treasurer. In size, these committees resemble the large scale MACs in Tze Wan Shan Estate, committees which have as many as eight to ten additional officers (Scott 1980:37). For example, the fifty-five member committee mentioned previously had fourteen officers altogether: one chairman, eight vice-chairmen, one secretary, two vice-secretaries, and one treasurer (Scott 1980:41).\n\nWhat are the duties of these officers? Of course, the chairman is the key officer, as he is the official representative of the MAC, convening the meetings, and acting on behalf of the residents when meeting with officials and representatives from the government. The vice-chairman, according to the 1982 Model Rules, is \"deputising the Chairman as and when necessary\" (City and New Territories Administration 1981:3). However, the vice-chairmen, acting in hand with the chairmen, sometimes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "15\n\nhave a great many other duties to do as well, and step in to work whenever necessary. The secretary, with the assistance of the vice-secretaries, if any, handles the correspondence, takes the minutes at meetings, and in general keeps the letters and correspondence received from outside, although in some committees this latter duty is performed by the chairman. Finally, the treasurer prepares the income and expenditure statements (in cooperation with the chairman and the auditor), issues the cheques (also bearing the signature of the chairman and/or secretary), checks the validity of payment vouchers, and supervises the collection of voluntary contributions and monthly fees (City and New Territories Administration 1982:4).\n\nThese distinctions look neat on paper and the division of labour seems clear, but the actual situation is a good deal less distinct. The lack of enthusiasm on the part of committee members often means that the officers of some committees carry out all the work themselves, and so take on additional duties beyond those formally listed for their offices. In addition, the distinctions between responsibilities often become blurred because officers must help each other perform their duties, especially if one is ill or away. This is especially true for the chairman, who in some committees becomes the only working office-holder. All the chairmen of Lok Fu Estate Mutual Aid Committees stressed the cooperation between the officers and the fact that they all could do each other's jobs when and if that became necessary.17\n\nHow long do officers serve? The Model Rules of August, 1982, stated clearly that, \"The tenure of an office-bearer shall be two years\" (City and New Territories Administration 1982:3). Before these rules were enacted, however, the officers of Mutual Aid Committees served terms of one year. The District Offices had many reasons for extending the term of office, but the most important was that the new officers needed more time to become acquainted with the block, its problems, and the duties of an officer. This was especially true if they were new to the block. In addition, the one-year term of office did not allow sufficient time for the officers to complete projects. The reason for this was that the last two months of a term were taken to prepare for the next election. Therefore, officers were serving, in effect, ten-month terms and it was felt that a longer term of office was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209381, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "16\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nimperative. Actually, the officers of many MACs have recently been serving for terms of longer than one year due to special events or circumstances (such as the recent District Board Elections) which have delayed the block elections. According to the District Office, the MAC chairmen were consulted before the new rule was enacted, to collect their opinions. These consultations were, however, informal ones carried out in the course of the regular visits paid to the committee by the staff of the District Office or collected during telephone conversations. There were no formal meetings called to discuss the proposed change.\n\nWhat opinions do the officeholders have of this change? The chairmen I spoke to were overwhelmingly in favor of the two-year term of office; only two chairmen expressed any reservations. As one explained, \"I think that two years is too long for a term and I want a shorter one. There are some residents of the block who are also well qualified and I want to give these people a chance to carry out the job of an officer.\" The second chairman, while generally agreeing with the change, cautioned, \"The drawback with a longer term is that people may begin to criticize the chairman, for example, for misuse of power.\" A third chairman felt that it made no difference. One and two-year terms were the same to him, for although a two-year term allowed the officers to familiarize themselves with the households, a one-year term was too much for him because few people in his block were willing to help the committee.\n\nOther chairmen had no reservations about the change. Their comments centered on three benefits (basically, the same ones as recognized by the District Office), namely: more time for the chairman to become acquainted with the block and its committee, more time for the officers to do their work, and avoiding too frequent elections. Speaking on the first point, one chairman told me:\n\n\"I think the two-year term of office is a good idea. This is because, in a one-year term, the officers might not get properly on track as they need to take some time to familiarize themselves with the work of the MAC. There is a risk that they might not be re-elected the next year and then the new", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "20\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nthe halls and the entrances of the blocks, watching for intruders and generally keeping an eye on the safety of the building. The majority of public housing estates have set up some kinds of patrol, or have had patrols in the past until the setting up of gates made them unnecessary (Scott 1980:38). While these neighbourhood security patrols are extremely common in other estates, there are very few at Lok Fu.\n\nWhy is this? There are a number of possible reasons, beginning with the smaller size of these blocks. Lok Fu Estate is designed on the older Mark I and Mark II structural designs which accommodate fewer people to start with, and recently, a number of blocks have been losing residents to newer estates elsewhere, or to home ownership schemes. In addition, the conversion of many blocks has meant fewer units, and therefore, fewer resident families. Fewer residents suggests fewer problems to many people, and so residents of some blocks do not see the need for a patrol. In addition, the H-shape of the Mark II blocks with outside balconies makes it easier to spot intruders, and makes residents feel safer. It should also be remembered that Lok Fu Estate has a Neighbourhood Police Unit in Block #13, and all the MAC officers are acquainted with its director. In fact, all the chairmen but one stressed again and again how safe and peaceful life was in the blocks. Another reason, one probably more to the point, is that residents of most blocks are simply no longer enthusiastic about patrolling, and they are not willing to give money to pay for the service, even if earlier in the committee's history they had supported such a team. The result has been half-hearted attempts to form patrols, and numerous failures.\n\nFor example, one committee had planned to establish a patrol team, but both interest and funds were insufficient to support it. Committee officers then decided that it would be more effective to hire a watchman for the front gate, but residents would not give money for that either, so up to now nothing has been accomplished. A similar lack of funds (and authority) prevented another committee from starting a patrol team. \"The MAC organizations were mainly set up in 1973, assisted by the City District Office, because public order was very bad at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209392, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "27\n\nLok Fu Estate. I did, however, hear of such misuse during my earlier research in other districts.\n\n17 It might be mentioned here that a number of MAC office-holders, most often the chairmen, are asked to participate on other community organizations, thereby representing the MAC and forming a link between it and the organization. The nature of such links varies from committee to committee, but membership on the Area Committee is common. For example, nearly all the chairmen of Lok Fu Estate MACS participate in the Lok Fu Area Committee. Participation on such outside organizations increases the duties of the office-holders, as they must carry back to the MAC information and announcements for dissemination.\n\nIn a few committees, these items were purchased by the officers (usually the chairman) and donated to the committee. Other committees have applied to the Sir David Trench Fund. This fund, made up of a sports grant from the Council for Recreation and Sports, can be used to pay for sports equipment such as table tennis tables. Applications are invited once a year, usually in September or October. At that time, the District Office sends the temporary community organizer to each MAC, to ask the chairman if any equipment is desired. If so, the forms are completed and forwarded to the City and New Territories Administration by the District Office. The forms are tabulated and the committees are then informed of what they can buy. The committees then buy the approved items and are reimbursed.\n\nThe Mutual Aid Committees are not unusual in their practice of inviting honorary members. Honorary members seem to be a part of many Chinese organizations, both traditional and modern.\n\nThe position of honorary member is not based on sex; both men and women can be asked to be honorary members, although male honorary members are more numerous, reflecting the generally greater participation of men in the Mutual Aid Committees.\n\nDespite the popularity of inviting honorary members, the District Office does not encourage this practice, as it views the officers and the floor representatives as the functioning members. In addition, there is potential for committee conflicts if members cannot agree on who to invite as honorary members, and this should be avoided.\n\nThe terms \"honorary\" or \"ordinary\" refer to the distinctions made by some committees. Actually, there is very little substantive difference between president and honorary president or consultant and honorary consultant. In a few committees, it seems that the titles of honorary president or honorary consultant confer a bit more prestige, but this is by no means certain.\n\nEach registered Mutual Aid Committee may request reimbursement of its essential expenditure up to a total of $2,000 per year, computed quarterly (that is, $500 every three months). This money is provided for the MACs from a special fund from the City and New Territories Administration and may be used to pay the costs of the initial setting up of the MAC office; to purchase supplies such as blackboards and notice boards, first-aid kits, and loud speakers; and to pay the monthly bills (such as rates or the cost of electricity) for the office. Sports equipment cannot be bought with this money. Newly-established committees that are setting up their offices can ask for a one quarter's advance, so that they can use up to $1,000 in the first quarter if necessary. However, if the $2,000 yearly allotment is insufficient for the committee's needs, or if special expenditure is planned, the additional funds must be collected from the residents, or donated by the honorary members.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209712, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 369, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n347\n\nChinese period. Perhaps because of this, the historian H. B. Morse commented in his International Relations of the Chinese Empire (3 volume, 1910) (Vol. I, p. 694) that it was \"history written to support the utmost pretentions of the Hongkong residents\" meaning its western inhabitants and especially the British. Saving Professor Lo Hsiang-lin's book on pre-1842 Hong Kong (1959) much of it done by his students and only part of it available in the English version (1963), we have had to wait all this time for someone to provide a clear and comprehensive account of the Chinese history of the region. It is fitting that it should have been written by China's scholar gentry, rescued from obscurity by a contemporary Chinese scholar businessman, aided and embellished by a British scholar long familiar with Hong Kong, and supported and published by the Hong Kong University Press.\n\nThe book is the result of collaboration between Peter Ng, who wrote a master's thesis for the University of Hong Kong on this subject in 1961 and Dr. Hugh Baker who revised and edited it for publication. I have used Peter Ng's thesis in connection with my own work for many years, and was consulted by the Hong Kong University Press when it was considering who might edit it for publication. I suggested that Dr. Baker, if available, would be the best person, but hinted that this would be a difficult task not because of any shortcomings in Mr. Ng's work but because a good deal of extra work would be necessary to make it suitable for the English-speaking public. It is therefore not surprising that, in the preface, the joint authors agree that the task was greater than they had anticipated. The work could have gone on and on, and it says much for Dr. Baker's will power that he was able to bring his complementary labours to a close so that we could all benefit.\n\nChinese gazetteers were never conceived for foreigners, as the Hong Kong University Press now intends. They were meant to provide a useful handbook of information on local subjects, for the benefit of senior officers in the district administration, particularly for the district magistrates and prefects who by the \"law of avoidance\" practised by the civil administration in imperial times, were required to be natives of other provinces of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "NOTES ON\n\nSOME CHINESE CUSTOMS IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\nB. D. WILSON*\n\nCONTENTS\n\n1. Introduction\n\n2. Succession\n\n3. Adoption\n\n4. Ching sheung and sheung tin land\n\n5. Land held by clans\n\n6. Family disputes\n\n7. Marriage by proxy\n\n8. Sam p'o tsai\n\n9. Customary agricultural leases\n\n10. Graves\n\n11. Housing-building\n\n12. Some fung shui problems\n\n13. Oaths\n\n14. Money loan associations\n\n15. Names\n\nIntroduction\n\nI compiled these notes partly in 1949-51 whilst District Officer, Tai Po, and partly in 1953-55 whilst District Officer, Yuen Long. The object of the notes was to provide basic information for myself and other District Officers so as to achieve some uniformity in our approach and in the handling of common problems that arose in our day-to-day work. The notes represent what I found customary in Tai Po and Yuen Long. I made no\n\n* Mr. Brian Wilson was an Administrative Officer of the Hong Kong Government 1948-1983. He retired as Director of Urban Services in 1983. Mr. Wilson was District Officer, Tai Po 1949-1951, and District Officer, Yuen Long 1953-1955. He was awarded the CBE in 1977. Mr. Wilson was a Founder Member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "42\n\nattempt to see if the customs were general throughout the New Territories.1\n\nThe Communist army reached Canton in October 1949. Shortly before and after that date, floods of refugees poured into the New Territories, many of them later engaging in agriculture, mostly vegetable farming. Up until then, natives of the New Territories were primarily rice farmers, living in long-established villages with customs and practices that regulated their lives. The only land available for cultivation by refugees tended to be marginal land without water. The refugees dug wells, made new paths, leased land from New Territories natives, and erected shacks all over the place (before October 1949 there were virtually no temporary structures in the Tai Po district). The energy, initiative and desperate attempts by the refugees to earn a living in new communities where neighbours seldom knew each other resulted in their following a way of life without traditional rules of conduct. To some extent, this washed off on the traditional New Territories natives, aggravated by the movement from 1951 onwards of New Territories men to emigrate overseas and to the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. This movement tended to break down the old indigenous customs.\n\nIn 1953-55, in Yuen Long, I used to have regular discussions with certain village elders who were locally acknowledged as experts on traditional customs; they proved most co-operative when they appreciated my interest in the subject. I always cross-checked the information with other local informants, but had neither the opportunity nor the need at the time to cross-check further afield so as to ascertain how widespread the custom was or the extent to which it applied to both Punti and Hakka communities. It must be accepted therefore that, in the absence of further proof, these customs may not necessarily have been uniformly observed throughout the New Territories or elsewhere in Kwangtung.\n\nFrom September 1953 to early 1954, in addition to my work as District Officer, I was also Police Court Magistrate (in Ping Shan), Assistant Land Officer (holding Land Courts), and Small Debts Court Magistrate. These had always been the functions of the District Officers at Tai Po and Yuen Long. But, during my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "Chinese call District Officers \"father and mother officers\" because they are in direct contact with the people, and in China carry on nearly every function of Government, except the making of laws. In Hong Kong the District Officer is a land court judge, magistrate, public auctioneer of land and property, director of small public works, county judge for small debts, land tax collector, registrar of land deeds, rates collector, matrimonial disputes officer, forestry officer, agricultural \"expert\" (so called), land resumptions officer, and six or seven other things I can't now remember.\n\nThe District Officer's chief function is certainly to adapt the new 20th century conditions to the ancient agricultural environment of the people he rules. More clearly than anyone he sees the need of going slowly, so as not to break up the rural economy and the whole social order with it, in the name of a badly-thought-out \"progress\".\n\nEconomics of the Islands\n\nFarming, fishing and forestry are the three chief occupations. Rice is the main crop. Owing to the rainfall coming in summer, two crops a year are raised on most fields, with a third crop of sweet potatoes or vegetables in the winter: the first seedlings are planted in February; in March they are planted out; in July this crop is reaped and the second crop sown; in August that is planted out, and in October and November it is reaped and the winter crop planted.\n\nHeavy manuring with everything available alone keeps the soil fertile, and as there is neither meadow nor pasture as we understand it, there is not much animal manure to be had. Milk is not produced except in modern dairy farms, so that very little land is used to support animals. All the conditions favour the production of a dense human population; and this in fact is the object of the whole of Chinese civilisation: not the making of money, but having enough sons to ensure that the father's ghost, and the ancestors, shall always receive due honour and offerings, and so will send prosperity and good luck to their descendants; they can if neglected send the reverse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209862, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "99\n\nthe men were then landed and stormed a battery of thirty guns (which had been silenced by the Auckland) and spiked the guns.\n\nThe junks were all armed, one carrying sixteen, the others twelve guns each, besides a large number of 2-pounder swivels, jingalls, and matchlocks, and plenty of ammunition; the latter igniting rendered the destruction of junks complete\n\nIn an affair of this nature under a heavy cross-fire from five batteries and four junks, some loss must occur. [Two officers were wounded and one seaman killed and five wounded.]\n\nThe enemy must have suffered severely, the boarders having turned the junks' guns on them as they were escaping to the shore.\n\nOn the 16th [next day] I directed the Eaglet to return to Hong Kong; the junks were still burning, but at the time of Auckland's departure (at noon) nearly consumed.\n\nThe enemy have thus lost five fine vessels of their fleet.\n\nTung Chung now is purely agricultural: it has twenty-nine villages and hamlets, while behind it is a large area of forest, including one of the few remaining patches of ancient woodland.\n\nAbove the plain is a mountain ridge reaching 2,700 feet in height. On its summit is a line of bungalows put up by missionaries for summer holidays. On the flank of Lantau Peak across the plain is a Buddhist monastery, whose head has recently built a bridge across the Ma Wan Creek, and a small jetty for boats.\n\nThe old yamen of the Taipang commander's subordinate still exists, and is one of the places where the District Officer can hold a small debts court.\n\nFrom Tung Chung a road goes over the hills to Tai O via a high plateau full of Buddhist retreats, temples, and fasting halls, often used by Chinese\". There has been a big increase in the numbers of these Buddhist retreats since the so-called \"anti-superstitution\" campaign in China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209887, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "124\n\ntheory by the god, whose image was brought to the dinner. Forty tickets were prepared for those persons who had secured chik lei papers at the ceremony in front of the altar. Three of the tickets were marked for the senior positions: the rest, as before, were marked tai kat. In this way, the selection of officers was, at least in theory, removed from human control. If there was discontent with the results, the god was responsible and not the persons from the previous year's committee who had made the arrangements. Unsuccessful candidates secured 'great fortune' papers: what more could be done?\n\nIt remains to be emphasized that the shrine was considered to be of great importance to the well-being of the district by the local residents. I was told that 90% of the pre-war population of the district attended at the shrine, at the first lunar month, including whole families. Whilst this is probably an exaggeration, the importance of the shrine is beyond doubt. After thinking for a time, a manager told me in the presence of others that it was 'more important than the ancestors in the daily life of the people'.\n\nThere was no restriction by age, sex or origin on eligibility for management, pre or post war. The grandmother of one of my informants had served as one of the senior managers when he was a small boy, and she had long been associated with the group. Again, as mentioned above, one of the Keepers was the elderly lady whose photograph is retained at the shrine.\n\n(2) Tai Ping Shan (K†14)\n\nThe second urban Fuk Tak Kung shrine and its management committee chosen for study, comes from an equally old section of 19th century urban Hong Kong, the Tai Ping Shan district. This district had boundaries fixed by the British administration: 'No. 3 or Tai Ping Shan', as it is described in the Hongkong Government Gazette for 9th May 1857, which proceeds to name the streets within which the name applied.27 They seem to agree generally with the area described by the committee members I interviewed in the mid 1960s, and other old residents, as being associated with the shrine. However, as in the case of the Sheung Fung Lane Fuk Tak Kung, persons from outside the immediate area of influence and protection also came there to worship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210180, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "130\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npreviously been located near Sham Chun, but, shortly after the cession of Hong Kong the sub-magistracy was moved to Kowloon, known as Kowloon City after a wall was built around it in 1847. A military garrison was transferred to Kowloon City from Tai Pang in north-east San On, at about the same time.\n\n73\n\nThere had been a few small military posts on the island of Hong Kong established long before 1841. These were manned by soldiers and ratings of the Tai Pang battalion which served as a kind of military marine constabulary, sailing war junks and manning small posts scattered across this part of the district. However, they may have been discontinued before 1841 as there does not seem to have been any civil or military establishment on Hong Kong island when it was taken over. Johnston wrote in 1843\n\n\"no public buildings were found on any part of the Island of Hong Kong when it was first occupied by the English, except a small tumble-down Chinese house at Chek-choo (now Stanley) and another at Shek-pie-wan (now Aberdeen) where the petty mandarins stopped occasionally\n\n76\n\n+74\n\nIt seems, then, that the magistrate sent collectors and runners to the island in connection with the land tax and that a clerk was sent in a boat to issue licences to the boat people. There are reports of the district magistrate's officers still attempting to collect land taxes at Stanley as late as 1844 and the boat people may have been subject to the annual charge of 400 cash said to be levied on the 150 boats privileged to fish in local waters. The San On magistrate was still trying to collect this in 1844. Such visitations were being reported by the inhabitants in the few years following the British occupation of Hong Kong, and the British official correspondence gives the impression that this had been a regular practice in past days. However, it was not to be tolerated after the cession, and after representations by the Hong Kong Government, the provincial treasurer of the Canton province indicated that any claims to the former land tax would now be relinquished.\n\n77\n\nOtherwise, the inhabitants were left to their own devices. In common with other communities of the region, large and small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "293 \n\nis the gayest of the gay cities. Yet I am told that the officers of the army and navy do not care much about being quartered at Hong Kong. Even gaiety becomes monotonous on an island scarcely nine miles long, so rocky that you cannot ride, and where pirates and squalls keep people from boating or fishing.\n\nThe island formerly constituted a part of the district Sun-on. It is scarcely a mile from Kiu Lung or Kow Loon on the main land, which is also British property. It is mainly granitic, but with a varied geology, so as to make it a most interesting place of study. There are some volcanic dykes in places, and traces of minerals, especially lead and molybdenum, of which fine specimens may be easily obtained. The highest peak is 1,825 feet high, and there are other peaks ranging between that height and 1,000 feet. Hong Kong as far back as the Ming dynasty belonged to the Tang family, whom I suppose everybody knows. It is an island at the mouth of the Canton river, and was a noted resort for pirates, who used to lie in wait for sailing craft in the Ly-ee-mun pass, a very narrow strait between the mainland and the island. In January, 1841, it was ceded to Great Britain. The capital is called Victoria.\n\nWood's description continues with surveys of the vegetation, fauna, and geology. It was part of a long article “Geographical Notes in Malaysia and Asia”, which was published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales, in 1888, shortly before his death.\n\nWoods: An Appreciation\n\nAs in Sir George Bowen's day, so in our own, there is a tendency to try to set religion and science in opposition. But more than a century ago, we find in Woods a lived conviction that there is no such opposition. His scientific work is certainly a product of his own time, but his Australian research is still cited in official geological publications.\n\nIn the antipodes, interest in Woods is growing. He has been the subject of three biographies, two of which have a full list of his scientific publications. There are many minor works about him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210450, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "38 \n\nBARBARA E. WARD \n\ngiven land, a new dwelling, a new pig-sty, free transport for himself, his family, livestock and all belongings, and an agreed sum of $50 per person per month to tide his family over the first six months until he could begin to get an income from his new land. It is important to stress that the negotiations, which were conducted by the District Office, were entirely correct, the enquiry meticulous and the terms most generous. Only the fishermen were left out of account. \n\nThe omission was, at the time, not unnatural. The stereotyped view of the Boat People as essentially mobile (“like gypsies” was a common English phrase) made it difficult even to imagine that some of them might be attached in any permanent sense to any particular place. It was assumed, too, that fishing could be carried on as well in one part of the water as another (or, if not, that it would be impossibly difficult with such a transitory population to determine who normally fished where) and that therefore only the land people of Kau Sai could be considered. \n\nThere were in fact two separate issues, affecting respectively two separable categories of fishermen. On the one hand were those who claimed that because firing practice interfered with their fishing operations and therefore reduced their income they were entitled to monetary compensation; on the other hand there were the others who did not want compensation but simply desired to be allowed to go on using Kau Sai as their permanent anchorage. The former group, mainly small long-liners and others engaged in day-time fishing, put in their claim to the District Office during the course of the negotiations with the land villagers. It was referred to the Fisheries Section of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and investigated by its officers together with those of the Fish Marketing Organisation. Finally, a list of claimants was drawn up, and a once-for-all payment agreed and handed over. The organisation of this claim and its significance are discussed more fully below. \n\nThe second group of fishermen were mostly, but not all, night-time operators, purse-seiners, who normally spent the days at anchor in Kau Sai bay. At first, they seem to have shared (though for different reasons) the District Officer's assumption that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "83\n\nthe right direction. At that time the Shek O men worked as seamen and their farm land was idle. The newcomers did vegetable gardening and fishing, renting farm land from Shek O people. To explain why the locals accepted the newcomers, Mr. Lau said that the local population was only some 300 at that time. The newcomers had built their houses on Crown land, which Mr. Lau said was ba-wong-dei, i.e. land which was claimed by the exertion of physical presence in force.\n\nBesides the predominately Western residents of the “villas”, there were newcomers from the cities too. One woman who started a brief conversation with me when preparing among others the final offerings to the ghosts told me that her husband who worked in an accounting firm moved to Shek O some 20 years ago in his forties because he liked the place. Among the newcomers was also a Tanka family.\n\nShek O has a temple for Tin Hau, who was the main god of the jiu celebration. According to Professor Tanaka Issei, the oldest dated object found in the temple was a bin-ngaak inscription dated the eighteenth year of Gwong-seui (1893).* Immediately to the left of the Tin Hau temple is a Residents' Association which organized an annual celebration in honour of Tin Hau. Third in the row of houses is the Man San Sports Association. I remember that the primary school is also named Man San, and at one of the shops or tea-houses near the bus stop, there was a poster announcing the results of football matches organized by the Man San Sports Association.\n\nAccording to Mr. Wong, the Shek O Residents Association takes care of local public affairs, relaying messages from the Hong Kong Government. It liaises with the South District Office and the Chai Wan district police headquarters. I saw a poster inviting entries for a South District Festival competition, with \"forms available from the Shek O Association” added in handwriting. The officers of the association also organize the annual opera performances in honour of Tin Hau. Mr. Lau saw the association as essentially a development of the village office (heung-gung-so) of pre-War times. The association has almost 2,000 members, although some of the Shek O residents do not join. Mr. Lau could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211035, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "71\n\n1901 (see below).\n\n36\n\nBrewin, who was promoted to Registrar General in 1901, had also served briefly, from 1897 to 1901, as Inspector of Schools in succession to E.J. Eitel. His endorsement was, therefore, particularly valuable. He had been appointed, together with his successor as Inspector of Schools, E.A. Irving, and the Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ho Kai, to the 1901-1902 Education Committee, the report of which contains blatant calls for the separate educational treatment of the different races and a clear recommendation, compatible with the extremes of colonialistic paternalism, that, as far as Chinese education was concerned, the Government should concentrate its efforts and finances on the education, in English, of the few who could be regarded as potential leaders. Interestingly, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at this time, Joseph Chamberlain, totally rejected this recommendation (Chamberlain to Sir Henry Blake, Governor of Hong Kong, 12th September, 1902, in CO129/311, p. 481).\n\n\"For certain individuals, this explanation is something of a euphemism since the “medical and sanitary precautions\" involved burning down their homes.\n\nThe Plague first broke out in Hong Kong in the Spring of 1894. The death rate for the first five or six months was over 2,500, and, though, it was the Chinese population which was most affected, the Europeans were not untouched. Lady Robinson, the wife of the Governor of Hong Kong, was, for example, a victim. Dr. E.J. Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, provided details of the rumours circulating among the less educated Chinese, and their effects, in a memorandum to the Colonial Secretary on 22nd May 1894. Eitel wrote to report and explain \"the panic which has suddenly decimated the attendance in the local Chinese Schools\" and noted that the rumours began to spread in districts affected by the Plague on Sunday, 20th May and reached other districts the next day. The principal rumours were (a) that \"the Government intended to select a few young Children from each School to subject them to a surgical incision of the liver in order to obtain bile, this being the only known remedy for curing the plague”; and, (b) that \"every School would be visited by officers who would examine every child and send to the \"Hygeia\" anyone having the least boil or pimple on its body\". Eitel speculated about the origin of the panic, attributing it to \"the malicious distortion of the native medical fraternity\" and concluded: “I do not think anything very effectual can be done to remove the suggestions of native malice to native ignorance and suspiciousness. Distrust of the Government is still rampant among the lower classes of Chinese. Education will remove it in time. (Memorandum No. 38 of 22nd May, 1894, by Dr. E.J. Eitel, Inspector of Schools; in CO129/263, p. 190-193). 39 In Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the Other Treaty Ports of China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources (London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd., 1908), p. 182, for example, Mok Tso Chun, “a native of the Heungshan district\" and formerly one of the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital, is described as the Chief Compradore of Butterfield and Swire. In the Anglo-Chinese Commercial Directory of circa 1915 (Chief Editor, Jan George Chance), a Mok Jao Chuen, clearly the same person as Mok Tso Chun, appears as Compradore for Butterfield and Swire, while a Choi Kung Po and a Mok Kon Sang appear as Assistant Compradores. Mok Man Cheung acted as witness to the will of Mok Tso [or Jao] Chun and the will, itself, makes it clear that Mok Kon Sang was Mok Tso Chun's eldest son. It was certainly not unusual for Compradores at this time to find positions for younger relatives.", "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": 211220, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 281, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "256\n\nI had been interested in social history in England and started to look for books about the New Territories, in particular on the Southern District, but soon found there was practically nothing. After a while, I realized that papers had been written but they were usually in journals that were not easy to get hold of in Hong Kong; and there was not very much anyway in English. I suppose that spurred me on to do more than I might have done. I was rather cross about it, I recall, because I gathered that many of the local settlements had been there for many centuries. The Shek Pik village alone was established in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in the 15th century, and possibly before that.\n\nFaced with a challenge, I began to look around for materials that would tell me more about the district and its people. I soon noticed that the temples and some other buildings contained inscribed tablets, sometimes about the repair of the building and sometimes about law cases in the long ago when the District Magistrate, or the local people after asking the Magistrate, had stone tablets put there commemorating legal decisions. I collected copies of these inscriptions and other documentary material, like land deeds, family papers, account books and genealogies (a point to which I will return later in this talk). I interviewed persons in their homes, and they were nervous for reasons not connected with the impositions of research. Once some people were very fidgety, and I couldn't understand why. This was in a fishing village on the shores of Junk Bay. I looked down, and saw that I was sitting on what I hoped was an expended tin of explosives! They liked fishing with dynamite, and they still do. In fact, there was a letter from a lady from Tolo Harbour in the South China Morning Post only the other day asking 'how come they are still dynamiting?' This goes right back to 1904 and probably earlier, when the reports of the Alice Memorial Hospital contained reports about fishermen coming in with missing hands or legs.\n\nI persuaded other District Officers to get their staff to record these tablets, too, and built up a collection of inscriptions with other people's help of about 30 or 40 of them. However, I couldn't do anything with them. My Chinese was not good enough to handle that material. In any case, some of the tablets were defaced and some characters were hard to read or even missing. It required", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212612, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "146\n\nis made up\n\nfor the job with any material handy. It may be fired electrically or by a spring designed specially for the purpose. There are three main kinds of spring: the pressure-switch, which goes off if you press on it; for instance, if you walk on it, or a train goes over it: the pull-switch, which is generally attached to a trip wire: and the release-switch, which goes off when you take a weight off it. When you set the trap, a cap is fitted to the switch. The cap fires a length of instantaneous fuse - this is a third kind of fuse - and that sets the charge off. Setting traps and dismantling them is a battle of wits. If you use the same kind of trap too often the enemy will tumble to it and learn how to discover and dismantle it: so you have to keep on ringing the changes. If you start with a simple pressure switch trap under a loose floor board, you can improve on it by putting a release-switch trap under a loose floor board, you can improve on it by putting a release-switch, duly connected up, under the charge itself. Then when the enemy comes along, he spots your trap, carefully eases up the floor board, maybe detaches the pressure-switch from the charge and thinks he is safe; but when he stoops to pick up the charge, the release-switch is set off and the trap explodes. That is a very simple illustration. In the course of several years of warfare the refinements in booby-trapping have been developed to the nth degree.\n\nIt will be seen that traps can only be used in places which our side is preparing to vacate. They must be carefully tabulated so that they can be located and taken up should our troops return: also, special precautions have to be taken in a district where there are friendly natives, lest they suffer. In many ways the use of booby-trapping can be a two-edged weapon.\n\nAt the end of November in 1941 I was included amongst several officers detailed to proceed to Chungking. Britain was still neutral in the war between China and Japan, and so we were instructed to wear plain clothes. We set out after lunch one day to motor the hundred miles to Lashio, where we were comfortably accommodated in the American hostel operated by the C.N.A.C. Next day, December 1st, 1941, we boarded the aeroplane and touched down on the island airstrip in the Yangking at dusk.\n\nBefore leaving Burma I acquired two useful items of equipment, the one a felt hat, of the kind used by Australians and Gurkhas, a comfortable head-piece, which kept the sun out and also a certain amount of rain:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212641, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 195, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "175\n\nramie, wood oil, porcelain, and so on, while in the reverse direction salt, cotton yarn, torch batteries, piece goods, and other supplies came in. The interior of China was mainly dependent for salt on supplies from the Coast and the Coast was in Japanese control. Had the Japanese strictly prevented the entry of salt they could have compelled the Chinese Government to sue for peace. As it was the commerce helped the Chinese to maintain their economy and so continue their resistance. Moreover, the middlemen in this trade were the guerillas and it was from the profits of the trade that they were able to finance their expenses.\n\nThe postal service between occupied and unoccupied China, too, continued to function almost as if there were no war. By a special arrangement the post bags were allowed to pass through the lines. A letter written from our place would reach Shanghai in about ten days; one could even send registered mail, or remit small sums of money. The Japanese maintained a censorship service, but their staff were too few to cope efficiently with the volume of mail. Thus Chinese who escaped to free China were able to keep in touch with friends and relations, who had remained behind in occupied China.\n\nAlthough the bases of the guerillas were in the mountains to which the Japanese had not penetrated, their field of operation was in the plain of the delta, one of the most thickly populated areas of the world. You could find guerilla troops in uniform in the delta, but as a rule they wore plain clothes. Should they be caught in one of the frequent sweeps made by Japanese troops they could pass off as local coolies or farmers. The Japanese went to great pains to tabulate the population and to check movement; their troops would be relieved from time to time by fresh troops, but they left a cadre of permanent intelligence personnel, who thoroughly understood the local dialects and could fix a man's district by his speech. They used Alsatian dogs and bloodhounds to track suspects. To exist in the delta a guerilla needed to keep his wits about him; it was a game at which the Chinese were much the superior. Owing to the presence of numerous informers in enemy pay, the Chinese were very reluctant to accept the responsibility of allowing British officers to accompany the guerillas on operations; to conceal and protect the British increased their difficulties. However, it had finally been agreed that British officers would accompany certain parties on special operations, unfortunately we were withdrawn before these plans were put into effect.\n\nPolitics were strictly not our concern, but I ought to explain that the\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "134\n\ngovernment, after the withdrawal of the British, became useless: the Japanese issued a new rupee paper note of their own, and compelled the people in the areas occupied by them to accept it. In Kokang the only money now acceptable was silver rupees. We had brought some in with us, and further substantial sums were dropped to us by air: it created a problem over the border in China, where the currency situation was so desperate. Our rupees were used to pay for any services or supplies we received from the local population, and they doubtless quickly found their way to the border, where a heavy demand for silver existed owing to the continuous fall in value of the Chinese currency and where, consequently, a rupee would fetch over a hundred dollars. Curiously, Chinese half-dollar silver pieces were still current though not common on the Chinese side of the border, perhaps the only district in China where silver coins still existed, as the Chinese government had gone off the silver standard years before, and withdrawn all silver coins; the silver half-dollar was naturally worth far more than the paper dollar.\n\nOne headman asked me if I could not rescue his son from China. It was a sordid story, the details of which only reached me by degrees, but it is a story which should be told.\n\nLopez was the son of a Filipino father and a Burmese mother. He had spent most of his life in Burma, but claimed American citizenship. The Americans, working from the side of India, were anxious to obtain intelligence about conditions in eastern Burma, and so they trained Lopez, gave him a commission, borrowed some Indian wireless operators from the British, obtained for him a Chinese pass, and sent him with a party into Kokang. They sent him very secretly, a precaution which was not unwise in view of the speed at which news travels on the border; but they overlooked the necessity of informing the American officers with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.\n\nLopez arrived in Kokang in the autumn of 1934, set up his wireless, and began to collect information, a work at which he would have achieved considerable success. I found he had left a very favourable impression on the local population; some of the men who were subsequently to do the most useful work for us had first been engaged by him. The attack on the Myosa upset his arrangements; Lopez knew too much about this, and perhaps spoke indiscreetly; anyhow the Chinese decided to get rid of him. Although he had a Chinese pass, the Chinese went to the American officers attached to the C.E.F., and reported the presence of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212878, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "172\n\nThis letter is both a classic of its kind and rather special—in its content warranting translation in full. It was composed in the literary style, and the writer's calligraphy is of a high standard. It is altogether a superior production, and of a kind now seldom seen. The writer was either an old village scholar or a retired schoolmaster, since the younger generation no longer has these literary skills or is trained in them. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the grave tablet erected in 1962 by the four branches descended from Ancestor Shui-tai, and by a list of all male descendants in the after generations, including mention of those who had gone abroad. It is beyond doubt that the clan took the government's notice to remove the grave very seriously indeed.\n\nAccidental Damage to Graves and Urns\n\nSuch statements by those concerned—and they can be many times multiplied since they were the rule—indicate how very concerned villagers became if an old grave, and especially a founding ancestor's grave, was likely to be interfered with by the authorities. Sometimes the files record damage by accident or even by intent. Where accidental damage to graves occurred in the early postwar years, when a large military garrison engaged in frequent exercises across the countryside, the British Army was sometimes the culprit. In 1963, the District Office received a letter from the Tangs of Kam Tin about one of their ancestral graves on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. 'It has recently been discovered that this ancestral grave has been damaged by military trucks... We are anxious to have it repaired; and as we cannot afford to do so, shall be much obliged if you will sympathize with us and provide the cost of building materials, so that we may proceed to repair the grave as possible in order to pacify the souls of our ancestors and calm ourselves.'8\n\nOn another such occasion, the then District Commissioner, New Territories, upon learning that an ancestral grave had been damaged during a military exercise, arranged for a ceremonial visit to be paid to the village by the brigade commander, the command land agent, the district officer concerned and himself. This was done to show respect to the family and to acknowledge its concern, as well as to show the authorities' desire to make speedy reparation for the damage caused.9 The villagers no doubt appreciated this gesture.\n\nSuch actions could be two-way. Meritorious actions by officers of the District Administration were also recognized. I once received a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213345, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "150\n\nstudies, they uncovered huge volumes of local historical materials - genealogies, land deeds, books, stone inscriptions, and oral history. Ethnographic material obtained through the observation of rituals, artifacts and dress, architecture, economic activities, language, symbols and everyday behaviour added further dimensions to their knowledge and highlighted vital links between the present and the past. These scholars might be more interested in using the materials to either discourse about Chinese culture, social organization, social status, power and government, gender issues, inter-lineage relations and so on, but their work nevertheless became invaluable ingredients for reconstructing the unique history of each locality.\n\nThe Scholar-Officials\n\nThe New Territories was the happy hunting ground of another group. These were District Officers of the Hong Kong government who were responsible for governing rural Hong Kong. Scholars of the sinologist tradition, they were particularly well placed to collect large amounts of oral and documentary materials while working among villagers in the New Territories. Prominent among them were K.M.A. Barnett, David Akers-Jones, and James Hayes, who was to become Hong Kong's leading historian. His major works, which combine scholarship, administrative experience and personal insights, are now classic studies.\n\n6\n\nThis group, known as the \"scholar-officials\", was later joined, and greatly strengthened, by Patrick Hase in the 1970s.\n\nIt should be noted that to these scholar-officials, the study of 'traditional' Chinese society is more than a purely intellectual exercise. To govern the New Territories, the Hong Kong government needs a working knowledge of the customs and culture of the indigenous inhabitants, especially in relation to land, family, lineage relations etc., and relies heavily on District Officers who are 'on the spot', as it were. For judicial purposes, too, when disputes over land and inheritance arose, 'sinologists' - academics and civil servants - are frequently called in, even flown in, to act as expert witnesses at court. A recent Ph.D thesis by Selina Ching Chan for the Oxford University analyses how in the New Territories, traditions are interpreted differently by the rulers and the ruled, each group in the way most expedient to them; thus she offers rare insights into the intricate relations between power and scholarship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213438, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nCHINESE CUSTOMARY LAW IN HONGKONG'S NEW TERRITORIES. SOME LEGAL PREMISES.\n\nEDWIN HAYDON\n\nLast year [1961—Editor] the legislation regulating the New Territories of Hong Kong was amended1 and jurisdiction was conferred on the Supreme Court of Hong Kong and on the District Courts subordinate to it.\n\n\"to hear and determine all questions and disputes at law or in equity in connexion with or in anywise arising out of or regarding any land in the New Territories.\"\n\nAt the same time the Land Officer was divested of his former powers to decide questions of land in the New Territories summarily,3 and District Officers were divested of the summary jurisdiction, which for many years4 they had exercised in Small Debts Courts, in actions or matters where the claim, debt or damages sought to be recovered did not exceed one thousand dollars. Since 1953 the District Courts had exercised a concurrent jurisdiction with the Small Debts Courts in such actions. The effect, therefore, of this amending legislation was to confer from henceforth exclusive jurisdiction in all proceedings arising in the New Territories on the courts of law staffed by the professional Judiciary.\n\nSection 17 of the New Territories Ordinance reads:\n\n\"In any proceedings in the Supreme Court or the District Court in relation to land in the New Territories, the court shall have power to recognize and enforce any Chinese custom or customary right affecting such land.\n\nSo much is clear in respect of land cases, but in respect of other proceedings which may involve Chinese custom or customary right one must search further back to the source from which the British Crown's rights in the New Territories spring.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "CHOK HUNG vs. LI FUI CHOI\n\n\"No enquiry has ever been made to ascertain what Chinese law is. It is an extraordinary fact that the Court of this Colony, in which the Chinese live and trade as freely as Englishmen and citizens of other countries, should do with regard to the Chinese what it would never dream of doing with regard to Frenchmen or Germans or Americans; and not only that, but that it should be entirely in ignorance of Chinese law on any subject which concerns the family life and family law of those who form the bulk of its inhabitants, which is so often before the Courts—its marriage law, and the rights of property it gives; its law applicable to children. We are in the dark as to the law of majority, as to the customary law of China generally, and above all as to its law of succession. The attitude of the Court has been to let the troublesome question wait until it is definitely raised by the parties. I myself have been guilty of this, though I have rebelled more than once or twice.\n\nPage 20\n\nDuring the last half century, there have been three such enquiries, of which the results have been published. I refer, of course, to the Report of the Committee appointed in 1948,1 Greenfield's article on marriage,2 and the report and recommendations on the same subject by the Attorney General and Secretary for Chinese Affairs in 1960.2 The latter two publications do not deal with any Chinese customary law of marriage particularly obtaining in the New Territories, but the first does deal with certain aspects of Chinese customary law peculiar to the New Territories.\n\nIf a search is made of the law reports, only two cases will be found where the particular Chinese customary law obtaining in the New Territories was considered. Prima facie, that is a remarkably small number for 57 years of law reporting, and it is worthwhile probing the reasons for this dearth of case law.\n\nFirstly, the Chinese much prefer to compose their disputes or to refer them to extra-judicial arbitration than to a court of law.**\n\nSecondly, in deference to this general desire of the litigants, the District Officers arranged for the bulk of the disputes which came before them, in their Small Debts Courts or when they sat as Assistant Land Officers to decide summary land cases, to be settled out of court, most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "6\n\nfrequently in consultation with rural committees and village representatives.\" For example, during the year 1956-57, of 138 land disputes which the District Officers dealt with, 30 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 92 were settled out of court and 16 were decided in court.” And in the following year, of 112 land disputes, 19 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 70 were settled out of court and 23 were decided in court. The method of disposal of one such case is recounted in the District Commissioner's report for the year 1948-49:\n\n\"For the first time since 1913 a land dispute, which had dragged on for nearly a year, was resolved when one of the parties satisfied the District Officer Taipo of his good faith by decapitating a cock in a local temple, a supreme test of honesty. As the dispute was not formally heard under Part II of the Ordinance, the legality of this expedient will fortunately not be subject to review by a Judge.\n\n1920\n\nThirdly, the Full Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to entertain a further appeal from the decision of a judge of the Supreme Court under section 23 of the New Territories Regulation Ordinance, 1910,\n\nThere are, however, a further eight unreported cases of the Supreme Court sitting in its appellate jurisdiction from decisions of the land officer in land cases arising in the New Territories. The cases all date to the first post-war decennium until 1956. The pre-war records of the Supreme Court were destroyed during the Japanese occupation 1941-45; and since 1956 there has been no appellate proceeding of this type.\n\nWithout proof by evidence in court, it would clearly be dangerous to rely upon works describing customary law obtaining generally or in certain areas of China in the past, as information as to customary law obtaining in the New Territories for Chinese customary law \"is subject to divergencies not only from Province to Province but sometimes from clan to clan in the same neighbourhood.\" Such books may have some comparative value. It is, however, to be regretted that it is difficult in Hong Kong today to trace even one copy of those works written in English to which reference was made by the 1948 Committee.*2\n\nApart, then, from the Report of that Committee, which covers the wider field of Chinese customary law generally obtaining in Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213444, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Kong and only occasionally refers to particular aspects of that law obtaining in the New Territories, and apart from the two reported cases, there is no published material dealing specifically with Chinese customary law of the New Territories which the courts may apply in cases arising from those territories.\n\nAlthough such law must be established by proof acceptable to the court, there is an apparent and an urgent need for a restatement of that law. Such a restatement would, it is submitted, be likely to be of assistance to the courts and to the legal profession. The material for such a restatement must naturally be accumulated over years, the most likely sources being the officers of the Administration and of the technical Departments, who are in daily contact with the inhabitants of the New Territories. In 1958 the District Commissioner stated-\n\nwe sadly miss the pre-war records. Successive District Officers in each district had, prior to 1941, built up what they called their \"Bible\" of knotty points of custom, obtained from independent witnesses who were alive in 1899 and were called not by either party to the dispute, but in accordance with Chinese practice by the Court itself.**\n\n(Although that loss may be held to the account of the Japanese, it does appear that nation has more than adequately repaid its debt to sinology by its scholars' researches into Chinese customary law.*4) During the last decade administrative and technical officers have again undertaken the task of collecting material on Chinese customs maintained in the New Territories and it is on the unpublished results of their labours that the ensuing restatement of Chinese customary law is based.\n\nThe Country and The People.\n\nThe area of the New Territories comprises 355 square miles of land and 673 square miles of sea. The leased territories extend in strict definition from Boundary Street in the middle of Kowloon to the Shum Chun River but the area of 7 square miles immediately to the north of Boundary Street is known as New Kowloon and is administered not as part of the New Territories but as an extension of the Urban Area, that is, the ceded territory of the Colony proper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213467, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "30\n\nIf a widow marries again she must either marry another man from her deceased husband's family or she must get the consent of her deceased husband's elder brothers to bring an outsider into the family. Otherwise she cannot touch the property left by her deceased husband.\n\nTo conclude this attempt to state the Chinese customary law obtaining in Hong Kong's New Territories it would appear appropriate to refer to a passage in the address of the Chief Justice of Hong Kong, Sir Michael Hogan, which he delivered on the occasion of the opening of the new courthouse at Fanling on 2nd September last year [1961 - Editor] :-\n\n\"I understand... that some anxiety has arisen as to whether Chinese customs and customary rights will be affected, and whether judges sitting in the District Court will be as familiar as were the District Officers with those customs and customary rights\n\nThe answer to that anxiety may be found in the power, conferred by section 15 of the District Court Ordinance, on the judges of requesting the District Officers or anybody also to sit as assessors in any case in which that course would be desirable. Section 17 of the New Territories Ordinance which provides for the application of Chinese custom and customary rights in appropriate cases remains untouched and will continue to apply as before. Indeed, it may well be that our system of law reporting, whereby decisions are recorded, published and made available for perusal by all who are interested can contribute to the ascertainment and preservation of those customs and customary rights, about which it is frequently so difficult to obtain reliable information and evidence.\"\n\nNOTE\n\nNew Territories (Amendment) Ordinance, 1961 (No 13 of 1961) and New Territories (Amendment) (No 2) Ordinance, 1961 (No 15 of 1961)\n\n1\n\ns 16 (as amended) New Territories Ordinance (Cap. 97) Prior to these amending Ordinances, the Supreme Court had original jurisdiction in respect of land having a capital value exceeding $10,000 or an annual value exceeding $1,000 (vide s 2(1)(d), now repealed, and former s 16, now replaced, and the decision of REECE J in AU SUN YUE and CHUNG YAU 1958, HKLR 235)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213468, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "31\n\n* These powers of the Land Officer sprang from the New Territories (Land) Ordinance, 1905 (No. 36 of 1905).\n\n1 Such powers were originally conferred on District Officers by the New Territories Small Debts Court Ordinance, 1908 (now repealed). By agreement of the parties, District Officers, by virtue of the proviso to that section, could determine suits with subject matter up to $5,000 in value ($1,000 HK is the approximate equivalent of £62-1st in 1962 - Editor).\n\nBy the Convention of Peking, 9th June 1898 vide Laws of Hong Kong, Allibone's Edition 1913, Vol. III, pp. 6-7.\n\nibid, pp. 8-9.\n\n* § 7, Supreme Court Ordinance 1873 (now s. 5 of Cap. 4).\n\nExtracts from a Memorandum on some Legal Aspects of the Hong Kong Extension, by W. Meigh Goodman, Attorney General of Hong Kong, dated December 1898, in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1899, p. 209 at p. 210.\n\n19 Mr. Chamberlain (then Sir Joseph) to Sir Henry A. Blake, Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1899, p. 177 at p. 178, para 5.\n\nTranslation of the Chinese Proclamation dated 9th April 1899, being Appendix IX to Sir Henry A. Blake's Report to Mr. Chamberlain dated 19th February 1900, in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1900, p. 280.\n\nvide my article \"The Choice of Chinese Customary Law in Hong Kong\" (1962) 11 International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 231 at pp. 232-233.\n\n\"Chinese Law and Custom in Hong Kong\" Hong Kong 1953, (hereinafter cited as Committee Report 1953) Appendix 1A at p. 122.\n\n1bid, Chap. II, para. 13 at p. 8.\n\n15 Memorandum of the District Commissioner, New Territories, to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, dated 20th March 1958. It would appear that the 17th April 1899 was the date intended (vide the Governor's Proclamation of 8th April 1899 which appeared as Appendix XX to the Governor's Report in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1900 at pp. 291-292) to bring the Colony's laws into force in the New Territories with effect from 17th April 1899.\n\n18 (1962) 11 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 231.\n\n17 loc cit para. 6.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213470, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "33\n\nOriginally compiled in 1955 by Mr. B D Wilson, MA, District Officer in the New Territories Administration. These notes were revised from time to time in the light of the comments of other officers of that Administration and of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs and have been circulated among the Administration though not published. I gratefully record my thanks to Mr GCM Lupton, District Officer, Tupo who made available to me the latest revision dated 15th September 1959.\n\nFor the customs of the sea-dwelling Tanka and Hoklo I have relied upon material collected by Mr W Duncan of the Department of Co-operative Development and Fisheries. He generously provided me with a copy of that material which in due course he proposes to publish.\n\nThe following brief topographical description is based on the Reports DCNT 1952-53 paras 1-5 as amended by the 1953-54 paras. 1-4; a scientific and detailed description is to be found in Tregear, Land Use in Hong Kong and the New Territories. Hong Kong Univ Press. 1958 (The World Land Use Survey Monograph).\n\nAnalysis of Census Returns, Hong Kong 1961, Table I.\n\nVide Reports, DCNT, 1952-53 para 5 and 1959-60 para 49.\n\nReport, DCNT, 1954-55, para 8.\n\nVide Ballou's article \"Hong Kong Before the British\" in T'ien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, 1941, pp 331, and 334-336 (Balfour's article is of great authority as it was based on the official local history of the area of Hong Kong and the New Territories \"The Topography of the San On District\" dated 1820 being a revised version of earlier editions dating back to the 15th century).\n\n\"Native to the country\" a Hakka expression for the Cantonese (Reports, DCNT, 1954-55. para 8 and Ballou, op cit p332).\n\nBalfour, op cit p 332.\n\nReports, DCNT, 1954-55, para 8.\n\nBalfour, loc cit.\n\nIbid.\n\nBalfour, op cit p 445.\n\nReports, DCNT, 1959-60, para 45.\n\nBallou, op cit pp 445 and 448.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "Africa and South-east Asia to be suspicious of the pretensions of local leaders whose personal interests were not always easily identifiable with those of the common man—or, in their new surroundings, the worker in the plastics factory and his family. They had been conditioned by British policy and practice elsewhere to accept a goal of parliamentary democracy and self-determination as the norm; and while admitting that Hong Kong was, in the other cant phrase, “unique,” they saw no reason for it to be utterly different in ethos.\n\nSomeone who appreciated the subtle differences within colonies and between their officials was the last Colonial Service Governor, Sir David Clive Crosbie Trench GCMG MC. Trench had started his service in the Western Pacific, where as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands he had been a wartime \"coastwatcher\" in the mountains, reporting on Japanese activity, and had earned a military decoration during the Allies' reoccupation. He was one of the few Administrative Officers to benefit from the old Colonial Office's unspoken \"seven year rule.\" Under this, those who had spent that length of time in the supposedly enervating climate and mores of the Pacific should be sent to more politically and mentally bracing parts of the empire, the better to come back refreshed when more senior (determined Resident Commissioners in the Western Pacific, who thought seven years only just enough to train their juniors in the proper ways, usually managed to circumvent this best-laid plan.) Trench came to Hong Kong after the war, where he acquired a strong and popular reputation, notably in the Labour Department, as reorganiser of the Fire Brigade and as Deputy Colonial Secretary (DCS). It was no surprise when he went back to the Western Pacific as High Commissioner; there he presided over the creation for the egalitarian Melanesian society in the Solomon Islands of a novel democratic form of government based, via a constitution already adapted for Ceylon, on the pre-war London County Council, with committees instead of ministers (some of whose chairmen, however, inevitably assumed ministerial pretensions.) After three years, he returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1964.\n\nBefore he had left, Trench had naturally always shown greater sympathy with and understanding of the \"interlopers,\" as the aforesaid subset was vulgarly known, than did some of his senior colleagues. Although relations with a governor were inevitably more remote than those with a senior secretariat officer had been, he contrived not to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213970, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "4\n\naloof on his return. The present writer can vouch for his active approval of an African-inspired experiment whereby departmental administrative officers in the urban areas would collect and transmit upwards a monthly 'intelligence digest' of local opinion, morale and responses to government action or inaction, and of attitudes to prominent local figures and to Chinese or foreign affairs: this was meant to supplement what was collected in their own specialist manners by the HK Police Special Branch (SB), the New Territories Administration (NTA), the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)'s Political Adviser (PA) and the Security Liaison Officer (SLO). Some of what was collected may have been too near the knuckle, some was rather too easily discounted as mere \"gossip,\" important though that might be as a reflection of influential belief at the grass roots, and some may have hurt the dignity of those who had the existing duty of intelligence-gathering. The governor was persuaded to drop the experiment as proving trivial.\n\nBut Trench also showed interest in another interloping proposal that, in the absence of any generalist government institutions to supplement the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (SCA)'s advisory staff (who liaised with the various kai fong (Neighbourhood) Welfare Associations, Clansmens' Associations and Residents' Associations, which were often self-perpetuating), District Officers (DOs) should be appointed in the urban areas; these should have certain executive functions, fewer than those of their colleagues in the New Territories so as not to encroach on the licensing prerogatives of the Urban Council, but sufficient to ensure that all should know of their existence and, above all, of where their offices were. Primarily they should oversee and co-ordinate the activities of the various professional and technical departments in their bailiwicks, but also, like paternalistic mandarins, inquire into, report upon and seek answers to the needs and concerns of the inhabitants. This suggestion was effectively smothered by a DCS who was unable to understand what such DOs might achieve in a city that existing institutions did not already adequately do: the concept of such junior, peripheral, government officers being responsive to people, as opposed to being mere executive agents responsible for essential infrastructural public services, was alien. Apart from the SCA's and District Commissioner New Territories (DCNT)'s contacts with often self-appointed élites, there was little by way of direct exchange with the man in the street: the same DCS once said, \"Government must, of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213976, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "In the developed areas the working party had its own preferences, but diplomatically decided to let higher authority decide on detail. The general intention was to set up what would be known in the conurbations as Municipal Councils or (minor) Urban District Councils (UDC), and elsewhere as District (or Local) Councils. This might, as the Governor-in-Council chose to decide, produce a Municipal Council for Hong Kong Island and a District Council for the non-urban area, with Aberdeen joining either or becoming a separate UDC; one or two Municipal Councils for Kowloon and New Kowloon; a UDC for Tsuen Wan; and no other change for the NT (but possibly three District Councils one day, where currently the DOS Tai Po, Yuen Long and South held sway.) All would be elected from geographical wards, and not from area-wide rating or electoral rolls; and by preference from single-member wards, with one-third retiring by annual rotation. All these Councils could form Joint Committees with each other, and perhaps have a Joint Consultative Council to co-ordinate their relations with Central Government. It was all deliberately tentative: junior officers must not seem to be handing up tablets of stone.\n\nThe possibility of public apathy (already much noticed in relation to the existing Urban Council), and the dangers of encouraging the involvement of external party politics, led to cautious suggestions that in the first instance whatever overseeing body the Government would assign to this field (doubtless a new branch of the secretariat, if not an amalgamation of the SCA and the NTA) might nominate members to leaven the elected majority; a proportion of 1:3, or in the last resort 2:3, was proposed. For the franchise, while considering adult suffrage as a distinct possibility, the prudent recommendation was for all men and women and their spouses over 21 to enjoy the vote who owned, occupied or tenanted property on which rates were paid or of which the rent might be deemed to include a rating element; provided that they had three years' residence, and therefore a stake in the colony, British citizenship would not be required. Councillors should not be paid, to avoid the growth of a profession of politicians, but should be entitled to attendance allowances within a statutory limit to compensate for any loss of earnings; and they should appoint their own chairmen from any quarter.\n\nThe new Councils' potential powers and functions received close examination. From the start it was accepted that Hong Kong's central\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213982, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "the Social Welfare Department), co-ordinated by regional generalist officers comparable with NT DOs, leading to advisory Regional Councils which might eventually become the main report's Local Authorities. They pointed up more outspokenly than the emollient main report the shortcomings of an out-of-touch government administering a non-English-speaking population that was only too open to misunderstandings and misconceptions (such as that taxes levied were drained off to the UK Treasury.) Interim steps should concentrate strongly on building up public confidence in the unaccustomed principles and practice of popular elected representation (the ‘political education' mentioned above.) The provisional system of regional advisory councils, coupled with departmental decentralisation and administrative co-ordination, should then lead to full local authorities in about six years. Meanwhile Tsuen Wan was indeed a unique opportunity for immediate action (the new towns to come of Tuen Mun, Sha Tin, Tai Po et al had yet to be envisaged.) These three semi-dissenters did not co-ordinate their Note with the other.\n\nDickinson has been described by one of his working party as “the least understood and worst treated member of the Cadet Service\" (the original title of Hong Kong's Administrative Branch of the HMOCS, which survived in common parlance long after the absorption into the Colonial Service of the pre-war Eastern Cadetships.) He chose to retire early for personal reasons. It is ironic that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution overspill, when special duties officers in the defence branch of the secretariat, the SCA and the Information Services Department became so active in devising new ways to win hearts and minds, to keep in touch with the people and to encourage the use of Chinese language, so much of what had been adumbrated in the Working Party Report re-appeared; but because the new ideas now came from well-established senior sources, they became respectable and it was to be long before they offered electoral participation in executive decisions. The SCA became the Secretariat for Home Affairs; City District Officers were created in ten urban districts, and found much to do that had not been done before; City District Committees were established in 1972; a Tsuen Wan District Advisory Board was at last set up in 1977, followed by others; in 1980 a new pattern for district administration was at last suggested, with direct elections to District Boards. But in all these and still later developments that affect present history, there was no official backward recognition that the ground", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214375, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "199\n\nTHE DISTRICT WATCH FORCE\n\nSHEILAH HAMILTON\n\nIn general the Force now appears to the Police to be an unwelcome anachronism, to the Chinese population to perpetuate a valued tradition, and to all civil servants not serving in the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs (as well as some who are) as an imperfectly comprehended mystery.\n\nIn the 1960s the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Mr John C. McDouall, described the District Watch Force in the above terms. This telling statement by the Government official in charge of the District Watch between 1957 and 1966 illustrates the opposing views held about the 'Force' by various sections of Hong Kong society. Indeed, the solo use of the word 'Force,' without its more familiar qualification, 'Hong Kong Police', would have been an anathema to many members of the Hong Kong Police Force whose officers considered that they, and only they, represented the true 'Force.' This 'them and us' notion neatly illustrates the problems faced by the District Watch Force throughout its long history.\n\nIn 1971 the sociologist Henry Lethbridge contributed a paper about the District Watch Committee to the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and, seven years later, it was reproduced as a chapter in his book Hong Kong: Stability and Change.2 Although these early works included the District Watchmen and their duties, their main thrust was the political significance of the District Watch Committee rather than a commentary on the work of the lowly Watchmen and, in the years that followed, the contribution of this band of local private security personnel has received little attention. This paper examines the birth and development of the District Watch Force, a group of Chinese men who may be regarded as comprising the first organised body of Chinese private security personnel employed in Hong Kong. More specifically, it explores the interaction between the Hong Kong Government and the District Watch Force.3\n\nThe District Watch Force existed, in fact if not in name, for more than a century between 1866 and 1970. During this period it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214383, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "207\n\nideas prevailed for many years amongst even the more enlightened Europeans. Since Chadwick did not identify the Chinese inhabitants who approved of the plan, it is not possible to determine from his report whether the proposed changes in the District Watchmen's duties had the backing of the Chinese merchants who paid for their services. However, what is indisputable is that a Notification appeared in the Government Gazette on 21 April 1883 about the formation of a Sanitary Board. Chadwick's crusade for the inclusion of a dedicated Sanitary Officer was ignored and the Board comprised the Surveyor General, the Registrar General, the Colonial Surgeon and the Sanitary Inspector. The Notice stated that the Sanitary Board would be assisted by the following staff:\n\n1 Coloured Watchman for the Peak District;\n\n2 Head District Watchmen for Western;\n\n12 District Watchmen for Western;\n\n2 Head District Watchmen and 12 District Watchmen for Central District;\n\n2 Head District Watchmen and 12 District Watchmen for Eastern District.\n\nThis was the entire District Watch Force.\n\nLess than two months after the publication of this Notification, an Ordinance was enacted on 1 June 1883 entitled \"The Order and Cleanliness Amendment Ordinance, 1883\" (No. 7 of 1883). This allowed the Governor 'to constitute a permanent Sanitary Board to exercise supervision and control over all matters connected with sanitation in the Colony.' Whilst the District Watchmen were not mentioned by name, the ordinance stated that the Governor could, from time to time, appoint and remove 'such officers as the Board may require for the purpose of carrying out the duties of the Board and the laws relating to sanitation.' Ten days later the 'Instructions' to the various groups of people involved in the 'Maintenance of Order and Cleanliness' were published in the Government Gazette. The Instructions to the Se-\n\n13\n\nof", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214397, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "221\n\nthe 1866 Ordinance allowed them. The non-confrontational attitude identified in the pre-1920 Chinese merchant class by Ku Hung-ting,1 coupled with a pragmatic belief that half a bowl of rice is better than none, could also explain why the merchants were prepared to go along with the Government's decision. Whilst they would have preferred to have complete control over their security force and did not relish having their businesses scrutinized more than was already the case, a limited degree of control was preferable to none.\n\nThe 'hijacking' of the whole of the District Watch Force for three years 1883-85 to work on non-security sanitary duties following Osbert Chadwick's Sanitary Report has been discussed at length and this change in direction of the Force need only be mentioned again to emphasize the point that, whilst the Chinese merchants may have been paying for this Watch Force, the latter's duties could be, and were, decided by the colonial authorities. The fact that the Chinese merchants continued to fund this scheme during these years whilst the Government contributed a mere $1 per person per month illustrates the lack of a level playing field in this particular game between the colonial power and the local community. Although it is possible that some Chinese people in Hong Kong may have wanted improvements in their sanitary conditions, it is by no means certain that this number would have been substantial. Even if some Chinese residents placed great store on improved sanitary conditions, it is unlikely that the local merchants would have wanted this to be done at their expense particularly if this sanitary work stopped their security force from performing their duties.\n\nThe years following the creation of the District Watch Force showed how certain ultra-conservative factions within the European community would have preferred the District Watch Force to disappear or, failing that, at least be merged with the regular police. That this did not occur is a testament not only to the Chinese merchants who stood their ground but also to some of the first young Cadet officers who were more open-minded than their less enlightened colleagues. With the introduction of the 1888 ‘Registration of the Chinese Ordinance,' the establishment of the District Watch Committee in 1890-91 and the appointment of the Captain Superintendent of Police as a member of the District Watch Committee in 1894, Government influence became even more effective and continued to grow during the twentieth century. Furthermore, the addition of duties such as the house-to-house checks\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214402, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "226\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nUndated Minute made available by Mrs Margaret Leeds, formerly Research Officer with the Royal Hong Kong Police.\n\n2 Henry J. Lethbridge, \"The District Watch Committee: The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong?\", in Hong Kong: Stability and Change, (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1978).\n\n3 This paper is based on a chapter of the author's PhD thesis, Private Security and Government: A Hong Kong Perspective, 1841-1941, awarded by the University of Hong Kong in 1999. In the interests of space, most of the end notes contained in the thesis have been omitted from this paper.\n\n4\n\n5 Kaifongs were local Chinese welfare associations. As early as 1857 a sworn mutual aid association known as the U-lan-shing is claimed to have united the four smaller kaifongs of the Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan districts. Henry J. Lethbridge, op. cit., pp. 105-106.\n\n6 China Mail, 8 February 1866; China Mail, 22 February 1866; J.W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, Vetch and Lee Ltd., 1971, first published 1898), 2, p. 86.\n\n7 Annual Report of the Registrar General for 1867, Blue Book 1867, p. 248, §20 - §21.\n\n8 The Baojia or Native Chinese Peace Officers scheme, which was introduced in 1844, was discontinued by 1861.\n\n9 Trevor Bennett and Richard Wright, Burglars on burglary: prevention and the offender, (Aldershot, Gower, 1984), pp. 50-53.\n\n10 Minute by Cecil C. Smith, 22 December 1871: CO129/156, pp. 117-118.\n\n11 Hongkong Government Gazette, 6 January 1872, p. 2. Henceforth HKGG.\n\n12 Report of the Police Commission, 27 June 1872: CO129/164, p. 290 (20, §60).\n\n13 Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore, (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 117; Under the heading 'Asian Counter-strategies against Municipal Sanitary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214713, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "92\n\nDo villagers really believe in tun fu?\n\nHow many of the New Territories' villagers really believe in tun fu? Earlier, it was mentioned that the Pat Heung villagers were paid $600,000 to stage their collective tun fu ceremonies. Brian Jenny, Government Director of Audit, in November 1994 wrote in his report that, during the 1980s, amounts paid annually by the Government (on account of feng shui disturbances) varied between $500,000 and $950,000. In 1990, the Government paid $1.1 million, in feng shui compensation, to the villagers at Ha Tsuen so that ceremonies could be held (Hong Kong Standard; 1990). The fall in the purchasing power of the dollar over the years must be taken into account when interpreting these figures.\n\nWhen the British took over Hong Kong they promised the Chinese that Qing laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott; 1958, 38, 40, 41). Certainly a large number of festivals, customs and much culture have been retained. To some degree, because of lack of restrictions during the colonial period, there was limited hostility towards the British (Cheung; 1999, 573). Other ex-colonial powers could perhaps argue that this easygoing affinity, which developed between the Hong Kong Chinese and their rulers, was not always in the interests of the Colony. For example, the compensation paid to villagers to hold tun fu ceremonies, could have been put to better use.\n\nBut returning to how many villagers really believe? A small group of elderly women that the Author spoke to, sitting in the sun near a tun fu pot at Shui Tau Village, in the Kam Tin District, said that when work first started on improvements to the Kam Tin River the villagers did not intend doing anything. But people started falling sick and several died. It was decided then to hold a tun fu ceremony.12 'Did the elderly ladies believe in tun fu?'\n\n'Well, people stopped falling ill and dying,' they replied, 'so of course we had to believe.'\n\nThat is as good an argument for believing in tun fu as any.\n\nNevertheless several retired civil servants, both British and Chinese who have worked in the New Territories, some as District Officers,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "98\n\n'dragon' resides is to be the site of civil engineering work. As a perceived result a number of people in a village die.\n\nThe main tun fu ceremony, which this paper examines, was performed in a basically Hakka district. It was claimed to have been (including a number of related, smaller ceremonies), the largest tun fu ceremony ever held in Hong Kong. Comparisons in this paper are made with another Hakka ceremony and also with Cantonese ceremonies. The latter tend to be more rigorous. For instance, in some cases villagers are not allowed to leave their village or to eat meat for a fixed number of days. Although not for the squeamish, blood is sometimes obtained from a cockerel to anoint tun fu pots and talismans. It can be seen that, while there are similarities in basic principles, there can be not inconsiderable differences in the way they are performed, some of which depend on the personal practices of the person or persons conducting the ceremony.\n\nLike most rituals, such as living generations of a clan kowtowing to the soul tablets of their ancestors in an ancestral hall, tun fu is performed by men. For example by Taoist priests accompanied by village elders. Again, those who line up to pay their respects at tun fu ceremonies are males (see Plate 4 and 5). Women who were interviewed in this study seemed to accept this. Priests and feng shui masters were deemed to perform the ceremony on the collective behalf of villagers of all ages, including men as well as women.\n\nMost villagers, male or female, nevertheless, seem to take tun fu seriously. The British pledged, when Hong Kong became a crown colony, that local customs, including popular religion, would be allowed to continue, unlike on the Chinese Mainland where several attempts, at different times, have been made to stamp them out.\n\nIn Hong Kong, sizeable sums of money have been paid by the Government to finance the holding of tun fu ceremonies. These can be both expensive and time consuming. Such compensation has often 'bought' co-operation from villagers. In spite of what some past District Officers say, about it being 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui, the latter's disturbance can be viewed with considerable alarm. Affected villagers often go to great lengths to make amends and to ‘adjust' their lives accordingly. While a great deal appears to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215836, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 135, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "68\n\nAll associations were required to be registered under the Societies Ordinance of the Laws of Hong Kong or as limited companies under the Companies Ordinance. Partly because of this, another duty undertaken by officials was to attend or officiate at the inaugurations of new terms of office-bearers, including administration of an oath of office to the new incumbents. This was particularly the case with the rural committees and the kaifong welfare associations, which (as major channels of communication with the local public) had close links with, and came under the supervision of, the District Commissioner, New Territories, and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and their senior staff in the districts.1\n\nDuring my fifteen years in the New Territories Administration (NTA), and five more in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs (SCA, which later became the Home Affairs Department or HAD) both of them to be described as \"political\" departments whose staff had direct dealings with the public, we were also in contact with a miscellany of other community bodies, including the many clansmen's (same name) and district (same place) associations, in both town and country. From the early 1970s, these were joined by the government-sponsored and assisted Mutual Aid Committees, of which large numbers were formed across the whole territory.\n\nThose officials with district responsibilities (including police), were invited to all major local functions as a matter of course, and the officiating officers were either the District Officers, or their superiors in headquarters or in concerned departments. I attended a great many functions during my service in various departments, and thus became familiar with their way of conducting them. This hardly varied, the difference being mainly a matter of degree and extent, depending on the importance of the bodies concerned and the nature and significance of their events.\n\nThe Nature of the proceedings\n\nA marked formality characterized all their occasions. The ceremonies followed set procedures, and each stage was introduced by a\n\n1 For anyone wishing to learn more, the index to Friends and Teachers indicates where information concerning these and other Chinese associations, and their interaction with government departments during my service (1956-87) can be found.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215838, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "In the essentially conservative society of the day, partial to the observance of etiquette and sensitive to social niceties, it was equally necessary for the government departments involved in district administration and community liaison to have the services of similar experts. The former Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and the old-style District Administration New Territories/New Territories Administration, were the two departments in question. Even more than the associations, they had to do everything in the approved style, and with smooth efficiency.\n\nIn the SCA, there was a Chinese Literary Clerk to advise and assist the senior staff. There was also a Calligraphist, whose duties included writing the apothegms requested by associations to grace the pages of their bulletins and special publications (Plate 1). These posts are listed in the SCA's printed annual departmental reports (e.g. 1966-67, Appendix 21). In the DANT, such assistance was provided by a specially selected senior member of the government's General Clerical Service. A Calligraphist came later, together with an Interpreter/Translator in headquarters (see e.g., the District Commissioner's printed annual departmental report for 1964-65, Table XI). Such help was needed if we and our Offices were to function properly within the old system: meaning, in conformity with the accepted norms of polite (i.e., educated) Chinese society.\n\nOutside the headquarters, a notable contribution was made by the Liaison Officer grade in the two departments. Their senior officers' detailed knowledge of the associations' leaders and general expertise was vital in guiding the expatriate element among their superiors. And although, on one occasion, it was unkindly said of the liaison staff in the former Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, that 'all they were good for was arranging chairs and seating, and ushering guests to their seats,' such remarks overlook the great importance attached to protocol and etiquette in traditional Chinese society and the creation and maintenance of a sense of wellbeing between the guests and their hosts.\n\nIn truth, many persons took notice of performance. Government departments and community associations alike would be criticized for any mistakes or omissions, whilst any \"gaffes\" made during speeches - including the unwary or inadvertent choice of words to whose sounds other, disreputable, meanings could be construed - would be noted at once, and give rise to profane mirth or even ridicule. I can vouch for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215859, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 158, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "阿倍\n\nPlate 11. Hail and farewell! Temporary street pai lau to mark a banquet for outgoing and incoming District Officers, Islands, Cheung Chau, 1962\n\n91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215986, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 285, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "219 \n\nand in doing so will avail myself of a rough copy of some remarks which I addressed to Her Majesty's Consul in Canton [Harry Parkes, 1828-1885] upon it in January of the present year [1863]. The outrages complained of were then of more than twelve months' standing; the Consul had been more or less in correspondence with the Chinese authorities about them during all that time; he had submitted the case, he told me, to Frederick Bruce, but had got no reply; nor has he got any, I suppose, up to this time. Everything provided for by the treaties has been broken at Pok-lo; Christians pursuing their calling peaceably were interfered with and persecuted; our Catechist was torn from the house which has been purchased to be converted into a place of worship, and barbarously put to death, because he would not renounce Christianity; placards were issued offering rewards for the head of any Foreign Missionary who should visit the district, and for the heads of all Chinese Christians who should assist him in his measures. These and other violent proceedings were taken, and the Government has yet done nothing effectual to show its regard for the treaty stipulations. I should be sorry now, after the lapse of time, if life were to be taken, even by justice, for the life that was sacrificed for Christ, and still more sorry if the district were to be visited with the scourge of military operations in avengement of the deeds done. But can nothing at all be done? I do not doubt that you represented gravely, again and again, to the Governor-general here, how serious the offences were. Since those representations have proved ineffectual, Her Majesty's Representative at Peking will surely bring the case before the high officers of the Imperial Government. Her Majesty is committed may I not say so? - by the articles of the Treaty not to let the matter rest, without signifying by Sir Frederick Bruce her strong displeasure, and entering her solemn protest at least against the impunity allowed to such despite to her subjects, and such persecution of Chinese Christians. \n\nSo Legge voiced his protest, full of Dissenter concerns opposed to military escalation, but based on treaties purchased at the price of military muscle. The irony of this situation would play itself out in the multitudinous problems encountered by missionaries and Chinese Christians within the subsequent decades of the Qing \n\nPage 285\n\nPage 286", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]