[
    {
        "id": 206323,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1971",
        "page_number": 140,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "134\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nof its history64. The Hong Kong government utilised a number of Chinese associations that had developed independently, gave official status to a few and drew them for the convenience of administration into its orbit. In doing so, to some degree it had to forego total control over the Chinese population and share such control with a small number of Chinese notables. Both benefited from the arrangement. This system has been called one of 'indirect rule' but I feel the phrase conceals more than it reveals, for a committee such as the District Watch could on occasion shape government policy. Government had to play along with a number of Chinese committees for without their support the regulation of the Chinese masses would have been at best an uncertain matter. The heaping of honours on a small number of Chinese notables was, surely, a recognition of the key part they played in promoting stability rather than prizes given for their alienation from Chinese society. Such prominent Chinese, as I have suggested, were as much watchdogs for the Chinese community, and especially the Chinese bourgeoisie, as barking dogs for the colonial government.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Lennox A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, London, Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 398.\n\n2 i.e., Sir Shouson Chow, Sir Robert Kotewall, Lo Man-kam, Dr. Li Shu-fan, and William Ngartsee Thomas Tam.\n\n3 S. F. Balfour states that Hong Kong Island was owned originally by the Tang (Têng) clan of the New Territories: 'Hong Kong Before the British', Tien Hsia Monthly, vol. xi, 1941, p. 464. A translation of a Chinese notice printed in the Friend of China, 24 July 1858, reads: Tung Wing-Fook-Tong (sic) of the Sun-on district, was formerly sole proprietor of the Island of Hong Kong, and of the hills and coast of the North Side of the Harbour under the general name of Tsin Shat-Choy.... Lately Tung Wing-Fook-Tong petitioned the Magistrate of Sun-on to examine Tung's claim to Tsin Shat-Choy and the Magistrate issued a proclamation declaring that Tung Wing-Fook-Tong is the real owner of the Property. The editor asseverated 'as to his having been a Lord of this Isle, as well as of Tsim-shat-choy, —in a word, we do not believe a word of it'. Barbara Ward writes of fishermen that for reasons probably mainly connected with their spatial mobility and the lack of land, these fishermen do not have a developed lineage system nor any real concept of one'. See Barbara Ward, 'Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: Their Post-peasant economy', in Maurice Freedman, ed., Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, London, Frank Cass, 1967, p. 278.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206749,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 26,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "20\n\nH. A. RYDINGS\n\nother pests took their toll, the collection of the Medico-Chirurgical Society gradually became unwanted and unusable.\n\nSome remarks should be made on the incorporation of the Society into \"the Asiatic Society of China\" which soon became the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (21). First, why was such a step necessary, and second, to what extent did members of the former Society opt for membership of the new?\n\nIn the account of the origin of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1) it is stated that the Medico-Chirurgical Society \"in accord with the contemporary spirit of inquiry and the enthusiasm for better knowledge of Asia in general and China in particular, had contemplated setting up a Philosophical Society.\" Part of this story is recorded in the Transactions, p. 62-63. Dr. McGowan of Ningpo wrote a letter which was read at a meeting of the Society on 6th January 1846, \"suggesting the addition of a scientific branch of this Society; or the formation of a Philosophical Society having a Medical Section. The matter having been briefly discussed it was the unanimous opinion of the members present... that the discussion of other scientific subjects should be left to other Bodies, of which members could avail themselves.\n\n**\n\nHowever, this resolve to go it alone was not to be achieved. It is stated in the \"Journal of Proceedings\" regarding the setting up of the \"Philosophical Society of China\" (afterwards the China Branch of the R.A.S.) that \"the number of members of a scientific body called the 'China Medico-Chirurgical Society' had been gradually diminishing, so as to render it difficult to obtain any meetings except at irregular and frequently long intervals\" (22). At the preliminary meeting held on 5th January 1847 there were eight doctors present, namely Drs. Balfour, Young, Barton, Dill, Harland, Bankier, Grant and Fletcher. Only four of these can be positively identified on the membership list of the Medico-Chirurgical Society (Transactions, p. 78), which includes 38 names—though of course others may have joined in the intervening year—but it appears that these four and possibly others had formed a splinter group sympathetic to those who favoured the formation of a \"Philosophical Society\", in the older meaning of the phrase.\n\nThere seems little doubt that the activities of the Medico-Chirurgical Society were on the wane, probably due to the death or departure of some of the more active members. Drs. Tucker,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206751,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 28,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "22 \n\nH. A. RYDINGS \n\nWe began this review of the China Medico-Chirurgical Society with some account of those who were officers during the first year of its existence. It is therefore appropriate to finish with a look at the office-bearers of the 'Philosophical Society of China”, and to note how many of them had been associated with the former society. The original office-bearers (22) were:\n\nPresident \n\nMajor H. P. Burn \n\nVice-Presidents Dr. Kennedy \n\nCouncil \n\nDr. Balfour \n\nA. Shortrede \n\nJ. C. Bowring \n\nGeneral Secretary W. F. Bryan \n\nTreasurer \n\nCurator \n\nDr. Young \n\nC. T. Watkins \n\nDr. Harland \n\nDr. Barton \n\nThere are five doctors on this list, of whom three are known to have been members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, namely Drs. Kennedy, Balfour and Barton. The Dr. Young was probably Peter Young, the Colonial Surgeon, and not J. H. Young, who had been Secretary of the Medico-Chirurgical Society but had resigned. Dr. W. A. Harland, who read a paper on \"The Chinese system of human anatomy and physiology\" (23) at the meetings in September and October 1847, was later to become the Society's \"devoted Secretary\" (24), but is not included in the membership list of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, though he may have joined it after the list was compiled. A new set of office-bearers was appointed with the first change of name of the Society (21) and adoption of a constitution on 19th January 1847, with His Excellency Sir John F. Davis, Bart., F.R.S. as President: but that is another story.\n\nNOTES \n\n1 [J. R. Jones] in JHKBRAS, v. 1, 1961, p. 1.\n\n2 There are three copies recorded in libraries in the U.S.A., i.e. the National Library of Medicine at Washington; the Boston Medical Library; and the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine.\n\n3 Trans. China Med. Chir. Soc., v. 1, 1845-46, p. 28.\n\n4 Memoirs of the life and labours of Robert Morrison, comp. by his widow, London, 1839, v. 2, p. 148.\n\n5 Chinese repository, v. 16, 1847, p. 187-9.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210379,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 350,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "329\n\nstudent who can find a generous sponsor for complementary studies of those rural areas which lie outside Dr. Hayes's purview: the other Peng Chau (in Mirs Bay or Dapeng-wan), Tap Mun, Sha Tau Kok, Tai Po, Yuen Long and their hinterlands. Even within Hong Kong's 400 square miles can be seen the kind of variations which Ouyang Hsiu described (in his preface to the Hsin Wu-tai Shih) as: it is a strength of Chinese society that such healthy variability can exist. Time is short, because when I was last there in 1982, the opening up of roads had already begun to erode village life, as it did in Tsuen Wan, Lantao and New Kowloon,\n\n+\n\n-\n\nDr. Hayes is a true Cadet, in the tradition of Cecil Clementi, Walter Schofield, Stephen Balfour and John Barrow, and his work puts even them in the shade. But oh! oh! that romanization! He says disarmingly in the Foreword \"I confess that romanization has been a problem.\" No shame in that: Chinese — whichever you wish of the 3,000 languages, all known as Chinese — does not lend itself to phonetic writing, and the Cadmean alphabet, while no doubt adequate for the Western Semitic language for which it was devised, was not really suited to Latin and is hopeless for English (though it does not do too badly for Finnish and Welsh) — how much less for Chinese? But of all the inadequate answers to this problem, why choose the obsolete Wade-Giles without its vital apostrophes and tone-numerals, too for what Western academics obstinately call “Mandarin”; and Meyer-Wempe for Cantonese? The latter, with omitted or misprinted diacritical marks, of which I found many (and have sent Dr. Hayes a list) is gibberish. Besides, being based on West River dialects, which differ considerably from the Upper Punyu which, after the eclipse of Sai Kwan wa from 1905 onward, became the standard speech of Canton, Hong Kong and overseas Cantonese (except those from the 5 districts known as Sze Yap), Meyer & Wempe's handy little dictionary has serious shortcomings. What a pity an updated Eitel never appeared!\n\nNothing will ever persuade me that Cantonese, Hakka and Hokkien place names should be written in letters indicating a pronunciation which no local would understand. (I suppose it must be a matter of politics, with which no scholar should soil his hands). Just you try getting a boat to “Shayuyung”! (The place is",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
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]