[ { "id": 206040, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n—\n\n115\n\nmade, is being made, or will be made (in each case without success) or for what we would use a conditional, “if I try to wake him up, he won't wake\" that is, it's no use trying to wake him up. The context nearly always shows. There is an Occam's Razor about spoken, and written, Chinese at least as used here in the South entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. It is bad Cantonese to put in one unnecessary word.\n\nWould that those who teach Cantonese, by books, in classes, or on the radio, would learn to cut out the extra words, which make even an easy sentence sound difficult to the hearer.\n\nBUURNJRANN GORNG ZHUNQJHENQ-LREORNGM-RANN GEA PHINNFAAT JRIRGHENO GORNGDOU CREONQPHINN-DRAAILREON, GAIZRUK-GORNG · XRAAXEOI LRENG GOKWRAIV FANZREOK-ZOR, GIU-DHOU GIU-MRH-SEARNG, DHOHZREA GOKWRAIV\n\nSEORNGMRJNV ZIRGAAU,11\n\n—\n\nof which colloquial peroration a free translation might be \"If I were to continue this already over-long discourse on the structure of English and Chinese, I should put you all into a deep unbreakable sleep. Thank you for listening.\"\n\n101 本人講中英兩文化編法已經講到長篇大論,繼續講下去令各位瞓着啊,\n\n叫叫唔醒,多謝各位賞面指教。\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206675, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n217 \n\nfourteen centuries (i.e. from the 7th century, the period of the beginning of the grand romance of the Lan-t'ing Preface, to less than ten years ago?) evaporates in the presence of the magical magnificence of the calligraphy. By religiously translating every single word of the miscellaneous writing on the Lan-t'ing as collected in the KKYL by Wang Tso, Sir Percival David became the first Englishman to dive into the dark waters of the mystery of the cult of Lan-t'ing. The translation reads well, even if no attempt is made to ease the task for the English reader of identifying personages referred to by multifarious names and titles. A great deal of patience and labour must have gone into the translation of this long section which can only have minimum appeal to the general reader but will be useful to the specialist student who wishes to explore the more esoteric subjects of Chinese art—although the student must also expect to do some homework before he or she can achieve full understanding of the stories told in this section. Similar criticism can be applied to other sections of the book which are mainly Wang Tso's additions. They deal with such subjects as imperial patents, imperial seals, and wandering spirits.\n\nThe reviewer must not give the impression that there are no notes at all; but that many more notes are required to make such a strange (in the sense of being foreign) book intelligible to the English reading public which, though large in numbers, is not and cannot be generally familiar with China of the 14th century and before. Of the notes which are given, some are useful, such as that on \"hsi-p'i\" lacquer on pp. 145-6.\n\nAll in all, the most accomplished production of the book contrasts sharply with the unfinished nature of its contents. And this brings us back to the cautionary remark made earlier, that the book must be judged as an unfinished work. With this work, Sir Percival David has taken English scholarship in Chinese art history to the verge of a new level of understanding. It is hoped that a new generation of scholars will follow the path that he has shown.\n\nAs a postscript, it may be mentioned that the plates, chosen by Mr. Basil Gray who has otherwise done excellent work in preparing the book for printing, do not relate too well to the subject matters dealt with in the book. Again, to perform this task satisfactorily, it would have been necessary to do a great deal of research into the kind of objects which would go into the collection of a Ming scholar.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206695, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n237\n\nthe path of English speakers learning Mandarin. A pronunciation problem exists because most English speakers do just what Huang directs them to do, i.e., make voiced-voiceless contrasts for these initial sounds instead of the voiceless aspirate-inaspirate contrasts made by the native speakers. If such mistakes are understood by the native speaker it is only because they are adapting to the pronunciation errors and not because the errors are unimportant. Such adaptation is of course automatic and easy if this is the only mistake a beginner makes. However, any beginning student can be expected to add mispronunciations of tone and vowel to the problem of the initials and it is clear that the pronunciation errors can easily multiply beyond the ability of the native speaker to compensate for them. In the long run every area of mispronunciation is equally important and the language instructor cannot afford to let students reinforce any weaknesses.*\n\nIt is ironic that many older works were more accurate than Huang in this respect. Wade-Giles p', t', etc. represent a clear attempt to demonstrate that these contrasts were NOT voiced versus voiceless. Huang misses the point altogether when (pp. xx-xxi) he says \"voiceless plosives should be written as P, T, K, and the voiced ones simply as B, D, G.\" The Yale system uses such a symbolization but obviously the symbols themselves are totally unimportant, purely a matter of agreement among the users. The critical point is how these symbols are related to pronunciation in articulatory terms. Here Huang misdirects the student, while the textbooks using the Yale romanization write b, d, g, but clearly describe them as representing voiceless consonants.\n\nHuang continues to mislead his readers by equating English and Chinese sounds when they are not equal. On page xxvi he equates Mandarin yi with the English vowel in see. This is phonetically inaccurate and touches on another common area of mispronunciation in Chinese. The English vowel as in see normally has an off-glide [-iy] with a shift in position of articulation. The Chinese vowel in yi has no offglide and, after the initial consonant or semiconsonant, is pronounced as a pure vowel [-i]. A similar situation exists\n\n*Y. R. Chao suggests (Mandarin Primer, p. 21) that, failing to master voiceless initial stops and affricates, the student may \"as a last resort\" pronounce them as their voiced English counterparts. He then notes, \"The use of voiced consonants.... is not absolutely correct and will give a strong foreign accent.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207071, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "DO WORDS FROM EXTINCT PRE-CHINESE LANGUAGES SURVIVE IN HONG KONG PLACE-NAMES ?*\n\nBy K. M. A. BARNETT\n\nIntroduction\n\nAnybody whose work takes him into the rural parts of Hong Kong will soon be made aware of the badness of the maps. The errors in topographical detail I must leave to the cartographer to explain. The errors which concern me are those in the nomenclature. It is apparent after the most cursory check that a large proportion of the place-names are incorrect — either the wrong name, or the right name wrongly spelt, or the right name in the wrong place.\n\nPutting the right name in the wrong place is presumably due to the misreading of field notes. Wrong spellings are always to be excused in the absence of a generally accepted, scientific method of transliteration. And even the registration of a wrong name is not so easy to avoid as might be thought.\n\nIn the past, many field workers were entirely ignorant of the local languages and had to rely on interpreters. There are good interpreters in Hong Kong — in 24 years' service I have met four... but they are not available to accompany field survey parties. Field survey parties have to rely on less than the best interpreters, or even on pidgin English, with some amusing results in the early days. It was for this reason that the island of Ma Shi Chau1 is still marked on some maps as No Kot Choi — i.e. No got choy, pidgin English for 'No food to be had'.\n\nLater, the field workers themselves had some knowledge of Chinese, but even that had its pitfalls. For the Chinese they would know is Cantonese, either the Sai Kwan162 or the Pun Yue161 dialect. But the languages of the New Territories are Nam Tau156 Cantonese,\n\n*This article is reprinted, with some revisions and additions by the author, from pp. 1-13 of T. R. Tregear's Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong University Press, 1958). Mr. Barnett is well known to readers of this Journal. He served for 37 years in the Administrative Branch of the Hong Kong Civil Service from which he retired some years ago, his last post being Commissioner of Census and Statistics.\n\nSuperior figures refer to characters which can be found in the Notes and Character Index at pp. 157-159.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207436, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "196\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nnames in this account I shall spell them as they sounded to me. I was old enough to be aware of the fighting qualities of their troops in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 and Japan was acclaimed as our ally in the First War. The reputation of the people for courtesy in their own country was high. The situation changed drastically in the nineteen thirties.\n\nThe conduct of their troops in Manchuria and in China, the truculence of their government and the xenophobia of their nationals in Japan itself gave the nation a sinister reputation, and those of us who had followed these developments had few illusions about what would happen to people conquered by their armies if war came. This reputation was entirely self-made. I never hated the Japanese as such though I came to distrust individual members of their army. I try here to record our dealings with those in charge in the British Military Hospital in Hong Kong. The name of our hospital changed from time to time. In April 1942 I was writing reports and requests from the British Military Hospital. By September 1942 our name had become \"Dai Ichi Bun In, Kirishima Dori\". By October 1943 we were \"Dai Ichi Bun Ken Sho\", but I don't know what our name was in Kowloon.\n\nThe commander of P.O.W. camps in Hong Kong was one Colonel Tokunaga, and our hospital came under his authority. He was a thick-set man of a little over average Japanese height. His age was not easy to guess but I judged him to be well over fifty and he gave me the impression of having been recalled to active service from the reserve. He was nicknamed 'the pig' by our troops. I do not know if he could speak English but I suspect that he understood our language a little. I never had experience of conversation with him, and on his inspections and visits he seemed utterly withdrawn from any human contact with staff or patients though his orders, transmitted to me after inspections, showed that he had been observant and had noted arrangements which he considered should be changed. These referred only to such matters as the lay-out of beds, notices in wards, conditions in the hospital grounds and so on. He never gave me orders at the time of his visits; these were transmitted later. When the representative of the Red Cross came, Tokunaga always preceded him wherever they went and he obviously dictated the route to be followed. I never knew him speak to a patient. Tokunaga seemed to me to be a Japanese officer of the old school showing by his demeanour the rigidity of his training.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207438, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "198\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nthat camp. It was at this time that I first proposed that I should be allowed to visit P.O.W. camps in order to discuss the various medical problems with our doctors there and plan the best use of our hospital services for their patients. This suggestion, like so many others, provoked no apparent reaction and though I repeated it at frequent intervals I never got near a P.O.W. camp until I was moving to our new hospital in Kowloon in 1945. Major Harrison was allowed to make one visit to North Point Camp to consult with Canadian medical officers about some problems in which specialist advice was wanted. This was his only visit to a camp and none of our other doctors were ever allowed to visit either.\n\nI had another passage with Saito following an air raid on Hong Kong in October of which I shall write later, but in these critical months in 1942 my approaches to him had to be made in writing or through his N.C.O., Sergeant Seino or the interpreter and any messages from him came back by the same route.\n\nOn 23 November Saito saw all officer patients and though he did not make a physical examination he marked five for discharge. We considered that two of these would improve by a further stay in hospital, though it was not vital for them to do so. The order for discharge however stood. On 21 December we had our second Red Cross inspection, the first during the period I was in charge but Saito did not appear in the suite. A day or two later however he demanded a report on our sufferers from pellagra asking for detailed information about skin, gastro-intestinal and nervous symptoms and the details of treatment and on 16 January 1943 he came to see the patients. We demonstrated these including the eye cases. As our experience in these fields was small we asked his advice and he suggested giving 100 mgm nicotinic acid by intramuscular injection daily for 10 days. As was his usual custom he would not wait to make a detailed inspection and cut his visit short. We delayed him on the stairs long enough for him to use the English words \"B. complex\" when speaking on the causal deficiency. With this exception he had spoken Japanese throughout and whether he had got the information in discussion elsewhere, it agreed with our view that the symptoms were not to be explained by a pure vitamin B1 deficiency. In reply to my question he said that nicotinic acid and suitable diet were the important elements of treatment. He said also that yeast, easy to get before the war, was now hard to obtain. He promised to consult a colleague about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209827, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "64\n\nI am perfectly aware that it is notoriously difficult to ascribe lexical innovations to specific dates or occurrences with any degree of authority or accuracy. But my focus is on Hong Kong English at the present time, the English which is in use among native speakers of English. By 'native speaker', I mean L1 users of English, those who have not had to acquire it as a second language in Hong Kong today. The business of etymology-hunting becomes less tenuous: we have actually witnessed the initial appearance of specific loan words, then the process of their being popularized by the media; for example, mafoo (stable boy), a word which was already current in Shanghai and which gained currency here because of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club's dispute between management and labour in the 1970's and now once more in the news. This time it appears unmarked, unglossed, whereas when it appeared over ten years ago, it was almost inevitably accompanied by an explanation.\n\nThough the borrowing from Chinese to-date has not been very significant, it is evident that, because of the cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong and the easy movement of people to and from Hong Kong, some of these lexical innovations, such as they are, may find their way outside Hong Kong, gain international currency and eventual sanction by inclusion in reputable dictionaries. Contact between various dialects of Chinese immigrants, in Hawaii, in Chinatowns in New York, San Francisco, Boston, London, and Sydney, etc., has also resulted in mutual lexical borrowing. Some of the immigrants originate from Hong Kong. And since the late 1960's and early 70's, the English-speaking world has had much more direct access to China and to the Chinese language used on the Mainland.\n\nMy co-researcher and I have made an investigation of the subject according to the following headings.\n\nI. An outline history of contact between the two languages, with illustrative examples of the loan words resulting from various types of contacts. The focus is on the lexical consequences of historical events, not the events themselves; for example, we are interested more in the popularizing of the term kowtow than in the political or commercial results of the Amherst embassy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210843, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "177\n\ndismissed as he would be freed from the obligation to refund money. He became insubordinate and tried to excite the same feeling among others. ... After much expostulation and forbearance I was forced to dismiss him. This and public and private admonitions to others led all the rest to return to their duties with their usual alacrity.\n\nThus the student rebellion had been successfully crushed, but at the cost of Ng A-fat, a student upon whom Dr. Happer had placed great hope of his future usefulness as a mission helper. After leaving the missionaries A-fat, like Ng Mun-sow, became an interpreter in the Chief Magistrate's office in Hongkong.\n\nDr. Legge had similar trouble keeping his students. Some of their classmates who had left the school had already gone overseas. The reports sent back were full of the ease money could be made, especially for those who understood English.\n\nIn 1852, Dr. Legge reported that one of his former students, Ho Cheong-kow, was in San Francisco working in a store where he made $100 a month or £250 a year, which Dr. Legge noted was the same salary as that of a married missionary.\n\nThe boys were not only tempted by reports from former classmates, but their friends and relatives urged them to leave school and, as Dr. Legge phrased it, “engage in the race for gold.”\n\nHe particularly mentioned Ng Mun-sow and O Soey-cheong as having rejected large sums offered to them by their friends if they would become partners in overseas business ventures.\n\nO Soey-cheong was especially under pressure from both family and friends. A-cheong's father had brought him to Dr. Legge's school in 1848 with the idea that if his son were taught English he could get a good position, make money and contribute to the support of the family. When several years later, A-cheong had wished to be baptised, the father did not oppose for he was sure it was but another step towards financial advancement.\n\nAs soon as A-cheong was taken on as a theological student and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210953, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nOBITUARY: K. M. A. BARNETT\n\nTRANSACTIONS:\n\nJean Chesneaux, China in the Eyes of the French Intellectuals\n\nElizabeth Sinn, Kowloon Walled City: Its Origin and Early History\n\nARTICLES:\n\nAnthony Sweeting, A Middleman for All Seasons: Snapshots of the Significance of Mok Man Cheung and His English Made Easy\n\nLars Ragvald and Graeme Lang, Confused Gods: Huang Daxian (Wong Tai Sin) and Huang Yeren at Mt. Luofu\n\nGraeme Lang and Lars Ragvald, Official and Oral Traditions About Hong Kong's Newest God\n\nDavid W. Mahoney, The British (Protestant) Cemetery at San Pedro, Makati, Manila, Philippines\n\nValery M. Garrett, A Hoklo Wedding\n\nCarl Smith, A Sense of History (Part II)\n\nThe Hong Kong History Project\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nAnthony K. K. Siu, Tam Kung: His Legend and Worship\n\nThe Cannon in the Kowloon Walled City\n\nJames Hayes, Hong Kong's Own Boat People\n\nVisit to the Iwataya Department Store, Fukuoka, Japan\n\nNotes on Temples and Shrines, Hong Kong Island\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nvii\n\nxiii\n\nxv\n\n1\n\n11\n\n30\n\n46\n\n74\n\n93\n\n101\n\n112\n\n117\n\n254\n\n278\n\n279\n\n280\n\n283\n\n285\n\n292\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "56\n\n- and these should be seen in the context of other idiosyncrasies and other errors in the published works of those Europeans who wrote about Chinese culture, society, and language English Made Easy remains an interesting and substantial effort to help others less fortunate than himself. For this reason, the life and career of Mok Man Cheung needs to be examined to enable the full significance of his publication to be gauged. As will be seen in more detail below, Mok made his effort to help his compatriots nearly twenty years after he had left the teaching profession and several years after he had ceased being a professional interpreter and translator. By 1904, Mok Man Cheung was well established as a compradore and commission agent. There was certainly no financial need behind his writing of the book. Instead, he should receive the credit for having taken up the challenge of being a middleman and go-between in the most practical and, to his fellow-Chinese, the most helpful of ways. That he deemed this task worthwhile is a comment which itself provides insight into the social history of the time and, especially into the social history of education.\n\nSignificance of the life and career of Mok Man Cheung (the setting for snapshots 2 and 3)\n\nIn many ways, Mok Man Cheung was a typical product of the interaction of Chinese culture and enterprise with British colonial, bureaucratic, and commercial power. This interaction put a premium on the development of a group of middlemen or go-between. As the details outlined below demonstrate, Mok Man Cheung's education and career qualify him for membership of several of the categories analyzed by Carl Smith for the emerging Chinese elite in Hong Kong, even though his name has not yet been singled out by Smith. He was \"English educated\". He worked for a time as a translator. He became involved in the educational and the legal professions. He moved into the compradore class and, later, as “commission agent\", also performed compradorial services on a freelance basis. As a non-official Justice of the Peace towards the end of his career, he can be counted as one of the “English-speaking Chinese advisers to the Government”\n\n20\n\n21", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211009, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "46\n\nA MIDDLEMAN FOR ALL SEASONS: \nSNAPSHOTS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MOK MAN CHEUNG AND HIS \nENGLISH MADE EASY \nANTHONY SWEETING \n\nIntroduction \n\nOn 20th August, 1904, the Editor of the South China Morning Post drew attention to the special features of a book published locally in Hong Kong, particularly to \"its usefulness\". On the same date, the Registrar General of Hong Kong, A.W. Brewin, wrote: \"I have been all through the book and it seems to me that it should be very useful.\" The second, and final, sentence of Brewin's note offers the clue to the nature of the publication, the objectives of its author, and the precise usefulness of the book, especially when it is remembered that the chief responsibility of a Registrar General of the time was to be \"Protector of the Chinese\". The sentence reads: “I have tested it on Chinese and I find they get the pronunciation very accurately.” \n\nThe book was English Made Easy. It appeared in the book shops of Hong Kong in 1904, with the distribution rights accorded to the well-established European bookshop/publishing company of Messrs. Kelly and Walsh, Hong Kong, and also to Kam Fook of 102, Hollywood Road. The actual publisher of English Made Easy was described in the text as \"Kwong Hop Yuen, 46, Bonham Strand East, Hong Kong, China”. The author's signature, in English, appears in the book, underneath his photograph. His name was Mok Man Cheung. Modern commentators, with only a perfunctory interest in history but a relish for literary allusions, may attribute a role to him which combines some of the characteristics of Uriah Heep, Pollyanna, and Uncle Tom. The historical reality was even more complex and more interesting. Mok Man Cheung \n\nAnthony Sweeting is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Education. His major professional preoccupation is with the teaching of History. He is also involved in research into the history of education in Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211012, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "49\n\nHong Kong at the turn of the century, together with their educational implications. In particular, they may shed light on the role played by such \"middlemen\" as compradores and interpreters in the interaction between the ethnic groups in Hong Kong. There can be little doubt that this role had significance for educational developments as well as for economic and social growth.\n\nIf such insights can be gained, comparisons suggest themselves with the roles (including the educational roles) of other types of middlemen in other societies, ranging from the bourgeoisie in late medieval Europe, to the Lebanese and Indians in parts of Africa, the Creoles in the Caribbean and the southern states of the United States of America, and the Peons in the French Colonial Empire. But before such tempting generalisations can be made, a \"micro-study\" needs to be considered on its own merits.\n\nThe significance of English Made Easy, (or snapshot 1)\n\nThe text of Mok Man Cheung's English Made Easy is, of course, bilingual. It includes a number of proof-reading and other errors. Much more important, however, is the evidence it provides about the social realities of Hong Kong at the time. In this sense, it is a mine of information relevant especially to the social history of education and, more generally, to the social history of early twentieth century Hong Kong. It also offers opportunities for making inferences, rather than being presented with conclusions from which all individuality and sense of live debate have been distilled.\n\nMok's preface, for example, incorporates a dignified but \"hard sell\" approach to his readers. He identifies his target audience or market as \"beginners of the English language\" and, also, \"business men who have acquired a few ordinary English words and desire to learn more without a teacher by the aid of the character of their own language.\" There was already existing in Hong Kong a thriving private tuition business. The \"tutors\" or \"coaches\", who ranged from fully qualified European teachers, moonlighting, to scantily, if at all, qualified Chinese and other non-Europeans, striving to make a living by 'playing the system',", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211014, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "more down-to-earth \"lower valuations\" of the situation was that genuine friendship between Chinese and Europeans as equals was at the time so rare as to be not worth exemplifying. The same implicit message is conveyed by the deference and outwardly very respectful tone of several of his more formal examples of business letters. On the other hand, his suggestion that readers test the usefulness of the book by picking out any one English word and asking a non-English-speaking Chinese person to read the adjoining Chinese characters and produce the sound required implies quite a modern, empirical attitude towards the question of language and the assumption by Mok Man Cheung of a type of independent, verifiable authority. A.W. Brewin's short and inelegant note, included as an endorsement of the book and quoted at the outset of this article, intimates that the Registrar General had taken the author at his word and conducted a number of these experiments personally.\n\nThe reprint, in the “Introduction” to a second edition of English Made Easy, of the South China Morning Post's review of Mok Man Cheung's work, besides explaining his \"system\" in greater detail, also identifies the book's readership more specifically.\n\nThis work is self-teaching, and it is believed that it will supply a want which has long been felt by the following classes of the Chinese and Chinese who are unacquainted with the sounds of English words:- 1. Country youths who have acquired [sic] a fair Chinese education, but find it inconvenient for them to come from their country homes to learn English. 2. Chinese literates, scholars and officials who are desirous of picking up a few words of simple English to enable them to hold short conversations with Englishmen; 3. Servants in the employ of Europeans who are too old to go to school or unable to attend school for want of means and time.\n\nOne cannot know now the extent to which Mok Man Cheung himself contributed towards this analysis. It is, however, consistent...\n\nPage 51", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211015, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "T \n\n52 \n\ntent with the motive of maximizing the market, ranging, as it does from the local Chinese literati to domestic servants of European residents, and even to \"country youths\", presumably from the recently acquired \"New Territories\". \n\nThe principal contents of English Made Easy comprise Mok Man Cheung's “unique system” for enabling non-English speakers to pronounce the English alphabet, numbers, words, phrases, and sentences, plus an anthology of \"model letters\". Fascinating insights into the quality of the social life of upwardly mobile Chinese at the turn of the century are provided by the selection of materials for these sections of the book. \n\nSeveral of the categories of objects and phenomena, invented by Mok Man Cheung to organize his work, offer evidence about the ambivalence of this sort of person at this time in the face of influences from both East and West. In his list of words referring to \"Objects of Nature\", for example, the earliest words on the list (“Sky”, “Earth”, “Sun”, “Moon”, “Wind”, “Clouds”, “Rain”, etc.) may have been chosen for their compatibility with such traditional Chinese concepts as \"Feng Shui”1 and with other widespread beliefs. \"Spirits”, “Gods”, “Ghost”, and “Devil” are all included. The later entries seem to concentrate more on practical and modern realities, such as “reclamation ground”, “rough sea”, “typhoon”, “drizzle” [sic], “low-tide”, “flood”, and, to conclude happily, \"calm-sea\". In his suggested vocabulary for \"Time and Seasons\", he includes \"Intercalary moon”, “Full moon Festival”, \"Dragon Boat Festival\" and \"Winter Solstice\" as well as “Christmas day\", the days of the week and months of the year by Western reckoning, and a battery of non-culture-specific temporal terms. Mok Man Cheung's list of \"Persons and their Occupations\" begins, perhaps because it was politic to do so in 1905, with \"Emperor\", \"Empress\", \"Crown Prince\", and proceeds to deal with “Mandarin” and “General”, leading on to such occupations as “Maidservant” and “Captain”, before referring to \"Governor\", \"Policemen\" (juxtaposed with “Thief”) and \"Student\". It would not be uncharacteristic of Chinese style if the precise order in which these “Persons and Occupations” are presented is meant to be significant. Even if this is not the case,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211018, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "Moreover, when the model letter is addressed to someone in authority, at that time, almost by definition a European, the formality and respectfulness approaches servility.\n\nThe actual content of many of the expressions used in the book also reveals much about social attitudes and practices. Under \"Words in Common Use\", for example, one finds \"Cumshaw\", \"We thrashed the thief\", and \"The teacher flogged this boy”. In \"Short Sentences\", one sees \"Take bribes\", \"Learn by heart\", \"Good memory\", \"Worship at the tombs\", \"Study hard”, “Give presents\", \"He Got the Plague”, and “smoke Opium”. The “Long Sentences\" include \"Humbugging about\", \"He is fond of drinks”, \"I beg you to recommend me”, “Give me a cumshaw”, and “I undersell him\". Amongst the model letters, one discovers two applications to hospitals to make their charges moderate (pp. 436-437), as well as formal letters of application, resignation, requests for sick-leave and special leave, etc. (pp. 406-410), which were clearly intended as templates. In the same section, in addition to the routine business correspondence about bills of lading, the sale of property, etc., and the applications to Government departments for licences and permits, one finds letters politely complaining about drains and the failure of the water supply (pp. 439-440), a letter about a scheme to provide aid to a district in China after the onset of a natural disaster there (p. 442), and another about emigration to the United States. But the classic letter must be the one addressed to the Officer in Charge of No. 2 Police Station, bringing to his notice the fact that there is a dead body lying in the road, outside the letter-writer's house, and apologizing for the trouble given. (p. 438).\n\nOnly part of the significance of English Made Easy derives from the formal, external poses it presents which appear to accept and condone the excesses of a colonial regime and a discriminatory society. In the very early twentieth century, there was no feasible alternative, other than departure from Hong Kong. Also significant is the fact that a man like Mok Man Cheung took the trouble to write the book. With all its idiosyncrasies and its errors\n\nPage 55", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211020, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "57\n\nAt least partial substantiation of these claims can be found in a Who's Who in the Far East entry under his name in June 1906. Presumably, the details of his entry were provided by Mok Man Cheung himself. A full quotation of the short passage may, therefore, tell something of how he viewed his own achievements. It reads:\n\nMOK, MAN CHEUNG (HONG KONG), Commission Agent, Translator of Legal documents and Arbitrator; b. Dec. 4, 1865. Educ. Government Central School (now Queen's College), Hong Kong. Monitor in Government Central School, 1884; Pupil Teacher, 1885; assistant teacher, 1888-92; Translator in Registrar General's Office, Hong Kong, 1893-94; Translator for the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, 1895-1900; assistant Compradore in Butterfield and Swire's service, 1901. Publications: “Tah Tsz English and Chinese Dictionary”; “English Made Easy\". Address: 267, Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong.\"\n\n23\n\nSnapshot 2: Mok Man Cheung in the mid-1880s\n\nIt is interesting that, over twenty years after the appointment, Mok Man Cheung chose to include \"Monitor in Government Central School, 1884\" as a mark of distinction. The prefect system was not established in Queen's College until 1911,24 and, therefore, Mok Man Cheung had no opportunity to add such an honour to his resume. Even though in general it remains true that absence of evidence cannot provide solid evidence of absence, in his particular case, one may assume that the fact that he did not quote scholarship successes, coupled with the fact that he is not mentioned in this respect in any of the Government sources or in Stokes' Queen's College 1862-1962, indicates that he did not win one of the prestigious scholarship awards25 during his time at the Central School. On the other hand, Carl Smith possesses evidence that Mok Man Cheung won the Mathematics prize for Class 1 (i.e., the senior class in the school) on 23rd January, 1884.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211028, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "64\n\nthe need to make the record appear to indicate a full three years' participation in such a scheme. This is slightly more convincing as an explanation. A final possibility is that Mok wished to draw attention away from the fact that he was a teacher at the Central School from 1884 to 1887. It is interesting to speculate about the reasons for this desire. Is it a coincidence, for example, that these were precisely the years during which Sun Yat Sen, the future revolutionary leader and President of the Republic of China, then known as Sun Tai Tseung, attended the Central School? It is possible that the young assistant teacher and the new pupil became friends. It is also possible that, in 1906, it struck Mok Man Cheung that public knowledge of this attachment would have been inconvenient and, therefore, he post-dated his teaching career's commencement to 1888, the year after Sun Yat Sen left the Central School for the newly formed Hong Kong College of Medicine for the Chinese. In 1906, the Empress Dowager was still alive. A belated Reform Movement was in operation in a last desperate, but vain, attempt to save the Qing dynasty and the Imperial system. As mentioned above, only two years earlier, in the first edition of his English Made Easy, Mok Man Cheung had given precedence to words like Emperor and Crown Prince. He had referred to queues and queue-strings as normal items, at the very time when for revolutionaries and even reformers they were regarded as symbols of Manchu oppression. There is no doubt that at this particular time open evidence of an affiliation with Sun Yat Sen would have been commercially, socially and politically undesirable, though, like several other middlemen of the period, Mok might have been quietly keeping his connections open with all sides.\n\nDiscussion of the significance of Mok Man Cheung's career\n\nSo much then for the worldly successes and possible problems of Mok Man Cheung. Whatever his innermost thoughts may have been, there can be little doubt that he strove outwardly to take advantage of the colonial, commercial, and social establishment of his time. Significantly, his book, English Made Easy, attempted to bridge the enormous gap between the Chinese and British communities in Hong Kong at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned above, this was a period which was not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211029, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "65\n\nnoted for harmony between the races in Hong Kong society and the unease was certainly apparent in the field of education.\" The relationship between the two “communities” was, at best, symbiotic at this time.\" The period seemed to present, however, interesting and attractive opportunities for coaching members of the Chinese community in the skills and ostensible attitudes required if they were to seek socio-economically successful co-existence with the British. As Mok Man Cheung implicitly argued in his book, language was the key.\n\n49\n\nClearly, Mok Man Cheung was eager to exploit the advantages of his own position as a middleman and go-between in Hong Kong society. He was ready to “cash in” his education and training. In so doing, equally clearly, he considered that he was performing an important service for his fellow Chinese. Both the editor of the South China Morning Post and the Registrar General seconded him in this supposition and the fact that the book sold indicates that there was an audience and a market for this type of self-improvement course which, in retrospect, might have been subtitled \"How to be a useful and successful subject of a colonial regime\".\n\nNowadays, Mok Man Cheung's English Made Easy may appear to be a quaint, charmingly erratic and possibly old-fashioned “Do-it-yourself” manual in language learning. The principal contention of this article is, however, that, in both its style of presentation and in its contents, it also provides interesting insights into the social history of early twentieth century Hong Kong and, especially, into the social history of education in Hong Kong, and that these insights are enhanced by an attempt to \"place\" Mok Man Cheung in context. Considering the fact that most publications on education in Hong Kong comprise statements of or comments on official policy about formal schooling at the macro level, this is no mean claim to make. Perhaps a reprint of Mok Man Cheung's book in the years leading up to the resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong by China in 1997 could stimulate some latter-day middleman to produce a Chinese Made Easy, based on the phonetic values of the English language, supplemented by some unique codification of tones, to cater for those non-Chinese who\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211032, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "68\n\nOffice Records, Series 129 (“Hong Kong: Original Correspondence\"), File 404, pp. 359-397. Such references will hereafter appear in the style, CO129/404, pp. 395-397.\n\n12 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1944), p. xlviii, 20-42.\n\n13 The expression \"country youths\" is broad enough to include the Chinese further up-country in Guangdong Province. It is likely, however, that Mok Man Cheung had his eye on the chance of catering to the population of the area then known as \"the New Territory\", leased from China in 1898.\n\n14 \"Feng Shui\" is the traditional Chinese concern for geomancy, or the most favourable conjunction of winds and waters which would be taken into consideration when, for example, a tomb or a residence was being sited. See Maurice Freedman, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', in The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, selected and introduced by G. William Skinner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 189-211.\n\n15 In the Cantonese vernacular, \"horse-boy\" also means “minion”.\n\n14 The various page numbers included in parentheses refer, of course, to the original 1904 edition of English Made Easy.\n\n17 Other examples of simple errors, which have little to do with local knowledge, include \"grosery\", \"Bigonia\", \"Spinage\", \"Carret\", \"Pumpkin\", \"Thrimp fritters\", “Calway seeds”, “Pate foi gras\", \"Sarsaparilla\", “Cut dough or spargetty\", etc.\n\n18 A common expression, especially in business circles, for present, treat, \"sweetener\", close to the conceptual borders of bribe.\n\n19 Anthony Sweeting, 'Hong Kong', in R. Murray Thomas & T. Neville Postlethwaite (eds.) Schooling in East Asia: Forces of Change (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 275.\n\n20 Smith (1985) p. 103f.\n\n21 An expression used by Carl Smith to mean educated through the medium of the English language in one of the leading “Anglo-Chinese\" schools in Hong Kong at the time, e.g., the Morrison Education Society School, St. Paul's College, Ying Wah College, the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, the Central School (renamed Victoria College in 1887 and Queen's College in 1894), and St. Saviour's College (renamed St. Joseph's College in 1875).\n\n22 Smith (1985) pp. 143-171.\n\n24 Who's Who in the Far East, (Hong Kong, China Mail, 1906), p. 233. The first Prefects were appointed on Empire Day, 1911, received gilt badges to denote the importance of their office, and were known ironically as \"Mr. Ralph's peerage\", presumably to signify that this new pupil aristocracy was the brainchild of Mr. Edwin Ralphs, the popular Second Master. See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College 1862-1962 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1962), p. 282.\n\n25 These included the Morrison Scholarship, donated by the Morrison Education Society in 1873; the Government Scholarship, instituted for pupils at the Central School in 1874; several Belilios Scholarships established by E.R. Belilios in 1882 when his offer to erect a statue in honour of Viscount Beaconsfield, recently Prime Minister of Great Britain, was politely declined; the Stewart Scholarship, estab-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211036, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "72\n\n40\n\nHong Kong Government Gazette, 6th May, 1899, p. 701. Mok Man Cheung's book, retailing at $8, was unusually expensive. There clearly was a market for books attempting to bridge the social and linguistic gap between the Chinese and British communities. Also in 1899, for instance, a Lo Sing-lau published his English Self Taught for Chinese at $1 per copy and this went into a second edition in 1904 and a third in 1905, 1904, the year in which Mok Man Cheung produced his English Made Easy, also witnessed the publication of Tang Chi Kun's A Step in English Tongue ($0.80),\n\n41 Letter to the Editor, signed by \"X\", Hong Kong Daily Press, Thursday, 17th January, 1901, p. 2.\n\n42 This assumption is further strengthened by the fact that he made out his will on 28th December, 1917, and that its Probate Number is No. 68 of 1918. I owe this information to Professor Dafydd Evans who also points out the relatively high proportion of \"death bed” wills among the Chinese in Hong Kong at this time. The will itself is serial no. 3135, deposit no. 4, in series 144. It confirms that one of Mok Man Cheung's aliases was Mok Cheuk Lim. An examination of the actual will shows that it was, indeed, a deathbed will and that Mok Man Cheung actually died on 30th December, 1917. The Declaration by Executor before Probate, dated 13th March, 1918, indicates that \"the whole of the personal estate of the said testator amounts in value to the sum of $21,075.53”, certainly no mean sum at the time.\n\n43\n\nThere appear to be no locally-published Chinese language newspapers extant for this period of time. Although the Wah Tsz Yat Po was certainly in operation, unfortunately there is a break in the surviving copies from 18th January, 1917 to 16th February, 1918.\n\n44 The acronym for Queen's College, which was (and is) the current name for the school Mok Man Cheung had attended as \"the Central School\".\n\n45 These are very clear and characteristic indications of his prominence in Hong Kong Chinese society. See, for example, H.J. Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Stability and Change, (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978), especially pp. 52-102, and Carl T. Smith (1985), especially pp. 139-171. Confirmatory evidence that he was a member of the Committee of the Po Leung Kuk, elected on 20th March, 1909, using his alias, Mok Yeuk Lim, is found in the Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for that year, p. C39. If one can assume that another of his aliases was Mok Yuk-chi, confirmatory evidence about his membership of the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospitals can be found in the Administrative Reports for 1913.\n\n46 Even though Mok Man Cheung was certainly successful in a material sense, his name appears neither in Arnold Wright's Twentieth Century Impressions nor in S.L. Woo, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Company, 1937) which, though written long after Mok Man Cheung's death, contained reference to several deceased merchants who had been born before 1865. Moreover, he does not appear to have been a member of the District Watch Committee, posited by Lethbridge as the Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong (Lethbridge 1978, pp. 104-129). On the other hand, Carl Smith's justly-famed index cards reveal that he was involved in many property deals and was, for example, co-proprietor, with Tang Lap Ting and Mok Kun Hiu, of the Wanchai Godown.\n\n47\n\nIn London, a Colonial Office minute in 1907, for example, declared that “I don't think that the fact that Mr. Hee has found an Englishwoman foolish enough to marry a Chinaman is an argument for increasing his salary [as Headmaster of Wanchai District School] (CO129/341, p. 342). In Hong Kong, the official defini-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211037, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "73\n\ntion of schools, contained in the Government Gazette, included: “An Upper Grade School means one in which at least part of the Staff is European. Lower Grade Schools are those under purely native management” (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30th June, 1905, p. 1023). Earlier, Bishop Hoare, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria and South China announced at the annual prize distribution of a school noted for its ethnically ‘mixed' admissions policy that he \"did not believe it was a good thing to put two races side by side in the school. He did not think they mixed. There was a gulf between the Chinaman as a Chinaman and an Englishman as an Englishman, and he did not think it was a good thing for Chinese boys to be educated side by side with English boys” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 30th January, 1901, p. 3). Amongst the largely supportive correspondence in the letters to the editor pages of the local press provoked by the report of Bishop Hoare's speech, there is a letter from a local Chinese resident, Wang Chung-yu, who argued, “Now, to exclude Chinese from certain schools means to go against the law of nature and to aggravate the hatred between Chinese and foreigners.... My experience goes to show that, as a rule, European boys in school generally depreciate things Chinese, and therefore there is no need to fear that European boys may learn any bad method of thinking peculiar to the Chinese.” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 7th February, 1901, p. 3).\n\n48 Sweeting (1983), p. 274.\n\n49 Despite the lack of warmth and closeness in the personal and social relations between the two communities, there was, in a sense, a reciprocal interest by certain Westerners for \"Things Chinese\". This interest was largely intellectual (anthropological and literary) and is, perhaps, best exemplified by Dyer Ball's large publication, which in later editions became increasingly larger, actually entitled Things Chinese. See the Introduction and Prefaces of J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press reprint, with Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge, 1982 of the 5th Edition revised by E. Chalmers Werner, 1925). Interestingly enough, Dyer Ball also published a book entitled Cantonese Made Easy, which by 1904 had reached its 3rd Edition.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211082, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "118\n\nhad to bestow, made Ho A-mei a possible candidate for the Legislative Council.\n\nNg Choy, who had recently resigned, was the first Chinese member of the Council. He had been appointed by Governor John Pope Hennessy in 1878. His nomination had been part of what the English language press liked to call “Hennessy's pro-Chinese policy.\" Governor Hennessy's object was to establish closer relations between the Government and the Chinese. He believed Chinese views on matters affecting public welfare should be known and taken into consideration in decisions made by the Government and its officials. He was a strong advocate of equal treatment of all groups within the Colony and was opposed to class legislation. These policies were not welcomed by a large part of Hong Kong's expatriate population. When Ng Choy was named to the Legislative Council there were murmurs of displeasure.\n\nThe choice, however, was a happy one.\n\nNg Choy, a barrister educated in England, was a diplomat by nature. During the period he represented the Chinese on the Council, he steered successfully the treacherous course of co-operation with Governor Hennessy's \"pro-Chinese policy\" and cross currents of opposition it aroused among the European colonials. All of his good sense, ability to relate to people, integrity of character and humour were needed, and these did not fail him.\n\nIn 1882 he resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung-chang at Tientsin as a legal adviser. It was not easy to find someone who would fill the seat so capably. Ho A-mei, never backward, was willing and eager to compete for the high prize. His competitors were only a handful. Prominently mentioned were Dr. Ho Kai, Wei Yuk, Leung On and Wong Shing. Ho A-mei aspired to join their ranks.\n\nWho were these men and what were their qualifications?\n\nWei Yuk had been educated in Scotland and was compradore of the Chartered Bank, having succeeded his father in that position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211480, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 196, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "172\n\nteachers. Miss McCorriston, the geography teacher, inspired me to devote much time at home in drawing and colouring maps to pinpoint certain places. Miss Kelley determined that we should know English grammar backwards and forwards and had us forever parsing and diagramming. Miss Davis was an avid horsewoman who stood tall and erect as she whipped up our speed in doing arithmetic mentally while she called out the numbers in quick succession. I cannot recall what Mrs. Crockett taught, but it was in her class that Miss Daniels (who was later married to Charles King), a part-Hawaiian singer of some size and weight and exuding the warmth and joviality of her race, came once in several weeks to lead us in singing Hawaiian songs, using a tuning fork to keep us in key. I cannot recall who my history teacher was. Last but not least of the teachers was Miss Gertrude Whiteman, quite elderly and often the butt of laughter from some of the girls when she adjusted her wig. She was especially kind to me, probably because she knew my Father and also had special affection for the Chinese, having raised a Chinese girl as her foster child. I missed four months of the last year because of our trip to China, but I was able to graduate with the rest of my classmates in June, 1920.\n\nThe transition from elementary to secondary school was not easy. There was much less involvement between teacher and student, and the relationship between them was quite impersonal. As a freshman, I was completely crushed by my English teacher, Dorothy Stendahl, who was also my Sunday School teacher and an intimate friend of Mary Lam, one of my early playmates. Miss Stendahl selected many of us Chinese for her class. She was not only stern and exacting, but also very sarcastic, and I felt she was picking on me unnecessarily. As a result, I had a miserable year and dreaded going to her class. Some years later, I had occasion to meet her socially, but I could not warm to her. Perhaps she did not realize that I had come from a protected home, was exceedingly shy and sensitive, and was not able to deal with aggressive mannerisms.\n\nI had two years of Latin with Clara Ziegler, who would urge me on with my translation of Caesar in Gaul by jabbing her left palm with a finger of her right hand in rapid succession and would finally comment, in frustration, \"You are not like Me Lan!\" My sister had preceded me in her class and had been an excellent student. To myself, I would respond, \"Who wants to be like Me Lan?\" It was poor psychology on Miss Ziegler's part, as it only made me more determined to prove myself.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211526, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 243, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "219\n\npremier and treasurer of Manitoba in 1885, and while there was quite prominent in the political affairs of the province, being sent to England to negotiate a large loan. On his return from England, he was ordered to Hongkong, to take a position in the diplomatic service. Before leaving this country, he came to Portland with a letter of introduction from Sir William Van Horne of the Canadian Pacific Railroad to Theodore B. Wilcox of the Portland Flouring Mills Co.\n\nRennie at that time knew nothing about the flour business, but he made such a good impression on Mr. Wilcox that he was engaged by the Portland miller to put in the time he could spare from his diplomatic duties, in selling flour. He was successful from the beginning, and in 1895 his business had grown to such proportions that he resigned from the government service and devoted all of his attention to the flour trade. He was a tireless worker, and as he had very liberal contracts with Mr. Wilcox, he was soon enjoying a very large business. On this business he always endeavored to stamp his own personality.\n\nWhile the Wilcox brands were soon famous from Vladivostok to the Malabar coast, and far into the interior of China, it was Rennie alone, of whom the Chinamen knew, and with whom they dealt. This great success and the attendant profits it brought, was probably responsible for Rennie's belief that he could make a grand success out of the milling business.\n\nHis studied effort to keep his own name and personality in the foreground, had given him great prestige in Hongkong and other trade centres across the Pacific, and to him it seemed easy to transfer this prestige from the Americans to a mill of his own.\n\nApparently confusing flour making with flour selling, Mr. Rennie plunged into the business on a big scale. Had he been content to feel his way with a small mill, where the capacity could be increased as the demand for the product developed, he might have made a success, or at least the failure would not have been serious. But Rennie, the greatest flour salesman in all the Orient, had aspirations to be a great miller, and with the money he had saved during his successful career as a salesman, and several hundred thousand dollars subscribed by English capitalists at Hongkong, he built a two thousand barrel mill. The capital", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211566, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 283, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "259\n\nNOTES\n\nThere are several instances where Faure distorts the anthropological literature completely. The “frontier” which Pasternak (1969) refers to, for example, has to do with the socio-political consequences of a certain economic relationship between man and his use of specific strategic resources, namely water and land. Land reclamation is not an accurate translation of this frontier situation. Faure also reads Freedman's (1958:2) interpretation of a passage by Fei (1946: 1) superficially and without much understanding of its context or rhetorical intent. Freedman's purpose in quoting Fei was to argue that the function of the lineage as a political and local organization transcends its identity \"in name” as a descent group. But it should be noted also that Freedman deliberately distorted Fei as well. Had Faure actually read Fei, he would have also discovered that the phenomenon which Fei (1946:5) was describing was not even a descent group at all, which should make it quite enigmatic indeed. Sometimes among the peasants, the clan is found, but it is of another kind. In Yunnan, for instance, I have seen that in villages local organization is formed in terms of clan which includes even members of different surnames. Functionally these are not strictly kinship groups. I shall leave open as to the nature of the so-called clan-village. I rather suspect that such an organization among the peasants is a local organization, not a kinship organization.\n\nWhen reading Fried as he does Freedman, Faure confuses the model for empirical reality. Underlying the petty disputes over the definition of lineages and clans as analytical constructs, Fried (1970) was trying to make a more important point about the political functions of a genealogy in allocating differential access to scarce strategic resources (i.e., lineage property), this according to Fried being more important than the existence of property per se. The relative distinction between stipulated and demonstrated descent must be understood in this light.\n\nSheer numbers never mean anything. Even in Faure's (p. 96) analysis of a Chinese funeral, there is no a priori reason to believe that the lineage or village should have any role or obligation to play in ritual preparations. The scale of any such operation is always determined by the family of the deceased. “Work” is delegated among volunteers within the community (not necessarily a territorial one), whether it be neighbours, colleagues, or friends. Correspondingly, compensation for services rendered is made either as payment or as fa see.\n\nI suspect that variations in village organization and relationships within village clusters were shaped during the formative period prior to the time when the village had any formal identity. The diversity of local experience can only be attributed to the diversity of interaction within different villages. Rules prohibiting intermarriage in Man Uk Pin and the lack of an ancestral hall in Wong Keng Tei are other examples of local phenomena which must be understood in reference to the way the villagers themselves define or interpret the nature of their own community.\n\nSee Strathern's (1984) study of the \"community\" in an English village.\n\nThe whole problem with Faure's description of “lineage-building” is that it is too easy to project a genealogical structure onto residence patterns, especially with help from Block Crown Lease Demarcation District Maps and the like. As for the Sha Tin Wai example, I doubt whether Faure bothered to match up the registered ownership of houses with its actual inhabitants or even to seek informant testimony with regard to this period of household mobility. In practice, villages rarely update actual ownership records unless there is a conveyance of sale or other transaction that requires re-registration. That registered ownership is usually a couple of generations behind is thus the norm rather than the exception.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211811, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "201\n\n+\n\nhimself uncomfortable, with one of the nicest looking creatures for a wife imaginable. (...) Mr. BRUSHWOOD did the 'green eyed monster' admirably and the character suited him well—we mean of course artistically. By a skilful arrangement the warmth of a kiss was made to be followed by Cool as a Cucumber. Did the manager intend this to impart a deeper meaning than is conveyed on the face of the \"play-bill\"? We have an esteem for him and hope not: for although a kiss is, sometimes, but the prelude of a coolness that surpasses even that of a cucumber, we would not have Mr PROTEUS openly hint as much\". This piece called forth all the powers of the manager himself, and so perfectly was the coolness of Mr. Plumper exhibited, whether as regards the criticism of Mr. Barkins' face or his sherry, that, had he stepped from the neighbouring ice-house directly upon the stage, he could not have looked cooler (this was a reference to the Commercial Hotel; see note 94) What a desirable companion he would make, we thought, for the hot weather, but Mr. Proteus must be so, indeed, in any weather. The playing was well sustained throughout and Mr. BRUSHWOOD did his best — and that was not a little — to fret and fume as ‘Old Barkins' — but we can scarcely say that he looked a heavy father\" (the heavy father was one of the specialist roles in a stock company). A Conjugal Lesson was \"decidedly the crowning piece of the evening and was performed with an amount of case and artistic ability which elicited loud and well merited applause\". And as the critic had evidently taken a fancy to \"Mrs. NESBIT” he continued that she “looked more fascinating and piquant than ever and quite won the hearts of the bachelor portion of the audience who were altogether at a loss to understand the bad taste of Mr. Lullaby who could stay away from such an attraction till three in the morning!” (NCH 28.3.1857).\n\n23.4.1857 (Thur)\n\nT. TAYLOR: \"Still Waters Run Deep\" (1856)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: “A Capital Match” (1852)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: N.N. (C\n\n—\n\nR: That other favourite of the reviewer, Peter PROTEUS, had resigned and so the evening had to do without him. In the introduction to his report, the \"Man on the Bund\" referred to the playbill which informed him \"in capitals of vermillion that Still Waters Run Deep and of other matters besides in the like flaming manner”. About the piece he was not at all content: \"Muddy waters, however, as well as still, they turned out to be. This piece is one of those incongruous mixtures of French novel morality and English domestic life, which is as offensive and preposterous, as it is ludicrous. London milliners may persist in imitating the extravagances of French crinoline and superabundant circumference: they dress up our wives and sisters until they have destroyed every graceful curve they may have and make them look like balloons endowed with feminine heads and shoulders; and with a growl we may submit to this perversion of taste and whim of fashion. But when our playwrights, in their dearth of invention, ransack the repertories of the minor Parisian theatres for something new, which they themselves cannot originate, and stumbling upon the old and stale subject of Parisian conjugal infidelity, try to fit it into English social life, especially that of the middle class, the attempt excites at once our scorn and laughter, and ought, like monstrous bandorgans and other nuisances, to be put a stop to\". Small wonder then that in it \"there was much good acting thrown away. Mr. CLAY performed, throughout, the part he had undertaken, admirably. His conception of his character was good and was given with fidelity and ability. It was just how a blunt, honest Englishman might have been expected to act when, by some extraordinary chance, his domestic privacy is invaded by such a frenchified monstrosity as Captain Hawkesley. Mr. ROLLER too did the lean and slippered Pantaloon most successfully. His ease of manner on the stage and finished...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211896, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 311, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "286\n\nand pretty. There are abundance of trees of all sorts growing at the sides of the roads. The shops of the Chinese amused me very much as we went along. At last we came to \"Hughan's store\", where there is a great space, with easy chairs, etc. for loungers and loafers. Hughan is a ship chandler, and by keeping this place pretty comfortable he gets the captains of all the English and American ships there, and of course gets the job of supplying their ships with provisions, etc. Before the whole lines of stores and offices there is a path, with a roof to it so that one can walk about for an hour without being in the burning hot sun, which in Java is very injurious, especially to Europeans.\n\nWe took a short drive about the town with the captain, who was looking out for some spars for the ship, and then set off out in the country to Madame Baines' Hotel, which is the only English place where one can get to. It was a three-mile drive, but the beautiful appearance of the place made me think nothing of the distance. The Dutch, to whom the island belongs, are the greater part of the European population; consequently, the town is in every direction intersected by canals as is Holland. These canals serve the purpose of drainage, washing, and to keep the air cool. On each side of them is a very wide road, shaded by large trees from the sun. Thus the streets are very wide and airy. There are, of course, a great many bridges. The European houses are very grand, and nearly all built on the same model.\n\nOur two poor horses at last brought us up to our Hotel, where we arrived about two o'clock. It was half an hour before we could get anyone to attend to us, since it is the custom to sleep in the middle of the day. At last, after walking about over the house, we were met by our hostess, a Scotch lady of colossal dimensions, but withal a pleasant agreeable old party, who at once made us at home, and got us some \"tiffin\", or breakfast. All her servants are Malays, and she can speak the language very fluently. Indeed, when well spoken, Malay is a pretty language.\n\nHer house is an average specimen of all the European houses in Batavia. It has only one story on account of earthquakes, but it is very lofty and airy. There is a large dining hall and entrance hall, while round the house are the verandahs, where people spend a great part of the day, and especially the evenings. Facing the road, the verandah is very wide and lofty. In the garden is a stream, running round a small island, which has some fine clusters of trees, which are so curious that I cannot describe them. Some of the leaves are as large as a good-sized tablecloth. Round", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212295, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "214\n\nlast in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages.\n\nThe breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world.\n\n1\n\nJames Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China\", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript.\n\n++\n\nGeorge Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864).\n\nThis monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856,\n\nHì\n\nWhile remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of \"stimulating the economy\". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105.\n\nTheodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854).\n\nJ7\n\n44\n\nAt the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled \"Reminiscences\", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, \"Reminiscences\", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14.\n\n典\n\nIn his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213205, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "6\n\nMissionaries and religious institutions\n\nThe Rev. Karl Friedrich August Gutslaff - or as he became known in his later life Rev. Charles Gutzlaff was a colourful and significant figure in the introduction of Protestant Christianity among both the overseas Chinese and those who lived in China. He was born in Pomerania in 1803 and came to the Dutch East Indies as an agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1827. He severed his relationship with the society and became an independent missionary agent. To secure funds for his work he successfully publicised the missionary cause in Europe and America. His books, articles and letters aroused much interest and some controversy. Critics regarded his assessment of the prospects for the easy and immediate conversion of China as too visionary, but this did not prevent a large number of sympathetic supporters from forming societies to undergird his work,\n\nBefore settling in Macao in 1830, Gutzlaff was in Singapore and Bangkok. He was an able linguist and mastered a number of Chinese dialects. When hostilities broke out between Britain and China in 1838, the English employed him as an interpreter. During the British occupation of Chusan he was appointed a magistrate, and on the untimely death in Hong Kong of John Morrison the son of the Rev. Robert Morrison, Gutzlaff succeeded him as the Chinese Secretary of the British Superintendent of Trade in China and the Hong Kong Government. He remained in this well-paid post until his death in 1851. His official duties did not prevent him from continuing his missionary activities.\n\nGutzlaff was convinced that China should be converted by Chinese. To further this he organised the Chinese Union in 1844. Its members were converts who were given a somewhat brief course of instruction and then, carrying bundles of tracts and scriptures, were sent to spread the Christian message in the interior of China. The scheme was imaginative, but Gutzlaff did not have the time nor practicability to supervise it closely; consequently, some of his trainees used it for their own enrichment. They pocketed the travel allowance, while sheltering in Kowloon or their home village, and then resold the Christian literature back to the publisher, and submitted false reports of their evangelistic achievements in China. Nonetheless, the Union made its impact on China, particularly providing Christian elements for the ideology of the Tai Ping rebellion in China in the 1850s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213554, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "119\n\nadapted This pamphlet, costing a penny or two, was continually in the hands of servants, coolies and shopkeepers. The author was a Chinaman whose ingenuity should immortalize him. I have often wondered who the man was who first reduced the \"outlandish tongue\" to a current language. Red candles should be burnt on altars erected to his memory, and oblations of tea poured out before his image, placed among the wooden gods which in temples surround the shrine of a deified man of letters.\n\nF\n\nAccepting this widely-reported account of the \"Devil's Talk\" pamphlet to be correct, it is easy to understand how the vocabulary became established; after all, to the classically-trained Chinese mind, what appears in print becomes canon law. For fussy English-speakers to correct something which had been laid down in a Chinese textbook would have been no easy undertaking.\n\nBe quite clear on one point. Throughout the period of the Hong merchants and up to Treaty days, Pidgin English was not merely a means of communication between Europeans and their menials. It was a vital tool in a rapidly growing China trade in the southern Chinese ports. Hunter describes his discussions in Pidgin with the famous Hong merchants—How Qua, Ming Qua, and Pan Kei Qua—among the commercial elite of Canton. Hunter also describes one of the commanders of the Tai-Ping Rebels, Ho A-Luh, as speaking very good Pidgin English.\n\nBy the middle of the nineteenth century, China Coast Pidgin had become a well-established medium of communication. From the 1850s on, the restrictions to foreign trade and traders progressively broke down, so that the conditions which had made Pidgin's development a necessity disappeared. But the opportunities for contacts between European and Chinese people increased, and the conventions of the language were well enough engrained that it survived. The young makee-larns gradually progressed in their mastery of English, while the people with transient contacts—tradesmen and servants—picked up where they had left off. In his book “Rambles in Eastern Asia”, B. L. Ball records:\n\n“I saw a Chinaman who spoke good English, and appeared so polite that I stopped a while, and entered into conversation with him.\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214181, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "John Hadfield, an anatomy specialist at Cambridge University, England, is purported to have said that, although we know a great deal about the biology of anger, depression, sadness and aggression, our knowledge of laughter is limited. Why do we laugh at a public speaker who, at the most pathetic moment of his address, sneezes (Bergson, 1956; 93)?\n\nBearing in mind fate chooses who we are and the language we begin to speak at our mother's breast, we can ask in what fashion does our language shape the way we think and the jokes we laugh at? That question has been asked many times (Bloom, 1981; 1). Does the fact that English is alphabetical and Chinese is composed of characters, made up of pictograms and ideograms, have anything to do with the shaping of senses of humour? When bilingual speakers of two linguistically unrelated languages are asked whether they think differently (and employ different body language), when using each of the two languages, they usually answer 'yes'. When English speakers with considerable experience with monolingual speakers of non-Indo-European languages are asked whether it is their impression that speakers of a non-Indo-European language think differently from the way they themselves think, as a result of the language, again the person questioned usually answers 'yes'. Yet when translators of works drawn from literary traditions are asked the same question they may find it hard to suppress a smile at so 'naive' a question. In turn psychologists, in answer to the same question, are just as likely to answer 'no' (Bloom, 1981; 1 and 2). Readers who wish to pursue this subject further should perhaps start by reading 'If Triangles Were Circles...' A Study of Counterfactuals in Chinese and in English, by Cynthia Hsin-feng Wu. Although intriguing, it is not really the subject of this paper although it is related to it. In this paper it is necessary to ‘narrow the field.'\n\nLeading on from there, perhaps because humour itself is a rather nebulous subject, there appears to have been limited study (certainly in English) of the serious business of comparing senses of humour of different nationalities. When friends heard the author was researching a paper about humour their first reaction was: 'It's not an easy subject to write about.' Although there is the odd Chinese joke-book (Giles, 1925: Preface), and Chinese jokes do appear on the Internet, the author was unable to find much material comparing Chinese and Western humour.2 As a result, he decided to research and write his own paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "87\n\ninstruments.\n\nTwo native Cantonese speakers remarked at the ceremony that they each understood only about 10 per cent of what the priests were chanting. Thus, it was not always easy to follow exactly what was going on. This helps keep the priestly profession a closed shop. Priests are paid not only for performing ceremonies but also for knowing how to perform them.\n\nNote (see Plate 1) the five tun fu pots used to guard and protect each direction of the Chinese compass (including centre), with one talisman in each. These were later lined up in front of the matshed. After 'heaven and earth were made ready' messages to the respective gods were written on each strip of split bamboo (each about 75 centimetres long and four centimetres wide) after each strip, and the brush, had been purified by prayer and incense. The red paper horse at the front of the matshed acted as an emissary for letters, pleas and charms dispatched to heaven (Stevens: 1997, 121). The horse was constantly being blown over in the wind and one wondered, unless it could be anchored down in a secure way (which it never was), whether its magical powers would be affected. Anyway, few seemed concerned. During much of the ceremony ordinary villagers came in ones and twos and burnt joss sticks in front of Tai Wong Ye and his four henchmen.\n\nThe ceremony in the matshed lasted about one hour. After this was over we were bussed to an expanse of open ground not far from Lin Fa Tei (Lotus Ground), a 10-minute drive away. From here, we could see where the new railway tunnel's northern portal will be situated. A further ceremony took place not far from this spot, again officiated over by the same Taoist priests and attended by the same village elders, committee representatives, and government officials (see Plates 4 and 5). There was more chanting, more joss sticks and paper offerings were burned, and medium-sized roast pigs (brought from the ceremony inside the matshed) were presented up to the gods. Rice wine was again sprinkled on the ground for purification.\n\nIt was pointed out by a villager, who had lived in Britain for over 30 years and spoke fair English, that over 1000 village graves and burial urns had been moved to make way for the new tunnel. A small river had been filled in. In spite of the landscape having been considerably", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]