[ { "id": 206317, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "128\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nmonthly meetings, but it is clear that consensus was usually arrived at and the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs given sound advice on important local matters for it was politically unwise for the Committee to be deadlocked or sharply split for long. If that had occurred too frequently, the utility of the Committee as the chief consultative body would have declined46,\n\nIt would be wrong, however, to think of the Committee as being, in modern parlance, a purely 'Establishment' body. Certainly its members had very close links with European businessmen in the Colony. At the beginning of this century over half its members were compradores to European firms and banks. On the other hand it is clear the Committee did succeed in expressing what we can only call a Chinese point of view”. There are a number of reasons for this. Most committeemen had contacts of one sort or another with the commercial world of Canton and some were involved in the politics of Kwangtung Province and one in particular, Ho Kai, with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement47. Many owned property and land in Kwangtung and were interested in the economic development of that area48. And nearly all sent their male children back to China for education49. Thus the members of the District Watch Committee were involved in two sets of interests: those of Hong Kong and those of Kwangtung.\n\nYet when they spoke up about an issue they represented principally the interests of the compradore bourgeoisie, suggesting a narrower but perhaps more complex set of interests than would be conveyed by the use of the word 'Chinese'. Even the highly westernised Ho Kai, a Chinese who had studied Western medicine at Edinburgh University, dispensed with the queue and wore London suits, who married an Englishwoman and wrote better English than Chinese50 was still able to represent the generalised opinions of the Chinese community and, more importantly, the point of view of a segment of Hong Kong's Chinese community, that of the Chinese businessman and speculator. The advice given by the Committee to government must be seen then as a distillation of all these complex sets of interests.\n\nThere were, as I have already emphasised, several reasons why the Committee became so important as a key advisory body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "126\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE 24\n\nthe 1950s, when the British had acquired more sophisticated tastes in food and had travelled more. After 1950, the Hong Kong Chinese, in particular, exploited this new market. But, in the 1920s, although there were a few Chinese restaurants, especially in Soho, they tended to cater more for Asians than Europeans.\n\nAt an early date, these Chinese settlements acquired a reputation as places where the curious, or addicted, could smoke opium. Opium-smoking and gambling were traditional Chinese pastimes and, on the whole, did not create problems for British policemen. Such Chinese communities governed themselves and concealed their delinquencies from the outside world. Inevitably, secret societies (tongs) flourished.\n\nSir Montagu Williams Q.C. describes a visit to what he calls London's 'Chinese quarter' in the 1870s. It was situated in Limehouse, off the Ratcliff Highway. During the evening, he writes, 'we went to the Chinese quarter, where are to be found the opium dens.\n\nAs they emerged from an exploratory visit to one, Williams and his party heard cries of 'Amok! Amok!'. It appeared that some Chinese had been drinking with Englishwomen in a public house and a dispute had broken out with some foreigners (probably sailors). The Chinese had drawn knives, to defend themselves, and 'rushed upon all they met, stabbing, and cutting men, women, and children, indiscriminately'. The Police arrested the Chinese. Subsequently, Williams concludes, 'I had the satisfaction of seeing (as magistrate) the culprits tried and convicted'. On the whole, as Scotland Yard detectives were wont to affirm, the Chinese formed a peaceful community in the East End, unless of course they were driven to defend themselves, as, perhaps, in the incident given above. Since there were few nubile Chinese women in England, Chinese tended to marry Europeans or acquire common-law wives of the same stock (i.e., British women). Having inherited strong familial sentiments — a cornerstone of Chinese society as it once was — they made good husbands, a fact confirmed by the devotion of their wives (Mrs. Lock adored her husband, according to all accounts).\n\nIn most reports of the Chinese in England, from the 1850s to the 1930s, there is a considerable degree of stereotyping.\n\n126", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "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": 213302, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "104\n\nChristians believe in, rather than by fung shur? Indeed for most religions and persuasions when faith is involved, there is usually no rational way to measure faith. Although, so often, the more rational the person's view the greater the degree of rationalisation. This does not of course imply fung shur is completely illusionary. A person must believe in the cure. So much, after all, is psychological. Many things in life are.\n\nThose who are afraid of contracting some illness become disease conscious, which helps to attract what they fear, just as those who think always in terms of health are helping to attract health. It is a case of attunement. A natural force, seemingly, turns on the switch. An aggressive attitude towards fighting disease can help prolong life. If you change your outlook you change your vibrations.\n\nOne Englishwoman told the author:\n\n\"There are electrical fields. Why can't there be other fields too, like those emanating from crystal? Again, there are things like 'thought transference'. There must also be other dimensions of which we are not really aware. Things that give out an aura.\"\n\nCertainly most Chinese and many Westerners do believe in the 'breath of the dragon'. As one Irish friend explained to the author:\n\n'Fung shui? Yes, it works so well. I'm an advocate. Believe and it will happen. Get fung shui working for you. When my Chinese wife and I last went on leave to Dublin we bought a house, largely because of fung shui, on the spur of the moment. With a street number of 80 it also has a good setting.'\n\nTo some extent fung shui is commonsense dressed up in the language of fairy tales and folklore. As people enter the next millennium (western reckoning) it is opportune to question, as mankind stands at the crossroads, whether the world should continue down a path that leads to an even greater alienation from nature and contrary to the laws of creation.\n\nAs new energies surge into the earth's fields, if man, in the home, on the job, or in the grave, as a result of the fung shui master creating a better environment, is more content, then fung shui will have achieved an important aim. If man is more content he will feel more comfortable. He will accomplish more and enjoy life more.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 } ]