[ { "id": 204460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n81\n\nweddings and funerals, repairs to the ancestral temple, and so on. In \n\nAnother and less formal method of securing these aims is the setting aside of joss and oil fields, sometimes known by the obscure title of ching sheung 1, whose proceeds, again, are used for the proper observance of ancestral rites and other family needs.1 One need hardly emphasise the integrating effect of these land measures,\n\nTo understand the people and their outlook and background it is necessary to see to what sort of government they were accustomed.1 The government of the San On district was essentially Confucian, like that of every other administrative division; by which I mean that Confucian principles were ostensibly followed. This was sealed by the state worship of the sage. In every district city there was a temple to Confucius styled a man miu in which the District Magistrate, his senior staff and the local gentry paid the customary respects to the sage and his seventy-two disciples on his birthday (twenty-seventh day of the eighth moon) and at the spring worship or chun chai 1 in the second moon. The same thing happened at the prefectural and provincial capitals. At the head of the San On district was the District Magistrate whose superior was the prefect of the Kwang Chau prefecture which embraced at least five large districts. He was subordinate to the provincial governor and he in turn to the Viceroy of the two Kwang Provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The nature and duties of the provincial officers had been established since the T'ang dynasty and for well over a millennium the pattern of government had been cast in an identical mould. The District Magistrate was usually a scholar who had taken one of the metropolitan examinations at Peking and he was always a native of another province than his native one, this being a long standing rule. He spent three or six years in one post and was then moved elsewhere, and was promoted in due course to be prefect or to higher office through merit, connections or good fortune. Some persons began and ended their official careers as District Magistrates.\n\n1\n\nThe District Magistrate's duties were many and his competence was most extensive. He was, in truth, the father-mother official1 of the people so called by them and also so styled in official documents because of his authority over all their affairs, criminal or civil. He certainly regarded himself as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204483, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "104\n\nELSPETH MANEELY\n\n16\n\nhill slopes of the western islands and in the Castle Peak area; but perhaps only four places investigated since archaeological work began in the Colony may be dignified by the term \"site\". These are: So Kun Wat #, a series of low hilltops to the west of the Tai Lam Chun reservoir; Lamma Island (Pok Liu Chau14), which really comprises several distinct sites; Shek Pik and Man Kok Tsui, both on Lantau Island (Tai Yu Shan). A report on the findings at So Kun Wat was presented by C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear in 1932 at the first Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East held at Hanoi. Father Finn's publications on the Lamma sites, begun in 1932, have recently been reprinted in one volume, Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island Near Hong Kong.3 The Shek Pik site, on the south-west coast of Lantau Island, was excavated by W. Schofield and J. G. Andersson in 1937 and a report was published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, in 1938. The artifacts uncovered at Man Kok Tsui are similar to those found at these earlier sites and are of three kinds: stone tools and ornaments, pottery and bronze.\n\nBefore describing the discovery of Man Kok Tsui in more detail however, reference should be made to Father R. L. Maglioni's extensive discoveries in Hoifung as they bear a definite relationship to finds in the Hong Kong area. Hoifung lies on the China coast about one hundred miles north-east of Hong Kong. In 1934 Fr. Maglioni, then a priest in the Hoifung region, embarked on a thorough search for prehistoric remains. He located as many as twenty distinct sites. In general the finds were of the same type as those described by archaeologists working in Hong Kong, but Fr. Maglioni was able to distinguish three separate Neolithic cultures. These three he called the SON, SAK and PAT cultures from the capital letters of the romanized names of villages adjacent to the sites. So far Neolithic remains in Hong Kong resemble closely those of Fr. Maglioni's PAT culture, the latest of the three.\n\nIn April 1958, Dr. S. M. Bard first reported Man Kok Tsui as a possible area for investigation by the University Archaeological Team. The site, given the number 30 by the Team, lies at the extreme tip of the northern arm of Silvermine Bay, Lantau Island. It consists of two sheltered, sandy beaches, a flat fertile valley", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "110\n\nM. W. WELCH\n\nbelow the original level of the surface before artillery practice began). They prove only that there were people who spent some time there. Although I chose the sites as good places to live, I have so far found no strata, no remains of fires, and no other signs of habitation.\n\nI have combed the adjacent, unshelled, non-eroded areas for true surface finds, and, despite many days of search, I have found none at all. Hence I have a theory that the artifacts came to be where I found them as a result of shell penetration and explosion. After being thrown into the air, they fell around the area of the impact. (I have several items that seem to prove the point: one is a small chert adze—chert is an amorphous, massive stone, closely allied to flint—found in two pieces, each on opposite sides of a rock that it must have hit as it fell and then separated. Another is a larger adze, two fragments of which were found about twenty feet apart, and shattered in a way that can only be accounted for by an explosion. There are also two matching potsherds discovered on opposite sides of a ridge of hardened kaolin about three yards apart). The shells used on this firing range, I am told, penetrate about four feet and the objects found could have been located anywhere between the surface and the deepest point of penetration.\n\nI have not, as I have already mentioned, found any strata or deposits anywhere. There are several reasons why this might be the case. The inhabitants of the island may have been nomadic and lived here only during certain seasons, coming by boat to cut wood (there is a theory that Hong Kong was well forested in those days), or to dig kaolin for shipment to centres of pottery manufacturing (the latter I think is the probable raison d'être of my sites). The actual settlements of this area may have been located mostly where we find the present inhabitants, on sites which have been lived on without interruption until modern times. This would explain the absence of strata, and, if it is correct, no strata will be found until it is possible to trench on the site of an existing village. I understand that such a project is planned for the future.\n\nBefore I describe some of the finds, I want to explain the basis on which I have classified them. Father D. J. Finn began his researches on Lamma Island and later on with Father R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204909, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "12\n\nS. G. DAVIS\n\nThe sites at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye and Yung Shu Wan on Lamma Island have been most fruitful and have provided the material that was excavated and studied by Father D. J. Finn, which is partly on display today. The report of finds at Tai Wan came in a most interesting way. Mr. Tom Man Long (who happily is present with us tonight) was building the service reservoir in the Botanical Gardens opposite Government House when he noticed that the sand being used for the concrete had fragments of pottery and several axe-heads. Mr. Tom, as a keen collector of Chinese art and pottery, recognized the antiquity of the pottery and reported his discovery to the Waterworks Department who in turn notified Professor Shellshear. He visited Tai Wan and immediately recognized the richness of the site. At a later date Father Finn was asked by Professor Shellshear, who was going on leave, to interest himself in the finds. Father Finn wrote, \"I was very glad of the invitation and luck seemed to confirm the vocation. A few days after that, while I was still regarding any active participation as remote, I almost crushed a piece of obviously old pottery under foot as I walked past a sand-heap on a jetty at Aberdeen. The next step was to find where the sand came from. Having found out that and having got there, I found myself at the site from which I knew Professor Shellshear and his friends had already reaped a rich harvest.”\n\nIt was a fortunate day for archaeology when Father Finn began his work on Lamma. He brought an expert knowledge to the study and rapidly revealed tremendous archaeological treasures by thorough, careful digging. The results of this work were meticulously reported in The Hong Kong Naturalist from 1933 to 1936 and still later combined in one complete volume under the editorship of my friend, Father F. Ryan, S.J.\n\nMany of the best finds from the Lamma sites are in the British Museum. They were sent there by Professor Shellshear and were examined by Mr. Soame Jenyns, the curator for the Far East section. Mr. Jenyns had been in Hong Kong as a young administrator and had studied Chinese art. Outstanding among the specimens is a bronze sword about eleven inches long and distinguished by a zoomorph design in three panels along the blade. This sword has been dated as Warring Kingdoms Period, (421-221 B.C.). A bronze-socketed celt with a distinctive design", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n173\n\nestates of which none can be said to have the identity inhering in its predecessor. The so-called joint family has a short life.\n\nRitual primogeniture is inherent in the worship, but rests on a true primogeniture of a much older phase. No one son can step effectively into his father's shoes and exercise authority over the same range of people. Married sons are not seen as a threat to the father's position and the father, also, does not, once in his soul-tablet, support the authority of sons over their juniors. In a nut-shell then, the ancestor is worshipped but cannot be used as a major instrument of domestic discipline.\n\nMiss Ward's paper is very different in subject matter and theoretical interest to that of Dr. Freedman's but again is concerned with matters on which Professor Firth has done considerable work: peasant communities, including fishing communities, and their economies. \"Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: their Post-Peasant Economy\" is based particularly on data derived by Miss Ward from the village of Kau Sai which is on the shores of a narrow strait between two small islands in the Port Shelter area of Hong Kong's waters. It was there, in the early 'fifties, that Miss Ward first began her field work on the boat people.\n\nThe essay discusses problems of economic and social change. Miss Ward talks of the rapid technological changes in the fishing industry (whereas in 1952 in Kau Sai all but one boat had been wind-driven, by mid-1963 only one was not mechanized). She argues that this was possible because the economic attitudes of the fishermen and the social structure of fishing communities were already favourable. When the opportunity to adopt useful technical change was offered, it was likely to be seized upon unless blocked by something else. By 1950 the opportunity to mechanize did appear -- engines were available. By then the possible educational block had also been partly removed, and government action in freeing the market, injecting money and providing training courses and encouragement was all that was required to set a revolution in action.\n\nThe essay deals with the effects of mechanization and change on different kinds of fishermen, and changes in social structure consequent on such developments, highlighting as a factor of general importance the movement of boat-people to land-dwellings. This affects particularly the position of women, changing their opportunities to earn an independent income either by working in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206118, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n191 \n\nThe caretaker, Mr. Liu Wai-tong deserves special mention. Born in the caretaker's quarter, he is the third generation of his family to fill this post, as he says his father and grandfather before him held it also. \n\nOld Tai Hang \n\nNot much to look at, but the object is to see the old houses. Tai Hang was one of the old villages of Hong Kong Island. There are about 15-20 houses of the former village still standing, mostly in one row with a few others scattered among new buildings, and all built more or less to the same pattern.* They are situated in New Village Street (*†††) although an old resident tells me that this is a misnomer because they represent the old village known as Tai Hang Lo Wai (★★) which has always stood on this spot. The population of Tai Hang at the 1911 Census was already 1,574 persons. Formerly situated not far from the shore, reclamation began there in the 1880s by which time the area was already known as Causeway Bay - and ended with the development of reclaimed land for Victoria Park in the early post-war period. \n\n▬▬ \n\nThe village was a multi-clan one settled by the Hakka families of Wong (*), Cheung (3), Lee (†), Chu (*) and Ip (#). The first three are said to be the oldest families. A Wong now aged 45 is in the fourth generation which means that these families probably arrived in the area about the time that the British took over Hong Kong in 1841. Old residents say that besides some farming and fishing, the inhabitants kept some of the first dairy farms on the Island, long before the Dairy Farm started in 1886, and also engaged in laundry work. The name of the main street of present day Tai Hang, Wun Sha Street (r), which means 'washing cloth', refers to this early line of business. \n\nOne of the most interesting aspects of Tai Hang is its fantastic sports record. For unknown reasons, the old Tai Hang families produced a great many star soccer players before the war. I have been told that on five occasions at the pre-war Far East games the China Football Team were the winners, and that 90% of the team came from Tai Hang: again, that nine out of the \n\n*See plates 23-24,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206622, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "164\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nMeanwhile work had been going on under the Geological Survey of China in Kwangsi, where the Tertiary and Recent deposits were examined, and the earth in the caves, known to yield ‘dragon bones’ in considerable quantities, was searched, with the result that a flaked-tool culture related to the late Hoabinhian culture (Mesolithic) of Tongking was found. It is unrelated to the cultures of the coast. These, however, seem to extend as far north as the neighbourhood of Nanking, for stone artifacts and pottery with geometric decoration have been found near there and around Hangchow, lying on the surface of the earth. No details of these discoveries are yet published. The same is true of investigations carried out round Foochow, where a culture similar to that of Hong Kong is said to have been discovered.\n\nAfter the Oslo congress of prehistorians in 1936, at which Father Finn was present just before his death, Dr. J.G. Andersson went to China, and turned his attention to the problems of South China’s archaeology. In Hong Kong, after visiting several sites, he suggested a trial excavation of a site at Shek Pek on the island of Lant’au, which I had discovered. We accordingly collaborated in this task for some days; after he left I did further excavation there. At this site, for the first time, were found undisturbed burials. Dr. Andersson next visited Foochow, and later went to Szechwan, where he discovered a number of Neolithic sites. After the Japanese began the war he returned to the coast by Canton, and later worked in the islands along the north Tongking coast at the invitation of the École Française of Hanoi, where a number of sites were discovered; some were excavated by Mlle. Colani of that institution.\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese scholar of the National Research Institute had pursued researches at Wup’ing, West Fukien, where he found cultures akin to the earlier Hong Kong cultures and to those of Swabue. He communicated his results to the third Prehistorians’ Congress at Singapore* and in his address he showed that objects belonging to this group of cultures are to be found in several sites in Fukien and Chekiang provinces, but that all finds made so far are surface finds only.\n\nThese investigations, partial and local as they are, have yielded very interesting (and in some respects sensational) results. First,\n\n* These proceedings were published by the Government Printing House, Singapore, 1940.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206794, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "PERSIANS, ARABS in T'ANG CHINA\n\n65\n\nit was the fashion to copy the foreigners. Art, music, drama, dress and personal adornment were all full of foreign elements. It must be pointed out, however, that not every Chinese was in complete accord with these innovations. Yüan Chen lamented with patriotic emotion:\n\nEver since the Western horsemen began raising dirt and dust, Fur and fleece, rank and rancid, have filled Hsien and Lo. Women make themselves Western matrons by the study of Western make-up, Entertainers present Western tunes, in their devotion to Western music,32\n\nIt was also a fashion to learn a foreign language or languages. A Turkish-Chinese dictionary was made available for serious students.33 Never before had a dynasty been so fond of 'foreign things' as the T'ang, and never again was this kind of epidemic to spread in China.\n\nIII\n\nForeigners in Tang China made tremendous contributions towards Chinese artistic, medical, literary and political activities. The following shows how these foreigners had contributed their versatile talents to T'ang China:\n\nYü-chih Po-chih-na and Yü-chih I-seng\n\nYü-chih Po-chih-na and his son Yü-chih I-seng were the most eminent painters of Buddhist icons in early T'ang period.34 Artists in early T'ang period were fond of showing the gods or goddesses of foreign lands either in painting or in sculpture. The Yü-chihs were from Khoten, a Central Asian state that had long been closely related to China. According to Li-tai ming-hua chi by Chang Yen-yüan of the late T’ang period, in chapters 8 and 9, records the background of these two painters as follows:\n\nYü-chih Po-chih-na, foreigner, excels himself in painting Buddhist icons. (He) was very popular at that time and is now known as Ta Yü-chih.\n\nYü-chih I-seng was a man from Khoten. His father Po-chih-na was mentioned in the previous chapter.... (I-seng) was a great master in painting Buddhist icons. Contemporaries call him Hsiao Yü-chih, and his father Ta Yü-chih.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206871, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "142 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nbeaten back by the soldiers who had bunches of rattan in their hands which they used pretty freely, and both the gates were now closed. \n\nThe Mandarins having put on some official robes seated themselves under a shed at the street end of the alley and 40 or 50 yards from the spot where the crosses had been erected. Gradually the people began to increase on the house tops and the crowd in the enclosure was \"rattaned\" into a ring round the crosses, leaving a gangway open for the passage of the culprits when they should arrive. In the front row of the ring were several quite young children, also on the house tops. \n\nA more than usual noise at the gate now warned us that something was coming and soon, with a row and a rush of the crowd, the unfortunate men were brought in. They were each carried in a basket by two coolies, they had fetters on their feet and their arms and hands were firmly bound behind them, and a strip of wood with some Chinese characters on it was stuck in the clothing at the back of their necks. This, we were told, proclaimed their crime and the punishment to be inflicted. Both were young men apparently under 30 years of age. The first was crying in a sort of idiotic manner which made me think there might be some truth in what we were told, that sometimes they were “drugged” before execution. If this was so, however, the second man had not been affected by his dose: he had a wild defiant look about him which he carried to the last. Arrived at the crosses, the baskets were set down and the men helped out and placed one up against each cross. \n\nWe now knew that instead of being beheaded they were to undergo the horrible death of being cut to pieces—called \"Ling Chih\"—one for killing his father and the other—the determined one—for killing some female relation; the latter case being from what we could gather, manslaughter according to English ideas. I forgot to mention that shortly before their arrival on the scene the executioners came each carrying, wrapped up in an old cloth, a bundle of swords and knives which, when unwrapped, were left out on the nearest convenient pots. The process of lashing them to the crosses took a long time, and the wretched men were very roughly handled. They had to be so placed on stones that their shoulders reached just below the cross pieces. Then they were bound to the crosses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208042, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CHING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n65\n\nimplied a physical division of the land itself. From the scanty evidence on tenant rings, we can conclude that the sale of cultivation-value was probably regulated within the group. In any event, it was unnecessary for the landlord to be informed of the sale.\n\nDescent among perpetual lessor clans was governed by the principle Fen tsu erh pu fen t'ien (分租而不分田: \"divide the rent but not the land.\") Gompertz, in CSO109 Ext., comments:\n\nWhen an inheritance has already been divided among the various branches of the clan the problem is very much simpler but as a matter of fact such partitions have been hitherto very rare and we are now in the dilemma of being obliged either to devise a form of title suited to this collective ownership or to refuse to take cognisance of anything but the ownership of individuals.3\n\nThe Ping Shan Tang genealogy gives this account of the origin of this principle in Tung-Kuan county (at the time of the writing of this passage, Hsin-An had not yet been formed):\n\nWe have been inhabitants of Ping Shan for six generations. From my great grandfather to my father (i.e., three generations) no ancestral property was divided, a fact which greatly benefited the villagers. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, an imperial edict forbade the uniting of different families into single households. Thereafter, my younger brother and I began to register separately as inhabitants of Huang T'ien Ch’ang (黄田昌) and Tung-Kuan respectively. The ancestral properties were divided into two portions. As for the properties in remote areas, the grain payments (i.e., the rent) and the land-tax (plus corvee responsibilities) were also shared equally between us.36\n\nOne of the strongest prohibitions contained in clan rules was that against selling land, private or communal, to \"outsiders:\"\n\nIn large clans transactions in land take place, as a rule, between different members of the clan without the property ever being disposed of to outsiders. In such transactions the deed of transfer is invariably worded as if it were a mortgage, and no period of redemption is fixed, the vendor or mortgagor, or his descendants, thus having every opportunity to redeem the property at the original price even several generations after the transaction has been made.37", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "184\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nnée Yau, of Mang Kung Uk is not untypical. She grew up in Tseng Lan Shue, was betrothed at 4 years old, but continued to live in her father's village. At 7 she helped to look after three cows, driving them up the hill early in the morning, returning at approximately 8.00 am or 9.00 am for breakfast, and going back to the hill to drive them home in the early afternoon. At 10, she began to help her mother to carry firewood into Kowloon, carrying approximately 30 catties on each trip. She married at 19, and worked under the supervision of her mother-in-law. Her husband was a seaman, and received only 8 dollars per month. Her mother-in-law looked after the children, and she cooked, farmed, raised pigs, cut firewood and grass, and carried water. She often had to rise at 4.00 in the morning and work till late at night.64\n\nUp to the eve of World War II, daily life in Sai Kung did not change significantly from the description given in this chapter. This background is needed for an understanding of the impact of the War on Sai Kung's residents.\n\nTHE WAR YEARS\n\nThe coming of the Japanese\n\nIt was 3.00 o'clock in the morning, December 10, 1941. Mr. Chung P'oon was awakened by loud banging on his door. Thinking that these might be bandits, he answered the door with knife in hand. He opened the door to find several guns pointing at him. The Japanese army had arrived at Wong Chuk Shan Village. For him and for the rest of the Sai Kung population, the occupation had begun....\n\nThrough an interpreter, the Japanese told him they wanted to be taken to Kowloon. Mr. Chung did not know it then, but we now know that two days earlier, the Japanese army had overrun Tai Po and Sha Tin, and the day before had taken what was known as the \"Shingmun redoubt\". British forces were withdrawing from the New Territories to Hong Kong Island, and a contingent of Sepoy soldiers were covering the retreat at Devil's Peak. The Japanese soldiers in Wong Chuk Shan had probably strayed into the village by mistake. They had come over from Shap Sz Heung, intending to find their way into Kowloon. Now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208598, "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-1979", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "28\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nPART I: JANUARY — NOVEMBER 1941\n\n1:\n\nJANUARY\n\nReports coming in from our South China missions indicate almost a \"rush\" on the part of the people to enroll in Doctrine courses leading to Baptism—we learn that Father Regan in Kweilin has baptized over a hundred in the past six months.\n\nFather Sandy Cairns, sojourning at Stanley during January, introduced deck tennis and badminton, to keep us in shape during the winter months—and overcame his hereditary inhibitions to the extent of paying for the equipment. Father Sandy is awaiting favourable winds, and a slackening of pirate activity, to take him back to his mission in Sancian Island after his relief work in Canton.\n\nDr. Baker of the American Red Cross, spent an evening with us. He told of the arrival of several hundred tons of cracked wheat for the East River area. Since all the people of that area speak Hakka, he is hoping Bishop Ford will lend him two priests to act as inspectors to see that the wheat is properly distributed.\n\nFEBRUARY\n\nFather O'Melia has been invited to sit on the Government Board of Examiners, to pass on the Chinese qualifications of all Government servants who require a knowledge of Cantonese in their work. This is fine recognition of Father O'Melia's stature as a Chinese scholar.\n\nOn the 13th, Dr. Wong-Man, Commissioner of Public Health for Kwangtung Province and Dean of Lingnam University Medical School in Canton, had dinner with us, gave us a talk on the Provincial Health Program, learned of the Maryknoll Fathers dispensary work in the Province, and promised to work out a plan of cooperation between the Government and Maryknoll.\n\nBishop Paschang received a pass from the occupation forces to visit Hong Kong but his purpose for coming here was only to leapfrog to the unoccupied areas of his Diocese to visit the priests and Sisters. While he was here, Father Joe Sweeney arrived, describing the exciting trip he had just made: the motor launch carrying himself and other passengers was attacked by a Japanese patrol boat as evening was coming on, but escaped capture when darkness", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208604, "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-1979", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "34 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\ndoubt, the most momentous year of its short history. After months and months of suspense occasioned by the occupation of the mainland, the war struck Hong Kong. Everyone, of course, was hoping against hope that the catastrophe would not affect the British Crown Colony, but such was not to be, and its peace and quiet was rudely shattered by the Japanese guns and ships which began shelling the city. As a precautionary measure our Econome, Father John Troesch, wisely put in a goodly supply of food stuffs in expectation of a long siege, but as a matter of fact, we did not benefit from it, as future events proved.\n\nFrom this point we shall quote from detailed diaries written by Maryknollers stationed at Stanley, eye witnesses of much of the attack and occupation, Fathers Troesch, Feeney and Downs.\n\nThe month of December in Hong Kong was ushered in much the same manner as its companions of 1941, but its exit from the world was in striking contrast. We Maryknollers at Stanley rose to greet it, and at our breakfast table read the news of the day, news of the war in various sectors and rumors of war nearer at hand, but hope was uppermost in our hearts that the fair city of Hong Kong would not be embroiled in the world catastrophe. Due to the unsettled conditions in the Far East our 1941 group of new missioners had been delayed, and now that we had some news of their departure from the Coast, we were anxiously awaiting their arrival. One small group had already reached our shores, three of whom had left for their missions in Kongmoon; the fourth, a Hakkaite, Father Siebert, was waiting for an escort to his adopted land. This year the Hong Kong Language School was to move inland, and our plans, already formulated in our minds, were that as soon as we had definite word of the arrival of the new men, we would book passage on a plane leaving nightly from Hong Kong for Kukong. Because of the \"China Incident\" plane travel was the only means of transportation left with the interior of China, and we were all looking forward to our coming trip. The atmosphere, of course, was tense, and no one could hazard what was to happen, but hope was strong in our hearts that we could get to our inland missions before any storm broke.\n\nAmong our house guests at this time were Bishop O'Gara, C.P., and two of his priests, Fathers Benson, the Passionists' Procurator at Shanghai and Norris, C.P., who had come to meet their Bishop; and they joined us in felicitating Father Meyer on the celebration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208607, "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-1979", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n37\n\nSecretary, Procurator, and all his priests in the other parishes of the City were interned, he did not know where at that moment, but later on he was informed that they were at Stanley, in the prison. That evening our belated supper was eaten in more or less silence, as with guns booming in the distance and the suspense in the air, we did not have much heart for conversation. We retired early, but about eleven o'clock were awakened by the air raid siren, only to find that it was a false alarm. Incidentally, during the hostilities of Hong Kong there were no night air raids. However, after that false alarm, Father Downs in the city, at the Cathedral Rectory, could not get to sleep, and heard the clock strike every quarter of the hour until daybreak. And the next morning at about eight o'clock, the fun began! At that time planes appeared overhead, bombs were dropped at various points and wherever these bombs fell, anti-aircraft guns in the vicinity started barking. A couple of these anti-aircraft guns were set up in a small depression just below the Italian Sisters' Hospital on the hill to the east and south of the Cathedral, and when they began popping we thought they were in our backyard. During the day and those that followed, there were perhaps an average of four or five daily air raids, the targets being mainly gun emplacements, shipping and forts.\n\nHowever, on the very first day, as narrated by Fr. Downs a couple of bombs hit a portion of the Central Police Station, a block or two just west of the Cathedral. Guns were booming over on the Kowloon side and out in the New Territories along the Pearl River estuary where the Japanese landed, having come down the river from Canton. Whether these guns were land or naval batteries, of course we could not judge, but no doubt the shells came from both sources at times. On the night of the second day, after we had retired, the booming of guns seemed to be nearer, and finally we were awakened by a crash which seemed to be in the Rectory. As the booming kept up we were not desirous of making any personal investigation, and as we waited, another crash shook our building, and then another, a little farther away. The next morning we learned that the Japanese were evidently trying to get the range of the anti-aircraft guns just above us near the Sisters' Hospital, for the shells seemed to fall in a straight line; the first struck to the west of us, the second hit the edge of the roof of the house next door, the third crashed through the roof of the Cathedral, cutting a neat hole", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208612, "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-1979", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "42\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nrelease, at least of a few of his most important helpers. In the meantime, Father Craig had taken up his residence with the Italian Sisters at their Canossian Convent where, in addition to their large family, there was a large number of refugees and orphans. More people were crowding into the Bishop's house as a place of comparative safety and were loath to return to their homes. Little children kept close to their mothers, and fathers walked around distractedly, not knowing what to do or to expect. All heard Mass every morning, which was celebrated in the Bishop's house after daylight, as we were not allowed to have any lights showing. We said Mass as early as we could, but very often during one's Mass planes were roaring overhead, bombs dropped, shells screeching and anti-aircraft batteries popping all around, so that Father Downs confessed that more than once his knees were pretty wobbly as he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice.\n\nNaturally during these first days of the war, all sorts of rumors were abroad. Of course we knew that the Japanese had landed somewhere in the New Territories and that the British troops had engaged them in battle, as we could hear the distant boom of guns, but with what success we knew not, until reports began to come in that the Japanese were in Shamshuipo on the outskirts of Kowloon. This heightened the fears of the populace of Hong Kong, but still everyone hoped that the British troops would succeed in holding back the enemy. However, the booming of heavy guns came nearer and nearer and finally news came that the Japanese were actually in Kowloon.\n\nOn Thursday, and on the following morning, we distinctly heard machine guns rat-a-tatting away not far from the Kowloon Star Ferry landing. We later learned that Indian troops were fighting a rearguard action at this point, and from then on all communication with Kowloon ceased, the last ferry being scuttled on the Hong Kong side.\n\nAbout this time, during an air raid, a bomb struck one of the many godowns or warehouses along the Kowloon dock area, and immediately a huge volume of yellowish-green smoke rose up from the ruins. Evidently some sort of chemicals were stored there and the fire burned for several days, casting a lurid light at night on the surrounding buildings. Shortly after, also, a string of small barges was seen slowly drifting away from the Kowloon docks and out", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208614, "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-1979", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "44\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nand apparently their proposals were rejected, as upon their return firing recommenced, and in earnest. Shells again came whizzing into Hong Kong and onto the Peak. Looking out of our rear windows, we could see these shells strike the bald rocky face of Hong Kong's famous Peak, and amid a cloud of smoke, rocks began hurtling down the sheer sides of the mountain.\n\nThe Bishop's letter of appeal to the Governor evidently bore fruit, for today four of his priests, Fathers Spada, Grampa, Riganti and Ziliolli were released from their internment. And they had their own tales to tell. As they were hustled off on the outbreak of the war, they were taken to Stanley Prison and placed in the southernmost block of cells, with a garden space attached, in which they were allowed to walk. For the first day or so their food rations were very meagre and some were treated rather roughly, but as things began to get organized their treatment improved. At one time a bomb fell quite near their quarters. With them also interned were about thirty Japanese civilians, The Bishop rejoiced at their return, but was much concerned with the others still detained.\n\nWith the return of these priests to the Cathedral, Father Downs began to think of ways and means of getting back to Stanley. He had come to the Cathedral at the request of the Bishop, mainly to take over the procurator's work in the absence of Father Bruzzoni, but with conditions as they were, there was little business to be transacted, and at best, Italian bookkeeping was a terra incognita to him. But how to get to Stanley, in these days of topsy-turvy. Application was made to the Food Distribution Bureau, but they had no immediate solution. Father Toomey was consulted by telephone as to the possibilities from his end, but to no avail. Finally, on the sixteenth, Father Toomey did arrange with a Mr. Brown, a civil contractor working with the British Royal Engineers, who were in fact living in our House at Stanley, to call for him at the Cathedral and take him and his handbag to Stanley. They left after tiffin, and what a ride! It was during an air raid, and our car was the only one in motion. We literally tore through Wanchai and up the torturous Happy Valley Road, with brakes screeching at every turn, and occasionally we had to retrace our steps in order to make a turn properly. Just over the top of Wongneichong Gap we came upon a spot in the road covered with dirt and debris. Just a few moments previous a bomb had landed on the hillside just above", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208615, "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-1979", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n45\n\nthe road, and had showered down this debris. We halted not, but sped on, and finally turned into the lower road at Repulse Bay. Here Mr. Brown had some business to transact with his Chinese foreman and workmen who were engaged in demolishing the bathing beach matsheds, lest they be an obstruction to defending troops, or a hiding place for invading forces. Another dash up the hills and around curves brought us breathless but happy to Stanley, and Father Downs was indeed glad to get back among his confreres.\n\nArrived at Stanley Father Downs found the situation rather tense, though not quite so \"hot\" as at Hong Kong. During his absence he was told that Stanley was fairly quiet, except for occasional planes passing overhead, when they dropped a few bombs on and near the Prison, one also hitting Dr. Hackett's, the Prison Doctor's house, demolishing one wing of it. Of course, \"Big Bertha\"—a 9.2 inch gun at the fort on the promontory to the south of us—kept up an intermittent booming day and night, shelling enemy positions on the mainland. When \"Big Bertha\" spoke, she shook our building and made our windows rattle twice, but we did not mind that.\n\nLong before the outbreak of hostilities British Government and Army officials had visited Maryknoll at Stanley with a view to taking it over in whole or in part if any emergency arose. At one time it was intended to be a hospital, but the Army seemed to have prior rights and they decided to take over a part of our building. Accordingly when Japanese planes began flying overhead and Japanese troops began attacking His Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong, His Majesty's Royal Engineers came out to Stanley and occupied the western end of our building: that is, the servants' quarters downstairs, with the classroom and room adjoining, the recreation room upstairs together with two small private rooms close by. Our Ford V-8 was immobilized, our garage taken over by a number of coolies, and the Engineers prepared for eventualities. They brought out with them quite a supply of food, in the way of huge sacks of rice, soya beans and large tins of army biscuits or hard-tack. The five or six Engineers and Mr. Brown ate at our table with us, and we shared their food, so that we were quite a family.\n\nAs in Hong Kong the delivery to Stanley of daily food, such as meats, vegetables, bread and so forth by the Dairy Farm and Lane", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208616, "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-1979", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "46\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nCrawford's, began to cease and we turned over to a diet of rice, soya beans, green vegetables and hard-tack from the Army stores. We managed also to buy a little pork and vegetables in the village below us for a while, but the supply quickly ran out. We likewise had a limited supply of canned goods in our pantry.\n\nWhen the Engineers took over our recreation room we fixed up the lower chapel to serve that purpose and placed a number of portable altars in our Main Chapel upstairs. Here Mass was said daily as usual, but well after daylight as it was very difficult to black out the whole chapel. And finally there was no electricity and some old vigil lights and candles were required as illuminants. It made us think of mediaeval times, and we retired early and rose late.\n\nFather Maurice Feeney wrote a very detailed account of his experiences, and we shall now give some of his impressions of the conflict.\n\nOn the fatal day, the 8th, Father Maurice Feeney went to visit Father George Bauer who was ill at St. Paul's Hospital, suffering from a severe attack of dysentery. In the course of his visit Japanese planes began flying overhead, and he, together with some of the nurses, witnessed the attack. Hearing that the Hospital was to be emptied of its patients to prepare for casualties, he and Father Bauer returned to Stanley.\n\nThough Father Feeney had volunteered to serve at the Hospital, upon his return to Stanley he was sent to Kowloon in response to a request from the Maryknoll Sisters there for a priest chaplain, and protector. His trip the next morning was a rather hectic one with planes flying overhead and consternation in the streets below. On his arrival at the Convent he learned that the British were already using the Sisters' school as a first aid station. Immediately behind the school was a six-inch gun which kept up a steady fire at the invading forces. It was not long before a shell did hit the Convent, making a two-foot hole in the wall and causing much damage to the classrooms.\n\nThough hostilities had begun only on the 8th it did not take the Japanese very long to infiltrate into the Colony, and on the 11th they were seen outside the Sisters Convent, patrolling the streets. It was not long either before a Japanese officer appeared and politely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208618, "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-1979", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "48 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM, DOWNS \n\nports, visas and so on, and on their return the bus which they had boarded took them only as far as Repulse Bay Hotel. From there they began walking to Stanley, and they had not gone far when the command rang out: Halt!. They saw no one in the gathering darkness and continued on, when suddenly a bullet whistled over their heads. Some British Tommies on sentry duty stopped them and demanded their credentials. These having been verified they were allowed to proceed, none the worse for their experience. \n\nDuring these eventful days, Father Toomey did great work in visiting the Prison, on occasional sick calls. He also went to Point d'Aguilar where volunteers were holding an advance position. He was likewise at the Fort on the Hill when it was being bombed by the Japanese planes. While at the Prison he attempted to visit the interned Italian Fathers, but was not allowed. However, he managed to have delivered to them a Mass kit or two with the necessary supplies. \n\nAt the Carmelite Convent just below our hill, Father Hessler said daily Mass for the Sisters and later on remained with them during the actual fighting at Stanley. \n\nAs the days wore on in the second week of the war, things began to get pretty \"hot\" around Stanley. An occasional shell whistled overhead, reports came in that the Japanese landed in Hong Kong and were even now converging on the Tytam reservoir just to the east of us; in fact, they were even said to have captured a red brick house close by. Finally, on the twenty-second of the month, without warning, eight of the Royal Engineers' coolies who were standing just outside our garage on the west of the house, were wounded by machine gun bullets fired from across the valley. Also a little beggar girl who used to come frequently for food received a flesh wound. We brought them all into our house and laid them on the floor and did what we could for them, bandaging up their wounds. Just across this valley the British had built some ammunition dumps and had placed there an anti-aircraft battery or two. These batteries fired at enemy planes in the beginning but eventually we heard them no more and no doubt they were removed elsewhere, for now the Japanese were in possession of this hill. As a measure of safety we moved our kitchen away from this western exposure and also kept away as much as possible from that end of the house. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208619, "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-1979", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The next day, the twenty-third, snipers' bullets began pelting our house from the north and we promptly retreated to the south. A couple of these bullets came in through the glass windows in our front hall, and our only casualty was Father Meyer who received a very slight scratch on the cheek evidently from a piece of flying glass. Artillery shells now began coming our way, apparently from the west and north, proof enough that the Japanese had succeeded in getting on the island of Hong Kong. The targets of these shells were evidently gun emplacements in and around Stanley village and near the Prison, for the shells struck along the water's edge—sometimes in the sea itself—and along the military road leading to the fort. A number of these shells actually hit the Anglican School and the Police Station in Stanley village. Some also struck buildings of St. Stephen's College and the various buildings on the Prison Compound. Many shells seemed to fall just between the buildings on St. Stephen's campus, one building of which had been turned into a hospital. From our own hilltop we again had a grandstand view, but our interest was not exactly that which one has when viewing a competitive game.\n\nBombs also dropped out of the sky on the fort and attempts were made to cripple \"Big Bertha\", but she came out of the fracas unscathed and continued to hurl her deadly missiles over the hills until the end. One Japanese bomb fell at the foot of our hill, striking a portion of the village market and killing eight or nine people. All around our hill the British had constructed trenches and machine gun nests, and we were in momentary fear of the shells finding these objectives. British soldiers could be seen moving steadily in among the trees, and many came in to our house occasionally for a drink of water.\n\nAs a further safeguard against snipers' bullets we barricaded the exposed doors and windows. We also moved our provisional recreation room from the lower chapel to the refectory, this latter being on the south side. During these hectic days we could do nothing but huddle downstairs in the corridors while air raids and shelling were in progress, and look forward to the night time when the din (except from \"Big Bertha\") was silenced. As we had no electricity we retired early and rose late.\n\nOccasionally we could observe a few straggling soldiers on the mountain just across from us, but could not distinguish whether", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208621, "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-1979", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n51\n\nnest from the spurt of British fire at that point. Then almost instantly a Japanese shell could fall dangerously close, but the machine gun would continue to sputter. But the time came when they ceased to sputter. Perhaps they had moved their positions, or perhaps were silenced. The British had some mobile guns in the roadway leading to the Prison, and the flash from their muzzles could be easily seen. Fortunately, all during this time no bullets struck our house, it being on an eminence out of the range of fire, but the Carmelite Convent below was in the very midst of the battle. Its walls were pelted with machine gun and rifle bullets, but by the great mercy of God no one was either injured or molested, save Father Hessler, and the extent of his punishment was merely a slap or two in the face on Christmas morning.\n\nAt midnight, the battle seemed to be raging fiercely, and we could hear distinctly the blood-curdling yells of the attacking Japanese as they swarmed down the road past the Convent and reached the defending positions. So it must have been when the American savages attacked a frontier outpost when the world was not quite as civilized as it is supposed to be today. As the night wore on, the din of battle seemed to grow less and less. The defenders were slowly yielding ground, and the Japanese advanced towards the Prison and the Fort, so that when dawn began to break, the firing became more desultory, and the Japanese were in possession of Stanley Village and St. Stephen's Hill. They were not yet in the Prison, nor had they attempted the assault of the Fort, some distance out on the Stanley promontory.\n\nOn Christmas Day, needless to say, there were no Midnight Masses at Stanley to herald the birth of the new-born King, but as there seemed to be a lull in the battle raging all around us, we began saying our Masses at about five o'clock, on the portable altars in the corridors. We used but one candle, and even with that, we were in trepidation lest that tiny flame draw the fire of some lurking soldier. Some of us managed to say our three Masses, others two, and still others but one, while a few never got the opportunity, for about seven o'clock in the morning, there was a great hubbub at our front entrance, and we soon heard the sound of crashing glass. Most of us got as far as the second floor and tried to figure out what was happening. Finally, Father Meyer went down to the front entrance and there saw a group of Japanese soldiers who had gotten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208622, "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-1979", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "52\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nin through the broken windows. Some started immediately to go through the house, while one, apparently a petty officer of some sort, made signs that we were all to come downstairs. Father Meyer tried to explain to the leader, who knew a very little Cantonese, that this was a religious institution and that we belonged to the Catholic Church. This did not seem to make much of an impression and the Japanese insisted we all come down. We accordingly obeyed and were told or rather motioned to sit down on the tile floor in our front hall, we foreigners at the right and the Chinese, our servants, at the left. The Japanese soldiers looked pretty well tired out. Evidently they had been in the night's fighting, and were accustomed to rough fighting. Over their helmets they had a small net, into the meshes of which they had inserted small branches or shrubs, which certainly went far to make them indistinguishable on the mountains. Evidently they had not eaten much in the past few days, for they immediately began carrying out our food supplies, and eating them on the lawn outside.\n\nAs we squatted on the floor the soldiers, laden with the spoils, passed and repassed us. Some carried our personal effects, others cases of goods from our storeroom. A few carried out blankets and bedding evidently for their wounded comrades. But for the smokers, the straw that broke the camel's back was when they began carrying out carton after carton of cigarettes which many of the men had purchased and had in their rooms. As the Japanese soldiers carried out these cigarettes they would toss a pack or two to the Chinese sitting on the floor with us but nary a pack to the padres; this perhaps to show in what seat the foreigners were now sitting. From time to time packs of army hard-tack were also thrown to the hungry Chinese, and our own tins of milk, fruit and bottles of various things were being sampled right before our own eyes. Not one of us had had breakfast, and it was not until about eleven thirty that some kind-hearted soldier began to think of us and give us a can of cherries. This was passed around among the thirty-five of us, and with two or three cherries apiece the contents soon disappeared. Next a bottle of ginger ale came along, but how far it got I couldn't venture to say; however some of us got at least a swallow. Then a can of sausages went the rounds and each, or I hope each, got a bit on the end of a fork. To top off our repast another tin of cherries came along, along with some hard-tack, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208627, "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-1979", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n57\n\nwe saw a number of flower pots, a pile of lumps of clay, a few boards, a couple of ramshackle old beds which had long outlived their usefulness, a couple of large water jars and odds and ends of debris, together with a small portion of the family (or was it the gardener's) wash still hanging on a line. One window gave us a little light, but no air, the only air coming in through the crack between the door and the wall. Into this space, say sixteen by eighteen (a generous estimate) we, some thirty-four prisoners of war, were thrust, the door closed and a guard on duty outside.\n\nTaking further stock of our new quarters in the gathering dusk, for by now the sun had sunk behind our hill, we found we were on a concrete floor, at least that part which was not covered with debris. Kicking some of this aside we began to see if we could find enough space in which at least to lie down for the night, as it was now rapidly getting dark. We were still tied up and were given to understand that if we got loose, we would be shot, so we tried to sit or lie down on the concrete floor, but tied as we were, with our hands behind our backs and two and three and four tied together on one rope, it was almost impossible to maintain any position for more than a few minutes. If one of a group sat down, the rest perforce had to follow suit. For a time we tried sitting back to back in order to get some rest, but even that was too tiring. As remarked above, Father Szeliga and Michael were not tied, and they did yeoman service for us in picking up the debris and piling it in corners and under the two rickety beds. Every once in a while the guard would pass by and peek in through the crack. When he did so everyone was as quiet as a mouse for we were also given to understand that we were to make no noise.\n\nJust before dark our door opened a little and a sentry called for three of us to come out. The ones nearest the door were Fathers Tackney, Knotek and O'Connell. At first we thought our time had come, but when the purpose was revealed, namely, to carry a few sand bags, we breathed easier. Finally we lay or sat down in order to try to get some sleep. Outside by this time there was almost an unnatural stillness, the booming of guns had stopped and we wondered what was happening. However, stretched out on the floor in almost every conceivable pose, we could not get to sleep, and in desperation we sought means to get loose from our bonds, come what may. One had already succeeded in loosening his own hands", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208628, "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-1979", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "58\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nand he helped others to loosen theirs, at least to some extent. Some, though, spent the whole night with hands tied, but how they managed I do not know. Later the marks on their hands showed for weeks.\n\nTo cap it all, poor Father Bauer still had dysentery, and Father Madison also developed a similar malady. Well, we used the water jar, which so fortunately had been left in the garage. Thus passed our first night in the garage—the Christmas night of 1941.\n\nAltogether we were thirty-four—a Bishop, a Salesian Seminarian, Brother Bernard, two laymen, Mr. Brown and Michael, and Fathers Benson and Norris, C. P., Szeliga, the Polish Salesian, Toomey, Troesch, Meyer, Downs, Keelan, Quinn, Bauer, Reardon, Callan, Allie, Madison, Gaiero, Siebert, McKeirnan, Walter, Moore, O'Connell, Tackney, Knotek, O'Connor, C. M., Charles Murphy, from Scarboro Bluffs, Canada, and our Brothers Michael, Anselm, Lawrence, Thaddeus and William.\n\nDawn finally came, and we welcomed the new day. Fortunately for us the weather was mild, and despite the fact that all except Father Szeliga slept without their cassocks, and some just in trousers and underwear, we felt no ill effects, except a natural stiffness in our joints and bones from the hard floor. The ominous silence of the preceding night continued, and we began to wonder if in reality the war was over or what was brewing. Later we learned that an armistice had been agreed upon about five o'clock Christmas afternoon, though at Stanley sporadic fighting continued until around seven, when the few men still defending the prison surrendered. On receiving telephonic instructions from Hong Kong the big guns at the Fort also ceased firing and the Fort was soon in Japanese hands.\n\nAs the morning wore on we began to think of food and drink since we had nothing in our stomachs since eleven o'clock the preceding day, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. The sentry peeked in from time to time, and whenever he did so we always managed to turn our faces towards him and slip our hands back into their nooses. About ten o'clock we tried to make signs to the sentry that we were hungry and thirsty but to no avail. Finally, after repeated representations and the offering of a very valuable wrist watch by Father Toomey, the sentry handed in through the crack in the door, his canteen which was about half full of water.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208638, "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-1979", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "68\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nonly the masonry shell of a building stood, mute witness to the horrors of war. Whenever a building was left untenanted, it suffered this same fate. The area around St. Paul's Hospital was pretty badly scarred, and the Hospital itself received many direct shell hits. A few Jesuits and some Salesians were kept prisoners for a while close to the Hospital, but were released after a few days. While engaged in driving an ambulance in the city, one of the Christian Brothers, Brother Peter, was killed; otherwise, the clergy and religious of Hong Kong were uninjured, though I believe Father Tournier, Assistant French Procurator, was slightly wounded. One shell hit the Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon, and though the Sisters had a trying time, they were unmolested.\n\nAfter the armistice, the Japanese began immediately collecting all vehicles, cars and trucks. Along the road at Stanley, on our return from the garage, we saw a number of trucks and cars on the road, either having been damaged by machine-gun fire, or abandoned by their drivers. These were all towed into town, in many cases by British army trucks which had been captured, and hundreds and perhaps thousands of cars, trucks and buses were corraled on the Happy Valley and Deep Water Bay recreation grounds. It is also thought that the Japanese took many of these vehicles to Japan, as it is reported that they took food supplies out of the Colony to Japan.\n\nGradually, a few bus lines were started up, as was a ferry or two to Kowloon, but the only cars on the road were Japanese trucks and official cars. All business was at a standstill; shops and department stores were closed and boarded up; what business there was, was done by hawkers on the streets. All foreign enemy property was promptly taken over by the Japanese and strips of wood with Chinese characters painted or stenciled on them bore the motto: \"Imperial Japanese Government Property.\" Our house at Stanley was likewise placarded and Father Troesch was appointed guardian for the Japanese Government.\n\nThe French Fathers at Pokfulam were treated rather roughly, and were kept in a small room for several days, while their buildings were ransacked and looted. The Christian Brothers' College suffered the same fate, even though they were of mixed nationality and their head an Irishman. The Jesuits lost Ricci Hall but managed to keep Wah Yan College and the Seminary at Aberdeen. The beautiful French Procure was finally confiscated and the Fathers had to move", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208643, "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-1979", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n73\n\nand soon the Holy Sacrifice is being celebrated on four makeshift altars, each of us taking his turn. After Mass, Father Troesch manages to get a little fire going in our kitchen and soon we have a cup of coffee and a dish of oatmeal. We have already been informed that the Japanese authorities will give us rice, meat, vegetables, tea, salt, and sugar—all of which will be strictly rationed and that we may be allowed to purchase other foods, such as fish and vegetables from hawkers who will come into the Camp. We are to have two meals a day, from the Camp kitchen, now merely a large rice caldron set up on some cement blocks in an area-way on the ground floor of our Block. Our cooks in this general kitchen seem to be some stranded American sailors, whose captain scuttled his ship when the war began.\n\nAs we take stock of our surroundings, we find that there are already some two hundred Americans here, and more expected. Some of these who arrived early began, with typical American aggressiveness, to clean up the place, and when we arrived, our rooms were in a very presentable state. In the other Blocks, there are over a thousand British, and more arriving, in trucks and buses, with more or less baggage. We likewise find five Maryknoll Sisters in Block \"G\". These are the Holy Spirit School staff, who in the beginning of hostilities had been evacuated to the Queen Mary Hospital, where they also served as nurses. The Japanese have taken over the Queen Mary Hospital, also all the other British Hospitals in the Colony and the staffs are rapidly being brought to Stanley. Our sick, Father Bauer and the two Brothers, have also arrived in Camp, Father Bauer being not much improved. In the course of this afternoon, nine Canadian Immaculate Conception Sisters arrived, and were given quarters in one of the British Blocks. We suppose the Kowloon contingent of Maryknoll Sisters will soon appear as well, along with Father Feeney. We are saving a cot for him.\n\nImmediately upon our vacating the House, the Japanese Gendarmerie moved in, and at night, we can see a few lights in the building.\n\nJanuary 22nd—A call for able-bodied seamen on deck for manual labor; some to help in the kitchen, cutting wood and preparing food, others for carrying baggage of new arrivals, and others are set to work carrying cement blocks for the construction of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208646, "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-1979", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "76\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\n2 Feast of the Presentation: Once again, we start classes in the language, but under manifest difficulties. One classroom is our tiny, six by six combination chapel, laundry and kitchen. The other classes held forth in rooms occupied by from four to seven people. The fish we received today for our rations was spoiled and as a result, we had only rice and vegetables. Some of the internees went to \"The Hill\" this afternoon for various purposes, and while waiting to transact their business with the authorities, sat on the low wall at the edge of the road, which incidentally happens to overlook the prison below, now occupied by Japanese. As a result, three Sisters had their faces rudely slapped, and one or two were kicked around, because of their behavior. In the evening, just in front of our Block “A”, a number of internees gathered around a piano impromptu and began singing popular songs. This was immediately stopped, as no permission had been requested.\n\n3-Fathers Keelan and Downs bless throats at the little chapel at the Maryknoll Sisters quarters. Misty weather. Meat ration spoiled and unacceptable. We organize ourselves into morning duty squads and sweep and dust and help out in the kitchen by turn. (Our private kitchen, by the way, where Father Troesch has an iron range, and for which Father Meyer \"scrounges” faggots and coal dust, the latter being made into coal briquettes on the roof). Before leaving Stanley, Father Meyer had purchased a pig and had salted it down in a small barrel. This we managed to bring with us, and today when our meat ration failed, we fell back on this piece of fat, hairy salt pork, and we were glad to even eat the hide. On the Hong Kong Prison grounds (now within our Camp confines) there is a small field of alfalfa, which was grown as an experiment in feeding the prisoners. I do not know whether the experiment worked or not, but at the present time, we are eating alfalfa with our rice and other short rations, and “like” it. Father Meyer has also given us some \"grass\" tea, and we find anything goes these days.\n\n4-Bishop O'Gara called a meeting of his priests and appoints a Council: namely, His Excellency himself, and Fathers Toomey, Charles Murphy and Haughey, the latter a Salesian. Father Meyer is Pro-Vicar, and Father Keelan, Chancellor. Bishop Valtorta gives everyone all faculties. A series of sermons is also to be given.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208650, "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-1979", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "80 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\njam, butter, sausage (canned) and canned milk, but the prices were rather expensive. Our Procurator, Father Troesch, managed to borrow some money and bought a few cans of pineapple, sausages and jam. We had the pineapple for supper and the Sisters made us a cake. Father Reardon much improved. As we have no communication with the outside world, or even with Hong Kong for that matter, rumors are rife and often fantastic. Today's prize one is that we are to be free by the 15th! \n\n12—In addition to our two Camp meals, we Maryknollers (while our limited stock of food lasts) have a breakfast of coffee and oatmeal, the latter very often mixed with left-over rice (not that we have more rice than we can eat at our evening meal, but some cannot eat their portion). This morning for breakfast, however, we had a little sausage as an appetizer. Tiffin—boiled rice, a very little meat and one doughnut. Supper, Father Meyer makes some buns. Some cases of grippe appear in Camp. \n\n14—Just as we were preparing to eat our morning meal, word came that everybody had to proceed to the ball field for search and inspection. Leaving the food still on the stove, we left our quarters and assembled in the field. After considerable delay, we were segregated according to nationalities, formed in line and made to walk past Indian or Japanese soldiers, who searched each internee. While waiting, and during the search, it began to drizzle and among that crowd of almost three thousand, there were hardly a dozen umbrellas. In the meantime, our quarters were also searched, and upon our return, we found our typewriters had been confiscated, as being instruments of propaganda. Fortunately, I had loaned my \"cement mixer\" to the Sisters, and a little later, Sister Famula, who speaks Japanese, managed to get it back from the Japanese. Father Troesch somehow or other managed to save his, but Father Meyer's was gone. We returned to our quarters about twelve noon, and had our belated morning meal, which now consisted of three small pancakes. \n\n15—Sunday. In accordance with a new plan, Father Allie preached at the three Masses today. This will be followed by others in turn. Sister St. Dominic finally gets permission to leave Camp in order to go to the Civil Hospital at Hong Kong for treatment. Songfest at 6 p.m. of which Father Quinn takes charge. \n\nFathers Quinn and Madison give a rendition of \"The March of Time.\" Father Reardon returns from Tweed Bay Hospital. A Mr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208695, "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-1979", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n125\n\nThis literally took the wind out of our sails and we were in the doldrums. Bishop Valtorta also interviewed Mr. Oda on our behalf but received the same categorical answer. However, Sister Paul made application about this time for Sisters Marie Regis and Dorothy, the former having been released from the Camp on a third national status, but the latter with us. As a result, Sister Regis was allowed to board the boat but Sister Dorothy was turned back. So we returned to Bethany, sadder but wiser.\n\nOur status in Hong Kong now being determined for us, we began to think about resuming Language Classes, and looked around for some teachers. We found one for the Mandarin and one for the Cantonese, but could not easily get a suitable one for the Hakka-ites.\n\nFrom the 11th to the 15th of October we went on Retreat, it being conducted by Father McCarthy, S.J., from Wah Yan College. About this time, Father Knotek's electrical ability having been discovered, his services were much in demand, both at Carmel and at St. Paul's Hospital, Causeway Bay.\n\nIt may be of interest here to describe briefly Hong Kong, as we saw it, some eight or nine months after its capitulation. The downtown section, at least along Queens Road Central, was fairly normal, and business seemed to be going on as usual, that is, on the surface, but actually business was pretty poor. All the stores had long since reopened; the larger foreign stores, of course, being taken over by the Japanese, and prices were on the military yen basis. The Chinese department stores were likewise open, but their stock seemed to be depleted, and not only were prices high, but it was difficult and even impossible to purchase many articles, especially of clothing. In many cases, about all that was left were extra large sizes of things. Along the streets in many places, and just outside of the department stores, sat vendors of various small articles. On the streets, the crowds seemed to mill about almost as in normal times, but little money changed hands. There were only the strictly necessary purchases made. Even for the Chinese populace, rice, oil, and firewood were rationed and on certain days, the purchasers had to line up and wait their turn at depots in various parts of the city. The Gloucester Hotel is now the Matsubara Hotel, and is open for business, but of course, mostly Japanese business. The Japanese Army and Navy have taken over almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208698, "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-1979", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "128\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\ngoing its trial run. Quite a string of small landing barges were once seen leaving the harbor. At Aberdeen in the narrow channel there are a number of small river steamers sunk or scuttled, and the Japanese are attempting to salvage them. They have also succeeded in raising the river gunboat Moth, and its recommissioning was given quite some space in the local English paper.\n\nDuring our stay at Bethany we had a number of visitors: the Jesuits from Wah Yan College, as also from the Seminary at Aberdeen; Father Haughey from the Salesians, some Italian Fathers from the Cathedral and the French Fathers, as also a few laymen, friends of Camp days, among whom was our genial chef, Mr. Gingles, with his side-kick, Dr. Molthen.\n\nAcross from Bethany is Nazareth, the polyglot printing press establishment, and there we found the Superior, Father Biotteau, still holding the fort, along with one companion, Father Morel. Needless to say, the Printing Press is not now in operation, and the other Fathers normally stationed here left some time previous to our arrival for Indo-China. Later on, also, a number of French Sisters left St. Paul's Hospital for Indo-China.\n\nShortly after the occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese announced that they intended to build a large shrine just above the Botanical Gardens to commemorate the heroes of Hong Kong. They began surveying the site, beginning quite close to the Cathedral, and evidently it was to be a wonderful affair. Subscriptions were asked for from the local Chinese and everybody was expectant. However, as time wore on, the project seemed to have gotten out of the limelight, and now it seems it has been abandoned. However, a small monument was erected on one of the small hills facing the harbor.\n\nThe 25th of October was the Feast of Christ the King. On that day, there is an outdoor procession at the Cathedral to which the faithful come from the various parishes both in the city and from Kowloon. As we had received an invitation to participate, we started out for the city. As we neared the city we noticed an unusual number of Japanese planes in the air. This was not out of the ordinary as planes were more or less constantly flying about for various purposes, and we did not attach any special significance to this increased number on this glorious afternoon. As the Holy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208710, "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-1979", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "140 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nrest was the only thing they could prescribe. There was not one liver injection left. True to non-Catholic principles, some of them began to say: \"Wasn't abortion justified in such circumstances?” Several were carried out, and we felt it necessary to make a strong protest. Even Catholics began to waver when faced with the stark reality and under the influence of a spirit of defeatism. \n\nWe knew that egg yolk formed the entire body of the baby chick. Why should it not help form other baby bodies? In 1946, as many as eight mothers were receiving egg yolk at one time. Their blood-count began to improve; the doctors nodded their heads in approval. Every baby was born a perfect specimen; the one miscarriage had nothing to do with malnutrition. \n\nOne Catholic mother, who had had several miscarriages before the Camp, was blessed with a beautiful child. Two rather prejudiced Masons were dumbfounded when the Fathers offered to help their wives with the precious egg yolk; one could see hopelessness gradually give way to confidence, and both had healthy children. \n\nSo, life went on in Stanley Camp. The end came none too soon. The physical condition of everyone was at the danger point. And what a blessing one realizes freedom to be after he has been deprived of it. Yet before we left, Father Hessler and I agreed that the Camp had been for us a great grace of God (grace means “gift”). It was an experience that neither would have wished to miss, and down in their hearts all those who so generously cooperated in showing forth Christ to others felt the same. As one of the Catholic Actionists, who had previously been a careless Catholic, put it, \"One leads the fuller life only if working for a cause, and then it is not so much what one does for the cause as what the cause does for him.\" \n\nPART IV: AUGUST 1945 DECEMBER 1946 \n\nAt the termination of hostilities and the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, Fathers Meyer and Hessler were released from the Internment Camp and as quickly as possible returned to the Stanley House. Father Meyer has written a summary of what he found at the time. He said: \"There was nothing notable about the surrender. The departing Japanese kept order beautifully, and with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208713, "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-1979", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n143\n\nrice at a very low price in order to help the people and giving away bread and canned goods in order to insure that they would have enough to eat. On communications he noted that there were no buses in the city at all. The Japanese had sent them all to Japan early in the war. He got from Stanley to the city and back again by hitch-hiking in army jeeps and trucks. At the same time he applied to the military for a telephone and electricity connections. He noted that business was at a complete standstill. The two American banks had no business at all since they were not allowed to receive U.S. currency from the States. The exchange rate was 8 to 1 when he arrived but by the end of November it was down to HK$4.50. In December the railway between Canton and Hong Kong was reopened and people began flocking to Hong Kong; however, due to the poor condition of the track the trip was taking eight hours instead of the normal three. In normal times most people would have made the trip by boat, but in the course of the war more than half of the Canton boats had been sunk by mines, usually with the loss of all aboard. Nevertheless, as order was gradually restored in the Colony, more and more Chinese who had fled during the Japanese occupation returned and the Colony witnessed a spectacular recovery. People were returning at the rate of one hundred thousand a month, and the population, which had been reduced to about 600,000 in August 1945, rose by the end of 1947 to an estimated 1,800,000.\n\nWhen Father Meyer first returned to the Stanley House he was overjoyed to find that his priceless manuscript and 200 copies of the famous \"Meyer-Wempe Cantonese-English Dictionary\" had not been destroyed. In his correspondence to the Superior General about this he learned that the dictionary had been used by the U.S. Navy during the war years, and the Navy had given Maryknoll 50 copies of the printing they had made for the use of their personnel. In the same correspondence the Superior General announced that former South China missioners Fathers Keelan, Sprinkle, Youker, Weber, Cunneen, O'Neill, and Brother Michael Hogan were on the high seas returning to their mission posts.\n\nJust before Christmas Father Tennien hitched a plane ride from Hong Kong to Kunming in Yunnan Province, the city where every Maryknoller stayed before his thrilling flight \"over the hump\" into India during the war years. At one time there were so many", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208717, "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-1979", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Blessed Sacrament was reserved at Stanley House for the first time since the occupation. Our large wooden crucifix, which had been protected in Carmel during the occupation, was returned to its original site—we now have the most important Guest of all! Father Tennien sent a nice small harmonium from Shanghai to add another pleasant feature to the Chapel.\n\nOn June 5th, Father Wygerte, Scheut Procurator in Shanghai, and genial host to many Maryknollers, set some kind of record as he made his first visit to the Maryknoll Fathers in Hong Kong, traversing the hilly ten miles from the city to Stanley by ricksha! His eyesight is almost entirely lost and he is returning to Europe.\n\nBishop Valtorta and Father Meyer sailed today for San Francisco, the former for treatment and rest, the latter a Delegate to the 1946 General Chapter at Maryknoll. Ten minutes before the ship sailed, Father Meyer was still typing out his suggestions to the Colony for the proposed self-government of Hong Kong. The servicemen's restaurant and many other works he started in Hong Kong are evidence of his limitless zeal.\n\nA visit during the month of June to Kowloon gave a picture of the condition of our old Procure at 160 Austin Road, and of the former Maryknoll Sisters' Convent at 103 Austin Road. The Procure was badly in need of repair, and at the time was housing fifteen refugee families. The Convent escaped unscathed and the Government was conducting a bacteriological institute on the premises.\n\nSince the cessation of hostilities, ocean and air travel for civilians had been non-existent, but both army planes and naval vessels very kindly and generously transported many missioners back to their respective homelands.\n\nDue to the shortage of housing in the Colony, the Government began requisitioning many dwellings for this purpose. One day, a group of officials inspected our house with its 35 sleeping rooms and decided to take it over for some of their employees, who were soon to return to the Colony. However, upon returning to the city by way of Aberdeen, they saw the French Mission House at Bethany, much larger than Stanley House, and took possession of that instead, much to our relief.\n\nOn the departure of Father Meyer for the States, Father Brack arranged to take over his room in the King's Building, where the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208718, "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-1979", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "148\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nCatholic Center is located. He planned to use the room as a baggage storage place where missioners coming to Hong Kong to shop could store their purchases temporarily. Transportation between the city and Stanley had not yet been established and so it was more convenient to leave purchases in the King's Building which was near the West River shipping wharves.\n\nWith work piling up on him, Father Brack was happy to learn that Maryknoll had appointed Father William Downs as his bookkeeper and assistant.\n\nThe Center at Maryknoll, after 5 years of hopeful wishing to get some official information on the disappearance of Father Sandy Cairns, finally decided to go on record as believing that Father Cairns met a violent death at the hands of the Japanese, and set July 31, the day before the new Chapter began, to have the Solemn Mass of Requiem for Father Sandy. From local sources, it seems that after Pearl Harbor, Father Sandy was taken from his mission and shot in a motor boat either by Japanese or Chinese puppets working for them. His body was then thrown overboard, but his sun helmet was later found floating near Sancian Island.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208939, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE\n\n69\n\nthe imprisonment of Tomé Pires, whom they had sent as ambassador to the Emperor, and to the closure of Canton until 1530 to all foreign commerce. Henceforth the Portuguese had to trade clandestinely around the Bay of Amoy and at Ningpo in Fukien in the various goods, notably pepper and sandalwood, for which no amount of imperial prohibitions could lessen the demand in China.\n\nThe commercial losses suffered by the Chinese as a result of their isolationism and the prohibition of their own navigation were gains for the Portuguese. As the American scholar George D. Winius has aptly put it, \"in the Atlantic the Portuguese were explorers; in the Indian Ocean they were conquerors and in the Far East they were businessmen\". Before long their trading activities in the China Sea had developed sufficiently to make inadequate the temporary shacks and tents in which they stored and displayed their wares in such places as Shang-ch'uan (Portuguese Sanchao or São João, where St. Francis Xavier died of fever in 1552), and they began to press the Chinese authorities for a trading centre of their own. In 1555 the Jesuit Father Belchior Nunes Barreto described Shang-ch'uan as a centre for trade with the Chinese where \"silk, porcelain, camphor, copper, alum and China-wood are bartered for many kinds of merchandise from this land\" (i.e. Japan).7 In the previous year Leonel de Sousa had secured permission for regular trade with China on payment of customs dues and in 1557 the Portuguese were allowed to establish themselves at Ao-men (Gate of the Bay), otherwise known as Amacon, Macau or the City of the Name of God in China.8\n\nThere was no written agreement with the Chinese for the establishment of Macau as a Portuguese enclave in China and, though the Portuguese continued to pay rent to the Chinese government till 1849, their sovereign rights in Macau were not fully conceded till 1887. But from the outset, Macau's extra-territoriality was admitted in practice because it suited both parties to the agreement - the Portuguese because it gave them a secure place in a highly profitable commercial network and the Chinese because, as later with Hong Kong, they could now enjoy most of the benefit of foreign trade without having to abandon their restrictions on foreigners entering or Chinese leaving China.\n\nA gate was erected across the isthmus joining Macau with the mainland - the Porta do Cêrco - upon which the Portuguese placed a grandiloquent inscription: \"Dread our greatness and respect...\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209303, "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-1981", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "192\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTRADITIONAL FUNERALS\n\nApart from the ta tsiu, the most significant ritual acts within the traditional New Territories village were those marking the death of an adult villager. The ritual of such funerals differed in detail from area to area, but seem to follow basically the same form everywhere. The traditional funeral was a matter of importance not only to the bereaved family but to the whole village. The ritual alternated between formal religious acts, led by Taoist priests, and village customs, led by the elderly men and women of the village.\n\nTraditional funerals are becoming rarer, rituals are being simplified to follow the pattern set by the modern style funerals in the City, and the willingness of villagers outside the circle of the immediately bereaved to assist in the rites is less automatic than in the past. There is, therefore, a need to record the funeral ritual used while there are still opportunities to witness it in operation. Miss Barbara Ward, and Dr. David Faure of the Chinese University together with the author of this note were privileged to record at length a recent traditional funeral in Tai Wai Village, Sha Tin; it is hoped that this record will be published in an appropriate form soon. In the meantime a brief indication of the ritual with some photographs, (plates 4-13) is published here as a general guide to the main features of a New Territories traditional Punti funeral. The photographs were taken by Mr. Liu Yun-sum, of Sheung Shui Village, the current First Vice-Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk, in 1953, at the funeral of his father, Mr. Liu On-wai, and are published here with Mr. Liu Yun-sum's kind consent. Mr. Liu On-wai was the son and grandson of Ch'ing dynasty village headmen; he and his brother had been educated to the best standards available in Sheung Shui. His elder brother, indeed, became a Sau Ts'oi degree holder and taught in the village school. Mr. Liu On-wai himself went into trade, selling foot-stuffs and roast meats from a shop in Sheung Shui market; he was 76 years old at his death. The photographs, therefore, are of the funeral of a well-connected and moderately wealthy, but neither particularly rich nor powerful villager.\n\nThe funeral ritual began everywhere immediately on the death. Elders of the clan and village washed, dressed, and prepared the corpse, while the women of the bereaved family sang wailing songs. Friends and relatives stood around weeping during the dressing and preparation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209780, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "17\n\nSt. Mary's Anglican Church is at the junction of Tai Hang Road and Eastern Hospital Road. The congregation began in the chapel of the Eyre Diocesan Refuge for destitute women in 1912. In 1914 the Refuge was moved to Kowloon, but Anglicans in the east part of Hong Kong continued to meet there for worship. A vestry was formed in 1920 and plans were discussed for a new building. It was not until 1930, however, that a large fund-raising plan was undertaken. Finally, on 12 July 1936, ground was broken for a new church. It was officially opened on Christmas Eve 1937. In 1954 another building containing offices, kindergarten and vicarage was completed, and in 1958 the foundation stone for the Primary School was laid.\n\nFarther along Eastern Hospital Road is the Shing Kwong Church of the Church of Christ in China. This congregation considers itself the successor to a chapel built by the London Missionary Society in Tai Ping Shan in the 1860's. The chapel building was demolished at the time of the clearance of the Tai Ping Shan area at the turn of the century. Tai Ping Shan had been the breeding ground for the bubonic plague. With the money received in compensation for their land and building, the London Mission bought a new site on Yee Woh Street at Tung Lo Wan in 1898. The Mission had for some time been conducting services for workers at the nearby China Sugar Refinery. At the new site, schools were opened for boys and girls. The congregation became fully independent in 1922. With the widening of Yee Woh Street it became necessary for the congregation to move. In 1926 they exchanged the Yee Woh Street site for Inland Lot 2550 at So Kon Po. They occupied their new building in the summer of 1927. At that time the congregation adopted the name \"Shing Kwong\".\n\nThe number of institutions in the valley associated directly or indirectly with different religions is striking: Confucian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Jewish (indirectly, in the name of Ellis Kadoorie), and the former presence of the Japanese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210509, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "97\n\nauthority of his father while the latter is still alive. In the second type a younger son, or other junior male, apparently usurps the position of an elder brother or other senior. (A third type, in which a woman takes the mastership did not occur in Kau Sai).\n\n59\n\nThe story of one retirement, an unusually early one, on a small liner has just been told. As a purse-seiner example I will take the history of the Shek family already discussed from another point of view in the preceding section of this chapter. Both Shek Kwai Hoi and after him his son Shek Cheung Hei supplanted their fathers many years before the latters' deaths. In each case the fathers grew old, and fairly gradually at first but without rancour handed over their roles as managers to their vigorous eldest sons. When I arrived in Kau Sai in 1950 the process of handing over from Kwai Hoi to Cheung Hei was still going on. Grandfather Ch'uen Foon, still living with his wife on the boat on which his grandson Cheung Hei was master, took no part in management, or, though he was of course not left out of the general discussions, in practical decision making. Kwai Hoi, master of the second junk of the pair, still played an important part in directing fishing operations, but all matters connected with marketing and finance were dealt with by Cheung Hei. In 1952 after much discussion it was decided that a new, mechanised boat should be commissioned. This was to be the family's first venture into mechanisation, the second in Kau Sai and only the third or fourth among the several thousand purse-seiners of the whole of Hong Kong. Cheung Hei's adopted son, Shan Loi, the only one yet old enough and sufficiently educated, was sent off to study for the new coxswains' and engineers' certificates. During the protracted arguments and negotiations about these matters, Kwai Hoi, not in any case a forceful personality, began to take more and more of a back seat, while Cheung Hei, already in charge of the financial side of the business came increasingly to the fore. The new boat, its building supervised by him, its engine bargained for by him and installed with him in constant and fascinated attendance, was licensed in his name. When, to the accompaniment of volley after volley of firecrackers, he steered it triumphantly back to Kau Sai, dressed overall, there was no possibility of doubting who was in command of his Shek family's fortunes. At 61 Kwai Hoi slipped apparently ungrudgingly...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210553, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "141\n\nemancipation is at the very least one of the sources of the malevolent behavior that Romans sometimes attributed to their ancestors. The jurist Gaius observed that \"the children whom we beget in civil marriage are also in our authority (potestas). This right is peculiar to Roman citizens; for scarcely any other men have over their sons a power such as we have” (Inst. 1.55). It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of this paternal authority, the notorious patria potestas. In theory, at least, the head of the Roman family enjoyed absolute control of its property, and possessed the power of life and death over all of his unemancipated children (who were said to be in potestate). He could at his discretion order the exposure of a new-born child, sell his children into slavery, transfer the labour of a son now fully grown to a third party in payment of a debt, or compel his son to divorce his wife, even after children had been born to the union. Until the father was dead, a mature Roman citizen still in potestate did not have a legal personality, and could neither establish an independent household nor accumulate property in his own name, unless his father agreed to emancipate him through a cumbersome procedure of fictive sale.\" Roman literature is replete with morally uplifting stories of fathers who put their sons to death for breaches of discipline (cf., inter alia, Livy 8.7), but there is nothing imaginary about Aulus Fulvius, a senator executed out of hand by his father in 63 B.C. (Sall. Cat. 39.5; Dio Cass. 37.36.4). Under such circumstances, it would be surprising indeed if the Romans did not harbour ambivalent feelings when their fathers died.*\n\nDuring the middle and late Republic, however, this authoritarian family structure began to dissolve, and in the first and second centuries A.D. it came under systematic legal assault. During the reign of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161), for example, fathers were stripped of their authority to compel their children to divorce against their will (Paulus, Sent. 5.16.5). We have already seen that in this period the bond between kinship and property was also slowly breaking down. The latter had a significant impact on the cult of the dead we have noted the shift from personal to corporate worship exempli gratia. Hence it might be expected that a son who was emancipated from his father's jural authority and who could not realistically expect to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210792, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "126\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nby governors and generals striving to grasp independent power, and China was plunged into bloody civil war. Guangdong Province, the birth-place of the republican movement, immediately proclaimed itself independent. Sun Yat-sen, the \"Father of the Republic\", was elected generalissimo, and in 1924 the Kuomintang (the People's Party) was formed. Upon the death of Dr. Sun in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek, backed by his modernized army, emerged as the Kuomintang (KMT) leader, and with assistance from Communist factions began campaigns against the north which culminated in the fall of Shanghai in 1927.\n\nChoosing not to expropriate the capitalist bankers in Shanghai as demanded by the Communists, the KMT and Communists became bitter rivals which re-ignited armed struggle in south China. Fuelled by Communist propaganda, there came a genuine uprising of the peasantry against the KMT for failure to deliver promised tax and land reforms throughout the southern provinces. As part of this general uprising, the first group of “freedom fighters\" appeared on Hainan in 1927 and staged guerilla warfare on the island until Liberation, twenty-three years later (Fairfax-Cholmeley, 1963).\n\nAlthough armed conflicts between Peking and southern forces had occurred previously on Hainan such as those which led to the capitulation of General Lung's army in 1918 (Moninger, 1919), fighting was confined to the soldiery. However, the Communist tactics brought the conflict to the common citizens by inciting peasants to take up arms against the oppressive gentry and greedy merchants. The effects of lightning raids caused havoc in northern Hainan: numerous villages were abandoned, others sacked and reduced to ash-strewn rubble, and large tracts of farming land were deserted (McClure, 1934b).\n\nIn fact, the revolutionary play, Red Detachment of Women, was loosely based on incidents which occurred in Hainan in 1931. At a bridge about one kilometre south of the present Xinglong Overseas Chinese State Farm, a guerilla band led by Hong Chang-qing assassinated Nan Ba-tian, a cruel landlord. In reprisal, the landlord's forces captured and executed the guerilla leader. However, a slave girl, Wu Qing-hua, took his place as commander and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210864, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "198\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nson, who passed through San Francisco in the 1870s, reported that his father was still remembered by the community with gratitude and respect.\n\nWHEN FAME HAS ITS HAZARDS\n\nThe position of leadership is one of prestige and honour, but as a public figure the leader is also open to criticism by disgruntled members of the community. Tong A-chick, as leader of the Chinese community of California in the 1850s, experienced such attacks.\n\nIn one case a husband charged him with harbouring his runaway wife. The background of the story indicates some of the difficulties Chinese women had in California. Many of them had been imported as prostitutes. Some had been abducted from their home villages, others had been purchased, and still others had been deceived by false promises. Their lot was not easy.\n\nThe background of Too A-sung, the woman in the case, is not clear. She had been married in Sacramento to Fong A-lai in September 1856, by the Rev. Lewis J. Shuck, a former Baptist missionary in Hongkong. After the marriage, the couple went to live at Marysville, California.\n\nHere A-lai, the husband, began to mistreat his wife. He beat her, threatened to sell her, and, so she claimed, \"forced her into the lowest depths of degradation.” He kept her in \"constant misery, anxiety and wretchedness.\"\n\nFinally, she was able to run away through the assistance of some friends. She arrived at San Francisco and sought shelter at the business premises of Tong A-chick.\n\nThe premises were also used as a branch of the Yeung Wo Association, as the association's house was on the slopes of Telegraph Hill some distance from the centre of the Chinese settlement.\n\nTong A-chick was a director of the association, and Too A-sung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210868, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "202\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nHOW A-CHICK CLIMBED TO THE TOP IN SHANGHAI\n\nAfter his return to China, Tong A-chick, or Tong Mow-chee as he began to call himself, in some sense rode on the coat-tails of his younger and more prominent brother, King-sing.\n\nIn 1862, Mow-chee was employing his language skills as head linguist at the Shanghai Imperial Customs Office. King-sing had preceded him there but had left to seek better prospects.\n\nAt this time their father died and Mow-chee retired for the usual mourning period. Assessing his future prospect in Chinese Government service as not good, he did not return to his job after the mourning period ended.\n\nThe position he had held was a good one, but did not offer many opportunities for advancement, as higher offices in the Chinese Government were generally open only to those who held an official degree. Though he took steps to remedy this by purchasing a degree, he felt prospects in the customs were not bright. Later, when he had more wealth, he purchased the degree that entitled him to wear the peacock feather, and finally the button of the second rank on his hat.\n\nTong King-sing had become compradore at Shanghai to Jardine, Matheson and Company in 1863. In 1870, after leaving Hongkong, Tong Mow-chee through his brother's influence took charge of the Chinese business of Jardine's shipping office at Tientsin.\n\nIn 1872, King-sing was recruited by Viceroy Li Hung-chang to manage the newly created China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. Though backed by private capital, it was under the control of the Chinese Government. The compradoreship of Jardines at Shanghai thus became vacant. It was natural that Tong Mow-chee should come down from Tientsin to take his brother's place.\n\nIn 1877 Tong King-sing was commissioned to develop the Kaiping coalfields for the Chinese Government. Mow-chee assisted...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211250, "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": 311, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "286\n\nset in front of the shrine. I was invited to cut the first, and the 90 year old father of the Mount Davis Kaifong Welfare Association chairman was asked to cut the second. There were the usual speeches of welcome and appreciation for help given. Northern and Southern lions were brought to life by the chairman and vice-chairman of the Western District Kaifong Association, and the dancing displays followed.\n\nThe Southern lion began by taking down a lettuce, a roll of paper with money inside and a red paper with a name written on it from the upper part of the pailau. The red paper carried the name of the donor of the lucky money, who happened to be the manager of the local branch of Tao Hang Bank. The three items were suspended from the top of the pailau by a piece of string.\n\nThe front man of the two-man team used a 25 feet long stout bamboo pole, with foot rests towards one end, to reach them. The pole was hoisted, and kept in position, by about ten youths, members of the lion dance group. The front man, still in his mask, proceeded to dance at the top of the pole, in time with the drumming which accompanied the whole dance. In ten minutes he had secured the lucky money and “consumed” the lettuce (choi, synonymous for good fortune, for the community, understood). The drummer was as important as the lion dancer. He looked at the dancer with intense concentration, intensifying and diminishing the speed and volume of the drumming during the time the dancer was at the top of the pole. The effort was very taxing, and the drummer was relieved twice. He was accompanied by six persons playing gongs and cymbals. Meantime, the lion's tail was kept in place by the second man in the dance team, who held it up with a thin bamboo pole.\n\nThe vice-chairman of the Western Kaifong told me that before lion dancers were prohibited by the police from going in procession round the neighbouring streets this had been stopped about 1962 — it had been the traditional practice for the local shopkeepers to hang out the lucky packets and lettuce from the first floor of their premises, for the dancers to obtain by skill and in competition. The excitement was intense, and squabbles between the lion dance teams quite frequent.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211318, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "14 \n\n1 \n\n10 \n\n# A BRIEF HISTORY OF \n\nTECHNICAL EDUCATION IN HONG KONG \n\nDAN WATERS \n\nAs early as 1863 vocational training in carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, printing, bookbinding and gardening was provided for twelve boys. Numbers later reached thirty. Classes were held in a Chinese building, under a Father Raimondi, not far from the Mission House in Wellington Street. \n\nAlso, in the late 1870s, up to 100 boys, in addition to their native language, were taught carpentry, shoemaking and printing by brothers at the Roman Catholic reformatory at West Point. The destitute children, some of whom were Portuguese and came from Macau, learned gardening and played games after school. \n\nThe first annual prize distribution of the Li Shing Scientific and Industrial College (*) was held in January 1905. Over seventy students had enrolled but by examination time only thirty-five remained. The founders felt the purpose of the establishment was to help raise China from her low industrial condition' and to educate her sons in modern science and industry and train them to use their hands as well as their brains. \n\n'We hope to train dependent workers and not mere \"hands\" \n\nto be always under the direction of foreigners.' \n\nThe aim of most schools in Hong Kong was to train clerks and compradores. \n\nDuring the Governorship of Sir Matthew Nathan (1904 to 1907) the Government began to show interest in elementary technical education. This culminated in the founding of the Technical Institute in 1907. This establishment was different to the eight technical institutes run by the Vocational Training Council we know today. The Technical Institute which was established in 1907 formed a sub-department under the Director of Education. It had no building of its own but was housed at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211405, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "97\n\nA note on our genealogy\n\nThe genealogy of our family began with Heen Bow, because he was the one to form the West House (4) of Cha In village. He was, therefore, considered the first generation, although Joong Goong was the first to settle there. The route taken was the one usually taken by others fleeing southward from Fukien to Kwangtung. Nan-hsiung Prefecture is located in the northern part of Kwangtung. My father told me that Tung-kun was also one of the stop-over places and that the Cha In natives speak a subdialect derived from Amoy where their forefathers had passed through.\n\nCha In village consists of three branches of the clan Poo Shan, East House, and West House. My father, of the West House, often distinguished the relationship of a clansman as one from Poo Shan, or the East House, or the West House. There was an annual rivalry between the East and West to be the first to worship and beseech blessings at the grave site of the First Ancestor during the Ching Ming Festival. Family traditions had alleged that Li Jung, the founder of the East House, had been conceived before his parents were married, but I am not sure myself of the facts here.\n\nThe performance of bravery by Li Jen was the one event in the village of national importance that was a source of great pride to the clan.\n\nThe word 'Goong' is a title of respect.\n\nThe following sequence of characters indicated the generation to which one belongs: Sai, Duk, Jok, Kau, Wing, Ngin, Pui, Ki, Mung. The appropriate character is incorporated in the name taken at marriage, and this name is framed and hung in the main room of the home. From this name, one would know how to address and pay respect to a fellow-villager. For example, a Wing generation would address a Kau generation as 'Uncle'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211421, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "113\n\nat MIT, he travelled around the country to observe and learn more before returning to the University of Washington, where, after another year of study, he received a M.S. degree in 1925, specializing in Aquaculture. He returned to China, becoming Director of the Kwangtung Fisheries Experiment Station in 1929, and later Director of the Chekiang Fisheries Experiment Station. In 1946, he became President of the Taiwan Fisheries Corporation. His comprehensive knowledge and experience in the field of aquaculture made him a leading and respected authority of national and international renown,\n\nIn Canton on March 1928, Toby married Louise Dung Yuk Bow, a vivacious beauty from Grass Valley, California. Stricken with Parkinson's Disease and gradually weakened by it, she died on 27 January 1971. While I was teaching in Canton, Toby and Louise welcomed me as an immediate member of their family and I spent many weekends in their home - I am grateful for this hospitality to this day. They had six children, five daughters and one son:\n\nMelody Wil married Johnson C. J. Chen\n\nCarol Kit married John Lee\n\nSonia Cíl married Tai Min Wan\n\nJade Ef married Eddy Lin\n\nLloyd married Deborah\n\nLena ft married Jeffrey Lo\n\nThe girls leaned towards the arts like their mother, and Lloyd, an ichthyologist, towards science like his father.\n\nCousin Helen Moo Ching married a nephew of Tong Siu Yee (T'ang Shao-i) Hill, a Chinese diplomat during the late Ch'ing and one time Prime Minister of the Republic of China. Her married life was spent in Peking where her husband was head of the Postal Savings Bureau. After his death she moved south and finally retreated to Taiwan where she died in 1974 of cancer.\n\nCharles Ting Hing began his career in banking but switched to dentistry. He was married twice, both times to non-Chinese girls, and had children by both of them. He died in Shanghai in 1978.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211439, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "131\n\nMost of the itinerant workers were from where my father originated and spoke the Nam Long subdialect. Uncle housed them in a bedroom attached to the large barn facing the concrete area used for threshing and drying the grain. After dinner these men would lie on wooden, mat-covered beds, conversing with each other while heating beads of opium over a small lamp before puffing through a long pipe the bubbling brown drug. To this day I can recognize the sweet odour of opium.\n\nWhenever Uncle went to Honolulu, he would always stop by to bring us vegetables from the farm and have his lunch, usually large buns filled with black bean paste and large, flat cakes, made largely of flour and sugar. He usually left around two o'clock in order to reach home by sundown. The journey was difficult, especially in bad weather, because the horses would sometimes balk and refuse to proceed when they approached the Pali. Uncle believed that the horses were sensitive to the presence of ghosts, so that whenever they became stubborn and refused to proceed, he would let them turn back towards Honolulu until they reached the drinking trough of spring water near the entrance to Dr. Morgan's estate. Uncle would wait until the horses were willing to start for Kaneohe again.\n\nBefore the Pali Road, started in 1898, was completed, travel was by horseback from Luluku to the half-way house at the foot of the mountain pass and up the steep slopes to the Pali. A two-seater buggy, which supplanted the horse, was most intriguing in that the passenger seat swung out before one could get in. Once we got to ride in it when Mother allowed Ruth and me to visit our cousins without her. The visit was exciting and enjoyable, as we crowded together on the matted beds, enclosed by thick mosquito netting. Soon we thought that it was more fun to be outside on the porch. As we ran back and forth carrying each other piggy-back, Uncle suddenly appeared and ordered us back to bed. I was told later that I had become so homesick that Uncle had to take us home much sooner than planned.\n\nMother looked forward to a yearly visit to Uncle's and we would go there by coach, owned by Look Buck of Kaneohe. We often grew anxious as the automobile raced down the steep, narrow and winding road. Once Mother jumped out of the coach with Helen in her arms when it began to slide backwards while manoeuvring a hairpin curve. For several years", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211444, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "136\n\nenticing, wholesome meals to nurture Father back to health. Communication with her was interrupted by the Second World War and after 1949, and it was during these intervening years that she died, followed later by the death of Uncle Tin Suk, from injuries he had suffered falling down a well. Ging Heen, the only offspring of Uncle Tin Suk, is also now deceased. The details regarding his wife and children are not known to us.\n\nUncle Pong sent for Aunt Pong and their first child in 1922, and they lived with us temporarily until they bought a home on Lusitana Street. They sold this home in 1932, during the Depression, in order that Aunt Pong and the eight children could manage life easier in Shekki. They left the same time Mother, Dora and I did, on the Empress of Japan. Later, before the Second World War began, Aunt Pong sent the children back to Honolulu, two by two. Left with two of them, she was not able to return until the end of the war. The family settled in the neighbourhood store operated by Uncle Pong at the corner of Kaukini and Fort Streets, on property owned by us. This property was later condemned by the city to enlarge Kawananakoa School. Uncle Pong died from diabetes and Aunt Pong from cancer.\n\nThe Pong children are:\n\nHelen Wai Hing married Long Wa Lui\n\nViolet Wai Lin married Mun Git Chan\n\nElla Wai King married Joseph Loui\n\nErnest Dung Sun married Wai Quon Yee\n\nHerbert Cheong Fat married Dimmie Kam\n\nLily Wai Chiu married Stanley Chang\n\nClaron Ah Hoon married Pacita Tan\n\nRichard Kwock Hung married Kwei Fong Miu\n\nMy Jong grandparents and their children are all gone now. My Mother's health began to deteriorate following a bout of shingles and she passed away on 20 November 1974, after being incapacitated for about a month as a result of a stroke. Although I still feel the loss of those I love, I am comforted by, and hold on to, the many memories that are intertwined with their caring, nurturing, and warmth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211457, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "149\n\nUpon receiving word of the unexpected death of Second Paternal Aunt, Father decided to take a trip to China to see his remaining brothers and sisters. Passage by boat after the First World War was difficult to secure, but reluctant to change his schedule and to inconvenience the bank, he accepted steerage accommodation and left in April 1919 on the Shinyo Maru. Before the ship arrived in Japan some ten days later, he had seen 19 passengers die from influenza and he had himself fallen ill. He debarked in Japan to seek medical care, but as he had difficulty communicating with the Japanese doctor, he proceeded to Shanghai so that Second Paternal Uncle could take care of him. The weather in Shanghai proved to be too cold, so he decided to go to Hong Kong to stay with First Paternal Uncle. There a doctor Koch diagnosed Father as suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. When his fingers began to swell, relatives believed the sulphur content of the water in Hong Kong was not beneficial and arranged to move him to my maternal grandfather's home in Shekki, occupied then by his widow and son. It was then that Father sent for Mother. With the help of C. K. Ai, Mother was able to obtain passage, again steerage, on the S. S. Nanking for herself, Dora, and me. Ruth and Helen were left in the care of the Ais. It must have been difficult for them, especially for Helen, to be separated from Mother under such stressful circumstances.\n\nOn shipboard we were one of three families in a large cabin, sharing one bath. There was much noise and activity in and outside of this cabin, but we kept much to ourselves because Mother was very much worried about Father and left Dora, who cried a good deal, probably from seasickness, to my care. One day Mother suffered such severe gastric pain that she thought she would die and gave me instructions as to what to do. The ship's doctor was able to ease her pain. It was a frightening experience and the trip was a traumatic one for all three of us. Years later, Dr. Samuel Yee found that Mother had had a healed perforated gastric ulcer and I wondered if it had occurred then.\n\nSince we were total strangers in a different world, First Paternal Uncle thoughtfully accompanied us from Hong Kong to join Father in Shekki. We travelled over the ocean and up river to our destination on a crowded junk or \"doo\", to be greeted joyfully by Father. Chinese herbs and good food, however, had not been able to restore Father to good health. So my parents decided to return to Honolulu, hoping that a stay at the Leahi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211460, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "152\n\nyears later, Maternal Grandmother had her third child, a son, who died in infancy in China when he and Mother were taken there for a visit.\n\nMother was a very good-looking woman. She had rather large eyes, well-formed features and a fair, pleasant face. Her hair was dark and very fine, a characteristic she had inherited from her father, who, she said, had hair of silk and skin that was fair, smooth and hairless. There was an air of gentility and femininity about her. A modest, humble and friendly person, she made friends easily and always avoided conflict. She formed strong and lasting friendships with many who found in her an understanding and sympathetic confidante. Because she was a fine seamstress, many sought her help in cutting or sewing their Chinese clothes. Mother never lost her sense of pride, even though early years of poverty left their mark on her to save and deprive herself for that \"rainy day\" which never came. She was a pessimist, always anticipating disaster, and consequently was cautious and conservative, often warning us, \"Walk with hand holding onto a wall\".\n\n—\n\nBeneath her soft appearance, however, Mother was a person of strength. She dominated our early lives and we submitted whether we agreed with her or not, due to an ingrained sense of respect for our elders. It was not until I was nearly 30 years old that I began to exert myself and this resulted in a few emotional confrontations. Because it was felt that education would cause daughters to become too independent and also too old to be sought after as wives, Mother was allowed only a few years of schooling. On the other hand, because Hakka (**) parents saw the advantage of a good education, some of Mother's Hakka schoolmates went on to become teachers or prominent citizens. One of them was Mrs. Samuel Young and the other was Mrs. How Fo Chong, wife of a minister and daughter of Lee Toma. From these early associates, Mother learned to speak the Hakka dialect fluently.\n\nBright, alert and curious, Mother had a great thirst for knowledge and never hesitated to ask when she did not know. With added guidance from Father, she could read and write both Chinese and English better than many Hawaiian-born Punti girls of that era. She would tell us stories about the heroic deeds of old, about which she had read in such Chinese classics as The Three Kingdoms and The Dream of the Red Chamber. Even up to a year before her death, she left evidence of having used", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211461, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "153\n\nthe dictionary to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words she had come across in her reading. Whether she was scolding, philosophizing, or teaching, she would usually quote a Chinese saying to reinforce her idea.\n\nAlthough before her marriage Mother knew only how to boil water, she became a very good cook and developed a fine taste for gourmet dishes. Endowed with a good reasoning mind, she managed to figure out how to make household repairs. Widowed at 32 and left alone to cope with the responsibility of raising four young daughters, she proved to be a skilful manager of what Father left us. Except for requiring good behaviour of us, she made no other demands on us. I am sure that she derived much strength from her deep faith in God and in the knowledge that she had fulfilled her promise to Father, before he died, that she would give their children the best of care.\n\nWhen my parents were married in 1903, Father was 25 and nine years older than Mother. Mother had found it very difficult to be dominated by a husband after having been indulged by a fond parent. Still more difficult was the fact that she began married life in the home of Aunt Yim Ali, who took on the role of surrogate mother-in-law and had a sharp tongue. Because Father felt he owed much to his sister, he tended to cater to her and did not think of giving support to Mother. Since Father was earning only 25 dollars a month, there were only two meals a day — breakfast and dinner. Mother spoke of being very hungry, for on the farm where she grew up there had always been plenty of food. At that time adequate nourishment was especially vital for her because she had become pregnant and was still a growing teenager. Whenever possible, Grandfather Jong would bring her a piece of poached chicken leg, salted, and some snacks, which she would hide away for herself. Later, Father found an apartment in a frame duplex located on the corner of Prison Road and a lane running towards the waterfront, and opposite the original site of the prison. He was now able to give Mother two dollars a month with which she was able to have lunch, usually a Chinese flat cookie, called Kiangsu Cake.\n\nBeing chief homemakers, Chinese women rarely went out. Social relationships were usually with neighbours and family members. Our next-door neighbours were the Leong Nam's, with whom we shared a common porch. They had one son, Ah Sui, and three daughters, named", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211463, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "155\n\nI remember crying in pain and rage because adults and children gathered around me to watch.\n\nMother also used some of the ointments that Grandfather Jong brewed for us. One white jar contained a blackish, gummy substance, a bit of which in warm tea was for gastro-intestinal discomfort, and which I later learned contained a little opium. A jar of pink ointment was for drawing influence to a head after it had been warmed over a small flame and applied as a poultice. Mother was so pleased when Uncle Yim sent us a dried gall bladder of a bear because of its \"cooling\" effect on an infected area. Once she dissolved some of it in water and applied it to me. When I fell and cut my head, what Mother did was to press some tobacco, which Grandmother Jong used for her water-pipe, on the wound to stop the bleeding.\n\nAs we grew older and Mother began to learn more Western practices from some of her new-found friends, in particular Mrs. Lam Quan, a neighbour who had studied at Kawaiahao Seminary, castor oil was the first order of treatment when any of us got sick, followed by a dose of Chinese herbal tea to “cool” our system. According to Dr. Joseph Lam, the herbs served as a diuretic. Diet for the sick would always be congee, or sweet potatoes boiled in water and sweetened with cakes of brown sugar from China, or a thin sweetened gruel of white-flowered sweet potato flour, also imported from China. For a congested chest, she would rub the area with warm peanut oil and the feel of her soft, warm hand would give me comfort and reassurance.\n\nMother's health was always fragile, but she took very good care of herself. I do not know what her early ailments were, but she used to buy \"Vivai\" from a Mrs. McAllister upon the advice of Mrs. Lam Quan. Mother would drink the liquid and have either Ruth or me massage her back with the ointment at bedtime. Young and tired, I would often doze off while trying to do the boring task. Fortunately, this did not last long. In addition, Mother would use all kinds of Chinese medicines, often referring to a handbook of medicine. Soon after Helen was born, she suffered such severe gastric pains that a herbalist was called in to treat her. When I was in high school, it seemed that every time I planned to go to a football game, she would get so sick that I would have to be home with her. Later, after Father's death, when women were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211467, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "159\n\nand playing among chairs and other furniture on the unpainted but gleaming parlour floor. Ruth was a sweet, lovable and plump child, obedient and seldom in mischief. She was so bright that Father began to teach her to read before she started school. I was somewhat sickly and rather homely, causing the sons of the Leong Yau's to nickname me \"kitten\". I seemed to drop and break things often, and Mother, thinking that I was careless, would scold me with the term Cho Bow Gwai, (Careless Devil). Active, impulsive and spirited, I usually made life difficult for her.\n\nOur Wilci home was crudely built and sparsely furnished. We slept on a bed of boards, covered by a straw mat, under a square-shaped mosquito net, but we rarely used the hard, lacquered black pillows. Our home was lighted by kerosene lamps which cast such ghostly shadows that I was always afraid to go to bed by myself. At that time my Mother believed in ghosts and apparently transmitted her fears to me. It was not until I was about ten, after Mother had been converted to Christianity, that the fear of the rod was greater than the fear of my fantasies. The kitchen and toilet were located behind the house proper, but under cover, and cooking was done on little wood-burning stoves. Food was stored in a screened cupboard, which was called a \"safe\". There was no refrigeration and we had none of the amenities which we now enjoy and take for granted. Everything was done by hand.\n\nIn 1910 we moved to Smith Lane, off Fort Street, between Vineyard and School Streets, but we did not live there long. Two other Chinese families resided there: the Leong Chew's and the Loo Goon's. We were now not confined in the house, but had the opportunity to be outside to play with Willis and James Leong, and Florence and Louise Loo. It was here that Helen Me Chin was born on September 26, 1910, with Mrs. Leong attending Mother. That morning, after Father had gone to work, Mother sent Ruth and me out of the house to play. We returned later to find a new-born baby. On a few occasions, when Mother was very busy, I had to carry Helen on my back in an embroidered sling, which had four straps, two of which went over my shoulders and two of which circled my waist, that were knotted in my front. I remember feeling Helen's weight against my chest. Small wonder, for I was not quite five then. It was here that Ruth and I contracted the childhood diseases of chicken pox, mumps and measles.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211468, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "160\n\nBy the time Helen was learning to crawl, Father had a two-bedroom house built with the help of his cousin, Chan Ngit Chiu, and a few of his carpenter friends. They ended up stealing some of the lumber and leaving part of the house interior unpainted. This was something Father should have foreseen, since Ngit Chiu was an opium addict. It did not bother us much for we were utterly happy to be in a new home of our own. This was a two-bedroom house located on Board Road, which ran off Buckle Lane, an area where many upward mobile Chinese had relocated after the Chinatown fire, such families as the Wei's, Lee Lit's, Yee Mun Wai's, Lam Toy's, Lam Quan's, Yee Yap's, C. K. Ai's, to name a few. The narrow roads were of dirt and gravel and I often nursed a scraped and bleeding knee when I fell while running home on the slight incline.\n\nA right-of-way in front of our house led to the home of a Chung family and to a newly-built home of Chun Sun Kee adjoining our lot. Across the way was a very large L-shaped property owned by David Notley, an Hawaiian-Caucasian politician. There were many people and much activity in his spacious home and we enjoyed the sounds of merry-making and sweet music when he had a luau or a political rally. Across from us on Broad Road there was another large piece of property extending the whole length of the road, with the house facing Buckle Lane. Mr. Dutro, the owner, a gruff and fat Portuguese, would descend upon us growling if he caught us trying to \"steal\" any of his mangoes hanging so temptingly over the fence. I have never seen so many species of mangoes as he had. We were always on the alert for any that would drop onto the road.\n\nNext to the Dutro's on Buckle Lane was a stable occupied by a Mr. Silva, who had a draying business and with whose daughter I had a few casual contacts. I can recall the sight of horses and the smell of hay and manure in his yard. The Ai's lived next to the Silva's until they moved to their beautiful home on Beretania Street in 1915. The Lam Toy's, who had lived across from the Dutro's, sold their home and bought the Ai property in order to better accommodate their large family and visiting relatives.\n\nAs there were very few Christians in the neighbourhood, Father introduced Mother to the Ai's whom he had met at church. Gradually Mother began to meet neighbours who were also converts to the Christian", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211470, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "162\n\nthe rod. She would say, “A good rod produces a good offspring\". The louder I yelled, more out of anger than of pain, the more she applied the rattan until I gave in. She must have entertained some guilt over her handling of me, because when her anger subsided, she would rub the black and blue stripes on my legs with a Chinese herbal liquid. Father never interceded. Once when I attended a lawn party at the Theodore Richards home and did not heed Ruth's warning to desist from active play, Mother withheld dinner from me when she discovered that I had soiled my party dress. Even when Father asked me to supper, I did not dare join the family. It was not until Mother found me stealing food from the cupboard that she relented. There were times when she restricted my freedom by tying me to the leg of the dining table with a dog chain. It seemed that I was the child on whom she usually took out her frustrations, causing me to wonder at times if I were adopted. Ruth had her share of punishment, but much less. When Mother was in her 70's, I asked her why she had always concluded I was in the wrong without asking for my version. She merely smiled and asked what she should do to rectify it. In spite of these clashes of will, she gave me a good deal of love. I remember the time, when I was about 10, how pleased I was when she praised me for carrying the heavier of two bottles of limes she had left in the sun to cure. I also felt her concern the times she would prepare special foods and herbs for me, or massage my chest with warm peanut oil whenever I got sick. As I grew in knowledge and maturity, I began to understand her desire to bring me up correctly with the kind of discipline that prevailed in the Chinese culture. We were then able to communicate effectively, with much understanding and concern for each other.\n\nIn 1917 after Mother, who was under the care of Dr. Mitamura, almost suffered a miscarriage, Father bought a three-bedroom house from a Mr. Azevedo at 170 South School Street, the third one from Lusitana Street. It was located at the foot of Punchbowl where many Portuguese had settled, and was part of a small orange grove once owned by Judge Antonio Perry's father. We not only enjoyed the fruits of the three orange trees but also those of the avocado and Pirie mango trees which we planted - a great source of vitamins for us.\n\nOn 7 October, 1917, on a Sunday afternoon, when Mrs. Lam Toy chanced to visit us, Mother gave birth to her last child, attended by Dr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211471, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "163\n\nGroven Ballen. There was some excitement when Mrs. Lam thought the infant was a boy and announced this to Father. Although having no sons was a disappointment to my parents, this infant daughter was no less precious. With his usual sense of humour, Father named her Dora Me Sun, explaining that Dora sounds like the Chinese words for \"too many\", that is, “too many\" girls. He ordered milk, especially rich for babies, delivered daily for Dora, but she could not tolerate it and became very colicky and fussy. I tried to help by carrying her, swinging her back and forth in my arms or in the hammock, hoping to soothe her with songs like “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Upon the advice of Mrs. Lam, fresh milk was replaced by malted milk, but this probably did not fill Dora's need for adequate nourishment and she continued to cry a great deal. The very strict 4-hour feeding schedule that the doctor recommended added to the problem.\n\nSoon the First World War cast a shadow of uneasiness over our lives and we felt the sadness of mothers who saw their sons drafted and sent to Europe. It came close to home when William Kam, our neighbour, and a few of our schoolmates left. War songs, rallies, victory bonds, first aid packages, etc. in school whipped up our patriotism. I had my first sight of an airplane then. It was a day of great rejoicing when the end of hostilities was announced. But soon the world-wide epidemic of influenza reached our islands and we would hear the sounds of sorrow in our community over the death of loved ones. We were anxious and frightened about an illness that struck so swiftly and with such deadliness. In spite of this, we were a happy family until in April, 1919, we received word that Father had come down with influenza on board ship bound for China. This was our last home in which we had all been so happy together, because Father died on his way back to Honolulu. His death left Mother widowed at age 32 with four young children, and gave me my first real loss, which had on me a sobering and maturing effect. Support and advice from friends helped Mother, sheltered from the world before this, to cope with her new responsibilities.\n\nRuth's education outside the home began in a small school for Chinese girls run by Mrs. Chang in a building behind the Fort Street Chinese Church. The following year Mother tried to enrol Ruth and me in Central Grammar School, but the principal, Mrs. Carter, reputed to be very selective of minorities and called by the Chinese \"pigeon eye\" ÉIR", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211473, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "165\n\nChinese girls there. Very feminine and attractive, she had no end of male admirers, much to Mother's anxiety.\n\n1\n\nOn February 6, 1932, young and inexperienced, Helen was married to Edmund Tin Wai Tong W, who was some years her senior and much more sophisticated. He had been educated at Lingnan University in Canton and at the University of Pennsylvania, and was working for the Chinese-American Bank, of which his father, Tong Phong, was president. This union was pleasing to both my Mother and to the Tong Phong's. A son, Edmund Yee Sing, was born on 28 September 1933. Following the failure of the bank when it encountered financial difficulties, Helen and Tin Wai were divorced on 18 January 1937. This was a disappointment to the parents on both sides, but the in-laws remained good friends. With the passage of time, Helen and Tin Wai are now on friendly terms.\n\nHelen began her working career as a kindergarten teacher for a year and a substitute teacher at a junior high school for about half a year. For a year in 1937 to 1938, she went to San Francisco to attend a fashion designing school as well as a business school. She returned to Honolulu to work along these lines, first for others, then for herself in a dressmaking business, until the Second World War when she worked for the Office of Civilian Defense in a secretarial capacity. When the war ended, she accepted a civil service position as a statistician with the Territorial Bureau of Sight Conservation and later as a clerk-stenographer with the Territorial Board of Health. Due to the fact that she failed to receive child support, as ordered by the Court, from Edmund's father, Helen was forced to change jobs whenever a better paying one opened to her. Alone she eventually saw Edmund go through college with a degree in dentistry from the University of Illinois.\n\nIn 1946 on a vacation trip to Chicago to visit Dora, Helen met and married Tso-yu Futon on 14 March, 1947. He came from Wen Chou, Yung Chia Hsian, Chekiang Province MT and owned a Chinese art business, which ended when no merchandise could be imported from China. At the time of his death on 14 March, 1971, as a result of an automobile accident, he was a managing editor of a Chinese newspaper. After two more children, Lynnette Wen-chu X, born on 29 July, 1948, and Russell Wen-chau M born on 10 September, 1951,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211495, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "187\n\nMunicipal Council, 718 volumes and pamphlets were purchased from Wylie for Tls 1,767.50 to form the nucleus of the society's library. The Shanghai Municipal Council stipulated that the society would be responsible for providing “suitable rooms and a librarian”, and should they fail to do so, the books would be given to another organization.\n\nO. R. Crockett was appointed the \"honorary librarian\" in 1864, the first of at least twenty-eight people to hold this office. Over the years they represented at least four nations, England, the United States, Germany, and France. The third librarian, the American-born Frenchman Henri Cordier who compiled the monumental Bibliotheca Sinica, was the real founding father of the library.\n\nUnlike many members of the society, Cordier was a young man newly arrived in China, and full of both curiosity and energy. He immediately struck up a friendship with Wylie and was instrumental in the transfer of his books to the library. His first task for the society was to compile a catalogue of its recently assembled collection. As he recalled later:\n\nOn the first of April, 1871, Mr. Ney Ellis, then a merchant, took me to the library, which was indeed in a most dilapidated state in a large room of the Commercial Bank Building... I began at once the Catalogue of the books, which was published the next year (1872) at the Ching-Foong General Printing Office.\n\nThis catalogue showed 1,300 titles in Western languages, arranged according to Klaproth's classification, \"at least in its principal divisions\", with Wylie's books noted with asterisks. Not catalogued were an additional 1,023 volumes in Chinese, mostly from Wylie, and the **Transactions of Learned Societies and Periodical Publications, which form one of the most important classes of the Library**. Cordier noted in the preface:\n\nHowever valuable this collection may be, its deficiency is very great; and many a volume which an Orientalist ought to find is sought in vain through the pages of the Catalogue. Now that the paucity of our resources is known, no doubt people will come forward and help us fill the blanks.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211562, "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": 279, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "255\n\nLam Pin near the original village of Cha Sai to start a business. Upon his death, the 17th generation ancestor like those of the 13th to 16th generations was buried near his heung-ha of Tso Po. Not long after getting married, however, the 18th generation ancestor (my father's father) decided to emigrate overseas, leaving the family business to his four brothers in Lam Pin. My grandfather never returned to China and was buried overseas, where the rest of his family continued to live. The four brothers of this 18th generation ancestor died, unfortunately without male survivors and were buried near Lam Pin. Our house in Lam Pin has since been occupied by close (affinal) relatives, and the old house in Tso Po was eventually abandoned, remnants of which still stand. I was told also that those family members living overseas are now the only living survivors of that fong beginning from the 13th generation ancestor in Tso Po. Despite the many generations, there were a few other descendants from the 13th generation once or twice removed, but they too died without male survivors, leaving us therefore with the task of tending to their graves. These graves now include all those from the 13th to 17th generation ancestors at Tso Po and those of the 18th generation at Lam Pin. The funny thing about this explicitly genealogical account, however, is that my father never knew we had ancestors at Tso Po.\" He had likewise passed on to me the firm impression that we were Cha Sai villagers, and we usually address ourselves as Cha Sai villagers living at Lam Pin. According to elders, there was no question that our heung-ha was Tso Po. Bad fortune was probably what led the 17th generation ancestor to move to Lam Pin, but it was the 18th generation ancestors who began to dissociate themselves from Tso Po (due to bad fortune rather than change of residence). Thus, our change of heung-ha to Cha Sai represented less a nostalgic return to the past than a change of circumstances in an ongoing (re-)definition of that local life-situation.\n\nIf the meaning of locality is as complex as suggested by the above example, then what about the so-called \"single-lineage village\", one may ask? Contrary to appearance, such villages are less conscious of the fact that they live as a common descent group than of the fact they share relations of closeness (chan (C), ch'in (M)). It is easier perhaps to explain why a single-surname village remains a single-surname village than to explain how such a village came to be so in the first place. The continuity of a single-surname village has less to do with the descent principle per se than with a customary rule of marriage residence. A", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211865, "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": 280, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "255\n\nDIARY OF VOYAGE TO CHINA*\n\nFrom March 10, 1861 to August 6, 1861\n\nIt is with a combination of curious feelings that this journal is commenced. There is a mingled hope and fear, gloom and light, anticipations of a bright future, and occasional forebodings of ill. Yet whatever may befall, whether pleasure or pain, prosperity or adversity, it is a joyful fact that nothing can happen unless directed by a Father's hand. Jesus knows all, and safe under his guidance all will be well.\n\nSunday, March 10th\n\nWent on board at ten o'clock, and just put matters straight enough in the cabin to be able to spend the Sabbath. About eleven I came on deck, just as the vessel began to move out of the basin. She was towed down the Thames. A great crowd of people saw her departure. As she floated down the Thames I often gave way to melancholy thoughts, when I considered all I was leaving behind, and all that is in store for me. Sometimes the burden felt greater than I could bear. Yet I felt that Jesus was with me, and under his guidance I feared no ill: it was my Father's business I was about, and surely he would give me grace and strength to perform it.\n\nThe Prince Alfred went easily down the river, and cast anchor off Gravesend. On board were several people, friends of the captain, who although it was Sunday, were going to Gravesend for a holiday and treat, at his expense. They were a swearing set of fellows, and seemed to be old captains of ships. A Sunday in such company I never spent. I would not go to lunch with them, and at dinner time I was glad when all was over, and I could be alone in my cabin. But even here their shouting and laughing, when the wine and spirits began to take effect, was a great nuisance to my ears and mind. I never spent such a Sunday in my life. So as soon as it grew dusk I fastened my cabin, made up a bed and tried to sleep. For two days I had had a headache, which now grew worse, and very little sleep I had. My cabin, although in the quietest part of the ship, is rather the worse for noise. Every person that walks overhead on the deck is distinctly heard, and the noise is enough to keep one awake, to say nothing of the rolling of the ship.\n\n* From the John Fryer Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211880, "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": 295, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "270\n\nAround the ship a number of cape hens and cape pigeons are flying. When it is a trifle calmer I shall try to catch some with a hook and line, and then having fastened my name to them let them loose for some one else to catch.\n\nOur dog Jack has had his hair cut off, which has considerably altered his appearance. We are very good friends, and it is amusement to make him run about. We have quite a menagerie of cats, of which old Jerry, quite an old patriarch, is the father and ruler. At dinner time, no sooner does the bell ring than away they come and take their places as regularly as possible.\n\nDuring the gale we lost the flying jib, which was blown completely to ribbons. I have now learned the names of all the sails, and in fact am gradually growing into the sailor. When the ship is almost on her beam ends I can walk the poop without any difficulty. It is very amusing at meals to see the contrivances for preventing accidents, otherwise we should all get in a pretty state. Even as it is we have to fasten the things to the table, or hold them in our hands, to keep them upright. I must now leave off as it is dark, and shall walk the deck for a half hour to get a good appetite for tea. This shaking about has pulled my fat down considerably, and I must try to get it again.\n\nMonday, May 13th\n\nWe are still a week's sail from the Cape, and creeping along very slowly indeed, in fact we hardly seem to be moving at all, for the wind is so very light. It is enough to make one feel rather gloomy and dull to be tossing about so long. The sea for several days has been very heavy, and has poured over the decks, and into the cabin without mercy. Having suffered so much from former experience I took precaution enough to avoid all disasters, for all in my room is quite tight and safe, and I have not had a drop of water in to trouble me. You may depend upon it, I am getting nearly used to my cabin after nine weeks residence in it. In fact I began in a measure to feel myself at home, such as it is. Yet it is dreary, monotonous work, no change, the same faces over again, and nobody that one can speak a sensible word to. The captain would go into fits if I were to speak to the sailors, for all hands in the cabin seem to regard them as a set of inferior beings.\n\nOur menagerie had an increase of a family of three kittens yesterday,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212168, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "87\n\nseven died unnatural or early deaths, though the other six would appear to have died peacefully at a reasonable age in their beds. Three would seem to have appeared in human dreams after they had died, and all are prayed to for boons and blessings, protection or guidance,\n\nOut of the twelve examples six have had privately run temples erected in their honour, whilst images of the other six have been placed on secondary or side altars in local community temples.\n\nIt is worth considering the difference between the deified total nonentity and the deified virtual nonentity. The former would be the unnamed immigrant who died several hundred years ago but who is now regarded as the local protective spirit, whilst the latter is the villager, perhaps even a former headman, whose name, though little else, is remembered. He too is now regarded as a local protective spirit.\n\nAlthough we have been examining such deities mainly in the context of Taiwanese and South East Asian Chinese they appear to have existed China-wide. One such virtual nonentity was deified several hundred or more years ago on an island off the northern coast of Shantung Province, with the rural temple altar bearing the images of both the nonentity, Mr Liu, and his wife. R.F. Johnston describes the temple, formerly on the island of Liu-chia Tao, the Island of Mr Liu, off Wei Hai Wei, the former British possession where he was the last Governor, in his book Lion and Dragon in Northern China.\n\nHe explains that no one appears to know who Mr Liu was nor why his image appears on the altar. Liu Kung and Liu Mu Father Liu and Mother Liu were regularly worshipped, especially by sailors. Johnston notes that the curious thing is that the deification of the old couple has taken place without any apparent justification from legend or myth'.\n\nThe images were moved to a new temple built on the mainland during the occupation after the British acquired the island and began to make preparations for the construction of naval works and forts.\n\nThe images of Mr and Mrs Liu portray them as an elderly couple dressed in luxurious robes, he with a long white beard and the cap of the wealthy land owner.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212381, "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": 323, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "300\n\nin Singapore but not elsewhere, and the temple keeper was unwilling to offer any further information. A year or so later under a little pressure he revealed that he, personally, called them White Crane Mothers (Bai He Mu).\n\nRecently his son, who has now set up his own establishment, was more forthcoming. He began by saying that he did not agree with his father's description; the images were neither spirits (shen) nor demons (kuei) but were rather a substitute for the individual human (Ti-shen). Such images were carved by him for people who brought the description of the image required written, usually on red paper, by a spirit medium. He claimed that the practice was not unique to Hokkiens (people from the southern coastal province of Fukien) and that he had heard of it ‘all over China' including Taiwan (which is predominantly Hokkien speaking). He himself is a Hokkien though his clients in Singapore included local Ch'ao-chou, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese people.\n\nThe son explained that a living human may suffer from an unidentifiable ailment and having been to a western trained doctor and consulted a Chinese physician or herbalist, neither of whom has been able to diagnose the cause, in desperation he consults a temple spirit medium who, in a trance, discovers the cause, usually an 'unpaid debt from a previous life. Immediately after death souls are judged on the misdeeds done during their lifetime on earth and after purging their sins they are reborn. Occasionally misdeeds are missed and only discovered after the individual has been reborn, hence the ailment as punishment. The spirit medium is tasked to discover the identity in his or her previous life of the human now suffering from the unknown ailment and to record his or her likeness in that previous existence which will then be carved into an image. The surname of the individual in his or her previous life is also recorded on the reverse of the image. This image is unique to the family of the individual now alive, almost always with an entirely different surname to the one of the previous incarnation, and is kept on the family altar. It is never placed on a public altar for public reverence. After a ritual performed by the spirit medium the image is considered to house the spirit of the living individual with the ailment but with the identity of the previous incarnation, and it is expected that the spirit now residing within the image will absorb the 'unpaid debt' lifting the punishment from the living individual.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212477, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "11\n\nthat all men must die and not knowing when I may be called away, I deem it right while still in bodily health and full possession of mental faculties to make my will.\n\nWei A Kwong, the father of Wei Yuk, had a typical story of success. He was a Zhongshan native; he left his hometown and worked in Macau as a teenager. His father was a comprador to two American merchants, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks and Oliver H. Gordon. It was known that Wei was forsaken by his family and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau. He was later sent to Singapore where he studied under the auspices of the Morrison Education Society in a school of the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions. This changed his life. He returned to Hong Kong and began his career. He served as comprador in Bowra & Co. and then in the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China until his death. Wei wrote his will in 1866. He prefaced it with a brief account of his life, particularly mentioning that he was the first student of the Morrison Education Society and that he first came to Hong Kong in 1843. He had \"ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government.\" Though we cannot prove to what extent his exposure to Western culture was related to his Christian education, he succeeded in becoming a leading member of Chinese society in Hong Kong. This contrasts with the will of Sung Chin Tseung, which reads.\n\nSung Chin Tseung, otherwise literary appellation Sung Ching, otherwise Ngok Shan, native of Kat Tai village, of Kong Sheung Division, Heung Shan District. I followed my deceased father, Mr. Shau U, to Hong Kong in 1842 to trade in foreign business as compradore. Further, in 1854, thanks to the kind support of Mr. Ryrie and others of Messrs. Turner and Co., Hongkong, I took over the office of compradore and up to the present thirty odd years.\n\nBoth Wei and Sung were natives of Zhongshan. They came to Hong Kong for business in the early 1840s when Hong Kong was already a British colony. Though they lived in Hong Kong, they maintained connections with their hometown, as Sung's father, Soong Ke, stated in his will written in 1864:\n\nIn the 21st year of Tao Kwong (1841), I came to Hong Kong and employed myself in business all the time with foreigners, always being diligent and making little profit sufficient to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "134\n\ngovernment, after the withdrawal of the British, became useless: the Japanese issued a new rupee paper note of their own, and compelled the people in the areas occupied by them to accept it. In Kokang the only money now acceptable was silver rupees. We had brought some in with us, and further substantial sums were dropped to us by air: it created a problem over the border in China, where the currency situation was so desperate. Our rupees were used to pay for any services or supplies we received from the local population, and they doubtless quickly found their way to the border, where a heavy demand for silver existed owing to the continuous fall in value of the Chinese currency and where, consequently, a rupee would fetch over a hundred dollars. Curiously, Chinese half-dollar silver pieces were still current though not common on the Chinese side of the border, perhaps the only district in China where silver coins still existed, as the Chinese government had gone off the silver standard years before, and withdrawn all silver coins; the silver half-dollar was naturally worth far more than the paper dollar.\n\nOne headman asked me if I could not rescue his son from China. It was a sordid story, the details of which only reached me by degrees, but it is a story which should be told.\n\nLopez was the son of a Filipino father and a Burmese mother. He had spent most of his life in Burma, but claimed American citizenship. The Americans, working from the side of India, were anxious to obtain intelligence about conditions in eastern Burma, and so they trained Lopez, gave him a commission, borrowed some Indian wireless operators from the British, obtained for him a Chinese pass, and sent him with a party into Kokang. They sent him very secretly, a precaution which was not unwise in view of the speed at which news travels on the border; but they overlooked the necessity of informing the American officers with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.\n\nLopez arrived in Kokang in the autumn of 1934, set up his wireless, and began to collect information, a work at which he would have achieved considerable success. I found he had left a very favourable impression on the local population; some of the men who were subsequently to do the most useful work for us had first been engaged by him. The attack on the Myosa upset his arrangements; Lopez knew too much about this, and perhaps spoke indiscreetly; anyhow the Chinese decided to get rid of him. Although he had a Chinese pass, the Chinese went to the American officers attached to the C.E.F., and reported the presence of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213227, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "28\n\nAlexander Cosman Levysohn, another founder of the firm is on the Hong Kong jury lists in 1864 and 1865. He then went to Canton to take charge of the Shameen office there. Lewis Mendel became a partner in 1875 (DP 3 Jan. 1874). He died at Hong Kong on 4 November 1895 aged fifty-one. He came to China to join the firm in 1867, retired in 1883 and returned home, but came back to Hong Kong later and established his own business as a share broker (DP 5 Nov. 1895). His will made in 1882 mentioned only his father, brothers and sisters as his heirs. His executors were Jacob Arnhold of London and Lorenz Poesnecker of Hong Kong. Mr. Mendel was a native of Altona, Germany (PRO will File No. 101 of 1896 [4/1105]).\n\nLorenz Poesnecker was an assistant in Arnhold, Karberg and Co. in Hong Kong from 1870 to 1880. He was authorised to sign for the firm on 6 June 1874 (DP 7 June 1876) and became a partner in 1880/81. When he made his will in June 1896 he gave his address as 5 East India Avenue, City of London. He left his estate to his wife and after her death to his children. He named Caesar Erdmann of Hamburg and Richard Millitzer of Hof, Bavaria as his executors. He died in London on 9 July 1897 and the administration of his estate in Hong Kong was granted to Carl Beurmann and Max Carl Johann Grote as attorneys of the executors named in the will (PRO Will File No. 20 of 1898 [4/1162]).\n\nJulius Kramer was authorised to sign for the firm in June 1888 and was admitted a partner in 1892 (DP 13 June 1888, 18 Mar. 1892). During his first years with the company he was at its Canton office. At an auction for lots in the French Concession on Shameen in November 1889 he purchased Lots 1 and 7 for $2,610 (DP 8 Nov. 1889). After being admitted a partner he moved to Hong Kong. There his wife Bertha died on 14 February 1896 at “Luginsland” on the Peak Road (DP 15 Feb. 1896). Not long after he left Hong Kong and died on 11 November 1898 at Heidelberg. Administration of his estate in Hong Kong was granted to Ernest Goetz as the attorney of Philip Arnhold (GG Probate Calendar 7 June 1898). A former street in Tai Kok Tsui, Kowloon, was named after Mr. Kramer. When the Royal Dutch Oil Co. began importing oil to China by tanker in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Arnhold, Karberg and Co. acted as its agent. Oil storage tanks were built at Tai Kok Tsui. The Royal Dutch is better known as the Shell Co.\n\nWhen Philip Arnhold died in 1910 Ernest Goetz became senior partner.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213811, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "135 o'clock we had our dinner on the deck. Such fun and such make shifts. Our stock of portable soup was very good however, and what with venison pasties and other items we got a very comfortable dinner, much to the amusement of the Chinese passengers, about 20, and the sailors. My servant came in very handy, as he was the only professional cook of the party. Our food was cooked in the Chinese way, in a little earthenware stove, and a camp canteen kettle. The deck all the while was at a very considerable slope, so that it was necessary to mind one's p's and q's, in order to avoid catastrophies. Then when we were done and cleared away, the Celestials came forward and took the deck and began their meal. Each passenger pays 30 cash (not quite three halfpence) for his meal of rice and fish and little nic nacs: and as they only eat two meals a day, you may imagine that there is not much profit to be got out of it. They did walk into the rice and no mistake.\n\nOne little boy I took a fancy to: he was a friend of the owner of the ship and his father a rich man at Sam-tsun the place we were going to. I had a long talk with him, and we read some of the Pilgrim's Progress. He had been to school 6 years, and literally knew nothing after all. The Chinese system of education is the greatest folly imaginable: No Chinaman, in less than ten years is supposed to be able to know the meanings of the characters. Many learn 5 years and only know the sounds.\n\nHowever this little fellow and I got on very well together. He was much amused with Stringer's dog, and asked dozens of questions about it. Then I offered to sell it for a dollar, but the youngster said it was no good only to eat,\" and therefore was too dear. So I joked him that he had not a dollar belonging to him, whereupon he produced a handful of dollars from his purse, and showed me a bundle of paper which he said had 7 dollars inside. He seemed to have perfect confidence in us that we would not try to rob him. It was hard to talk with him, through his dialect. It was like a Londoner and Yorkshireman. “Tea” he called \"Chay-yup\" and we call it \"Chah-eep.\" About four o'clock we entered the “Kup shui moon\" a channel opening into the \"Bogue” or as English people say \"Bocca Tigris\" or \"tiger's mouth.\"\n\nHere we passed the Canton steamer going to Hong Kong. The people stared to see Europeans on board a Chinese craft. Towards evening the breeze dropped off, and at sunset there was quite a calm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214153, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Gillian Bickley, Ph.D., B.A. (Hons.), Cert. Ed., M.Litt., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University. She has previously held posts in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong, Longman Far East, the British Council, St. Stephen's Girls' College, and the Hong Kong Examinations Authority. She has taught at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has lived in Hong Kong for 23 years.\n\nPaul Bolding, works as a financial journalist at the news and information organisation Reuters in London. He has been with Reuters since 1974. He lived in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1997 and has travelled widely in Asia. Mr Bolding has previously worked in Europe and the Middle East including Brussels, Berlin and Nicosia. He has a special interest in the silk route and is a co-author of the Insight Guide to Turkey.\n\nB.C. Fawcett, was born in the Far East where his father served with the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. He also joined the bank and served from 1961 to 1978, being based in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1978. During that time he was also a volunteer with the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, now the Government Flying Services. He is a life member of the HKBRAS.\n\nRichard J. Garrett, M.A.(Cantab), C.Eng., F.I.C.E., F.I.Struct.E., F.H.K.I.E., is a director of an international firm of Consulting Engineers and based in Hong Kong since 1973. He has been a collector of antique arms and a member of the Arms and Armour Society of the U.K. for over 30 years. He has published a number of articles on the subject of early firearms.\n\nSheilah E. Hamilton, B.Sc., M.Soc.Sc., Ph.D., is a long-time resident of Hong Kong and former forensic scientist with the Hong Kong Government from 1968 to 1988. Her passion for Hong Kong history began in 1992 and areas of interest include historical fires, forensic issues and security.\n\nR.G. Horsnell, is a Chief Property Services Manager with the Architectural Services Department, Hong Kong Government, and a ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214978, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "30\n\nAfter the First World War and the return to China of the Powers, a movement to finance a new westernized Chinese élite began among the Powers. Each country hoped that the Chinese educated by them would naturally favour their country of education; gratitude, ties of friendship, as well as cultural and emotional orientations, would see to that. This also Leopold, the astute King of the Belgians, had foreseen. He had spoken of it urging that young men be sent to Belgium for training. \"Ils seront des nôtres,\" they will be ours.\n\nAbout her own Western studies, she wrote the following equitable lines:\n\nI myself was, in 1935, a recipient of a scholarship derived from the Belgian Boxer indemnity fund; I went to study in Belgium, following in my father's footsteps. But it was, in the end, China's money which was being spent to educate me, it was the Chinese people paying the Boxer Indemnity of 1900 who paid for my years in Belgium. And so my gratitude must go to them, for making me in turn, as they made my father, a privileged person, a returned student from abroad. Later I was to study in England, on a British Council scholarship, and also be grateful to England. But this has not influenced me in the end. For truth is truth and it cannot be bought at any price.\n\nVigilant yet dispassionate, non-compromising yet lacking even the slightest urge for revenge, always eager to unveil painful truths about enslavement of one people by another, Han Suyin is a born defender of human dignity and human rights. In the pages of her autobiographical/historical cycle, multiple shrewd remarks about interference of indigenous Chinese and foreign powers' interests in Old China are a most natural and therefore a matter-of-factly element, masterly interwoven in a vast political and economic panorama of Chinese life in that pre-1949 epoch. After all, the so-called 'gunboat diplomacy' and also the other forms of political blackmail, extensively practised by the white powers to threaten feudal, backward and corrupt society in order to press even more lucrative concessions out of it, had directly affected Han Suyin's and her family clan's existence on an everyday basis. Surprisingly enough and in the circumstances incomparably more neutral (or even favourable) for her, Han Suyin wrote a stunning and remarkable book - And the Rain My Drink - devoted entirely to the declining post-World War II period of the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215105, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "158\n\nof victorious battles he captured Kaifeng and Luoyang where he had himself proclaimed emperor of the new dynasty of Greater Yan. His further campaigns and those of his subordinates were at first victorious; however, they then began to suffer a series of defeats at the hands of Guo Ziyi, one of China's most renowned generals, whose successes led to increased loyalist resistance to the rebel forces.\n\nA major consequence of the rebellion of An Lushan, was the withdrawal by the emperor of his forces garrisoning the North-west thereby losing control over China's far dominions in Zungaria and the Tarim Basin [today's Xinjiang province] for the best part of the next thousand years.\n\nFor a while it seemed that the balance was turning in the emperor's favour. However, the Capital garrison at Chang'an [Xi'an] was incapable of resisting the attacks of the rebel forces and after the defeat of his main army on the banks of the Yellow River the emperor in great alarm was forced to flee Chang'an accompanied by some of his entourage. They fled west heading to Sichuan province ahead of the rebel advance. En route, at Ma Wei, his escort mutinied, killed Yang Guozhong and forced the emperor to order the Concubine Yang be strangled to pacify his discontented guards. Stories have varied but the most popular versions claim that the emperor had no choice but order her to be strangled by his chief eunuch or that she was forced to commit suicide. On reaching the safety of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, the heir apparent had been persuaded to usurp the throne. Weary and distressed the old emperor, now in Chengdu, gave his assent to the new reign and became the retired emperor. The new emperor bestowed the title of Taishang Huangdi\n\nupon his father but kept him under house-arrest.\n\nThe heir-apparent made his way to Lingzhou in Gansu where he was proclaimed emperor Su Zong and was soon joined by two armies, one under Guo Ziyi. By 757 Guo had recovered the main and subsidiary capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang from the rebels, whereupon the new emperor summoned the former emperor back to Chang'an to ensure that he would not be the focus of any further intrigue and threat, where he died in 761. The father was then canonised as Zongming Huangdi\n\nthough usually he is still referred to as Ming Huang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "160\n\nThe Emperor\n\nTang Ming Huang was the third son of the fifth emperor of the Tang. His personal name was Li Longji [AD 685-761], though popularly known as the Third Son, San Lang. He is now the patron of actors and professional musicians, worshipped backstage by Fukienese devotees in Taiwan and several places in South-east Asia. Prior to 1949 he was also revered throughout northern China as the patron of actors, actresses and musicians, with incense burnt before his altar prior to every performance [Photograph 1].\n\nHe succeeded his father who abdicated in his favour in 713, and ruled the country fairly. The first part of his reign approximated that of his great-grandfather, Tai Zong, in prosperity and glory. He began by economising and by 740 the country was reasonably prosperous. Being a man of the arts he surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Bo. It quickly became the most glorious period of Tang culture. He loved song and dance and he had built within his palace an area known as the Pear Orchard, Liyuan, to bring together the best actors and actresses, dancers and singers in all China. The title, Liyuan, later became a common designation for anyone who sang, acted or danced professionally.\n\nMany myths are particularly centred on Tang Ming Huang - and stories about him abound describing him as a very sociable man, fond of music and drama, with men and maidservants being trained as actors and musicians for whom he composed tunes. He also founded a school of dramatic art.\n\nThere are at least six temples in Taiwan dedicated to this deity, in Taipei, Taichung, Changhua and Kaohsiung where his festival is celebrated on or about the 24th of the sixth lunar month.\n\nAs a deity he is known by a number of titles, including Ming Huang Dadi 明皇大帝; Lao Lang Ming Huang 老郎明皇; Lao Lang 老郎; and in Beijing Xi Shen, the God of Happiness. In Sichuan, however, his images were simply referred to as the Bodhisattva Prince, Taizi Pusa and, as elsewhere, were worshipped backstage, principally to prevent actors and actresses from bursting out into uncontrolled laughter or forgetting their lines. He is the patron in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215320, "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-2001", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "45\n\nChina, Hainan would appear to have been neglected. Before 1949 Hainan was an area which few foreigners appear to have visited, though for much of the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th foreign consuls, customs officers and traders endured their existence, particularly in the northern port of Haikou (Hoihow), the American Presbyterian Mission, the first body of missionaries, only began its work 'saving' Hainan in 1881. Despite the latter, there would seem to be no missionary writings describing the temples and \"idols\" as did Father Doré in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, Shryock in Anqing and others across northern and central China. The old church in Qingzhou Fu, some three miles inland and to the west of Haikou, by 1890 had been converted into a Temple of Longevity, and another church elsewhere in Hainan, had also become a Chinese temple known as the Temple of the Cross.\n\nIn 1882 Mr Jeremiasen, an independent Danish missionary, made an unmolested circuit of Hainan on foot 'proving the friendliness of the people.' He then crossed the island north to south and east to west. Westerners who travel through \"darkest\" China today and write or talk about being the first foreigners within some remote spot, forget or overlook such Christian missionaries who roamed across all areas of China more than a century and a half ago. Even today there are foreign tourists who regard themselves as among the first to set foot in the more remote areas of Hainan. However, what Jeremiasen and others have overlooked are the individual Portuguese and German missionaries whose graves, dated in the 1680s, have been identified on Hainan. Most foreign visitors today also forget or, more likely, have probably never even heard of the eminent Chinese banished to the island during the early days of the periods of forced settlement of the 13th and 14th centuries.\n\nAn aspect of journeys to Hainan a century or so ago, now also long forgotten, was the basic problem of getting ashore from the steamer from Hong Kong. This was often the worst part of the journey. The steamer from Hong Kong touched bottom some three miles or so out to sea leaving the trip ashore to the main port of Haikou by shallow draft sampan across mud flats under less than a foot of water. This required bargaining with the laoda [captain] of one of the many sampans which offered their services to tranship passengers ashore. The native boatmen in a very round-about trip through the intricate channels, sliding over", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215830, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "62\n\nOH: USAAF, 1944), p.178 (hereafter referred to as USAAF). The higher the altitude of an airfield, the softer the surface of its runway, and/or the heavier the B-29, the longer its runway had to be for the aircraft to take off. Kai Tak was at sea level, but its runway was soft-surfaced for much of the war.\n\n37 The B-29 runways that were constructed in India and China were 8,500 feet (2,591 metres) long and hard-surfaced. See Keith Wheeler and the editors of Time-Life Books, Bombers Over Japan (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982), p.99.\n\n38 Peter Pigott, Kai Tak: A History of Aviation in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1990), p.67. After the war, the press reported that the Japanese had cleared some residences and hills around Kai Tak to make way for its expansion. See SCMP, September 11, 1945 (Morning Edition), p.2.\n\n39 (1) Eather, p.53. (2) Hong Kong Government Information Services, Hong Kong Airport (Hong Kong: s.n., 1962), p.27. (3) Wings Over Hong Kong: a Tribute to Kai Tak: an Aviation History, 1891-1998 (Hong Kong: Odyssey, 1998), p.131. The Japanese apparently had a scheme to extend one of Kai Tak's runways to about 5,580 feet (1,700 metres), which still didn't allow much latitude for B-29 operations. See \"Japanese Scheme for Extension of Kai Tak,\" 7 Nov 42: Series 10/38; WIZ (Waichow Intelligence Summary) Vol.2; Nos.27-72 (Excluding Nos. 35, 37, 64, 65), April 1943-April 1944; Ride Papers.\n\n40 Wheeler, p.39, 44, 59, 63.\n\n41 Wheeler, p.44.\n\n42 USAAF, p.178. The U.S. also faced a rubber shortage after Japan gained control over most of the world's natural supplies. But it eventually produced synthetic substitutes.\n\n43 USAAF, p.180.\n\n44 According to temperature data available for the three most recent years before the war in Hong Kong (1937-1939), early morning (1-5 AM) temperatures began to approach 75°F by late April, and didn't dip well below this figure until mid- to late November. See HKRO, Meteorological Results, 1937, 1938, and 1939 (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1938, 1939, and 1940) for hourly temperature readings for each day of the year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216479, "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-2003", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "188\n\nnight instead of walking the poop wet through with it blowing and raining hard. This week I began to learn to steer the ship. This week too we crossed the line.\n\nJuly 10th. My Dear Mother, You will have heard this sad, sad news long before my letter reaches you. I am very much afraid dear Mother that it has nearly killed you. It was a terrible blow for me, much more so for you. On Saturday morning July 2nd when I came on deck dear Father was looking quite well and walking the poop as usual. At II o'clock he was at the wheel and suddenly took ill and he fell down the companion ladder and hit his head. The 2nd Mate and David were there as soon as he fell and David came running forward and told the Mate what had happened. The Mate and I immediately ran aft and found my dear Father at the bottom of the ladder with blood coming from his head. The Mate immediately stopped the blood and got him into bed, bathed his head with cold water and poured a teaspoonful of brandy down his throat and did everything a man could to bring him to. But dear Father did not come to. His heart beat violently. He laboured very much in breathing and he shook violently, I had one of his hands in mine to keep it warm. After being in bed a while he grew warm and we thought he was better but he never opened his eyes or spoke and his breath became shorter and he laboured more. At a quarter past one our dear poor Father died without the slightest expression of pain quite calm. He never spoke or opened his eyes once the whole time. Anything that could be done was done to save him but God took him away from us. He had a very calm and peaceful expression on his face and I kissed him once for each of us and cut a lock of his hair from his head which I enclose in the letter for you dear mother.\n\nThe Mate, David and myself were by his bed when he died and when the 2nd Mate, carpenter, steward and sailmaker called in to see him everybody cried. The men forward were deeply touched. Something with me tells me that dear father has gone to heaven and is in a far better place.\n\nThe Reigate arrived at Madras some five weeks later on Sunday 7th August and Captain Samuel Plant's body was taken ashore in the afternoon and buried at six o'clock the following morning in the cemetery behind the Sailor's Home. Cornell Plant's letter goes on to describe these events and his feelings about them including his determination to continue his life at sea. Harriet Plant put the lock of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]