[ { "id": 204544, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "20\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nBut the interest of the cemetery is not by any means confined to biographies of those buried there. There are the histories of the ships that brought them there, clippers, men-of-war, whalers and countrymen (ships engaged in the \"country trade\", a term usually applied to the trade which had grown up between India, South East Asia and Canton); there are the interesting professions they followed as merchants, missionaries, military men, beach-combers, diplomats or opium traders; there are the mysteries behind the nameless memorial or the undecipherable or partly decipherable inscription, or the absentees. Of these latter we know of at least two, whose sojourns in our cemetery were but temporary; they are Lord Napier, whose final resting place is amongst his shepherds in Ettrick, Scotland, and Thomas T. Forbes, who is with his family in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, leaving his companion, who was drowned with him in a typhoon, alone in Macao.\n\nMay I conclude my talk this evening by now completing the quotation with which I began?\n\nThere are worse ways of occupying leisure than\n\ntours on foot through noteworthy cemeteries,\n\nso long as one does not overstay one's welcome,\n\nand by praying that I have not detained you too long this evening in the restful peace of the Old Protestant Cemetery of Macao.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204758, "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-1964", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "J PUBL \n\n50 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nThe Yao are reported to practise a type of agriculture based on cutting a clearing in the forest, burning the trees, hoeing in the ash and planting a crop of hill paddy, sweet potatoes or peanuts, none of which require irrigation. At the time we speak of, it is questionable whether they were yet cultivating peanuts, which had been introduced into Southeastern China by the Arabs not long before. Chinese books of reference speak of Foochow50 as the place of introduction of the peanut, but in view of the importance of this bean in the ecology of South China, it would be an advantage if Chinese botanists could collaborate with historians to fix the date and point of introduction and to trace the spread of its cultivation over the rest of South China, where it is now the principal oil plant. The sweet potato, also nowadays a vital crop in South China, is likewise an importation, but it comes from the other direction, i.e. from Central America across the Pacific. \n\nIt is quite certain that the Yao were one of the two pre-Chinese people living on the hills of this territory: and it is almost a certainty that many of our present inhabitants are their descendants. In previous studies I have already listed non-Chinese words preserved in local place names. I attempted a number of such identifications in my introduction to T. R. Tregear's Gazetteer of Hong Kong Place Names. Some of my conjectures have been since confirmed and I think many of them were sound; but there is a remarkable reluctance on the part of local Chinese scholars to admit that many of the people now living here can be of indigenous origin, or that their languages and place names can retain words from pre-Chinese languages.1 110 This attitude of mind is the reason why we are now missing so many of the pieces in our puzzle; Chinese scholars have shown remarkably little interest in the identification of the various non-Han peoples of China and their languages, betraying a tendency to group them in large heterogeneous assemblages, and to treat their languages merely as a collection of words, with no attempt to study the way those words were arranged and the way in which the languages expressed ideas which are not found in Chinese thought. This last, however, is a very common fault in the study of languages, and appears to have communicated itself even to those who have been busy inventing electrical translation machines.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204764, "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-1964", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "56 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nwhere the sea has been receding, it should be possible to find sites for excavation which are further away from the sea than they were when occupied. If one such can be found, it might be possible to uncover the whole settlement (whereas hitherto we have had to be content with the inland fringe of it) and thus to learn more of how these people lived before their way of life was disturbed. The area between the present Castle Peak Bay and Lau Fau Shan,79 particularly the re-entrants (which 1,000 years ago were bays) on the eastern side of Castle Peak and Tai Tau Shan,42 seems to afford the greatest promise. \n\nAssociated with the seashore sites, but also to be found on all the hills, are curious inverted conical pits variously described as kilns and vats. Their use has never been satisfactorily explained. These also should be plotted. I would be surprised if the plotting of all these objects: pits, stone walls, graves, standing stones, shore-side occupied sites and pre-Chinese irrigation channels, did not indicate that the inhabitants whom I have described throughout, in deference to tradition and to Chinese records, as of four kinds did not prove to have been after all one people. The fact that a people who grew cereals and roots on the hills and hunted wild game in the forests did not possess a technique for draining and cultivating mangrove swamps is no proof that they did not know how to catch fish; and the fact that our present boat people grow no crops and have for some centuries specialised in fishing and manufacturing salt does not mean that their earlier ancestors could not have hunted on the hills as well as in the sea, and there grown the cereals they needed to supplement a fish diet, and the roots from which they produced the preservative dye which they still use for their nets and sails. They must have had access to the forest to obtain the wood from which they built their boats, the skins from which they made their sails, and the gut from which, I suppose, they made their bowstrings and other fastenings. They may have done all this by friendly barter (I have suggested elsewhere that a group of place names including Yau Ma Tei,65 Ma Yau Tong90 and Ma Liu Shui could have been places where by convention the people of the shore and the people of the hills met to exchange their necessities), but the possibility that they were all one people", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204767, "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-1964", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n59\n\non the land with indigenous wives, probably seized from the boat people; a process of assimilation which was repeated all over South China and accelerated by the disorder of the times which prevented their embarking on the precarious journey to their ancestral homes, which their own tradition places in the province Kiangsi,58\n\nThis then is the picture, or the jigsaw puzzle. Subsequent work by those more qualified than I may show that I have put some of the pieces in the wrong place; may show indeed that some of the pieces are in the wrong puzzle, since I have indicated that there is yet no certainty whether we have one jigsaw puzzle or four. There are many Chinese sources into which I have dipped but which I have not thoroughly sifted. There are other Chinese sources to which I have not been able to obtain access: most important of these are the earlier editions of the San On Yuen Chi,123 to which the 1819 edition makes several tantalizing references, but reproduces only their prefaces. I have suggested how the geologists can contribute to this study. The botanists and agronomists should be able to reconstruct a general picture of the local flora a thousand years ago before removal of the forest cover started the rapid erosion which has defaced these hills. The archaeologists should do some really intensive work between Castle Peak and Mong Tseng. The Arabists and Indologists should contribute accounts of the voyages made by traders during the Tang139 and Sung132 dynasties. And the book collectors should hunt for the previous editions of the San On122 and Tung Kwun31 gazetteers.124 The first edition of the San On Yuen Chi123 was that of Chan Kwols of which the preface was written by Yau Tai-kin64 the sixth holder of the office of chi yuen.161 He wrote it in 1587 at which time there must have been several villages which preserved their former language, dress and customs which could not have failed to be noted. Even the list of Hakka149 and Cantonese villages in this and the intervening editions would teach us something about the subsequent pattern of occupation and agriculture and thereby give us some clues to other problems, such as the origin of the Hakka, which may have a bearing on the subject with which I have dealt today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206244, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36 \n\n55 \n\naverage of one in a fortnight! Moreover, I can't swim a stroke. Thus, the house-top is my esplanade and Champ-de-Mars every morning and evening; and seriously, the view from it is very interesting at least to an eye not palled by long repetition of it. All Canton, the City, and the Suburbs (far more extensive than it) stretches away below you on the north, with its strange curved roofs and gables, such as you always see painted in China tea-cups; and now and then the pinnacles of a joss-house, or temple, with tall flag-staffs; until the eye takes in a most beautiful hill some 2 to 3,000 feet high, and perhaps three miles away from you in a straight line. There stands an enormous Pagoda at the foot of this hill, towering prodigiously many stories above all the trees and houses around it, and with a tree (which looks a merest shrub) growing on its summit. That hill is the finest thing here; I wander over it—I mean in spirit—every morning that day breaks on it drawing out all the tints of the scene; there are half a dozen fissures in one part, which I look on as thunder-rifts; and a delicate whitish line creeps up one shoulder, which I take to be a path-way for those happy, happy, thrice-enviable and most-favored Chinamen who can walk thereon without being bamboo'd to death for the offence! The river opposite the Factories joins another great branch only a few yards higher up, and the remote shores of the united stream above, show yellow with harvest, and painfully rural to the poor bird in the cage. The country there stretches away into hills too, but perhaps 15 or 20 miles away, a long and very high range—several indeed—which break the horizon nearly half its circuit. Down the River, i.e., to the S.E., the stream curves like an S, and thereby, from your point of view, a forest of masts, of all heights and sizes ever used in boats, is visible in one coup-d'oeil, such as I never saw before. I should not say boats, though; for most of them are the masts (single sticks!) of junks from 2 to 600 Tons Burden. Their number is perfectly prodigious. You see the horizon beyond and near this, striped with one or two delicate lines of alternate land and water from the windings of the noble river, the last line of all being perhaps ten miles off. It is over there the sun rises to you, else you could not see that tiny thread of water inlaying the meadows. Not a single European ship is in sight here, and only a few sailing boats and wherries. All the European ships are down at Whampoa reach, some 12 or 13 miles away.\n\n—\n\n—\n\n—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206851, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "122\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nwho her father really was, and Yuen Leung was very troubled as to what to do with her. However when she became of marriageable age the elders of the village advised him to marry her to his son Tsz Ming (A) which, as she was quite willing, he did.\n\nMeanwhile the fighting between the Tartars and the Sungs had ceased. Peace was made, and Hong Wong had now become the Emperor Ko Tsung, who ordered that enquiries should be made concerning his daughter. All the district officers throughout the Empire were instructed to help and when the official notice was posted up in the vicinity of Kam T’in, Tsz Ming was much frightened at having married the princess without the emperor's permission. But the princess said, “Do not fear. My life was saved by the Tang family and I have willingly become your wife. Go and tell the District officer who I am.\" When the official heard the news he came at once and did obeisance to the Princess, and then sent a petition to the Emperor. Ko Tsung ordered Tsz Ming and his wife to come to the capital, where they stayed for about a year, but the princess pined for Kam T'in and begged to be allowed to return to the place of her adoption. So the Emperor let her go, but first he bestowed on her many wharves in the district as \"powder expenses\"; and a large area of hill and forest land as \"toilet expenses\". On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the 8th year of Siu Hing (2) A.D. 1138 they started back for Kam T’in. When they got there, the princess gave orders that the hills and woodlands should be thrown open to the public, so that anyone could make graves on her land without paying tax. In the 51st year of Hong Hei (‡) of Tsing dynasty, A.D. 1712, when the princess' grave was repaired, her dowry was still being used by the country people for a free burial ground. In the 5th year of K'in Lung (†) A.D. 1169, the princess gave thirty-six wharves to the Tsz Fok Monastery (*) the oldest monastery in Tung Kwun. Among these wharves was that of Shek Kit (5) near Shek Lung. When the history of Tung Kwoon was revised in the 12th year of Sung Ching (†††) of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1639, only three out of ten of the wharves were mentioned as still being in use, but Shek Kit is still in existence now.\n\nIn some books the princess is referred to as Sung Tsung Kei (***). Sung being the name of the dynasty, Tsung meaning royal, and Kei high lady. She is known, however, in the Tang family as Wong Kwu (2), the Emperor's Aunt, as her nephew became", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208153, "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "176 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\n(usually brought in by boat at extra cost) to some lofty spot to which the only access was by hill path and sometimes not even that. 23. Other visitors to the hills at the grave worshipping festivals include persons from outside the Colony who, on account of old and important ancestral graves located by geomancers in time past, have long been accustomed to make the annual pilgrimage. This tradition has been eroded by the establishment of the People Republic in 1949, though some persons have continued the visits intermittently. In one case known to me at Lo Wai, Tsuen Wan, where the grave was repaired in the Hsien Feng reign (1851-1861), and the people came from beyond Sham Chun Market in Po On county adjoining the New Territories, the family have not come for many years now. The geomantic name of the site is \n\nPre-Chinese Occupation \n\nNE \n\n24. Another aspect of the mountain is its pre-Chinese connections. These are now very difficult to ascertain and one would need to comb the hillside for evidence of pre-Chinese occupation such as field systems and irrigation works, and look closely into the place names of localities, fields and villages, to see which of them contain signs of pre-Chinese words, together with the nature and location of the earth shrines of the area. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett has done a lot of work generally on this subject and has prepared a name list for 150 words which he thinks descend from and relate to pre-Chinese languages in the Hong Kong area (see JHKBRAS 14 (1974), \n\nResources \n\n25. Resources of the mountain included mineral deposits — the largest prewar wolfram workings were at Shing Mun (Davis: 116) \n\nand kaolin clay used in the pottery kilns long established at Wun Yiu near Tai Po (JHKBRAS 15 (1975) 291-2). Other clay was specially used for mud bricks, notably at the village now known as Ta Chuen Ping near Upper Kwai Chung. Another resource, long since exhausted, was the forest trees used for charcoal burning, once a flourishing local industry all over the New Territories. The memory of both trees and of this old occupation remains at one of the place names at Shing Mun, known as Tan Chong (炭廠) or 'charcoal factory', in which there were some houses already abandoned from the early years of this century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209862, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "99\n\nthe men were then landed and stormed a battery of thirty guns (which had been silenced by the Auckland) and spiked the guns.\n\nThe junks were all armed, one carrying sixteen, the others twelve guns each, besides a large number of 2-pounder swivels, jingalls, and matchlocks, and plenty of ammunition; the latter igniting rendered the destruction of junks complete\n\nIn an affair of this nature under a heavy cross-fire from five batteries and four junks, some loss must occur. [Two officers were wounded and one seaman killed and five wounded.]\n\nThe enemy must have suffered severely, the boarders having turned the junks' guns on them as they were escaping to the shore.\n\nOn the 16th [next day] I directed the Eaglet to return to Hong Kong; the junks were still burning, but at the time of Auckland's departure (at noon) nearly consumed.\n\nThe enemy have thus lost five fine vessels of their fleet.\n\nTung Chung now is purely agricultural: it has twenty-nine villages and hamlets, while behind it is a large area of forest, including one of the few remaining patches of ancient woodland.\n\nAbove the plain is a mountain ridge reaching 2,700 feet in height. On its summit is a line of bungalows put up by missionaries for summer holidays. On the flank of Lantau Peak across the plain is a Buddhist monastery, whose head has recently built a bridge across the Ma Wan Creek, and a small jetty for boats.\n\nThe old yamen of the Taipang commander's subordinate still exists, and is one of the places where the District Officer can hold a small debts court.\n\nFrom Tung Chung a road goes over the hills to Tai O via a high plateau full of Buddhist retreats, temples, and fasting halls, often used by Chinese\". There has been a big increase in the numbers of these Buddhist retreats since the so-called \"anti-superstitution\" campaign in China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210733, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "67\n\nmore can be planted. . . . The Fernery in Glenealy Ravine in the New Garden, which was made about five years since, has succeeded admirably.\n\nThe administration of the gardens also became independent of the Survey Department and emerged as the Botanical Department.\n\nMr. Ford also botanised widely in the area and started a collection of plant specimens as soon as he arrived in Hong Kong. The Herbarium was formally established in 1878 and in 1881 he started a series of botanical expeditions to southern China for the purpose of obtaining more knowledge of its then little known flora, especially the economic plants.\n\n\"The living plants introduced to cultivation by this expedition contain many things of very much interest which will be valuable acquisitions to (the) gardens.\"\n\nIn addition to his duties in the Botanic Gardens, Ford also had a much wider outlook on the flora of Hong Kong and in a letter to T. Thistleton-Dyer F.R.S. (dated 16/8/81) he illustrates his interest in the conservation of the natural flora on the hillsides:\n\n\"From the commencement of this year I have had two 'Forest Guards' at work whose special duty is to patrol the Island and prevent wanton destruction of trees and shrubs by grass cutters and other people. They are doing excellent service and I believe that we shall in consequence, get many more new plants. There are many shrubs growing on the hills which are unknown to me, and which, I believe have never been found in flower because of their having been so frequently cut down that they could not attain sufficient size to flower, but which, now that they are being preserved, will be able to flower.\"\n\nIn his report to Kew 1882 Ford estimated that about one-tenth of Hong Kong (including the New Territories, Lantao and Lamma islands) was planted. \"There might be about 25,000,000 trees", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211043, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "79\n\nty] there are those who occasionally meet him in the forest. Not long ago there was somebody who traveled through Luofu and had to stay at night among the rocks. He then saw a man without clothes covered only with long hair. Thinking it must be a saint he approached him, saluted twice and asked about the way [Tao]. The man didn't even bother to look at him. He laughed with a sound that shook the trees and answered by chanting the verses: \"When the clouds arrive the hundred thousand mountains move. When the clouds retire the heaven is of but one colour, I repeatedly burst into long laughters. About the deserted mountain, the autumn moon turns white.” It was Yeren.\n\nThe key fact about Yeren in this account is that unlike Ge Hong and his wife, who ascended to heaven after ingesting the cinnabar, Huang Yeren somehow failed to achieve this, even with the cinnabar pill left behind for him by Ge Hong. In one version of this story which we heard at Mt. Luofu, there had been only half a pill left, and this accounted for his failure to levitate. (Perhaps this version is designed to deflect the implication that even with a whole pill of cinnabar, Yeren was not sincere enough or worthy enough, and hence could not levitate). We also heard a version of the story in which Yeren was late for the ascension because he was drunk (a version indignantly denied by others in a later conversation).\" In any case, Yeren became immortal but was stuck for some centuries on earth. He seems to have spent his time wandering in the hills, and engaging in the kind of behaviour which gained him the reputation of “the wild man.\" There are no biographical details available which might identify Yeren as an actual historical figure, although it is quite plausible to suppose that at least some Taoist hermits in the Mt. Luofu area were recluses, seldom seen, whose odd behaviour could have contributed to the development of a myth similar to that of Yeren, the wild man.\" In any case, this figure eventually was credited with several healings.\n\n16\n\nIn appears that there was a second historical Huang who became a Taoist hermit at Luofu about 500 years after the time of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211201, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "237\n\njoining in our manly games might as well hope to see them reducing themselves to the grade of the despised 'Tanka' or boating population by indulging in rowing; or forfeiting all claim to the calm dignity of a Chinese gentleman by masquerading in jockey costume in a horse race; or outraging all sense of Celestial propriety and decency by whirling in the sensuous waltz clasping the tender waist of some sweet thing of the opposite sex.'\n\nThe first signs of a change, however, were taking place. Around the time these views on the aversion of the Chinese to European sports were being written, a Hongkong Chinese youth was being awarded the first prize at the English Public Schools gymnastic competition at Aldershot.\n\nThe recipient Wei On was a student at Cheltenham College. His picture and an account of the event appeared in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News with the comment: \"We do not know how it will strike the modern gymnast that a native of the Celestial Empire is able to take the tuck of all public school forms, but there is no getting away from the fact that he is a wonderfully strong and finished worker, and thoroughly well earned the silver medal.\"\n\nIt seems the young student had not only adopted new forms of exercise but also had a new hair-style for a Chinese of his day. It was said that from the sketch in the magazine: “Wei On does not appear to wear the queue.\"\n\nAfter finishing his course at Cheltenham, the young athlete went on to study at Christ Church College, Oxford, and then in 1897 qualified to practise as a solicitor. He returned to Hongkong and was with the firm of Messrs. Johnson, Stokes and Master. He died in 1907. His brother, Sir Poshan Wei (Wei Yuk), served on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1914.\n\nThe next generation of the Wei family also produced a noted athlete. Wei Wing-lok, son of Sir Poshan and a St. Stephen's Old Boy, won the world doubles tennis championship at Forest Hills, New York.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211891, "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": 306, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "281\n\ninhabitants of the tropics which I encountered.\n\nAs the moon rose the scene was grand beyond description, and the sailors' voices as they pulled the ropes echoed far and wide among the forest covered hills in the distance, and far away over the calm clear water, which reflected the moon's rays. The splendour of the moonlight and stars is far beyond what is ever seen in England.\n\nOn the following afternoon we began to move a little, and I made several drawings of the land as we went past. Never did I see such a fertile island as Java, even at the distance. Its lofty hills were partly hidden by clouds, yet where they could be seen they were covered with trees up to their very summits.\n\nOn the next day we were fairly in the Strait of Sunda, and could easily see Java on the right and Sumatra on the left. One peak in Sumatra called Krakatoa was in sight for a day or two. It was dreary work to sit on deck under the awning all day long, and see how slowly we moved. About noon the sea breeze blew toward the shore, and at five in the evening the land breeze blows from the island. No one who has not experienced the land breeze, after a hot day, can imagine how cool and refreshing it is, and it has such a delightful perfume which it brings with it from the land, that you seem in the midst of a blooming flower garden. In the early morning it is just about the same.\n\nAt last we sighted Anjer Hill in the evening, and in the morning I rose at four o'clock to see the village as we passed it, which however we did not do till nearly noon. The sun rose behind the hills, and was the grandest sight I ever saw,\n\nAbout eight o'clock the steward came and told me a boat was alongside, so I went on deck to see it. It came off from the observatory and lighthouse on shore, which we saw very plainly, and the headman had a paper for the ship to fill up. There were plenty of fruit and provisions which the man brought on his own account. He and his crew were Javanese, and their appearance was not more prepossessing than their language, which is a strange conglomeration of harsh sounds as they speak it. They were all but naked. Every rag that one of them had on was hardly so large as a pocket handkerchief. Only fancy a fellow to come stalking on board in such a condition. The captain's wife instead of acting with modesty in such a case, was one of the foremost to go", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213577, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "143\n\nTHE USE OF HILL LAND FOR VILLAGE FORESTRY AND FUEL GATHERING IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG.\n\nRICHARD WEBB\n\nWhile recent economic and social changes in the New Territories of Hong Kong have wrought irrevocable changes to the rural villages, until perhaps twenty years ago, villagers appeared to have used the hillsides much as they pleased, even though some of the larger clans claimed payments for hill land. The villagers of Cheung Sha Wan, west Kowloon, for example, paid regular sums in silver to the Tangs of Kam Tin for their forest land. The Liu family of Sheung Shui was leasing forest land to the villagers of Long Keng under a deed of 1867 (Hayes 1983). However, hill and forest land was usually annexed by the nearest village. Each village had its forestry lot, apportioned to families according to natural boundaries. There was a major difference in people's minds between land under pine tree cultivation (Pinus massoniana) and other hill land used for fuel gathering, grass cutting, and grazing. The British administration carried over the common usage of hill areas for pine cultivation into their village forestry licenses, or \"t'sung shaan p'aai\", which allowed villagers to occupy Crown Land for the purpose of growing these trees on which they relied for fuel, poles, and timber. It was the 'pine hills' that mattered more to the village families, even though they possessed no proper title to them, save under British rule, an undifferentiated notional share in the village license through being part of its community. Like houses and fields, hillside plots could be passed from father to son.\n\nDaley (1975) provides an account of forestry activities, although it is not clear if this refers to village forestry, in which 211,015 trees were planted in 1880, rising to 1,157,609 in 1883. The British administration established the Botanical and Forestry Department in 1880, with the objective of planting the badly eroded areas and water catchments. From 1881 to 1891, an average of around 647,223 trees were planted every year, of which 95% was Pinus massoniana, a local pine which can establish on very poor soil. By 1938, 70% of Hong Kong island had been afforested with government plantations, and 200 km2 of the New Territories were occupied by leased forestry lots used as a source of firewood. By this time, the government plantations were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "146\n\nto get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!'.\n\nAlso according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, \"nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years.\" Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside'.”\n\nTea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green \"cloud and mist tea\", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et al. (1988).\n\nHill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213581, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "147\n\nincense or joss sticks. According to Lo (1959, quoted in Iu, 1983), these trees were introduced into Guangdong Province from Vietnam in the Tang dynasty (619-907 AD) and were planted in large numbers in the New Territories during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD). In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned throughout China for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories) (Chan, 1989). In the Kuang-tung hsin-yu (Ch’u, 1974), it is noted that many people in Tung-kuan made their fortune from Kuan-heung (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. Incense trees were very suitable for the decomposed granite soils of the area and were particularly grown in the area of Shatin and the lower part of Lam Tsuen valley, whose name means \"forest village\", and around Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau. Interestingly, Schofield (1983) referring to the fine fung shui wood at Sha Lo Wan adds “In a suitable light, ancient log slides can be seen running straight down the steepest hills on this stretch of coast\", although whether these have anything to do with the incense trade may never be known.\n\nThe successful cultivation of the incense tree depended on three conditions, the suitability of the soil, adoption of proper methods of cultivation and the mastering of tapping and cutting methods for the collection of resin, which had a medicinal use. The general name of the varieties of incense produced in Tung Kwun, Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those times, was \"Kuan-heung\" (Iu, 1983).\n\nThe logs were collected at Tsim Sha Tsui from where it was shipped by small boats to Shek Pai Wan near present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, where it was re-shipped onto Chinese seagoing junks to Canton, SE Asia and as far away as Arabia.\n\nIt has been suggested that the cultivation of and trade in incense trees gave rise to the name of Hong Kong (meaning incense harbour). \"Little Hong Kong, or Heung-kong-wai, is said to have been so-called on account of the quantity of Pak-miu-heung-shu then growing there, the wood of these white-wood fragrant trees is called \"Nga-heung\" (i.e. fragrant wood white as a tooth), is odoriferous when burnt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213585, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "151\n\nRecent Developments\n\nThe Government formally re-adopted a forestry policy in 1953, the aims of which were to afforest the waste hills of the Colony, many of which were eroded and bare and as such were a threat to effective water catchment; to manage the forest so that it would produce a sustained yield of poles, fuel and small timber; to encourage private forestry and assist the villagers in the New Territories to establish and manage their plantations. By 1963 there were about 10,000 acres (4166 ha.) of Government plantations and around 2,000 acres (833 ha.) of Government-assisted village plantations. The erosion control planting in particular was often on a heroic scale, and it is this planting which characterizes much of Hong Kong's Country Parks today.\n\nAround this time, however, the programme was scaled down considerably. The village population was declining as people emigrated or moved to the urban areas; the demand for wood fuel was declining as alternatives became available; and the problem of hillfires was as serious as ever. In 1966-67, the area of Government coniferous forest alone which was burned was 1,265 acres (527 ha.), and village plantations and naturally regenerating woodland also suffered. From 1970 to 1985, the total number of trees killed exceeded those planted, and the total area affected by fire was nearly twice as large as the woodland cover in 1985. In the event, the total planting programme was reduced, and the replanting of village woodlands was discontinued (Daley 1975).\n\nFor better facilities for informal \"countryside\" activities, such as walking and observing wildlife, more effective management of the hill areas was required. In 1977, the first Country Park was established in Hong Kong (Neil & Harding, 1983). Some 40% of the area of Hong Kong and the New Territories, covering most of the upland area, had been designated under 21 Country Parks by 1979. Under the Country Parks Ordinance, all development within the Country Parks is strictly controlled. As well as the Parks, the conservation framework in Hong Kong includes 13 special areas and 37 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which are sites chosen for their rare flora, fauna, and geology, or because of special educational, archaeological, or historic interest.\n\nThe Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, which manage the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213905, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "231\n\nTHE HAN LIN ACADEMY AND A CHINESE DEITY\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Academy, Han Lin Yuan E, known to foreigners as the College of Literature or the Academy of the Forest of Pencils, was founded ca. 8th century AD and at any one time contained about five hundred of the most brilliant scholars of the Empire selected from the highest graduates at the national triennial examinations. Martin in his Lore of Cathay explained that those selected were in practice Chin-shih graduates who could pass a further examination called tien-shihPC, the palace examination. Their role was the advancement of learning generally, and included compiling dynastic histories, drafting and drawing up decrees, composing prayers for ceremonial occasions, drawing up patents for nobility and proposing posthumous titles for deceased emperors. They were, ex-officio, Imperial counsellors. The Academy also contained the Great Encyclopaedia of the Yung Lo emperor.\n\nThe Han Lin Academy formerly stood on the site which, in 1900 after the Boxer rebellion, became part of the extended British Legation. It had consisted of some twenty to twenty-five separate halls and was utterly destroyed in June 1900 by the Kansu Muslim soldiers of the Chinese provincial military force accompanying the Boxers, and commanded by General Tung Fu-hsiang1, in their attempt to burn down the besieged British Legation during the Boxer troubles. They only failed because the wind suddenly veered, saving the legation whilst the Academy was burnt to the ground.\n\nAdmission to the body was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar. Much has been written about the academic aspirations of individual Chinese down the ages and here we shall simply note the three degrees qualified at state examinations during dynastic times. They were the hsiu-ts'aiA, the county level examination which foreigners equate to the bachelor's degree, the chu-jenA, the provincial degree equated to the master's degree, and finally the chin-shih, the advanced scholar, at the national level triennial examinations, equated to the PhD. The one who passed out top of all in a year was known as chuang-yuan, the First Scholar of the Empire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214671, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "50\n\nbetter wooded - seven hundred years of cutting fuel by Nga Tsin Wai villagers on Lion Rock had left that mountain rather bare of wood). Their mountain could not supply all the fuel the village needed, given its bareness, and the villagers had to buy fuel in Kowloon Market from the hillside villages in Sha Tin which brought it there for sale. When the British closed the hills to wood and grass-cutting after the Lease, in order to undertake a major programme of re-afforestation (several hundreds of thousands of new trees were planted in the Kowloon Hills), this caused major problems to the villagers, since they now had to buy all their fuel (each village was given a fuel reserve to cut fuel from, but these had to be left until the trees there had grown). Illegal fuel gathering was endemic, and led to brawls between villagers and Forest Warders. One villager, at Ngau Chi Wan, according to the Ngau Chi Wan elders, shot and killed a Forest Warder who interrupted him while he was illegally cutting wood - the village, with considerable trepidation, decided to fee an expensive European barrister, who, to the village's vast delight managed to get him off (the village is still speaking of this 80 years later).\n\nVillagers often went down sick (the average age of death in the New Territories in 1911 was about 20 years of age, and those who survived to 16 could expect to die by about 45-50). There were several dozen doctors in Kowloon City, but they were very expensive, and the villagers rarely used them. The Lok Sin Tong would give free medicine as a charitable act in certain circumstances, and the villagers would sometimes go there, but usually the villagers used their own village remedies, using herbs from the hills, which were boiled up to make medicinal teas or used to make medicinal washes or baths. Not all the village families knew which herbs to pick - village families with this knowledge kept it secret as it represented good income. Some village remedies were fearsome - a tea made from boiling up bat-dung scraped from the floor of the Ancestral Hall was used to cure certain childhood fevers, for instance, and a split pod of wild black pepper was bound round the wrist of children seriously ill with malaria, and left there until it had eaten its way deeply into the flesh. Witchcraft, involving secret prayers and incantations, and strange ritual acts, was often used as well - there were several village women who knew how to \"call the spirits\" in this way.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215640, "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": 417, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "369\n\nThere was plenty of time apart from these formal occasions to look around Jehol. Macartney is full of admiration for the parks and countryside. He describes the West Park in the following words:\n\nIt is one of the finest forest scenes in the world, wild, woody, mountainous and rocky, abounding with stags and deer of different species, and most of the other beasts of chase not dangerous to man. In many places immense woods, chiefly oaks, pines and chestnuts grow upon perpendicular steeps and force their sturdy roots through every resistance of surface, and of soil, where vegetation would seem almost impossible. These woods often clamber over the loftiest pinnacles of the stony hills, or gathering on the skirts of them, descend with a rapid sweep, and bury themselves in the deepest valleys. There, at proper distances, you find palaces, banqueting houses and monasteries (but without bonzes) adapted to the situation and peculiar circumstances of the place, sometimes with a rivulet on one hand gently stealing through the glade, at others with a cataract rumbling from above, raging with foam, and rebounding with a thousand echoes from below or silently engulfed in a gloomy pool or yawning chasm. The roads by which we approached these romantic scenes are often hewn out of the living rock, and conducted round the hills in a kind of rugged staircase and yet no accident occurred in our progress, not a false step disturbed the regularity of our cavalcade, though the horses are spirited, and all of them unshod.\n\nAlthough Lord Macartney was unable to establish a close rapport with the first Minister who accompanied them, the journal, nevertheless paints a picture of them having an enjoyable and interesting time, in contrast to the usual descriptions of the visit which concentrate on the refusal to perform the kowtow and instead to go down on bended knee, an alternative which, after some discussion, was accepted amicably when it was agreed that it was sufficient to go down on one knee, but not to kiss hands.\n\nFinally the Embassy party left for 'Pekin' on 20th September and arrived on the 26th after an arduous journey, Macartney himself being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]