[
    {
        "id": 210524,
        "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": 131,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "112\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nested shrug: “Oh, he's just one of the fokis”. The surnames of those not related to local or locally known people were usually not known. Rationalised, the above believed-in characteristics were explained as the inevitable concomitants of having no stake in the family's business. Fokis took no risks and had no responsibilities, it would therefore be unrealistic to expect them to act responsibly. Above all, they were an expense. If only one had enough sons one need not employ outsiders. Fuk Hei's almost daily mutterings about his lazy fokis were balanced by his frank delight in the birth of his grandsons and unconcealed impatience with the very existence of his granddaughters. In this he was only more extreme and more outspoken than his neighbours. There was no disagreement. Sadly, he did not live to see the foki-less Kau Sai of the late 'sixties.\n\nFundamentally, these views reflected sound common sense economically and domestically. As we shall see in Chapter 8 purse-seine families with enough able-bodied members not to have to employ fokis did in fact make a better profit, and even in Kau Sai there was at least one example of a fisherman having to go out of business altogether because he could not meet his expenses. If only he had had enough sons, he said, this would not have happened. At the domestic level there were other hazards. The only scandal in Kau Sai for many years occurred during the last months of my stay in 1953. The hitherto barren wife of the harmless but sub-normal and allegedly impotent brother of [name withheld] was found to be pregnant. After fifteen years of marriage this was odd, to say the least. Imagination boggles at the practical difficulties in such small, crowded boats but the guilty parties confessed to having committed adultery in the presence of the unsuspecting husband. Perhaps fortunately, the [surname withheld] family have not needed to employ another foki since then.\n\n  \n    The official census of China in 1953 did not enumerate the Boat People as a separate group.\n  \n  \n    2 Ref: to Chan's and Ho En's books et al.\n  \n  \n    [Ch'en Hsü-ching, Tan-min ti yen-chiu (Shanghai, 1946), and, probably, Ho Ke-en, \"The Tanka or boat people in South China,\" F.S. Drake, ed. Proceedings of the Symposium on Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-east Asia and the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967), pp. 120-123.]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214311,
        "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": 169,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "133\n\nSeveral questions remained unanswered. We have no idea what happened to Mary, his first wife who is not referred to anywhere after 1911. R R Sowerby recorded their marriage and added that she bore him a son.... \"there is one son of the marriage, now [1956] living in Australia.'\n\nAnother aspect of Sowerby's life about which we know nothing is the financial side. His father is unlikely to have left him much if anything. He is unlikely to have earned much teaching in Tientsin or working for the wealthy American. His printing press would not have been cheap and his and his wife's collecting hobby again reflects an adequate income. He had several business directorships, was the manager of China Industries and, of course, had an income from the Journal. During his earlier years he did, of course, receive financial support from Mr Clark during expeditions. There is no doubt that there was money; perhaps brought into his life by his second wife? The 1938 and 1939 China Hong Kong Lists record the Sowerbys as living in the area beyond Bubblingwell, and near the American Country Club, at 34 Lucerne Road, a very upmarket address. Of tangential interest only, their neighbours at No. 33 were Captain and Mrs J V Davidson-Houston, the British Assistant Military Attaché, whose autobiography of the era was quite gripping.\n\nSowerby's works include The Naturalist in Manchuria, A Sportsman's Miscellany, Sport and Science on the Sino-Mongolian Frontier, A Naturalist's Notebook in China and, in joint authorship with Robert Clark, Through Shenkan.\n\nMy sources have included The Passing of the Manchus, Through Shen-Kan and also Sowerby of China, a privately produced short booklet published in Kendal in 1956 by R R Sowerby.\n\nPost Script\n\nSince submitting this article to the Editor of the Journal, I have been fortunate to come across the 'Obituary of Arthur Sowerby' written in 1954 by Professor Frank Drake of the University of Hong Kong who had the great advantage of having personally known Sowerby.' It has thrown a little more light on the life and times of our subject and I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]