[ { "id": 204406, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CURRENCY PROBLEMS\n\n29\n\nMemory calls to mind how that, in 1911, when I rode out of the Minshan range, which lies between the provinces of Kansu and Szechwan, I came out onto the great silk road of the Empire at Kwangyuan and travelled along it to Chengtu. On this road one found the most magnificent hotel accommodation then existent in the Empire. Yet in the best hotel I got the best room, together with all the rice I could eat at the evening meal, for forty cash a night—then the equivalent of about 3 cents U.S. currency!\n\nThis problem of the weight of the brass cash was well exemplified during the relief work I was called upon to direct in 1921 in North West China following the catastrophic earthquake that took place in December 1920. The quakes changed the whole face of nature in some fourteen counties and it became a matter of the utmost importance that we restored communications and set free the dammed up streams before break-throughs could cause flood devastation in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. To this end I had some fifteen thousand men at work in the 14 districts, engaged in this work of vital importance. They were paid on the basis of labour giving relief. On the largest undertaking at a place called Chin-Chiang-Yi I had four thousand eight hundred labourers. Of this number 10% were overseers or foremen gangers and received five hundred, or over, cash per day. The rank and file received a straight four hundred each. This means that the total weight of the cash required to meet a single day's pay on this one undertaking amounted to just over 12 tons deadweight. Something over 35 tons of cash was needed each day to pay the fifteen thousand men. Those were the days before motor transport in that part of the country and with the roads wiped out by the earthquake and pack-animals of all kinds exceedingly scarce the situation soon became impossible. After much thought I decided to put out my own note issue to meet the emergency. This though was easier conceived than executed. Neither paper supplies nor printing facilities were available. Therefore I had wooden blocks carved representing cash denominations of four hundred and five hundred cash. From these impressions were taken on strips of calico. The pull-offs were then oiled to prevent falsification. These notes were used in paying the workers who were able to use them for the purchase of food and necessities. The Chambers of Com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204717, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n11\n\nin the Pearl River estuary. This estuary formed a great bay on the eastern edge of which was Hong Kong and on the western edge the Portuguese city of Macao. Many of the ships whose cargo were destined for Canton stopped first at Macao and the city was the summer home of a considerable number of foreign merchants trading to Canton. The island of Lintin, consisting of little more than a sharp peak rising in the center of the bay, was the entrepôt of the opium trade. At the mouth of the Pearl River a series of forts known as the Bogue dominated the estuary, at its widest three miles and at its narrowest one mile.* European ships were required to stop at the fortifications and receive permission from the Chinese authorities to proceed up the Pearl River. They then sailed on thirty miles to Whampoa, an island in the river where they anchored and discharged their cargos which were taken by barges and smaller ships thirteen miles to Canton, Neither the depth of the river nor the Chinese government permitted the \"Foreign Devils\" to bring large ships to the provincial capital.\n\nOn March 28, 1839 Elliot agreed to turn over to Commissioner Lin the entire holdings of opium which he stated as 20,283 chests. As each major consignment of opium was delivered restrictions on foreigners were eased in regard to food supplies and employment of Chinese workers. By early May conditions outwardly had returned to normal, the embargo lifted and the river opened to commercial traffic. The first crisis was over but the basic problem had not been settled.\n\nThe journal of William Hunter covered the critical days of siege from March to May 1839. Hunter graphically presented the dangers and concerns of the western community in Canton yet more significantly he showed the necessary patterns of life which develop even in the midst of agonizing uncertainty. In short the routine of peace was exchanged for the routine of confinement. All in all, tension produced by a state of siege, rumor, and the anticipation of an unknown fury ready to be unleashed by Chinese authorities were key ingredients of the spirit of the beleagured foreign community in Canton in 1839. Hunter was not concerned about the morality of opium trade. Apparently he saw no justification whatsoever for the action of the Chinese government.\n\n* For places mentioned here and in the Journal see the map facing p. 27.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204798, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n89\n\ncoastal and riverine areas of Kwangtung were always receiving the unwelcome attention of pirates and robber gangs, right up to the end of the nineteenth century and well into the present one. The Taiping rebellion occupied the middle years of the century and, though it does not seem to have caused much bloodshed in the San On district, the large-scale struggle between Hakkas and Puntis in the parts of the province west of the Delta must have increased mutual antipathy between the two groups elsewhere. The Opium War and the War of 1857-60 saw increased foreign activity in Hong Kong waters. There were therefore both internal and external dangers to be expected on a small island settlement like Peng Chau at this time.\n\nInternally there was probably less trouble than there was potential. There are no recollections of fighting between the various groups of settlers on the island, though the Hoklos, who are generally credited with a more turbulent disposition than the Cantonese and Hakkas, perhaps in most cases having fewer possessions to make them cautious, sometimes fought among themselves.51 The Cantonese shops in the main street were ever fearful of robbery and violence and until ten years ago one could see the last of the protective gates known as ... There were three of them, barred every night, one at each end of Wing On Street and a third at the entrance to a large lane which left the main street at right angles and led to the Hakka settlement. Within living memory one or more watchmen were employed at night by the Kaifong and collected contributions from shops according to their size. These night defences were erected as much to keep out bandits and robbers coming from the sea as thieves or dissatisfied elements from within the island. There was, as Mr. CHUNG recalls, a small military post on the island in the late nineteenth century, but this would scarcely deter would-be assailants, especially if they were numerous and well-armed, and there can be little doubt that the first farmers and shopkeepers lived in genuine fear of such assaults. There are sufficient instances of violence from neighbouring places at various times to show that such fears were fully justified3½ and an isolated town like Peng Chau would have offered better prospects for pillage than a lonely village of farmers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205493, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "30\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\norganization as their only method for organizing members. There are certainly some overseas today which still retain the patriarch type of organization but several are run only by \"family heads\" (chia-chang). Such \"family\" groups have also fragmented to form separate off-shoots of the religion.\n\nThere is evidence also that for at least some of the vegetarian sects of China the dangers of running their organization through vegetarian halls was well recognised: that although sometimes such halls existed as centres for administration, for ordinary members meetings were more normally conducted in their own homes. De Groot writing on the Lung-hua sect in the town of Amoy (this sect is also an off-shoot of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao as I discovered from my researches) talks of sectaries meeting in each other's homes. Their vegetarian halls were rooms in private dwellings (this is still true of some of the \"halls\" in urban Hong Kong today but not all of them). He says, however, a patriarch lived in a residence which \"may be something like a Buddhist convent\".35\n\nTo what extent were ordinary members operating in their own homes residents of villages? Sects certainly appear to have operated in villages in this century. Several organizations found in villages of Ting Hsien, a district of Hopei and described as \"Taoist societies\", listed meeting days which are special meeting days for the Singapore sects I worked with and not celebrated by any other religious group I know of. Nine of these societies reported sixty-eight village organizations and one was represented in twenty-two villages. It was said probably half, possibly two-thirds, of the villages had one or more of the groups represented among their inhabitants.36\n\nBut was villager membership likely to have been common? And what about the leaders, what sort of men were they and where did they come from? A look at the sort of qualifications some sects demanded for rank-holders and satisfactions they offered to members might give us an idea.\n\nLeadership was not for the busy, first of all. Much study and practice of religious tasks was necessary for passing the required examinations and vegetarian sects required leaders to practise abstinence. Sometimes, when for example a proselytizing campaign was underway (sectarian records in Singapore show there were often such campaigns, and also campaigns aimed at reamalgamating...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205495, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "32\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nspectful of State authority in some cases (one sect I studied states in its rules first published in the nineteenth century that leaders should not bow to official power).\n\nThe evidence suggests in fact that leaders were low-ranking, failed, or would-be scholars; scholars not taking the official examinations for patriotic reasons; merchants with some education but no degree; individuals with some education but no permanent or permanent well-rewarded occupation - herbalists, geomancers, tutors and clerks, story-tellers and petty traders; and occasionally retired military or civil officials unable to exert much influence in local society. Several leaders in China of sects with off-shoots in Singapore are recorded as herbalists in the lists of patriarchs; one was a school-teacher, another a merchant, and a present-day leader in Malaya joining his sect in China was a retired military official who previously studied Economics in Japan. The rural area must have included a number of persons of such kinds. In Ting Hsien members of esoteric \"societies\" are said to have included old-type school-masters and men without regular occupations.38\n\nFor an ordinary peasant living in a village, membership of a sect however might involve difficulties and dangers. The \"kinship\" system and its obligations might conflict with obligations of actual kinship and membership of the village community. Sectarianism in its ritual aspects, too, would tend to clash with ritual aspects of ordinary social institutions more than in the case of Buddhism. Whereas it was common for people to have Buddhist rituals performed at funerals for example (although sometimes by teams of Taoist priests) the sectarians often had their own special rites. The sectarian who had them performed would risk revealing his membership. This might be dangerous unless a large percentage of village members were in the sect. Many sectarian religions were also more demanding than Buddhism both in cash contributions and time to be devoted to religious tasks. Farming would not leave much time for religious practices and ordinary home-life was not conducive to their performance. Some sectarian customs conflicted with Chinese custom to which the majority of peasants ascribed moreover: men and women met together for worship for example.\n\nThe literature suggests that in village communities it was again the unattached, particularly the elderly who joined such sects and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205502, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n39\n\n\"pseudo-kinship\" system. Taoism had a monastic organization which might again have drawn off some of the dissatisfied in normal Society. It might have attracted more men than women. It also provided teams of professionals who catered for the customary ritual needs of villagers and also possibly promoted the ritual activities of popular temples. A popular temple organization might become a means for community control, but it required religious activities of course in order to be popular with the ordinary people. Taoism also produced a number of societies specialising to some extent in problems of poverty: drug addiction and sickness for example.\n\nThe role of sects and secret societies at the village level was probably most complex. The local bonds of sectarians and possibly members of secret societies tended to conflict with those tying them to the wider organization of such bodies. In both cases organization tended to cut across village organization, however. Whether the bonds among members were on the whole disruptive or conducive to community order would depend largely on their activities at particular times which might vary with economic circumstances. The power and support sects sometimes gave to local communities might tend to reduce their control over an area ultimately, however.\n\nWhen actually rebelling sects might be expected to be less efficient than secret societies unless they made special organizational arrangements. The latter placed fewer religious restrictions on members and would attract ordinary peasants more as members and leaders. One of the main dangers of secret groupings which were religious, or used religion, to a village community, was that they tended to draw off the desperate and discontented into organizations cutting across such units as I have said, and thus divided the poor from the rich who usually controlled community affairs. While organizations like the sects provided other-world satisfactions and also housed unattached members outside the community they might be doing a village a service; but when members of such sects, and particularly of secret societies lived in their own homes they would create dual allegiances which could be dangerous. This was particularly so of the societies, of course, which did not provide outside accommodation away from the villages. Nevertheless such dangers themselves and also those from dislocated peasants for which they might provide a tighter organization.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205619, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "156\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nchildren, with lack of warmth and very strict control inside the family.\n\n3.7 The attitude to Western culture is quite favorable and more markedly so with the younger generation — though. The dangers of adopting Western ways of life are often stressed.\n\n3.8 Some quite extreme cases of traditional Chinese behaviour seem to persist, And if one would consider that such traits as lack of frankness, keen regard for \"face\", stereotypes in thought truly reflect part of the Chinese cultural heritage, then the novels show that this tradition still occupies a remarkably strong position.\n\n3.9 The high amount of immoral behaviour in the novels is more often related to persons of middle and upper class, especially of the older generation in the upper class.\n\n4.0 The attitude to law is markedly rejective. In contrast to 3.9 lower class persons and youths show much more opposition to law.\n\n4.1 Juvenile delinquency is related by the authors mostly to family problems, but is also traced to two simple \"theories\".\n\n- he or she is just a bad person, and\n\n- love is at the root of it all.\n\n4.2 Whereas several factors indicating socio-cultural stress are dealt with in the novels (suicide, juvenile delinquency), the authors seem to evade other problems which widely exist in Hongkong (e.g. mental disorder, drug addiction).\n\nHong Kong, December, 1967.\n\nKLAUS MADING\n\nDr. Mäding is Vice-Consul in the German Consulate General in Hong Kong. His doctorate is from the University of Cologne and was on the Chinese traditional law of succession. He hopes to publish his findings on the subject of this note.\n\nHONG KONG'S FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE*\n\nPeople sometimes ask where Hong Kong's first 'Government House' was situated and they usually receive the answer that it stood on the site now occupied by the Victoria District Court. The question is obviously of little historical importance today but it does provide an opportunity for an interesting trip to Hong Kong in the 1840's.\n\n* See map at Plate 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206008, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 83\n\nlanded in Cuba alive. Losses of up to 40% were not uncommon on such voyages, and it is not surprising that the emigrant trade was sometimes called the \"Pig Trade\".*\n\nMost of this emigration continued to be in sailing ships as the early steamships were not particularly popular in the emigrant trade; it was thought the passengers were not landed in such good condition as from sailing ships. The number of days at sea was not so important as the number and condition of the passengers landed. It is probable, however, that like the contemporary objections against carrying tea in steamships, the objections against steamships in the emigrant trade were mainly based on prejudice.\n\nBetween the 1840's and the 1870's, when emigration to South America and the West Indies was practically uncontrolled, conditions on the long passage from the China coast were as bad as those on the notorious 'Middle Passage' of the African Slave Trade. Sometimes they were so intolerable that the Chinese rose in revolt, and attempted to kill the captain and crew. Sometimes they would set the ship on fire, hoping either to capture the ship or escape in the confusion. Emigrant ships were usually provided with barricades on deck in those days, like those on convict ships, to prevent the coolies from attacking the officers' and crews' quarters, a device later adopted as an anti-piracy precaution on late 19th and early 20th century emigrant ships in the South-east Asian trades.\n\nDuring this same period Indians were emigrating to the West Indies, Mauritius, Fiji, and other places, and the Indian section of the emigrant trade has been studied more intensively than the Chinese. The Indian trade was not subject to such great abuses as the Chinese, as it was under more effective control at each end. Indians were also more amenable to discipline, so there was less danger of revolt on Indian emigrant ships. Their passivity and personal habits, however, made them more liable to illness, and the greatest dangers in the Indian emigrant trade\n\n* S. Wells Williams, Chinese Commercial Guide (Hong Kong, 1863) pp. 223-224, shows that coolies for the American countries were known as \"chü-tsai ## or pigs\" among contemporary Cantonese \"by an allusion to their [i.e. the Cantonese] mode of catching and carrying off swine in round baskets\". It is not known whether this phrase, which is still remembered today as 7, is of earlier origin. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206122, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMAP OF THE SUN-ON DISTRICT\n\n195\n\nParties are referred to the M. S. circulated. The intention is to have it engraved in London, provided a sufficient number of copies to pay the expense of publication are subscribed for. It is proposed to charge $5 per copy, and it is estimated that it will require a subscription list of 120 copies to liquidate the outlay of engraving, &c. Any surplus which may be left will be devoted to Missionary purposes.\n\nThe scope of this Map embraces an area of about Forty Five miles from North to South, and of about Sixty miles from East to West; that is to say, the District of Sun-on, whereof Nam-tao, is the departmental town. It is within the district of Sun-on that Hongkong and its dependencies stood prior to their cession, and the whole Coast line for many miles adjacent is under the jurisdiction of the Mandarin at Nam-tao.\n\nThe Map is the result of four years' labor, and is made entirely from the personal observations of the author. The dangers, the difficulties, and the hardships which the work has involved, have been very great. The district is excessively mountainous and as ocular demonstration had exclusively in all cases to be relied on, by reason of the worthlessness of native information, the fatigue attending travel has been no light matter. The villagers entertain the idea that their mountains contain auriferous deposits, and are very jealous of foreigners examining them. The consequence is that there is much difficulty in procuring the services of guides and still more difficulty in obtaining correct information on any point. In fact, the idea above alluded to proves a strong incentive to the conveyance of false information, and excites resistance to the progress of the traveller, besides creating great personal danger.\n\nUnder these circumstances, this Map has been produced, and it has been suggested to the author that it is a pity the result of so much labor, danger, and difficulty, should in these days of progress, be concealed from the world. Science, Religion, and Commerce are now allied in the vast work of the dissemination of knowledge and of Western Civilisation, and it cannot be doubted that Geography is the pioneer of the movement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206555, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "REVIEW OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG\n\n97\n\nPokfulam supply is distributed on the intermittent principle, conducted in a manner which subjects it in the highest degree to all the well-known dangers appertaining to that system. The water from the Wong-Na-Chong dam is not actually turned off daily, but the pipes are so small that the supply is virtually intermittent at the western extremity of the district which it supplies.6 Families in houses with no water supply had to hire water carriers to obtain their day's supply from public standpipes. The water at these points was turned on between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., and there was usually a mad scramble during this brief period; those who were left out had to obtain their supplies from distant water holes and streams on the hillsides.\n\nIt is not surprising that under such vile conditions the life expectancy of the Chinese citizens of Hong Kong was relatively short. To illustrate this point, Chadwick produced statistics to show that the mean age at death of adults (persons over 20 years) was 43 years in Hong Kong in 1881 compared to 55 years for the whole of England in 1840. No wonder then that Chadwick was forced to the conclusion that \"…the foregoing facts clearly show that the health of the population is not so good as to make it presumptuous to attempt to reform time-honoured abuses; on the contrary, to my mind, they prove that reform is urgently required.\"\n\nChadwick made a considerable number of bold recommendations which the seriousness of the situation demanded. In particular, he recommended the provision of open spaces at the rear of buildings, the prohibition of cocklofts and earthen floors, the provision of a window in every habitable room, and the limitation of overcrowding so that each adult would have 400 cu. ft. of unobstructed space in undivided rooms and 600 cu. ft. in rooms divided into cabins. Further recommendations included the reconstruction of the drainage system, the improvement of the water supply, the requisition and reconstruction by Government of existing public latrines and the provision of additional facilities, the provision of public bathhouses and a laundry, the construction of new markets, and the improvement of the scavenging system. Other notable recommendations were that before building lots were offered for sale, the roads should be laid out, surfaced, and provided with drains; that Government…\n\n6 Ibid., p. 16.\n\n7 Ibid., p. 22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206593, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n135\n\nported by the lower level caves. The second level caves themselves are spaced above but between the openings of the three caves below. The reinforced brick fronts to the caves are to help prevent erosion and landslides.\n\nThese cave complexes usually house several families with each family having a courtyard or all sharing a common courtyard. In a village there might be fifty caves covering a large area with as many as two hundred families. Internal passageways are built to connect the caves. Some of the caves are surrounded by walls and watchtowers which provide an added protection against outsiders. If the walls were built high enough, they would also help keep out the dust of the loess.\n\nThe agricultural fields were usually above the caves themselves. With the very fertile soil of the loess, crops could be raised year after year without loss of soil nutrients. Although there is little rainfall, the moisture-retaining soil benefits the cave dwellers and allows the crops to flourish. Hence, the soil not only forms the shelter but also provides the food for the family, giving them two of the three basic needs for living.\n\nNevertheless, there are several problems inherent in living in a cave with erosion, landslides, earthquakes and lighting being the most serious. There is no system of lighting provided in the construction of the cave except for the light from the open entrance or the occasional candle. During rainstorms, there is the added problem of drainage. The water flows into the caves through the sloping entrance ways. Although some families have attempted to solve the problem by building wells or drainage ditches in the courtyard, the caves remain damp throughout storms. Since much of the rain comes as cloudbursts, the heaviness of the sudden downpour causes erosion and landslides. The most serious problem comes from earthquakes. This region of China has been devastated by frequent earthquakes destroying the caves and the fields above them.\n\nFinally, it must be considered why these caves would be chosen for a dwelling despite all these problems and dangers. In some ways it is a necessity. In a land where transportation of goods is so difficult the Chinese had to learn to use and adapt to local commodities and resources to supply themselves with building materials. As has been mentioned, there were no large trees for constructing wooden houses. Although there was brick with which they did build", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206758, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "YAUMATEI TYPHOON SHELTER, HONG KONG\n\n29\n\nSo it was that on 14th December, 1903 the Honourable Gershom Stewart*, an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, rose to move the following motion-\n\nThat in the opinion of the Council it is advisable to increase, if possible, the means of shelter for cargo boats and sampans during the typhoon season.\n\nIn the course of a long speech Mr. Stewart said it was a fact to be borne in mind--\n\nThat the harbour is after all the reason of our existence here, from the harbour we either directly or indirectly, all of us, depend on our subsistence.\n\nWe are now in the happy position of having an abundant revenue and I have now put in a plea for a humble and hard working section of the sea-faring population who have no means of advocating their own cause.\n\nHe then spoke at some length on the dangers which the boat people faced in the course of typhoons with particular reference to that which had occurred in 1900, and went on to recommend his resolution to the Council on two grounds-\n\nThe first being that of self-interest for we indirectly will get some benefit because we are doing something to assist trade and secondly on the higher ground of our common humanity. For I think it is right and proper that we should afford all the protection and help we can to an industrious and hard-working section of the community. For during a certain part of the year they may claim to be following a dangerous avocation, because we must remember that these people in numbers, men, women and children have nothing between them and the next world but perhaps a half inch plank when it may be blowing a hurricane in the harbour.\n\nMr. Stewart's resolution was seconded by Mr. C. W. Dickson* who pointed out that--\n\n* Listed in Who's Who in the Far East 1906-7 June (Hong Kong, China Mail, Publishers) as b. 1858, came out to Hongkong Bank, Jan. 1883, Exchange Broker, Chairman of the China Association.\n\n* Charles Wedderburn Dickson, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as partner in the firm of Jardine, Matheson and Co., and Deputy Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, b. 1863, arrived in Hong Kong 1884.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n121\n\nallies, for example, occasionally directed their military efforts against, rather than for, the dynasty; and even the Uighurs sometimes became overbearing and troublesome.42 There were, moreover, tensions between barbarian and Chinese officers, as well as conflicts between various competing barbarian commanders. But perhaps the most vivid illustration of the dangers involved in utilizing foreigners was the famous rebellion of the \"mixed-breed\" barbarian, An Lu-shan, which the Uighur heir apparent had helped combat in its early stages. Contemporary observers saw this uprising not as a civil war between the central government and a local \"warlord,\" but rather as a conflict between the Chinese and a barbarian. Chinese historians went so far, in fact, as to maintain that the rebellion occurred \"because An Lu-shan and other barbarians were given important military and political offices.\"43 Whatever the merits of this view, we may safely assume that An did not rate a biography in Li Te-yü's I-yü kuei-chung chuan; and although foreign troops and individual barbarian commanders assisted in the restoration of imperial rule, and helped sustain the Tang dynasty for nearly a century and a half after the revolt, resentment and distrust of barbarians became increasingly evident as neo-Confucianism rose to prominence.\n\nThe Use of Foreigners in Post-T'ang Times\n\nChinese anti-foreignism, already on the rise in the later years of T'ang, received reinforcement from neo-Confucianism, with its emphasis on the superiority of Chinese culture and the closer identification of Confucianism with that culture. At the same time, the stress on civil virtues and the growing importance of the vaunted examination system as a channel for upward mobility led to a general decline in martial spirit.44 Yet even as China turned inward, her ever-present need for foreign military and administrative expertise assured that outsiders would continue to find their way into the Chinese service. This proved true in the Sung, when specially trained \"barbarian troops\" (fan-ping) operated against internal and external enemies, and barbarian commanders (fan-chiang) such as Kuo Yao-shih (a surrendered Liao officer) rendered similar service. Kuo is particularly noteworthy for having led a military force known as the Ever-Victorious Army (Ch'ang-sheng chün) which, in some respects, resembled the contingent with the same designation raised by Frederick Townsend Ward in the latter stages of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).45", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207405, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n165\n\nexpeditions were always anxious occasions, for the roads were patrolled by Japanese troops, communication between our people and them was impossible, Red Cross brassards were of no protective value and stoppages and incidents were common. Fortunately Campbell and his men suffered no more than slappings and some minor indignities but they did a first-rate job in replenishing our stores. Our messing situation was however precarious in these early months.\n\nThe Chinese staff of the hospital, except for a couple or so who had known no other life than Bowen Road for years, had long departed and anything we wanted done had to be done by ourselves.\n\nWe had a hospital full of seriously ill men, most of them severely wounded, and we set to work to complete the surgical treatment of the war casualties. In the underground theatres we operated in the morning and evenings, leaving an hour or two in the afternoons to get a blow of fresh air. We could no longer dry-sterilise our operating towels etc., and so we boiled them. The method was effective though, because our clean surgical wounds remained uninfected and grafts including pedicle grafts were accepted cleanly. Surgical procedures were followed by as smooth progress as we could have wished for. Our coal stocks were soon exhausted but theatre sisters and staff were very successful in their improvisations. The supply of electricity from the mains was cut off for a while but the deficiency was remedied by our generators.\n\nWe were anxious about the surgical situation. We did not know if our staff would be left to care for our own wounded, but a rumour which spread round the hospital one night soon after our surrender that all doctors were to be moved next day proved to be unfounded, though I always thought that such a specific rumour as this had some kind of basis. It was perhaps at this time that a clear decision was taken by the Japanese as to our future. We were anxious particularly about the effects of wound infection upon the health of patients already undernourished, for we knew that this would certainly hasten the development of deficiency diseases. And so our days were filled.\n\nWe were alive to the dangers of undernourishment on a poorly balanced diet especially as the change came about suddenly from the diet to which our troops were accustomed. On 16 April 1942, as surgical specialist, I joined with my specialist physician colleague, Major Gerald Harrison, in drawing attention to the problem in a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207482, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "242\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nthis feeling, but I still was troubled by a nagging fear of the dangers that closer American pressure and a final assault could bring for all prisoners in Japanese hands.\n\nIn 1945 the order to move to Kowloon was given to me by Saito on 6 March and the move itself took place on 23 March. The place first named as our destination was the Heep Yunn School and I learned of the change only on arrival in Kowloon.\n\nUntil we moved we continued to be short of ration wood, though we used a great deal of wood from floors in vacated buildings in the hospital with which to start our fires and often to maintain them. Early in January vegetable rations were short and many meals consisted of boiled rice only. On 26 January Seino began to store peanut oil in our boiler house, to protect it he said from incendiary bullets. We received 280 sacks of rice from a city godown followed in another day or two by another 60 sacks. Some of these sacks were taken into our store and some to the Japanese quarters, 200 were stacked in our casualty department for re-export. Altogether our men handled 400 sacks each weighing a nominal 100 kilos or about 40 tons over a few hours. They richly earned the small extra issue I arranged for them. Our men also had to carry 600 sacks of charcoal up the very steep steps to the old barrack room where it was stored, the doors being then locked. None of this charcoal was ever issued to us.\n\nIt was about now that I was allowed for the first time to take on our books a nominal 100 kilos sack at 96 kilos and this was lucky, for we were already issuing less than the authorised Japanese rice ration in order to avoid running out of our short-weight stocks. In fact over a recent period we had actually received 370 kilos of rice less than the weight we had to take on our books. When I told Seino about this he asked me not to lower our rice issues below our entitlement, and asked also that we should make up one sack a month. This advice was, I believe well intentioned but was much less realistic than I expected from Seino. Arising out of our talk on shortages one day Kochi, an interpreter, said that the Japanese had been very busy during December. That was certainly true for the Americans were making much progress in their invasion of the Philippines.\n\nIn January 1945 the system by which an amount of money was deducted by the Japanese from officers' monthly pay as savings was abandoned and so a lieutenant colonel, for example, got 160 yen in his pocket instead of 130. In the same month Seino gave me six dozen 11×14", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207519, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 287, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n279\n\namong us. I have referred to only a few people by name and this has occurred when the story would be incomplete otherwise. In singling out individuals I do an injustice to those who are not named and this is clearly unfair. Some, like myself, had weaknesses, but all could be relied upon in difficult times; at the other extreme, some were magnificent throughout, courageous and dependable in the long months and years of the slogging, unexciting routine work needed to nurse and care for the personal needs of patients, to supply and feed them and keep their surroundings in a state of good order and cleanliness. In all these circumstances, I have felt it improper at this distance from events to single out more individuals by name. In an appendix (Appendix C) is provided a list of those who served in the hospital from August 1942 to our release in September 1945. This is a hospital staff Roll of Honour, which it is a privilege to publish.\n\nThough the period December 1941 to August 1942 is not covered by my diaries and I have touched on events during that period only lightly, I must refer specially to the lady nurses of the Q.A.I.N.M.S., the Royal Canadian Nursing Service, the Volunteer Nursing Service, and the Auxiliary Service. Miss E.M.B. Dyson, as matron, was responsible for the training of the additional staff before hostilities and for arranging the staffing of the additional hospitals set up in St. Albert's Convent, in Stanley, in Happy Valley, and in the Hong Kong Hotel. In St. Albert's, the matron, Miss Kathleen Thomson, was wounded, and one sister, Miss Brenda Morgan, was killed by shell fire, and elsewhere, a number of these ladies suffered badly at the hands of Japanese troops. The Royal Naval Hospital had its own nursing service under Miss Olga Franklin and found itself practically in the fighting line before moving to St. Albert's Convent Hospital. When this hospital was overrun, the matron and nursing staff were tied up with ropes for a time. In Stanley, medical officers and patients were murdered before the eyes of the nurses, and some of the latter were criminally assaulted, while nurses at Happy Valley suffered like fates. Our nurses at Bowen Road were spared these fates only, I consider, because the Colony had surrendered just as the hospital was about to be overrun. That these dangers were real is shown further by the advice given to us by a Japanese officer after our surrender that we should keep our nurses away from observation by Japanese troops. All this was known to these ladies, and their courage during", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208406, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "114\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThe greatest obstacle, which confronts the student of rural government in China, therefore, is the lack of adequate, accurate information. In the first place, information from Chinese sources is scanty in comparison to the whole body of the literature. Chinese writers, generally speaking, have shared with Western students an indifference to the customs and mode of life of the people themselves. The difficulties attendant upon discovering such information as does reside in Chinese books will be well appreciated by anyone who has attempted it. Fortunately, modern Chinese students have done some work upon the subject, as will be seen from the bibliography of their studies appended to this work. These should be of considerable value for study in the future.\n\nWestern material, aside from random observations and one or two careful works, is entirely lacking. In fact, the writer has seen only one study, that of Bazin in 1854, which attempts to cover the same field as does this essay. And Bazin seems entirely to have been dependent upon a very few official Chinese literary sources and one Chinese informant with whom he corresponded. Men like S. Wells Williams, Parker, Doolittle, and Huc give extended accounts of the organization of the central government and limit their observations on rural government to a few paragraphs or pages only.\n\nIn the absence of much accurate information, it has been possible in the present study only to break ground. The attempt has been at a general consideration of a single institution, rather than a detailed study of this institution in one locality under particular circumstances. In this, it falls under all the dangers attendant to generalization. Unfortunately, generalizations about China are entirely too numerous, and the writer is aware that he may be criticized for adding to their number. But, since this was the only method open to him, he undertakes the risk because it allows him to make a start upon a subject which he believes must be studied. It has been said that China should be compared, not with any one country of Europe, but with the whole of it. Thus, a social institution such as village government may be as widely diversified in different parts of the whole territory as would be the case in Europe. The geographic conditions of China vary widely; its peoples do not all come from the same racial stock, unless we speak in the loosest terms; and the country, or much of it, has been inhabited for several thousand years. These are all factors leading to a wide diversity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208476, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "184\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nthem might have. Prints of images might help to bring luck or protection, and as agencies might represent both personal and impersonal beings; such as ancestors, nature spirits, saints, heroes, gods, or goddess. Because the chief attitudes of the devotees towards these agencies were fear, awe, love or affection, loyalty, reverence, obligation, and aspiration, prints of the images would be the very core of the ceremonial through which the devotee hoped to secure the benefits which he was seeking such as food and drink; protection from natural dangers like thunder, lightning, flood, disease, plague; or victory in wars; long life; riches; prosperity; and counsel in emergencies. Some of the block printed folk prints were in the form of applications to the heavenly authorities conveying all sort of messages or containing prayers for the benefits which the devotees hoped to secure. These talisman-like prints were either burnt together with other paper-made religious offerings or pasted on the walls.\n\nSome Chinese folk prints in the form of character-styled charms were created by Taoist priests for either warding off evils or curing diseases. These Taoist charms were usually written or printed in red colour on yellowish medicated papers by Taoist priests. Taoist priests were both occultists and herbalists. They used their secret formulas like vermilion (b) red orpiment (*) etc. to write or print charms, and these charms could produce some sort of medical effect to lighten diseases when sick persons drank them with water. Taoist priests had long been using these special practices to promote their religion and to make people believe that magic came from their religious power and through the design of the charms they created. Today these charms have become merely a superstition. Those we can find are printed in ordinary ink by the print makers instead of by the priests. Even contemporary priests have little knowledge about the use of formulas. The old formulas are mostly lost through many generations. Yet though charms no longer have the magic power, they still can give psychological comfort to ignorant believers.\n\nSince Late Ming most of the folk prints were printed in colours. The colour used are traditionally believed to have beneficial effects. Each colour has its meaning: red for happiness, joy or prosperity; green for peace and eternity; white also for peace but for mourning as well; gold and yellow for royalty, strength and wealth. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208736, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "166\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\ncannot be touched by its defilements. The gods of the folk religion are seen as more human in this (and other) respects. They need worship and offerings for their continued existence. They are susceptible to dangers and impurities. This shows that these concepts have been created by the common people in a simple fashion. Neither the higher deities of Taoism nor the Buddhist Holy Ones share this vulnerability. Unless, perhaps, even here there is a wrong interpretation by the author. Is it correct to say that the gods can be polluted? I have some doubts. If gods are really efficacious, they do not have to fear human pollution, or pollution by evil spirits. I believe that gods are kept away from the presence of evil spirits as a sign of honour; it would be an insult to their sacredness (just as the common people are not brought into the presence of emperors). Wherever there is a special need of bringing the two together, as in cases of exorcism, the gods are called down to chase the evil spirits away. Why is that not polluting as well? In such cases, the element of irreverence is absent (as when criminals are brought into the presence of high mandarins for judgment and sentencing).\n\nThe same sense of respect for the hierarchical status is present in the chronomantic ordering of sacrifices. The higher the status of the gods, the earlier in the day they are served (p. 154).\n\nOn pp. 168-169, several confusions occur: Taoist priests are said to perform in Buddhist temples, while Buddhist monks are invited to Taoist temples. The examples cited do not warrant this, for the so-called Buddhist temple is not really a Buddhist temple, while the Matsu temples cited are not Taoist either. The author conveniently follows the official appellation from the gazetteers, which he has criticized in a previous chapter.\n\nOn p. 174, there is another example of 'sublime distortion'. The author tries to explain the folk saying that \"Taoists do not offer the service for feeding the hungry ghosts, and Buddhist monks do not offer the li-tou service\", already quoted on p. 165. Factual observations contradict the saying. The author's explanation is that “individual ancestral services such as chin-chu and chin-t'a are only offered... in \"Buddhist\" bone temples, and by Buddhist priests (p. 174), whereas the community temples do not allow this to take place: the god's purity must be safeguarded. First, the statement is incorrect as far as chin-chu services are concerned; these normally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209125, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "14\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nbalance of the human person, the first thing to be upset is the feelings or the emotions. This shows itself by paleness, trembling, or nervousness, and the soul begins its journey to the land of the dead, leaving behind it only the body, which is still animated by the principle of life. If the soul does not return, death is inevitable.\n\nThe world, as I said a little earlier, also contains other beings than humans. No Melanau doubts the existence of spirits, though if you ask him about them, he is likely to say: \"They are things which cannot be seen; how can we be sure what they are like?\" Even so everybody knows what quite a large number of them do look like; I have the detailed descriptions of about 150 spirits. Many people who are not experts have sufficient knowledge of the appearance and attributes of several spirits and the afflictions they are thought to cause. They are also able to carve spirit images for use in curing illness.\n\nThe most general classification of spirits is by the region they inhabit; for like men, they all have their proper homes and settings. In this middle world are found air or sky spirits, and forest, and river, and sea spirits. The upper and the under worlds have the same types; and all can move from one world to another in a way that a man cannot. Spirits are male and female, and most are anthropomorphic. Some people think that like the Melanau they are hierarchically ranked within their categories, each of which has its own leader with authority over all his kind, whatever world he may inhabit.\n\nAlthough people tell myths and stories of marriages between humans and spirits and of men becoming spirits, others deny that any of this is possible. At the same time all agree that animals, plants, humans, and spirits are distinct and separate orders of being who happen to share the same environment - a fact that entails ordered rules of behaviour. Contact between these various orders is inevitable, but it carries considerable risk with it; the likelihood of over-stepping the bounds of proper behaviour and so causing trouble is very great indeed.\n\n―\n\nThe Melanau's technical equipment gave them little control over the natural forces of their environment; but they did have an extensive and detailed knowledge of its variations and dangers. By personifying those forces and placing them in a system of moral relationships, stated in much the same terms as they used in handling the social order and backed by the same kinds of sanctions, they were helped", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209134, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "TOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO- DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n23\n\na shaman has to have a large number of spirit friends; and human aristocrats, whose social relationships with other villagers are mostly those of clients and followers, do not readily admit others to their friendship. On the whole shamans are middle-ranking people. Their personal histories often show that at some stage in their lives they suffered from psychological disturbances; and that once they accepted the role of shaman they usually calmed down. Some of them, especially men who appear ambitious, and who were blocked in their political or economic careers, were very intelligent, and used their position as a shaman to gain advantages. On the other hand, some of the shamans were not intelligent; but were also not very well thought of as shamans. One man, who was particularly ambitious, had had his career blocked by aristocrats, it was said, on several occasions; and it was whispered that he was a witch, a very venomous shaman who could only just control his more dangerous spirit friends. Some people, indeed, said that his moral character was not strong enough to keep them in order, and that he did allow them to feed on neighbours' blood. A hundred years earlier the aristocrats would undoubtedly have speared him to death.\n\n―\n\nAt this point I realise, with some dismay, that I have given only the roughest idea of the Melanau's ideas on human illness and its causes and cures. What I hope I may have done is to give some indication of the complexity and sophistication of the system of thought that lies behind their ideas on illness. The universe they live in, which, if used incorrectly, almost automatically produces the ills that the human condition is subject to, is as complex and as aesthetically and imaginatively satisfying as the universe inhabited by Dante and the men of the European middle ages. Clearly the way in which the Melanau empirically handled many of the illnesses that afflicted them was less effective than the practice of western medicine in 1950. The terrifying number of newly born babies who died during my first visit to their villages and the fact that the owner of the house next to the one I lodged in died of tuberculosis six months after my arrival was sufficient evidence that many of their cures failed. But most of the disorders they suffered would in any event have cured themselves, as they do almost everywhere else in the world. The fact that the Melanau had little control over their environment, though they did have a detailed and extensive knowledge of its possibilities and dangers, meant that the way in which they organised that knowledge into an extension of the ordinary moral system gave them the assurance they needed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209164, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO\n\n53\n\nThis short passage shows the general attitude which characterizes the religious interpretation of the present time: the present era is seen as a time of decline and of crucial historical significance. The future of humanity is at stake. Only if men are able to reverse the tendency of decay inherent in modern societies will it be possible to avoid the impending catastrophe. Recovery can be secured by returning to the way of the sages of antiquity and by practising the traditional virtues of the Chinese culture. This point is further elaborated in the following passage:\n\nThese are the teachings of the holy kings of former times:\n\n1. We want to restore the five social obligations (wu lun), the three social principles (san kang) and the five constant virtues (wu ch'ang). 2. We want to institute the three unspoiled [values], i.e. virtue, merit and true speech, and [in this way] bring benefit to the people. 3. We want to esteem highly the spiritual life, but to disregard the material life. Spiritual life means to put into practice the natural virtues humanity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faithfulness. [...] Alas! [How different are] the men of this world! They always care about the material life and are striving for the enjoyment of worldly goods. Who still speaks of propriety and righteousness, of modesty, social principles, constant virtues and modesty?\n\nIt can be seen from this passage that the dangers of the present time have their roots in the moral decline of men, i.e. in the abandonment of the traditional social virtues as propagated by the Confucians. These rules of moral conduct and social obligations are seen as the prerequisite for a sound and orderly society. Although principally these standards apply to every society, it is obvious that the deity especially has in mind the present situation in China, i.e. in Taiwan. Criticism of contemporary society in Taiwan becomes more outspoken in the next section:\n\nI [i.e. Shang Ti] see that in this world it is the Chinese nation in which rites and music are cultivated, where true culture exists. For this reason, up to the present day China could not be overthrown by another nation. Nowadays, however, people are only imitating the European and American way of life. Father and son do not love each other, husband and wife do not live in harmony, brothers fight each other,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209218, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920'S 107\n\nson-in-law of Ho Tung\n\nT. N. Chau, a barrister\n\nLi Wing-tin\n\nSimon Tse Yan, also known as Tse Ka Po\n\nFung Ping-shan, donor of the Fung Ping Shan Library building\n\nat Hong Kong University\n\nChau Yu-ting, a wealthy import-export merchant\n\nYung Tse-ming, compradore of the Chartered Bank\n\nHo Wing, son of Ho Fook, adopted son of Ho Tung and compradore of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank\n\nWong Ping-shuen, and\n\nIp Lan-chuen\n\nWong Ping-shuen advocated a slow approach, \"The time was not yet ripe for drastic action. Conditions in China had to be radically changed before it would serve any useful purpose to legislate on the question\".\n\nThe Secretary of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Ip Lan-chuen, contended that Hong Kong was too close to China to attempt abolition at this time.\n\nLi Po-kwai, the Chairman, vividly portrayed the dangers to the mui tsai if she were released from servitude at the age of eighteen. She would do \"mad and silly things\" which would lead to her downfall.\n\nChow Shou-son spoke out as \"being dead against the Bill\". If left alone the custom would die out in time as had the practice of foot-binding. After making his speech in Chinese, for some reason he shifted to English to conclude it, saying, “It is the opinion of the Chinese community and the Chinese people generally that the system should not be abolished”.\n\nMr. M. K. Lo interjected a moderating tone into the discussion when he reminded the meeting that it would have been better if the Chamber had expressed opposition to abolition sooner and more clearly, instead of keeping relatively silent until the Government had drafted and introduced a Bill.\n\nMr. Wong Kwong-tin objected to the Ordinance because it did not provide protection to the owners of mui tsai and was therefore grossly unfair. He gave a warning to the British Government they should be very careful in interfering with an old Chinese custom which had become an unwritten law.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209407, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "42\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\nThis limited franchise might be called the first characteristic of the voting structure in Shanghai. The second was the existence of proxy voting, that is voting by people present at a Public Meeting acting as agents of and voting for persons not present.\n\nNeither in the 1845 Land Regulations nor in those of 1854 had any provision for proxy voting been made, yet even before 1854 it was widely used, so we might put the question as to when it was introduced.\n\nThe first time the matter was considered at a Public Meeting was on June 14, 1851, when the problem was raised as \"to whether persons holding special powers of Attorney to deal with the land of parties absent could claim a vote on their behalf at a Public Meeting in addition to their own\" 27 It was then argued that \"such a system... had never been adopted at Public Meetings of this nature at Shanghai\" and consul Alcock was not inclined \"to admit the principle on the present occasion”.\n\nHowever, there were apparently some difficulties of a legal nature involved and Alcock thought it wise to consult the Attorney General at Hong Kong, whose advice was negative. Earlier I have drawn attention to the fact that the merchants at Shanghai were very self-conscious as to their self-government and the resolution against the interference from Hong Kong has already been referred to. At the same Public Meeting of May 25, 1852, it was decided, by resolution no. 2, \"That all holders of Land within the British limits may specially appoint an Attorney to act for them in their absence; and further that one person may act as Attorney for several renters, and be entitled to vote for each proprietor he may be duly empowered to represent\".28\n\nAs from that date proxy voting became the established practice at Shanghai and it was incorporated in article XIX of the 1869 Land Regulations.\n\nThere were evident dangers in this mode of voting. The already rather oligarchical procedure at a Public Meeting might be still more monopolized if a great number of votes were collected by some persons who might then be able to corner the meeting. Moreover, less scrupulous voters might be willing to sell their own vote to the highest bidder. It should be stressed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209418, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "53 \n\nlater, conditions improved, though allegations of brutality and corruption were voiced from time to time.18 \n\nThe force consisted of Chinese, Sikhs and, especially in the higher echelons, foreigners. \n\nThe Public Works department equally had its origins in the very beginning of the Settlement when roads and drainage had to be built. At times there were many complaints about the state of the roads; thus one female reader of the North China Herald wondered whether it was \"in reason that we should have to walk all the days of our lives over sharp little cubes of broken brick?\"19 The department, however, faced a difficult task in the construction of roads on the marshy soil of Shanghai and the situation became only worse when traffic increased to such an extent that often a decision had to be made between demolishing whole rows of buildings, with all the attendant hardships for the occupiers, and letting congestion get out of hand. \n\nThe Public Health department was initiated as the Nuisance Department in 1861 because of the dangers to health caused by the throwing away of offal at all possible and impossible places with the result that one reader of the local paper returned from a walk in the Settlement \"sickened and disgusted”.50 \n\nBesides the official department there were numerous private or missionary hospitals receiving municipal financial subsides. \n\nThese tasks were the traditional tasks of a laissez-faire government and in general did not rouse much controversy, apart from complaints that services did not go far enough. It is noticeable that it was only these tasks which were enshrined in the Land Regulations as falling within the realm of municipal administration. \n\nQuite different problems were encountered when it came to coping with the results of industrialisation, especially the regulation of working hours and the abolition of child-labour. \n\nIn the west social legislation had increased in scope over the decades since the middle of the 19th century, but in Shanghai most efforts in this direction were doomed to failure. In the early 1920s several attempts were made to pass a bye-law which \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209477, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "112\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\nunfortunate that some of its worst features have been incorporated into the Chinese Code, including the use of analogy (Article 79) and a broad classification of \"counter-revolutionary offenses.” Articles 90 to 104, dealing with such offenses require the court to determine the motive for a range of acts which might or might not have as their purpose \"overthrowing the political power of the dictatorship of the proletariat.\" For example, Article 102 stipulates that \"using counter-revolutionary slogans, leaflets or other means to spread propaganda inciting the overthrow of the political power of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system\" is to be punished by a fixed-term imprisonment, detention, surveillance, or deprivation of political rights for not less than five years. Since the classification of a presumed offense as counter-revolutionary then depends on a subjective interpretation of motive in this type of case, it is difficult to know when the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and press become counter-revolutionary.\n\nIt is understandable that since this is their first attempt to produce a general criminal code, the compilers were reluctant to give up the useful tool of analogy to cover any gaps in the law that might appear later on. The drafters of the Code were, however, not oblivious to the dangers inherent in the application of analogy and therefore stipulated that its use had to have the approval of a Higher People's Court. The articles dealing with counter-revolution are a far more serious matter. Again they are understandable given the turbulent history of modern China, the on-going civil war with the Kuomintang on Taiwan, and the hostile treatment accorded the People's Republic by most of the world throughout most of its history, not to mention the general paranoia which seems to take hold of most societies going through a revolution. However, it is precisely because of these articles and the psychological condition which produced them, that one continues to feel some concern for the future in spite of all the positive steps that have been taken since the fall of the Gang of Four.\n\nThis concern is further strengthened by another disturbing factor. I mentioned earlier that one of the characteristics of the period following the Anti-Rightist Movement was the development", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209645, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 302, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "280\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npotential dangers to the colony argued the need for a governor with an intimate knowledge of the territory and the reputation of being a strong disciplinarian.\n\nThe situation to which May returned was very different from that which he had left seventeen months previously. The early part of the year 1911 was fairly peaceful2 in spite of the abortive uprising in Canton in April and the assassination of the Manchu general there in August. But the outbreak of the revolution in central China in October soon spread to Canton and the Manchu governor was forced to flee to Hong Kong in early November. These successes were wildly celebrated by the Hong Kong population with demonstrations and firecrackers. But rejoicing soon gave way to hooliganism and violence as the feeling grew that the overthrow of the foreign Manchu government in China ought soon to be followed by the ousting of the British from Hong Kong. Shops were looted in broad daylight, the police were stoned, Europeans were threatened and attacked on the streets, bomb-making factories were discovered, and laws were openly defied. When police made arrests they were liable to be attacked by mobs attempting to release the prisoner. There was a rush by Europeans to buy firearms for self-defence.3\n\nLugard took strong measures to deal with this situation. There were daily route marches through the streets of the city by soldiers with fixed bayonets. On 30th November emergency powers under the Peace Preservation Ordinance were invoked by proclamation, giving the police wide powers to disperse crowds, enter houses and make arrests, and the same day an amending bill was rushed through the Legislative Council in one meeting to give magistrates the power to impose the penalty of up to 24 lashes with a cat o' nine tails for a wide range of offences, in addition to any other penalty prescribed by law. In the three months from December 1911 to February 1912 fifty-one prisoners were flogged with the cat o' nine tails for such offences as theft, assaults on the police and resisting arrest. At the same time the garrison was reinforced with two battalions of infantry and a battery of artillery sent from India,\n\nThese strong measures had their effect and before Lugard departed in March 1912 he felt sufficiently confident that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210489, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "77\n\nsuitable small-sized marine diesel engines. The first two of these appeared in Hong Kong late in 1950. In 1951 they were installed in purse-seiners belonging to Chan Lo of Aberdeen and Chung Fuk Hei of Kau Sai.\n\nTheir installation had some drawbacks. They were noisy, smelly engines which made a few people seasick at first, and they took up a great deal of room. In such cramped quarters the loss of storage and floor space entailed by taking over the largest hold amidships for the engine was a serious matter. Even worse, or at least more resented, was the cluttering up caused by the set of life belts that had to be carried now that the junks came under the Regulations for motorised craft. But these were small matters. Engines soon began to pay for themselves many times over and when it became possible to build houses ashore problems of storage space ceased to be a worry. Even from the very beginning, however, the price paid in discomfort (and even money) was seen to be worthwhile in terms of one completely over-riding good - safety.\n\nThis is a point that should be stressed. These South Chinese fishermen live and work on one of the most uncertain and dangerous of the world's seas. Brought up near the coast in England myself, and familiar with the traditional skills in weather forecasting of local fishermen there and their quiet confidence, I was at first surprised at the apparent ignorance of the Kau Sai Boat People and inclined to feel contemptuous of the unabashed apprehension with which they greeted what appeared to me to be even slightly rising winds. What I did not realise was that the weather in these waters is indeed largely unpredictable from local manifestations alone, and that, particularly in the typhoon season, the dangers are very real and can strike with astonishing speed. The objective situation is simply not comparable with that on the North Devon seaboard, and that is sometimes dangerous enough. Moreover, the Appledore boats of my childhood did not house whole families with women and children, most of whom could not swim, and all the family belongings, nor were they even in the 'thirties, when I had known them, dependent completely upon sail. Kau Sai junk masters had every justification for their caution. Mechanisation,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210514, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "102\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nIt should not be inferred from any of the foregoing that the potentially polluting nature of females in general and the actually polluting nature of menstruating and parturient females in particular was not considered to be of prime importance. The dangers were certainly felt to be completely real, the fears they engendered just as worrying to the women as the men. It so happened, however, that the prohibitions that were believed to ward the dangers off had little to do with the performance of work. Provided she observed the correct ritual taboos and did not take part in shooting lines or nets while in a state of impurity a woman's participation in fishing operations was not thought to be unlucky.65\n\nBoth in 1953 and 1970, when the full counts were made, the Boat population of Kau Sai was distributed almost equally between males and females.\n\nChildren and the elderly\n\nThe following information has been compiled from the full count made in 1953 and discussed in more detail in Chapter below [not included in manuscript]:-\n\n \n Type\n Number\n 0-9\n 10-15\n 16-59\n Over 60\n Total\n \n \n Purse-seiner\n 37\n 121\n 25\n 180\n 13\n 339\n \n \n small long-liner\n 15\n 26\n 16\n 55\n 3\n 100\n \n \n medium long-liner\n 3\n \n 7\n 1\n \n 11\n \n \n hand-liners and others\n 8\n 8\n 3\n 17\n 1\n 29\n \n \n Totals\n 61\n 158\n 44\n 259\n 18\n 479\n \n\nThe divisions in this table have been made to accord with the common practice of including young people of 16 years and above in the economically active section of a population and excluding old people over 60. There was nothing very realistic about this division in Kau Sai, where boys and girls around 10...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211116, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "152\n\nsqueezer-general of the Chinese Government to take up residence in our midst.\" His presence would only further undermine British control.\n\nUnderlying the relations of foreigners with the resident population was this basic unease. The masses might at any time become restless, create trouble, break out into riots.\n\nThe opinion prevailed that such troubles were more likely to come from external than internal influences. Hence, the presence of a representative of China was most undesirable and dangerous to the peace and security of the Colony.\n\nTo clinch his arguments regarding the dangers of external influence on the residents, Sir Richard recalled the desperate plight that the European population found itself in when \"in the last war with China, nearly all residents and servants left in 24 hours, so that European residents had to clean their boots and cook their dinners themselves.\"\n\nWho would have the audacity to suggest a policy that might expose foreigners to such menial labour? The thought of the re-occurrence of such a situation was intolerable.\n\nNo wonder the Governor was most unhappy with the British Minister in China for suggesting that Britain approve a measure which might open the way for Chinese pressure on the Hongkong population.\n\nThe suggestion was also a blow at British honour and prestige. Was it Sir Rutherford's intention, the Governor asked, to limit the Hongkong Government to make representation to the Chinese Government through a resident Chinese consul rather than, as had been the practice, through a British consul at Canton?\n\nIf so, he saw the move as “a humiliation in the eyes of the Chinese, which seems more injurious than beneficial to British interests.\"\n\nOnly harm would result. On behalf of Hongkong, the Governor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211130, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "166\n\nIn addition to the embarrassment such persons were to “respectable” Europeans, it was felt the employment by the Chinese of members of their own class also created a wrong impression.\n\nOne of the resolutions passed at the meeting to protest against the blockade stated that the actions of the Chinese were \"most inimical to British prestige in Hongkong and the neighbouring provinces of China, the impression being general, on account of the prominent part taken by Englishmen in the matter, that the system is connived at by the British Government, which is powerless to resist it.\"\n\nAny situation where British honour or prestige was felt to be undermined stirred up basic insecurities. Other statements made at the meeting reflected popularly held attitudes towards the Chinese.\n\nOne of the speakers gave a somewhat simplistic analysis of the manner in which the Government functioned in China. He stated: “China contains two classes, the governors and the governed. The one class squeezes and the other is squeezed and the richer the subject, the more certain he was to be so.”\n\nHe believed that many Chinese were attracted to Hongkong not because of the opportunities it offered for making money, but simply to escape the uncertainties of life in China.\n\nMr. Whittall in his speech at the meeting had introduced the question of a Chinese consul in Hongkong. Another speaker elaborated on the dangers he felt were inherent in the proposal.\n\nHe claimed that a consul would be regarded by the Chinese as the real ruling power in Hongkong, especially “as they do not understand all the details of English law, they would at once submit themselves to his direction.”\n\nA Chinese consul would never be able to fulfil the usual function of a consul in a foreign port, which, according to the speaker, was to act as a mediator in case of disputes between the people of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211147, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "183\n\nassociation with the Li family enterprises and at times had been their spokesman. Neither their experience, nor his own, deterred him from agitating for a consul.\n\nAs an example of the dangers to Hongkong's security to be expected if a Chinese consul were resident, a correspondent, signing himself “Englishman,” recalled certain events in Ho A-mei's past.\n\nAt one time A-mei held the position of chief clerk in the office of the Registrar General. At that time sensitive information had come to the knowledge of the Chinese authorities in Canton,\n\nSuspicion was directed against the Registrar General's office. The Registrar, Mr. Cecil Clementi-Smith, in order to clear himself, had to make a formal deposition that he was not responsible for the information leak.\n\nShortly after, Ho A-mei resigned and went into the service of the Viceroy at Canton.\n\nThe impression the writer wished to convey was that A-mei was in some way responsible for certain confidential information getting to Canton. He, however, assured his reader, with the following: “I do not venture to assert that he abused the confidence placed in him, but did he ever succeed in tracing who it was that had this clandestine correspondence with the Canton authorities?”\n\nThe implication was that the Chinese in the employ of the Hongkong Government could not be trusted. If they were not trustworthy, even more dangerous to Hongkong's security would be the presence of Chinese officially employed by the Chinese Government.\n\nAll the alleged evils of Ch'ing officialdom would flourish in Hongkong under the diplomatic patronage of Great Britain.\n\nNeither the arguments for nor against the appointment of a Chinese Consul for Hongkong were ever tested by history, as there", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211161, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "197\n\nand in his public utterances, and during the course of his much lauded conciliatory and considerate policy towards the Chinese, the Governor has unduly accentuated the political power assumed by this eleemosynary institution.”\n\nThe paper had time and again drawn the attention of the public to the dangers the activities of Tung Wah posed to the legitimate authority of the Government.\n\nOnce again it warned of the \"dangerous mischief calculated to result from the action of a native corporation possessing no guide or check” and urged the “necessity for either prohibiting the directors from acting as extra judges or jurymen, or for recognising certain powers in them limited by clearly defined rules.”\n\nTheir acting as \"a sort of Small Cause Court, Chamber of Commerce, Tribunal of Arbitration, (and) Hongkong Association\" was the natural result of the composition of the directorship of the hospital,\n\nIt was made up of elected representatives from the major commercial guilds. There was usually a member from the pawnbrokers, the compradores, the rice merchants, the nam-pak hongs (trading firms dealing in goods between the northern ports of China and Southeast Asia), the California-Australia importers and exporters, the piece-goods merchants, the cotton yarn merchants and the opium dealers.\n\nThe directors were quite aware of the tenuous position they were in, due to their being charged with the management of a hospital and at the same time undertaking to act as a board of arbitration over disputes that could not be settled within a guild.\n\nThey also could not escape the fact that the Chinese in Hong Kong looked to them as their natural leaders and entrusted them with the general overseeing of the welfare of the community.\n\nAs long as the hospital was used for the management of general community affairs, the directors realised they would be criticised. For this reason they requested a grant of land from the Govern-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211679, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "69\n\nThe embarkation took place at midnight. It had begun to rain. There was no street lighting; the night was very dark and the gangway up to the hulk was slippery. These hulks were great steel pontoons, two hundred feet long, with a large deck house, in which were located the shipping company's office and some residential quarters. Wide stairs led down to the holds below, where the inward and outward cargoes were stored pending transfer elsewhere. To approach the ship you had to walk round outside the hulk along a gangway, about three feet wide, left between the deckhouse and the edge. To facilitate the movement of cargo no railings were put along this edge. I was carrying our younger child and I remember the feeling of horror when our other child, at a moment when the amah's attention was attracted elsewhere, toddled along to the edge to look over at the black tide rushing between the steel sides of the ship and hulk. My wife just in time snatched him back from the wet slippery edge.\n\nThe steamer was of the usual river design, like any small sea-going merchantman, but with more super-structure and a flatter bottom. There were not berths sufficient for all the refugees, who began to sort themselves out, some in the saloon and others in the smoking room. A wild alcoholic glow added to the sociability induced by the common dangers of the situation and I regret to say bets were taken whether one of the refugees, who was conspicuously expecting a baby, could last out till the ship reached Shanghai. When the Captain decided to start, husbands and bachelors were reluctantly persuaded to go ashore to return to their solitary and darkened houses.\n\nNext day the Consul decided to get in touch with the Chinese general who held the appointment of Garrison Commander at Kiu Kiang. This official was elusive but he eventually agreed to come to the Consulate for a conference. The safety of the foreigners in Kiu Kiang was really his responsibility and after some pressing he undertook to furnish protection. The British guards were consequently withdrawn from the Concession gates to the two hulks.\n\nDuring times of civil commotion respectable and well-to-do Chinese would bolt their doors or put up the shop shutters, as the case might be, and remain inside; but in any Chinese town there would also be an unruly element of loafers, pickpockets, thieves, and toughs, as indeed in any western city. Now was the opportunity for these hooligans. By midday the streets of the Concession were filled with a seething mob", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211813, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "203\n\n21.1.1858 (Thur)\n\nEntertainment by Mr. George Henri.\n\nR: As there appeared no review of Mr. George HENRI's miracles on December 29 there is some doubt as to whether they were indeed performed on that date: perhaps they were postponed to January 21. Then the Herald showed itself “so astonished that had he asked us what we wished him to do next we should have requested him to produce Yeh before our eyes\". This alluded to Yeh Ming-ch'en, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Affairs who had played a major role in the second Anglo-Chinese war. He had been captured on January 5 1858 and taken to Calcutta by the British. (NCH 23.1.1858).\n\n9.2.1858 (Tue)\n\nT.J. DIBDIN: \"The Birthday” (1799)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nC. DANCE: \"The Dustman's Belle\" (1846)\n\nT: Comedy (2 acts)\n\nJ. KENNEY: \"Raising the Wind\" (1803)\n\nT: Farce (2 acts)\n\nC: Officers of H.M.S. Pique\n\nTh: On board ship\n\nR: The description of the circumstances under which the Herald's reporter was drawn to the \"Pique\" (a British frigate with crew of 350) is too vivid for the reader to forgo: Tuesday last was a depressing day for a melancholic tempered man, and even we, not constitutionally sad, felt its influence. The morning dawned through an atmosphere in which rain and mist were struggling to see which should do its worst to make everything look disagreeable. As the day moved on, the rain gained the ascendancy and pelted down most pitilessly; overhead the sky looked dull and murky; underfoot the soil of Shanghai, mingling lovingly with the weeping clouds, produced a mixture as tenacious as the grasp of a miser, and dirty as the soul of a time-serving parasite. The mail, with the usual fatality which crowds one mishap upon another, though overdue, had not arrived. To take the gun was simply to commit a felo de se in a sea of mud; and to hum a snatch of a tune was as great an exertion as to dance an Irish jig in fetters, or laugh at the present Sir R. Peel's facetiousness.* In this desolate mood we were plunged, when suddenly a bright recollection flashed upon us. We rose hastily from our chair and consulted a paper which had been lying neglected in a corner: it was the Pique's playbill. The sight of the 'Birthday', the 'Dustman's Belle' and 'Raising the Wind' acted like a charm upon us, and a few minutes afterwards we had crossed the Bund, escaped the insidious dangers of those man-traps of jetties which the Municipal Council are daily suffering to grow more and more like that bridge with many pitfalls invented in the vision of Mirza (this is a reference to \"The Vision of Mirza\" by Joseph Addison, first published in \"The Spectator\" in 1711 and reprinted in 1856 – JH); and committed the safety of our person to a China-boatman and his magnified eggshell. The rain pelted, but we laughed at it; the gusts blew spitefully, but we clutched the tighter and defied them; the darkness did its best to mislead us, but the bright glow from a sailor's pipe guided us with more trustworthiness and safety than a beacon light under certain auspices could have done, and we reached the Pique in safety. Here we found all light, bustle and tiptoe expectation. The main deck had been cleared of its grim everyday tenants - the cold frowning implements of old Mars and their room occupied by the flimsy, but joy-inspiring fripperies of Thespis. We passed along row after row of happy, eager faces and took our seat in front, amongst the guests whom the ship's company of the\n\n* Sir Robert Peel (1822-1895), diplomat and politician; popular in social life and gifted with \"rare powers of irony, but also \"absence of dignity\" and a \"want of moral fiber in his volatile character\" (Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 44, p. 223-224).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212086, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "There and elsewhere, the Rural Committees carried out many executive functions at that time, and in remoter places where government was less in evidence they continued to do so until much later.\n\n3. Self-Management among Tsuen Wan Squatters\n\nUnlike the villagers, the squatter population of Tsuen Wan in the 1950s and 1960s was neither homogenous nor long-settled. It mostly comprised newcomers from many parts of Kwangtung and elsewhere. However, like other groups of Chinese who happened to find themselves living together in a strange place far from home, they too were imbued with the spirit and practice of these long-exercised \"self-help skills\". It was, therefore, in no way surprising to find that able, willing men (and sometimes women) in the squatter areas organized themselves and their fellow residents for greater convenience, providing local services through their own efforts and giving very little trouble to the authorities.\n\n71\n\nThis self-servicing was decentralized. Committees formed in each squatter area in the time-honoured way, because men came forward and were accepted by the rest. There was a real need for their services. Life in such places was (and to a lesser extent still is) often fraught with dangers arising from fire, and from the floods, typhoons, landslips and similar natural disasters to which Hong Kong is periodically subject. However, the leaders were used to taking such precautionary measures as were possible and were ready to meet new crises as and when they occurred. There was an equal need for the exercise of initiative in daily life, since at that period the amenities provided by government departments or the public utilities mostly ended at the settlement fringes or some point in the neighbourhood. The leaders had to make their own arrangements to obtain and distribute water and electricity inside the lanes of the squatter areas, and they sometimes carried out minor public works. They also formed fire-fighting teams and security patrols. Disputes between residents over a wide variety of causes had to be resolved, and sometimes triad elements had to be deterred from taking a hand in “providing” security and services for a consideration. In short, the task of the local leaders was not light, even for capable men. It needed time, effort, and the right contacts in the community and the bureaucracy, including the local police, and cooperation and support from the residents was vital.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212100, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "19\n\nand, it would seem, much of the wording of the original record. The inscription reads:\n\n\"The deceased was the fourth son of Ancestor Kau-yuen. He died early. Afterwards [we] his three elder brothers [only the names of two are given] took up the bones [from a coffin burial] and on an auspicious day in an autumn month in the Ch'ien Lung 4th or ping-san year3 buried them above the cross road at Pak Kung Au on Tai Mo Shan (the geomantic details of the site follow). During his life, the deceased was polite and ceremonious. He managed his family frugally and industriously, and he was straightforward and upright in his dealings with others. We his brothers and descendants flourish [scil: on account of his exemplary conduct and noble character]. We had hoped that he would have a long life, but his virtue is ever fragrant and he is deserving of his descendants' offerings for ever. For ten thousand years his memory will not be forgotten.\"\n\nConfucian hyperbole, one might ask suspiciously? Perhaps it was, though in fact there is not much of the kind in the local grave tablets I have seen. Certainly the memory of this good man must have remained alive in the Chung family for generations after his death and formal burial in 1738; for it was nearly 150 years later that the repair to his grave took place.\n\nAnother of the basic Confucian principles was reciprocity. It had practical use amid the many uncertainties and occasional dangers of rural life: where mutual help was sometimes badly needed though not always welcomed since obligations were created and had at some time to be repaid. This awareness was very well-developed. It was deemed important to know when it was appropriate to render and receive assistance, and to express or show eternal gratitude and awareness for help rendered in time of need. These were the ideals, and it has seemed to me that many villagers did their best to put them into practice.\n\nOnce assistance was given and accepted, it was both family and village custom never to forget it. Nor was gratitude to be regarded as being confined to one generation: where considered important", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212364, "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": 306, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "the second half of the journey, through Mirs Bay, where The station is to be found on the western coast. With a favourable wind and a good boat the trip can be completed in a day. Should the conditions be unfavourable, however, it is very difficult to estimate the time. In addition, you have to consider that Chinese waters are very often unsafe because of pirates, and travelling this route you are continuously exposed to danger. Use of small boats is perhaps safer.\n\nIf using the other route, you first of all cross to Kaulung, which lies immediately opposite the island of Hong Kong. From there you cross the mountains until you cross the first range running west from Mirs Bay. At the village of Saten [Sha Tin] you can get a passenger ferry, or hire a boat, in order to reach Wo-Ang-Tschung (Wo Ang Chung, Wan, today called Chung Mei) to the north. Now you have a strenuous hike over the mountains before you reach that arm of Mirs Bay (Sha Tau Kok Hoi) which stretches to the west. Having reached the village of Kiuk-pu [Kuk Po] you have to take another boat. In about 20 or 25 minutes the sea has been crossed and you have arrived at Tunglo. This journey can be completed, if all goes well, in a day. It is a difficult journey, but avoids the perils of the sea. But where in China is there a route free of difficulties and dangers?\n\nIf you look down on Tungfo from a high place, you can see, in the first place, the sea to the south and east, whereas to the north and west you see a narrow strip of cultivable land, while, further away, the horizon is limited in all directions by mountains. The range to the north stretches from the east to the west and bends round in a bow shape to the south. This mountain range forms the border of the strip of cultivable land to the north and west, with the other sides being open to the sea. This range has no collective name, whereas the individual mountains that appear within it carry names, which it can be of very little interest to mention here. The highest of them, which is also the highest point in the Sinon District, is called Ng Thung San [Ng Tung Shan, #1]. Its height is, according to the measurements of English technicians, 3095 feet. It is\n\nPage 283", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212395, "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": 337, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "314\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nPeter Hopkirk, The Great Game, On Secret Service in High Asia. (Oxford University Press 1991) 524 pp. illus., index.\n\nWhere Britain and other Western powers extended their colonial influence by the sea-routes, Russia's empire was achieved overland, first into Siberia and then east and southeast into Central Asia. Inevitably this brought Russian armies and officials nearer the frontier with British India, causing alarm in London; and throughout the nineteenth century a continuing system of intelligence-seeking and diplomatic nursing of local chiefs occupied some of the brightest and most adventurous of Russian and British officers and agents.\n\nThis was the Great Game of Hopkirk's title, a phrase popularised by Kipling but first coined by young Lt. Connolly of the 6th Bengal Native Light Cavalry fifty years earlier. It was certainly not a game for the soft-hearted, the difficulty being that any Briton found making maps or gathering information in the wild kingdoms north of the Himalayas was suspected of plotting a British invasion and would certainly risk death.\n\nThe story begins after the defeat of Napoleon when the Russians were strong and confident and felt that Central Asia was their rightful sphere. Russian troops fought their way southwards through the Caucasus, then inhabited by fierce Muslim and Christian tribesmen, towards northern Persia. Then the pressure switched eastwards, and by the middle of the century, as one after another of the cities and khanates of the former Silk Road fell to Russian arms, it looked part of a grand design to bring the whole of Central Asia under Russian control. Once that was achieved, strategists in London feared, the final advance would be on India.\n\nAs the gap between the two frontiers gradually narrowed, the Great Game intensified. Despite the dangers, there was no lack of young officers ready to risk their lives, filling in the blanks on the map, reporting on Russian movements. One of the earliest in the field, in 1810, was young Lt. Henry Pottinger, who would become Hong Kong's first Governor thirty-odd years later. He was bright, brave and self-confident. And there were just as courageous operators on the Russian side.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212420, "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": 362, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "339\n\nAs Spence and other students of history are well aware, circumstances in later years forced the Empress Dowager to implement even more radical reform measures than the ones her nephew the Emperor tried to put in place. But those came too late to save the dynasty.\n\nFRANK CHING\n\nWong Siu-Lun, Emigrant Entrepreneurs Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988. xii+244pp. Bibliography. Index\n\nThe role of the Shanghai industrialists in the post-War development of Hong Kong is a tale often told. A comprehensive, authoritative and readable book on this subject would be a welcome addition to those interested in modern Hong Kong history. Unfortunately, Professor Wong's book does not justify such a welcome.\n\nThis book is the result of research performed by the author over a period of ten years. His objective is to provide a detailed account of (the Shanghainese group's) industrial accomplishments to fill a gap in our knowledge about the process of industrialization in Hong Kong, which he hoped would 'help to answer two theoretical questions. First, why do people with common regional origins often congregate in particular economic spheres? Second, what are the distinctive features of Chinese industrial entrepreneurship?' His research was based on his B.Litt. thesis at Oxford, conducted in 1975, and was supplemented by interviews conducted after his return to Hong Kong. However, it was not until 1985 that he was able to undertake a thorough revision, resulting in the publication of this manuscript.\n\nAs a sociological study, this book was probably destined not to appeal to a businessman such as me. In any case, I found this book to be extremely dry, one of the dangers of releasing to the general public work originally done for an academic audience. There were and are a number of colourful characters among the Shanghai textile industrialists, but little of this is reflected in this book; there is no sauce to go with the meat. Names of individuals are sometimes disguised and textile mills are numbered; suitable perhaps for an academic thesis, but not for a more general audience.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212480, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "14\n\nHong Kong. First, they had enough money to pay their own passage and start new businesses. Second, they had the inclination to engage in trade at a time when business was shifting from Canton to other places. The life stories of Cantonese merchants tell the origin of their emigration, how they struggled against the difficult environment and hardship in acquiring wealth. They gave details of their business careers in the wills to encourage their descendants to follow their examples in creating a successful life.\n\nCanton-Hong Kong-Macau Network\n\nO Kee Cheung, a Cantonese merchant who first came from Canton to Macau, accumulated business know-how and went to Madagascar for trade. Later he returned to Macau but took residence at Canton. He mentioned he was poor and suffered a lot of sorrow in the past and reminded his sons there was hardship and extreme difficulties in making a fortune. His business was the Yee Fung Hong in Annam and there was a family trust fund named the O Chin Sin Tong:\n\nI came to Macao at the age of 18 to learn business, and at the age of 20, I began visiting foreign countries for the purpose of trade. During the first few years, I neither gained nor lost much. Afterwards through the help of Mr. Lee Mang, I went to trade in Madacassar and other islands and was a little more successful. Then I returned to Macao, and afterwards lived at Canton, at which time I was successful in all trade transactions, and my family was considered wealthy. But learning in mind the dangers of the winds and seas and the troubles encountered during the adventures of my youth, my former poverty and sorrow still appear to be within my sight. Therefore with tasteless rice and coarse dress, and always striving to renounce worldly vices, I have passed several decades, as if they were but one day. I have thus set you an example, so that you may know the hardships attending upon the making of a fortune, and being afraid that I would not be able to hold fast to the same, I have always striven to be diligent and economical, and even then, I was afraid of losing it.\n\n16\n\nLeung Kau was a Zhongshan native. It had been said he went to California when mining for gold was the chief attraction for most people.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212601, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Maymyo 1941 \n\nGUERILLA TRAINING* \n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE \n\n135 \n\nThe shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four.\n\nHongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”.\n\n*This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213275, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "77\n\nEuropeans and Chinese have commented that, on entering, one senses a feeling of tranquillity.\n\nOne Chinese lady was keen to live in Realty Gardens. She paid her deposit in 1972, shortly before the flats were completed, and she was allocated a flat in another block. On learning the fung shui in the second block was not so good as the flat examined in this case study she promptly withdrew her application. Even though she could ill afford it she relinquished her deposit,\n\nIn today's world much is happening at a rapid pace. Yet the powers of the natural environment are still important. Psychologists, sociologists and environmentalists warn of the dangers of alienation of people from nature. The Eight Chinese Elements of Nature are: fire, thunder, heaven, water (the ocean), water (rain), wind, earth and the hills. A valley with favourable fung shui is considered good for farming. A village should preferably be situated at the foot of a hill so that the vitality of fung shui flows down. Also, paths leading to or from a hamlet should meander or zig-zag so that evil spirits, which travel in straight lines, cannot follow people walking along them.\n\nMost Chinese feel they are part of nature, and, everywhere they turn, they try to imagine things are alive. Consequently, most do not move into a flat blind to fung shui principles. It is important to 'examine the earth and taste the water'. One of the 'tests' is to take a babe-in-arms into a house and see how it reacts to its surroundings. Does it cry or does it lie peaceably?\n\nUntil the late 1960s, the gracious old Foreign Correspondents' Club stood on the site where the housing complex, Realty Gardens, now stands. Many of the old features in its communal garden, such as steps, retaining walls, rainwater catchment channels and pavilions with green, sweeping, glazed tile roofs, are still there.\n\nJust as alongside a path on the edge of a village an earth god shrine is usually positioned, so, as you enter the flat in this case study you are faced by a figurine of Chung Kuei, the eighth-century physician. Wearing a maroon and white robe he stands, smiling, on a ledge by the front door. In his hand is a fan on which a bat perches. Chung is a protector against evil and an expert at catching ghosts. He may be likened to a guardian", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213976, "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-1997", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "In the developed areas the working party had its own preferences, but diplomatically decided to let higher authority decide on detail. The general intention was to set up what would be known in the conurbations as Municipal Councils or (minor) Urban District Councils (UDC), and elsewhere as District (or Local) Councils. This might, as the Governor-in-Council chose to decide, produce a Municipal Council for Hong Kong Island and a District Council for the non-urban area, with Aberdeen joining either or becoming a separate UDC; one or two Municipal Councils for Kowloon and New Kowloon; a UDC for Tsuen Wan; and no other change for the NT (but possibly three District Councils one day, where currently the DOS Tai Po, Yuen Long and South held sway.) All would be elected from geographical wards, and not from area-wide rating or electoral rolls; and by preference from single-member wards, with one-third retiring by annual rotation. All these Councils could form Joint Committees with each other, and perhaps have a Joint Consultative Council to co-ordinate their relations with Central Government. It was all deliberately tentative: junior officers must not seem to be handing up tablets of stone.\n\nThe possibility of public apathy (already much noticed in relation to the existing Urban Council), and the dangers of encouraging the involvement of external party politics, led to cautious suggestions that in the first instance whatever overseeing body the Government would assign to this field (doubtless a new branch of the secretariat, if not an amalgamation of the SCA and the NTA) might nominate members to leaven the elected majority; a proportion of 1:3, or in the last resort 2:3, was proposed. For the franchise, while considering adult suffrage as a distinct possibility, the prudent recommendation was for all men and women and their spouses over 21 to enjoy the vote who owned, occupied or tenanted property on which rates were paid or of which the rent might be deemed to include a rating element; provided that they had three years' residence, and therefore a stake in the colony, British citizenship would not be required. Councillors should not be paid, to avoid the growth of a profession of politicians, but should be entitled to attendance allowances within a statutory limit to compensate for any loss of earnings; and they should appoint their own chairmen from any quarter.\n\nThe new Councils' potential powers and functions received close examination. From the start it was accepted that Hong Kong's central\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214812, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "192\n\n24\n\nOpinions differ on this. Sinn (1998; cf. 1995) for example, traces the continued emergence of native-place associations in Hong Kong through the 1950s and their importance to date, yet Wong (1995) talks of Hong Kong identity as 'receding'.\n\n25 Earlier Salaff and Wong (1997) had emphasised the importance of 'network capital' in motivating emigrations. See also articles in Skeldon (1994 and 1995) on the Hong Kong emigration process.\n\n26 It may be the nostalgia for a vanished Hong Kong which has most afflicted Hong Kongers since the end of British colonialism (personal communication, Yang Tsung-Rong 5 December 2000).\n\n27 Tapp (1996).\n\n28 Personal communication, Prasit Leepreecha, 1995.\n\n29 identity@lao.net' in Evans (1998). Souvannavong (1999) also provides some extremely valuable insider-research on returning Laotian elites.\n\n30 See Ben Anderson (1994) on the dangers of 'long-distance nationalism'.\n\n31 The most appropriate visual image here is one of VORTEX; an enormous up-surge from a centre, leaving a void which aches to be filled...\n\n32 Somewhat similarly Saskia Sassen (1999b) contrasts the 'utopian' view of the Internet as a space of freedom and empowerment with the 'dystopian' which focuses on the power of big corporate networks to dominate the media.\n\n33 See Hughes (2000) for another account of real social actions emerging from cyber-communications.\n\n34\n\nAnthropology owes a great debt to the work of Anthony Cohen (1982; 1985; 1986) in reviving the notion of the community and its symbolic boundaries.\n\n35 As in simplistic contrasts often drawn in development studies between undifferentiated, homogeneous villages and fragmented, divided societies resulting from the impact of capital.\n\n36 \"The Anthropology of Separation and Reunion in China', LSE, 15-16 May 1999.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214823, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "204\n\nEarth Gods and Tree Spirits\n\nBesides the gods of Buddhism and Taoism worshipped in the village temples, there were also the gods of each locality. In the villages of the Hong Kong Region, in addition to whatever temples had been erected to the deities, it was usual for there to be several earth gods in each village, and in each of the streets in the local market centres. These animistic spirits were equally sought out by the village people.30 Besides the regular acts of worship performed at the shrines, with their supplications and thanksgivings, it was common practice to place children, especially boys, under the protection of a temple deity, an earth god or a tree spirit during the uncertain years of childhood, in order to secure protection against the many dangers that beset young lives. If a tree died or had to be felled, the protégés were transferred to another protector, with the appropriate ceremonies of disengagement (recognition of and thanksgiving for favours bestowed) and adoption at each place.31 Either Buddhist or Taoist priests were required for such rituals.\n\n31\n\nChinese Women and Religion\n\nFinally, it should be noted that Chinese women are considered to be more religious than their menfolk. As Rev. Dr. Robert Morrison's biographer observed in the last century:\n\n46\n\n'...their nature is much more religious than that of the men...it is they who visit the temples. The incense pots which smoulder before the placid countenance of Buddha are filled and kindled by them; they burn ten sheets of paper to the men's one....The men can do without worship, the women cannot.”32\n\nFrom my observations in Hong Kong and elsewhere, I believe this to be as true of today's worshippers as when it was written one hundred years ago.\n\nNOTES\n\nWilliam Frederick Mayers, The Chinese Reader's Manual (Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1874) called them \"The Three systems of Doctrine (or Religion)\" and stated that they “constitute the recognized systems of religion,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214985, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "37\n\nThe labourer gave such details as age, address, knowledge of English, previous occupations and also details of the person, in China, to whom he wanted the Chinese portion of his pay to be sent. He then \"signed\" his contract and his identity card with his thumb-prints, so agreeing to the terms of service. Even though recruited as civilians, all were subject to martial law, including field punishments and courts-martial, conviction sometimes including the death penalty. They were considered as mercenaries.\n\nGroups of fifteen were invited to elect leaders, called Under-gangers. These men usually were more literate or had other qualities of leadership. It was necessary for the British officers and NCOs to treat them with respect at all times, otherwise they \"lost face,\" and their compatriots would then treat them with disdain and not obey their commands.\n\nEquipment and Pay\n\nBeing non-combatants, no Army-type uniform was issued to the labourers. They were issued with summer and winter \"native-style\" clothing. They were also issued with a fur-lined cap made of brown felt, with ear-flaps of grey fur, commonly called the \"Shandong hat\". These hats were modelled on similar hats worn by British troops in the North China garrisons prior to World War I. On arrival in France, labourers managed to acquire other types of headgear, namely civilian cloth caps, Australian bush hats, French Army kepis and even steel helmets. Pictures, whether stills or movies, show labourers of the CLC with a variety of clothing and headgear. European officers and NCOs wore regulation British Army uniforms and insignia, either with an Army General Service Corps badge2 or the insignia of their parent units during prior service.\n\nA cap badge of sorts was issued. Made of copper, it was oval, one inch by one and a half inches, and had the initials \"C.L.C.\" stamped thereon. Gangers wore chevrons on their uniform sleeves. The Chinese were proud of their contribution to the war effort and were ultimately awarded with an official motto Labor Vincit Omnia. [Labour Conquers all].\n\nIn addition to being clothed, fed and accommodated, the labourers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214986, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "38\n\nalso received a small daily payment, part of which was remitted to his nominated party in China. Invariably gambling was rife and, on pay days, some debts could not be honoured. Fighting ensued and some killed their companions as a result, eventually paying the price by being shot at dawn.\n\nThe Army Directorate of Labour laid down payment scales:\n\n \n Bonus to family on recruitment\n Chinese dollars 15\n \n \n Pay to start on arrival at Weihai Wei\n \n \n \n Labourers\n Per diem in France in francs\n Per mensem in China in Chinese $\n \n \n Skilled labourers - carpenters, masons\n \n \n \n \n bricklayers, fitter's mates\n 1.00\n 10\n \n \n and blacksmith strikers\n 1.50\n 13\n \n \n Gangers [equal to Corporal]\n 1.50\n 15\n \n \n Skilled blacksmiths\n 2.00\n 20\n \n \n Skilled fitters\n 2.50\n 30\n \n \n Chinese Assistant Interpreters [equal to sergeant]\n 2.60\n 30\n \n \n Chinese Interpreter Clerks\n 5.00\n 60\n \n\nDeductions from Pay - Pay stopped for time lost owing to sickness or misconduct:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214989, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "41\n\nhis contingent of coolies via the Panama Canal for New York and ahead of them was the Empress of Asia which was torpedoed, so they headed for the safety of Jamaica. From his memoires I cannot ascertain a date. He held a high opinion of his coolies and stated that the greatest aid to maintain discipline was to retain his sense of humour under all circumstances. He also believed in seeing that they were properly cared for when ill and, most important of all, when selecting coolies for promotion, to prefer the old man with character with the slow moving brain to the smart young town coolie.\n\nDaryl Klein, who joined the CLC as a 2Lt in late 1917, assisted in escorting a large contingent by sea, leaving Qingdao in about February 1918, sailing via Japan where they coalled ship and on to Canada where they stayed for about ten weeks. They were then conveyed in June 1918, with some Canadian soldiers, on HMT Empress of Asia, this ship being used to convey troops and others, via the Panama Canal to Kingston, Jamaica and, after refuelling in New York, on to France. This contingent consisted of 13 officers [of whom one was an ex-banker, one an ex-officer from Russia and one an ex-missionary], 4,200 coolies with five interpreters and one medical assistant. During the voyage, Klein interviewed two First Class Gangers [or sergeants], Sgt Tang Chi-chang, aged 27 and previously a school teacher in Nanjing and a graduate of Weixin University; he was also a Christian. Sgt. Sen Shin-lin, aged 26, had served in a warlord's army for six years.\n\nAs Halifax, in Canada, had been so badly damaged by the accidental explosion of an ammunition ship in harbour, G. E. Cormack and his contingent had to stay at Victoria, British Columbia and whilst there he had to look after a coolie who had been admitted to hospital for a severe operation, which was successful. Later a deputation came to see Cormack and presented him with a carved wooden panel, which they had made, representing two stags fighting. This was their way of showing appreciation of his attention to their sick comrade. This carved panel is now held in the Imperial War Museum, London, and, at the time of writing, is not on display. [see photograph]\n\nWorking in France\n\nIn a Company of about 500 men, there would be 24 British officers and NCOs, lead by a major or captain; 476 Chinese labourers, with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214990, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "42\n\nbalance being formed of an interpreter, a Head Ganger (equivalent to a CSM). Some Class One Gangers [sergeants], 7 Class Two Gangers [corporals] and 16 Class Three Gangers [lance-corporals] in charge of 14 men. These were known as paitou. No military titles were used for the labourers as they were not regarded as being service personnel.\n\nThe labourers were expected to work up to ten hours a day for seven days every week, time off being allowed for Chinese holidays. This was the norm for Chinese workers back in China and therefore not considered untoward. They were employed in ports to unload/load cargoes, repair roads, lay railway lines, build huts and aerodromes. At the end of the War, they were used to level shell holes, search for and unearth unexploded bombs, roll up barbed wire and also to collect the remains of bodies and bury them in graves already dug by CLC labourers. In some areas the labourers were eventually running their own truck repair shop, smith's shop, paint shop and motor-cycle repair shop. Others maintained the artillery and serviced tanks. Some also, as a pastime, constructed items from used war material [bomb cases, bullets, grenades, etc.] as souvenirs for the soldiers, and these items formed and were eventually known as 'Trench Art.' They were also adept at making items from other materials and also modelling and carving from chalk. The Imperial War Museum, London, has on display two lions carved from chalk and also, not on display, a lion modelled from clay by a labourer no. 53279, of the CLC. Unfortunately, there are no further details about this model. (see photograph)\n\nTo provide a picture of how Chinese labourers were employed let us examine the development of their employment on tank repair over the twelve months from August 1917 to August 1918. Members of the CLC first arrived at the Tank Central Workshops on 8th August, 1917. These were located in the Ternoise Valley, on the road between Hesdin and St. Pol. Tank HQ was at Bermincourt, Central Workshops at Erin but the whole establishment later expanded to take over more of the valley and include more villages.\n\nThe 51 Chinese Labour Company, consisting of 4 officers, 12 British NCOs and 200 tradesmen, was followed, on 26th August, by an additional 270 tradesmen.\n\nA large number of the men failed the trade tests and, for those who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214994, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "46\n\nfence at the proceedings were men with Chinese features. [see photograph] Were they of the Chinese Labour Corps and did they assist in digging his grave? Just a conjecture.\n\nThe labourers celebrated their holidays by decorating their huts, making paper lanterns, staging operas or shows and with special meals. Time off was given for these.\n\nThe Young Men's Christian Association [YMCA] sent men and women to France to provide recreation, talks, rest facilities and entertainment, including cinemas. Members of the YMCA also assisted some of the illiterate Labourers in writing letters to their relatives for them. By February 1919 the YMCA maintained in France a staff of 1024 men and 735 women, representing a major increase over early 1917 when only 641 workers of both sexes were active, largely necessitated by the ministry to the Chinese. Some of them, all too few, could speak Chinese.\n\nDiscipline\n\nDiscipline among the labourers was generally good. The Chinese were predominantly engaged in carrying out, initially, unskilled labouring work. They were commanded by white officers and NCOs and having, in their midst, some literate and articulate men who could organise and represent their fellow countrymen who had no experience of bargaining, they collectively went on strike for better conditions and more food. Labourers were also subordinated to the equivalent of foremen, fellow countrymen known as Gangers, who exercised informal authority.\n\nBecause of the strict censorship, members of the Labour Companies were not allowed to mix with others outside their camps. This, in part, can be explained that some nationalities held animosity against others, e.g. the Indian Labour Corps was made up of many tribal groups; the Basutos and Zulus of the South African Native Labour Contingent [SANLC] were mutually hostile and the Chinese and the SANLC were cool towards each other.\n\nIt appeared that the Chinese and other foreign Labour Corps members, were, at that time, of unknown characteristics and were\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214996, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "48\n\nc] He is a rigid adherent to his contract though agreeable to modifications, e.g. piecework if advantageous to him.\n\nd] He is unequalled as a judge of human character; the best procurable class of white overseer is therefore necessary to obtain the best results.\n\ne] He is fond of litigation and lodging complaints, and, though he can be \"sworn,\" his evidence must be accepted with considerable reserve.\n\nf] He is not addicted to crimes of violence or drunkenness, but is an inveterate gambler and indulges freely in immorality with women, if opportunity offers.\n\nIn spite of all the seriousness there was some humour amongst the British officers and NCOs with the Chinese, as these few examples may illustrate :\n\na] Four coolies had left a railway truck which they were loading and disappeared, thereby delaying work. When charged with leaving work, each had a ready answer. No. 1 declared that he was sick and obliged to retire. No. 2 had seen some friends in the distance and had left to talk to them for a few minutes. No. 3 felt the need for some tea, so had slipped away to get it. No. 4 was forlorn at being left alone and so left to escape the solitude.\n\nb] The O.C. had occasion to rebuke some gangers [Chinese NCOs] for slackness. They listened intently and on conclusion of his speech a babel of sound poured forth from the delinquents. The O.C. asked as to what they were saying and the interpreter, a graduate of Peking University replied, \"They wish to say, Sir, that they all like you very much!\"\n\nc] A melancholy coolie asked the British Orderly Officer if he could make a complaint. 'I wish to be sent back to the Depot. The men in my hut are wicked men.'\n\n'How's that?' enquired the officer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215026, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "78\n\nStaff Officer for the HQ mess. The Head Ganger was from Tsinan [Jinan] in Shantung, under him were I think four Gangers, and the Labourers were all from Northern China, my father said they were all tall men and physically very strong and hardy. While clearing munitions one of them had been very badly injured when he pulled the pin from a grenade out of curiosity, and to the amazement of the British was able to return to work after a few weeks. My father said that for minor ailments the Chinese practised acupuncture on each other using a needle stuck in a cork.\n\nThe unit my father joined moved backwards and forwards with the last German Offensive of the War, he had great trouble finding them initially, and after the Armistice seemed to work mainly in the area around Amiens remaking roads, clearing munitions, collecting corpses, destroying animal corpses, clearing wells, and digging ditches to restore the drainage to arable land. It was a priority that the local French farmers were able to plant their fields as soon as possible as the population who had been behind the German lines were close to starvation. The condition of some of the French children in these areas made a deep impression on my father and on the Chinese who seemed very fond of children and used to give them their rations.\n\nAlthough the Chinese were willing to work waist deep in water, they often refused to work when it was raining much to everyone's exasperation. One who insisted on working while holding an umbrella in one hand had it broken over his back by a Ganger. Punishment was either by fining or flogging. My father asked the Head Ganger which was better, and the Head Ganger assured him that since they were all there to make money flogging was better. The Labourers, said the Head Ganger, would resent a fine but a flogging would be nothing to them. My father said this was borne out by one of the Officers who refused to flog on principle being chased down a road by a crowd of angry Chinese. A flogging would be administered by a Ganger and would be watched by the other Labourers who stood laughing at the victim's stupidity at being caught. The man who was tied to a post, often had wet tea leaves poured over his head. Wherever the Chinese went there was a bonfire with tea brewing.\n\nOne of the Officers with the unit, a Mr. Ferguson, was robbed and murdered while off-duty by European labourers who had been paid off", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215651, "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": 428, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "380\n\nthe gunpowder store, on one of the uppermost platforms. (Figure 4) Today it is kept locked, but is no doubt empty. Photographs from about 1900 show there was another building alongside the fort. This has been demolished to make room for the road that now skirts this side of Taipa.\n\nReclamation was instigated to provide for a pier which is now situated besides the Fort. Today the land in front has been filled in and a pleasant garden occupies the area. (Figure 5) On the slope at the side of the fort is a memorial to the victims of an explosion on the frigate D. Maria II in 1850. This is inscribed A MEMORIA DAS VICTIMAS EXPLOSAO DA FRAGATA D. MARIA II EM 1850. ERECTO EM 1880. It is a sad reminder of the dangers to which seafarers were exposed in those days.\n\nSecurity of Taipa Island was eventually taken over by the police and the fort was used as a police station until 2000. It is now a base for the Scout Association of Macau. Its continued official use has meant that there has been no pressure to change the facilities and there are no signs of any major modifications to them.\n\nA Nineteenth Century Cannon\n\nAlthough there are a number of old cannon within the fort, most have been placed there in recent times. However, an original one, dating almost from the time of the fort's construction, is at the front corner nearest to the pier.\n\nThis gun is an interesting example from the middle of the nineteenth century, a period of great change in the design of cannon. Similar guns quickly became obsolete and were replaced, so it is very unusual to find such a piece still in place, complete with the original mounting3. Figures 5 and 6 show the cannon, still pointing out across the straight between Taipa and the island belonging to mainland China.\n\nThe cannon is marked 'C.A. & Co. Boston,' and dated 1855. The maker was Cyrus Alger and Company, a firm founded in the U.S.A. in 1809. Their foundry was on Dorchester Avenue, Boston and they supplied the United States with cannon balls in the war of 1812 and later in the Civil War. They made both cast bronze and cast iron cannon, the basic alternatives for cannon up till the middle of the nineteenth", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215967, "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": 266, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "44\n\n18th centuries. It is well documented now that the Manchurian despots who militarily overcame the weakened and corrupt Ming court were adamant in their efforts to rewrite the history of their forefathers in “angelic\" terms. Perhaps more than in any other previous dynasty, the Manchurian emperors destroyed pro-Ming and pro-Hàn culture books and documents, burning also any books which stood against their Manchurian ancestors, and censoring portions of books which touched on these topics.** In numerous cases the contemporary relatives of earlier authors were themselves detained, tortured, and given death sentences. Sometimes the penalties were completely inordinate, causing not only racial tension among the Hàn elite (between those supporting and those fearing this Manchurian method of \"intellectual cleansing\") but also a deep seated resentment among the common people. Understanding the harshness, breadth, and persistence of this long-term policy of the Qing government, the Tàiping Insurgents' anti-Manchu ideology appears to be a long submerged political whiplash against a racist regime.\" Yet it remained another facet of Qing social life during this chaotic period that \"the people become willing partners in their own subjection,\" very much in order to save their own lives as well as those who support them.46\n\nCh'ea's armoury against these tremendous cultural pressures and political dangers was his newly obtained Christian library and the inherent attractions of his alternative form of life. No precise details about what he brought back with him to Poklo in 1856 are available, but later records suggest that he and others had access to at least Ho Tsun-sheen's Introduction to a Comprehensive Commentary to the New Testament (Yīnyuē quánshū jiěshì xù), the Christian version of the Three Character Classic (Sānzì jing), and a translation of the first volume of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, rendered by another Scottish missionary of note, William C. Burns (using the family name Bào, 1815-1868).47 This third work was given the Chinese title Tianlu lìchéng (lit., The Course along the Heavenly Road),48 and was probably read with a great amount of empathetic understanding by Ch'ea as he faced these daunting forces in opposition to his Christian associations and beliefs.\n\n200", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215985, "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": 284, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "218\n\nthe Zongli yámén, he cannot be faulted for missing this major tragic event among Chinese Protestants in southeast China, because it was apparently never reported or discussed by British and Qing officials.\n\nMaybe the \"oversight\" happened because the turn of events shifted attention to the military problems associated with the resistance of Tàiping forces during the next three years before they were destroyed. They had become the target of a common effort by the Qing armies as well as some foreign (and particularly British/Scottish) militia under General Gordon, probably causing a host of special problems demanding the \"immediate attention\" of the British Ambassador, Sir Frederick Bruce.4 Nevertheless, it was against the Ambassador that Legge expressed his most piercing salvo of Protestant Dissenter displeasure in 1863, nearly two years after the riots in Poklo and Ch'ëa's murder had taken place.\n\nIn a brief note leaked to the public a year after it had been written, Sir Bruce explained his opinion to Lord John Russell (1792-1878), then Secretary of State, that missionaries should not be permitted to enter into China because of the troubles they caused and the dangers they faced. His arguments stood in blatant opposition to the conditions codified by the 1860 treaty, but were nevertheless read with approval by Lord Russell. This occasioned an outburst of righteous anger from Legge, who took Bruce's letter apart piece by piece, and showed its insensitivity to missionary work as well as its incoherence in the face of the recent treaty conditions. In and of itself, this letter written by Legge, first published in the Patriot in London and soon afterward in the local China Mail in Hong Kong, was one of the most perceptive and articulate pieces of political analysis he ever wrote. But the coup de grâce came in the end, where the level of frustration Legge felt against British bureaucratic reticence and its discounting of missionary and Chinese Christians' rights had grown to a new height.\n\n95\n\nI will conclude this long letter by referring to a case in point,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216432, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "141\n\nOne such snippet dated 12 May, 1904, described how 'when the Russians withdrew from Wafangtien, contemporaneously with the Japanese advance, bands of Hunhuses throughout Manchuria began to show great activity, especially in the region of Yantai, a station between Mukden and Liaoyang, thus adding enormously to the dangers and preoccupations of the Russians. There were reports that these bands were led by Japanese, which were not improbable, since the Japanese had a perfect right to make use of their hostility to the Russians of the population of Manchuria. At the same time, in all directions, attacks on the railway began, under the direction of officers of the Japanese General Staff. Two such officers had been captured by General Kuropatkin in April and, as there was no doubt as to their mission since they had upon them a large quantity of dynamite, fuses and tools for destroying the line, they were promptly executed.' On the page facing this snippet is a photograph of the decapitation of several Hong Huzi with the caption 'How Russians deal with the Hunhuses who destroy the railway.'\n\nAlthough it does not in any way help clarify the employment of Chinese bandits as irregular troops by the Russians, a British observer writing on the horsemanship of the Cossacks, noted that ‘after a comparatively small force of Japanese cavalry at Sha-ho had acted as a sufficient counter-check to the larger masses of Russian horsemen, the Cossack was deficient in courage and staying power, but was well mounted. There was a long and exposed line of the Manchurian Railway for them to guard, and the Russian cavalry had the Hunhutses [sic] always with them, but these marauders on their diminutive horses should not have been able to ride round the horsemen of the steppes in the manner they seem persistently to have done.'\n\nAlthough captions on photographs of captured Chinese claim they were being executed for espionage, mainly spying for the Japanese, it tended to have been more a matter of individual banditry and any resultant monetary reward rather than prisoners having been 'resistance fighters.'\n\nThere is also a photograph of \"The Head Chief of the Hunhuses.' It shows four Chinese and one Japanese (said to have been an Intelligence Officer, who worked in Newchwang [Niuzhuang] during the Russian occupation as a shoemaker). The central figure is described as 'the chief named Chin, said to be in Japanese employ who is a well-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216485, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "194\n\nThe move to China\n\nWhether his meeting with Archibald Little in the Oriental Club in London in 1899 was accidental as contended by some, or whether it was arranged by one or other of them is a matter of conjecture. The meeting itself was important to both of them. Archibald Little, an Imperial entrepreneur with an ambition to be the first to establish a regular passenger and steam service in the Upper Yangtse, was back in the UK to supervise the building of a paddle steamer designed for the task. He also needed an experienced and professional river pilot to command it. Cornell Plant needed just such employment. He must have been enthralled by Little's description of the great river, its problems and its dangers. The undoubted difficulties that Plant had overcome on the Karun River were trivial in comparison with the many natural hazards that existed in the Upper Yangtse that some claimed to make it the most dangerous river in the world. The annual snow melt in the high mountains and the seasonal rainfall over the whole area combined to produce variations in the height of water of as much as 150 feet - a scarcely believable phenomenon to a deep sea sailor. Plant was used to rocks, rapids and river water turbulence, but not the standing whirlpools, the moving whirlpools, the sudden holes that appeared in deep water and the rapidly changing nature of the river bed with every new rush of water down the feeder rivers of the great Yangtse Kiang. The talk must have whetted his professional appetite to such an extent that he even joined Little on his trip to Denny's of Glasgow where the new paddle steamer, the Pioneer, was being built. The result of their meeting was that Cornell Plant joined Archibald Little in China and took command of the Pioneer on her voyage up through the gorges, the first truly successful trip by a commercial vessel driven by steam.\n\nPostscript\n\nThis is the story of how Captain Samuel Cornell Plant came to be in China. His career as a trader, river pilot and finally Senior River Inspector of the Upper Yangtse is well covered in the article by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee. They also tell of the tragedy that occurred when Captain and Mrs Plant were on their way home on leave in 1921 accompanied by two young Chinese girls they were thought to have adopted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]