[ { "id": 205878, "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-1969", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "178\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nand clubs, on their families, and on their ties with home. All these contain much of interest, though there are many points small and large on which one might quibble, from the trivial matter of the delusion which the author has that Chinese restaurants in general serve Chinese food which derives its virtue from Cantonese culinary supremacy (p. 28), to the important matter of omitting to mention that many Chinese employees receive in cash their total wage, their employers paying for them their tax, National Insurance, etc. over and above the wage (p. 81).\n\nMore important is the lack of organisation of the approach to this subject. One has the feeling that little attempt was made to extract meaning from the facts with which Mr. Ng presents us. If there had been, then surely they would have been presented differently? Certain basic considerations seem to have been neglected. Why London? for instance. Granted that London is an important centre for Chinese immigrants, why is it so? and how is it possible to study London as a centre without reference to the area of which it is a centre? Would not The Chinese in Britain have been a more valid topic? (Of course, the research worker's time and finances are important factors here, but there should be justification for the choice of field.) Again, was it not possible for Mr. Ng to approach this subject from an angle which would give more meaning to the whole to impose a pattern on it, as it were? To be constructive, could he not have started with the individual and worked outwards from there? the three case studies in Chapter IV are very enlightening.\n\nSince the work for this study was done (in 1963-64) the situation of the Chinese in Britain has changed a great deal. There seems to have been achieved a greater degree of coalescence (particularly in the provincial cities), political awareness has heightened, the Hong Kong Government has attempted to help its people overseas, the Gerrard Street area of London has become more and more clearly defined as a Chinese centre (the world's only new Chinatown?), and so on. There is call now for much more detailed and wide-ranging study of the field; and whoever undertakes it will be fortunate in having Mr. Ng's general survey to start from.\n\nSchool of Oriental and African Studies,\n\nMarch, 1969.\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209492, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "127\n\n20\n\nPart of this, at a later date, was due to the influence of the popular novelist Sax Rohmer who invented the sinister but suave Dr. Fu Manchu, perennially at war with the tight-lipped, establishment Nayland Smith (Ian Fleming's Dr. No revives this stale mythology).2 The British public came to believe, as a result of press reports, that the insidious Doctor had become incarnate in the person of 'Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurateur and 'dope-king', whose premises were located in Gerrard Street, London, opposite the Forty Three Club, Mrs. Kate Meyrick's notorious night-club.27 Chang was a member, and supplied the club's rich clientele with narcotics, especially cocaine, until April 1924, when he was sentenced to fourteen months imprisonment, followed by deportation.28 Although the great majority of Britain's Chinese population were hard-working, intent on bettering their lot by economic enterprise, a constant process of stereotyping caricatured Chinese as inscrutable and complex, unknowable and different, sly and dangerous, separated by a vast cultural chasm from Englishmen. This, I believe, is suggested by Marshall Hall's comments in the Lock Ah Tam case and, as we shall see, by Sir Travers Humphreys' animadversions on Miao Chung-yi, whose case will now be examined.\n\nDr. Miao Chun-yi: a murder for profit?\n\nMiss Siu Wai-sheung married Miao Chung-yi, a doctor of law or jurisprudence, in New York on May 12, 1928.20 Born in 1899, she was the eldest daughter of Siu Ying-chau, a rich Macau merchant with business interests also in Hong Kong. Her mother was Siu's primary wife (tsai), but there were other children born to Siu's concubines (tsip). As a girl she was clever and able, and when her mother died in 1910 she helped run her father's household. She was educated at St. Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong, which she left in 1917 to further her education at Emerson College, Boston, U.S.A., and graduated in 1922. Then she returned home. In 1924 her father died. She was named sole executrice in his will; he left over a million dollars — an unusual event in those days when unmarried Chinese women had few, if any, testamentary rights. Moreover, she inherited much of his wealth, although she had a younger brother, and several half-brothers and half-sisters. Soon after", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214609, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "d) February 2000: A lively Chinese lunch at the suitably named Golden Dragon Restaurant in Gerrard Street, London, attended by 45 persons.\n\nFor the arrangement of these activities we again have to thank Rosemary Lee, Anita Wilson, Kirsty Norman, and Keith Stevens, all of whom really make this Friends Society bond and move forward. We are now looking at the future and we will have the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Hugh Baker, Professor of Chinese at SOAS to lecture on 27th May, at which time we will also have our annual general meeting. Unfortunately the proposed trip to visit World War I cemeteries and battlefields in Northern France and Flanders to examine Chinese graves has again had to be postponed due to the incompetence of the travel agent. However the Oxford weekend is still in the planning stages and it is hoped to visit Brian McElney's collection of oriental porcelain and artefacts in Bath.\n\nI close this report by sending you on behalf of the Friends in the UK all our best wishes for a successful annual general meeting and for the years ahead. It is very encouraging to read the newsletter and to see that the membership is at a high level; there is an enviable lecture and activity programme, and a steady stream of publications; for all of this we congratulate you.\n\nD.A.Gilkes, Chairman\n\nMarch 2000\n\nXXIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]