[ { "id": 204781, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "# PENG CHAU\n\n73\n\nin this region in the late CHING. Their time is obviously short, and as much use should be made of their evidence as is still possible.\n\nIn this article I have attempted an outline study of an island community which, despite its small size and population at the time of the British lease, included groups of the various sea and land peoples who are common to this region. It is, for this reason, of particular interest, though by no means unique.\n\n## II\n\nPeng Chau *** is a small island lying off the south-east coast of Lantau, about four miles from the west end of Hong Kong harbour. Its land area is 213 acres (0.328 square mile), of which 23.13 acres were cultivated and 4.35 built over when, together with the rest of the New Territories, the island passed under British rule in 1899.6 At the 1911 census of the Colony of Hong Kong, the first accurate count of the population of the New Territories, the land population of Peng Chau totalled 642 persons.7\n\nThis article attempts to tell something of its history before 1899, for which purpose it is material to its theme to state that it was one of many islands, large and small, inhabited or deserted, which lay off the coast of the Kwangtung province, in this case within the boundaries of the San On district of which the island of Hong Kong itself was formerly an insignificant part.\n\nPeng Chau's past is shrouded in mystery. It is likely that its first, and for most of its history, its only users were the fishermen whose boats sheltered in its bays whilst their owners dried and mended their nets on shore or beached their boats at the water's edge with grass cut from the hillsides. Pirates and other lawless men may have visited it from time to time because of its remoteness. Eventually its regular use by the sea people must have attracted land dwellers, mainly Cantonese in the first instance it would seem, who set up shops to deal with the fishermen by supplying them with stores and provisions on credit and acting as middlemen for the disposal of their catch.\n\nWhen this first occurred is not certain. The first dated information now available comes from the local temple dedicated to Tin Hau the Queen of Heaven, a popular goddess with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204794, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n85\n\nbetween the Tanka fishermen and the land dwellers. The traditional picture is one of the two communities rigidly separated, with the despised fishermen exploited by the land dwellers whenever they came on land at the sheltered anchorages and excluded from a share in the amenities of village life, including the important one of education. It is supposed that the villagers or townsfolk would not let them take essential items like grass and firewood for themselves but insisted on selling everything to them, even charging for the use of the beaches where they beached their boats on the average once a month, and carried out running repairs.39\n\nHow far is this assessment borne out in Peng Chau in the period under review? In the first place, it has been shown that it was not only the Tanka who owned boats and obtained a living from the sea. Apart from the Hoklo fishermen who maintained an uneasy existence between land and sea and are generally considered to be more sea dwellers than landsmen, a number of land people, Hakka and Cantonese alike, owned and operated boats and sampans. Other land people were accustomed to fish from the rocky coast by line or by means of a stake net. The latter represented fishing for profit and was not just a way of supplementing a livelihood gained by other means since the financial outlay for a stake net was considerable. The fishing community was therefore wider than the group of Tanka who chose to base themselves on the island. Though this is not really surprising when the sea was near at hand and could provide a living for all, it led to a blurring of the sharp lines of differentiation commonly imagined to exist between the traditional boat people and the land dwellers.40 This must have assisted participation in religious activities, including the repair of temples, in which task both sea and land people were equally concerned because they all in some measure lived by the sea, if not all of them actually on it.41 Shopkeepers living on an island had as much reason to pray for the gods' blessings on their cargoes and customers as the fishermen for good catches and the safety of their boats and families. In such a small community, too, business connections were probably on a very personal basis and the boat people customers no less well known by the shopmen than their land neighbours.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204795, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "86\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nHowever, the Cantonese, Hakka and even Hoklo fishermen lived on land and were still landsmen who could live in both worlds. The first two, if not always the third, could cut their own firewood, and grass for breaming, whereas I am led to believe that in the anchorages, which were nearly always in populated places, the Tanka fishermen had usually to buy these necessities from the villagers. The reason usually given for this is that the villagers had planted the trees which supplied the firewood and paid rent to the imperial government or, more often, to some powerful clan.42 A less striking, but equally practical reason, I was told on Peng Chau, was that fishermen did not wish to carry the grass or poles used in breaming their craft, in order to save valuable space. Breaming facilities were not always charged for, it seems, though on Peng Chau a breaming charge of 20 cents per boat was levied by the personnel of the military post before 1899 — the sort of \"squeeze\" by which soldiers supplemented their pay. The military post seems to have been a late innovation, prior to which no breaming charges are believed to have been levied by Peng Chau's land dwellers. On nearby Cheung Chau the WONG clan owned the main breaming beaches in the main anchorage and in a secondary one at Sai Wan, also much used by the boat people. They charged a fee for their use, part of the proceeds going to the upkeep and ceremonies connected with the clan's main ancestral grave on the island.43 Of course the boatmen could go to some deserted beach, but they were hard to find since villagers were well distributed in the coastal areas and islands by the nineteenth century and there were few areas capable of returning crops left undeveloped.44 In any case, there were no amenities, such as shops and temples, to tempt fishermen to such places; whilst, as Miss Ward remarks in her study of the Kau Sai fishing village in the Port Shelter area of Sai Kung, boat people are not the sea rovers drifting from place to place they are commonly imagined to be, but have been linked to a home base over a long period.45 This seems certainly to have been true of Peng Chau in the period under review.\n\nIn a mixed community of the small size of Peng Chau it is hardly surprising that no district associations similar to those of Cheung Chau and Tai O were established.46 The Cantonese residents were relatively few in number, whilst the Hakka clans had their own family ties and, at the grave festivals and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204828, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "110\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nto within ten yards of the shore. We saw a hut on the beach, and six men at work with some bamboos. Here we disembarked and the sailors filled a cask with excellent water from a well close to the shore. The inhabitants who were fishermen were civil, but they appeared to be alarmed at our arrival14. Mr. Alexander and myself walked up to the high land over the point I, where we had a view of the island and of the north east end of Lantao, as well as of the eastern shore of the main as it is laid down in the charts. The general form of the island appeared to be triangular. Its length from north to south about a mile, and from east to west about three quarters. Its general surface is irregular, rising in unconnected hills or joined only at their bases, but these are smooth and thickly covered with grass of different kinds, some of which had been lately cut down. The soil is red, light and sandy; if we may judge from its verdure it is very fertile. Besides three or four other plants the gardener found some ginger, there were also some guava trees and wild figs15. The projection K is narrow but rather high, on it are five or six huts of fishermen, whose nets are suspended from different points, and hauled up occasionally by windlasses. Between K and I is a rocky bay, that appears to be very deep. South of the projection K we saw some trees, but there are not very many on the island17. About ten acres of land are under cultivation in two separate patches from the bay on the east shore where the land is low. The water on this side of the island is very rocky. Whilst on the hill we were visited by about fifteen persons, men, women and children, from these we learned, that the island is called Toong Shing-ow-a18.\n\nAs to its extent, its fertility and its situation, in a point of view merely military, it appears a desirable island, but perhaps it may be seen in a different light when examined as a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade. It appears incapable of future improvement to any very great degree as an harbour, since on account of the rapidity of the currents, the depth of the water and the badness of the bottom, large ships cannot lie with safety on that side of the channel next the island. A few may lie on the north shore, and perhaps but a few, and on this account it\n\n¡", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204830, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "112\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nweigh at daylight. The morning of the 17th was thick with much rain, we could scarcely discover the land, and were disappointed in our intentions of examining the islands, and of sounding around them. We had found that all the soundings within the line joining the point L, and the islands, were regular and in soft mud, and it is highly probable from the appearance of the land, that this bay affords good anchorage for the space of three or four miles, and the Bottoe Islands with the rock to the southward of them, would afford very good situations for batteries for its defence.\n\nThe westermost island appeared about a quarter of a mile in length, and nearly the same in breadth; on its south end, as we observed from the anchorage of Shatlapko, it ascends gradually from the water's edge, having a small bay as appears in the view; on the north, east and west sides, it rises boldly from the shore. A bank of land extends a little way from its north west angle, on which we found 44 fathoms water when very near the island.\n\nThe eastern island appears longer than the former; it is perhaps half a mile from north to south, and a quarter or upwards in breadth. It shows a bold shore, and has 13 and 15 fathoms water over soft mud close to its north end. They are each of them about 70 or 80 feet in height, and distant from each other about a mile. If these islands were occupied by good batteries, they would afford protection to a number of ships. The establishment might at first be small, and at very little expense, and the island of Lantao would at all time admit of its being extended at pleasure.\n\nIt is probable that the dotted line running south east from Shatlapko, should be nearly the boundary of the shallow water, but there is hardly a doubt that there is a sufficient extent of water of the required depth for any number of the largest ships beyond it, and this over a fine bottom of soft mud. The depth of water round the islands promises a good situation for heaving down ships and small as they are they have every appearance of fertility, being quite covered with shrubs and grass almost to the water's edge.\n\nThe point M appeared to project considerably into the bay, and to offer a good situation for a battery. Along the shore of Lantao there is occasionally cultivated land, particularly in the depth of the bay, where we observed a stream of water rushing down from the hills. We did not see the island named Tysa in the charts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204923, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "24\n\nT. HARRISSON\n\nand carved wood have also survived there. Some fifty rush mats and wrappings survived under late neolithic or early metal burials in the West Mouth of the Great Cave.\n\nPUBLICATIONS\n\nMany smaller caves have been studied; and many others are available for study - over fifty. But there is no point in constantly repeating work that is very costly. Rather we seek constantly to define and re-define the project, so as to add new data, modifying or widening ideas — in preference to multiplying the established points. So far, about fifty papers have been published on the Niah results in Asian Perspectives (annually), Archaeological Newsletter, Journal Royal Society of Arts (a general review to 1963), Man (three papers), Oriental Art (Oxford), Artibus Asiae (Switzerland), Bijdragen (Holland), and the Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society, London). The full background and a long series of technical reports are published in the last eight issues of the Sarawak Museum Journal (Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia). The S.M.J. papers include specific contributions from Dr. R. Brothwell of the British Museum, Miss J. Clutton-Brock of the Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Calvin Wells of the Norwich Museum, Dr. D. A. Hooijer of Leiden and Professor G. H. R. von Koenigswald of the University of Utrecht, Dr. W. S. Solheim of the University of Hawaii, Drs. R. Inger and Wayne King of Chicago, the Earl of Cranbrook and Miss Pat Aldridge (now Dr. P. Marshall) of the University of Hong Kong. While those who have made specialist studies on the spot, working in Kuching, include Lord Medway (both here and at the University of Malaya), Dr. Alastair Lamb (glass beads), Dr. Solheim with Mrs. Lindsay Wall (prehistoric earthenware), Mrs. E. Moore in association with Miss Mary Tregear at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yueh and other early porcelains), Mr. Benedict Sandin and Mr. R. Nyandoh (links to cave and other Niah folklore), Mr. Geoffrey Barnes (burial rites), Mr. J. Revers (U.S. Peace Corps; topography), Professor N. Haile (geology; now of the University of Malaya), Mrs. Barbara Harrisson and her husband. Work of this sort involves multiple cooperation, as has already been well demonstrated by the University team from Hong Kong working on Lantau Island. In 1965-66 we hope to get additional outside help from Dr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205024, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n123\n\nhappened recently at Tong Fuk on Lantau Island, a multi-clan Cantonese village with a population of 198 at the Hong Kong Census of 1911. Its present population is about the same number. In 1958 the scheme to build a new reservoir at Shek Pik was confirmed and work went ahead on the dam and associated works. Behind Tong Fuk there were to be catchwaters for which an access road had to be constructed to the west of the village. This led to difficulties with the villagers, because in feng shui ideology the place was held to be the seat of the White Tiger. They therefore requested a ceremony known locally as a tun fu (符) — to propitiate the gods and spirits who would, as they thought, be aroused by digging earth and blasting stones in this particular place.\n\nPrecedents were cited by the village elders. They said they had carried out such a ceremony thirty-five years before, following several unexpected deaths in the village. The inhabitants had worshipped at the Hung Shing (廟) temple on the beach nearby, praying for the removal of the malignant influence. It transpired that a villager had cut stone from this particular spot to build a house. The elders then invited a Taoist priest — a Hakka — to come from one of the neighbouring villages to carry out the propitiatory observances usually made under such circumstances. They also said that a similar ceremony had also been conducted twenty years before in the adjoining Cantonese village of Shui Hau, this time by a priest engaged from the urban area. Deaths had also occurred there and had been traced to one of the villagers having constructed a cowshed in front of his house on ground with feng shui properties.\n\nReturning to the 1958 case, the elders proposed to call in the services of the nephew of the priest who had supervised the ceremony thirty-five years before. He was a man of forty years of age who had followed in his uncle's footsteps. Such persons are known locally as feng shui hsien sheng (風水先生).\n\nThis ceremony was supposed to cause considerable inconvenience for the villagers, in theory if not in practice. One week of vegetable diet was obligatory for all and there was also a three-day prohibition on entering and leaving the village: that is, if the ceremony was to realize its full value. This meant that no cows could be grazed or grass or firewood cut on the hills; nor, presumably, could men go out to work in the fields.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205026, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\nTHE TSANG'S BIG HOUSE IN SHATIN \n\n125 \n\nThe Tsang's Big House, with its bluish bricks, green tiles, thick walls, strong iron gate, and a history of more than 120 years, is probably the oldest building in Shatin. It is fifteen minutes' walking distance from Shatin Market. \n\nThe Big House has an interesting history, which can only be touched upon in this note. Its site was formerly a deserted sandy beach near a Shatin hillside. The house was built by Tsang Kwan-man, who had immigrated from his native town in Wu-wah (24) to settle in Shaukiwan on Hong Kong Island. There he established himself in the stone quarry business, and soon became rich. Tsang later moved from the island which was ceded to Britain to live in Shatin, which then belonged to the District of Pao-an under Chinese jurisdiction. \n\nTsang used coarse sand to reclaim the beach from the sea, and built the Big House on the reclaimed site. Strong solid stones were used for the foundation, and bluish bricks for the surrounding walls, which were then plastered with the ashes of grass roots. Although it was built in traditional style, it is said to be no less strong and solid than modern skyscrapers constructed by machinery. \n\nWhen the Big House was first completed, it was inhabited only by Tsang and his wife. However, they employed many servants and workers to exploit the virgin land in the vicinity for productive purposes. They gave birth to six sons, and the descendants multiplied. The Tsang family on this site is now in its sixth generation. \n\nDuring the reigns of Emperors Chien-lung and Chia-ching in the Ch'ing Dynasty, the Tsangs often contributed gold to the Government in return for official titles. These were limited to a certain rank in the officialdom, and did not carry any definite appointment in authority or official duty, being somewhat similar to the title of Justice of the Peace conferred by the Hong Kong Government. With the official title the Tsangs were entitled to hang a guilded board in their Big House with characters Ta-fu ti (✯✯✯) carved on it, meaning \"The residence of an official,” distinguishing it from the houses of commoners.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205227, "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-1966", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "177\n\nGARCIA, A.\n\nGARD, Dr. R. A.\n\nGARTNER, J. GEORGE, T. J. B. -\n\nL\n\nGIBB, H. GIEDROYC, M. J. H.\n\nGIMSON, C, H, -\n\nGILES, R.\n\n+\n\nGLASS, Miss M. A. GLOVER, Mrs. J.\n\nGOLDNEY, Miss C. M. GOODRICH, Prof. L. C.\n\n-\n\nc/o South Kowloon Magistracy, Kowloon. c/o U.S. Consulate General, Garden Road, H.K.\n\n15 Guildford Lane, Melbourne, Australia. c/o Diplomatic Service Administration Office, King Charles St., London S.W.1, England,\n\n74 Kenilworth Avenue, London, S.W.19, England.\n\nc/o P.W.D. Hq., 4th Floor, Main Wing, Central Government Offices Building, H.K.\n\nc/o Crown Lands & Survey Office, P.W.D., H.K.\n\n14 Braga Circuit, Kowloon.\n\n\"Crossways\", 49 Christchurch Road, Sidcup, Kent, England.\n\nc/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K. 504 Kent Hall, Columbia University, New York 27, New York, U.S.A.\n\nGORDON, Mrs. Charles R. 118 Pokfulam Road, H.K.\n\nGORDON, K. H. A.\n\nJ\n\nRoom 601 Marina House, H.K.\n\nGORDON, The Hon. S. S.* - Messrs. Lowe, Bingham & Matthews, 22nd Floor, Prince's Building, H.K.\n\nGUADAGNINI, Dr. P. GUILLAUME, Baron P. de HADDOW, Dr. I. F. G. -\n\nHALE, Richard E. -\n\nVia Buon Compani, No. 16, Rome, Italy, Flat 5, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. New Territories Health Office, North Kowloon Magistracy, Taipo Road, Kowloon. The Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corpn., P. O. Box 64, H.K,\n\nHALLWARD, Miss C. L. J. St. Stephens Girls' College, Lyttelton Road, H.K.\n\nHARDEN, Mrs. Guy T. Jr.* 15 Shek-O, H.K.\n\nHARRISON, Prof. B.\n\nT\n\nHAYDON, E. S.\n\nHAYES, J. W.\n\nHAYIM, E. J.* -\n\nHAYWARD, G. W.\n\nJ\n\nHEANEY, Robert S. HECHTEL, F. O. P. HENSMAN, Dr. Bertha\n\nHERRIES, M. A. R. -\n\nDept. of History, The University, H.K. The Supreme Court, H.K.\n\nc/o The Colonial Secretariat, H.K,\n\n41, Island Road, Deep Water Bay, H.K. White Mill End, 5 Granville Road, Sevenoaks, Kent, England.\n\nDeer Park, Greenwich, Conn., U.S.A.\n\n10 Branksome Towers, May Road, H.K.\n\n+\n\n-\n\nChung Chi College, Ma Liu Shui, N.T.\n\nc/o P. O. Box 70, H.K.\n\nd'HESTROY, Baron P. de G. Belgian Embassy, 1653 Calle Viamonte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.\n\nLife Member\n\nPlease notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205299, "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-1967", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "54\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nfrom piracy there. The mountains offered more security and this group established themselves in the remote Grass Field Village. In fact, this spot in the valley was then already occupied by people bearing the surname Ng. What form the contact between these original settlers and the intruders took is not clear, but evidently, as time passed by, the Ng were pushed off, and resettled themselves on an island in the Rocky Harbour area.11\n\nThe first Lau group in Grass Field Village seems to have constituted an extended family — one particular man is referred to as the founder of the village. He was of the 15th generation.12 The founder had two sons, one of whom moved out of the place and settled at Clear Water Bay. The progeny of the remaining son ramified in several offshoots. The village now consists of four hamlets inhabited by distinct lines of descent. Two branches have moved away to other areas; to Three Fathoms Cove in a northerly direction, and to the Yuen Long area in another part of the New Territories.\n\nThe Grass Field people, then, constitute a localized major lineage. As such they form part of a kin unit of a higher order, for which I would propose the designation 'clan'. In fact, a Grass Field villager is not usually able to establish his proper kinship relations with other villagers, at least not with those who are members of other main segments. In order to do this, he has to consult a kinsman with special knowledge or a genealogy book, which used to be kept in most villages. By these means he has a theoretical possibility to trace his actual relations through the genealogical links in the patrilineal line of descent. This will motivate the use of the term 'lineage'. The greater kin unit will, besides the Grass Field people, comprise the segments that resettled in other areas as well as the people living in the village of origin in Sai Kung, and the relatives, in all respects distant, in Mui Yuen in Kwangtung. Theoretically, other Lau descent lines, unknown to Grass Field people, would be included.\n\nBefore the Japanese Occupation fairly regular demonstration of kinship bonds took place when people from the Three Fathoms Cove and Clear Water Bay branches returned to Grass Field for common ancestor worship. There were, too, frequent contacts with the village of origin in China before the establishment of the People's Republic; delegates took part in ancestor worship", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205306, "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-1967", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205330, "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-1967", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n85\n\nwere very small, but had very powerful engines and steering gears. Only the high passenger and freight charges enabled them to run at a profit. One of the most important cargoes from the Upper Yangtse was tung oil, which was latterly carried in bulk. This oil was used in the manufacture of high quality paints and lacquers, and was so valuable that the privilege of cleaning out the cargo pumps after discharge was one of the most highly prized perquisites of the engine room staff. The Upper Yangtse was too dangerous for night navigation, so that the Gorge boats anchored each night at dusk, and set off again at dawn. Officers on these ships were paid a special bonus after a season on the Upper River, and also given local leave.\n\nBecause they operated in inland waters, the Yangtse riverboats were exempt from certain of the manning regulations which applied to deep sea British ships. Certificated masters and chief mates were always carried, but sometimes the second mates had no British qualifications, and were either White Russians or Chinese. During the inter-war years these White Russians were often former officers of the Imperial Russian Navy, and without exception were very capable and efficient. On the engine room side the chief and second engineers had British qualifications, but sometimes Chinese third engineers were employed,\n\nThe opium clipper tradition inherited by the 'China coasters' resulted in smart and well run ships, a credit to the owners and crews concerned. The pre-war 'China coasters' were probably the smartest ships in Britain's Merchant Navy, and their bright paintwork, gleaming brass work, and smart red-sashed quartermasters would have gladdened the heart of old Admiral Benbow. Their closest rivals under the Red Ensign were the coasters of the Straits Steamship Company which were based on Singapore, and which traded round Malaya and the East Indies. 'China coasters', apart from officers, had all Chinese crews, while the Straits coasters and their Dutch K.L.M. rivals had Malays on deck and Chinese down below, a good combination in pre-Sukarno days. Sailors and firemen sometimes spent a lifetime on one ship, and often the bosun and Number One Fireman would have started their careers on the same ship twenty-five years earlier. The Arab and Indian practice of the bosun and Number One being responsible for their department was followed on the China coast, and each department was very much a family and clan affair.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205351, "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-1967", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "106\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nTo the North of Deep Bay is Chik-wan Bay, on the shore of which is situated the renowned temple of Tien-hau. To the South is the Bay of Toon-mun-wan, near Castle-peak. The open sea forms the Southern and Eastern boundary of the district.\n\nMirs Bay, the most remarkable of those which indent the Eastern shore of Sanon, is called by the Chinese \"Ti-po Hoi\" 大步海.\n\nIt is worthy of notice, that when the question of ceding Hong-kong to the British crown was brought before the Emperor Tau-kwang, it was asserted that the island had never really belonged to China; and it appears remarkable that, in an official geographical and statistical account of Sanon, in 8 volumes, published about 40 years ago, no mention of Hongkong is made, although islands much more insignificant are accurately included. However, in the list of villages of the Sanon District, the names of Shek-pai-wan (Aberdeen) and Check-chu (Stanley), are found. Among the numerous Straits between the different islands the most worthy of notice are:--\n\n1. The Cap-sui-mûn between Lantao and the two small Islands of Tsing-yeu and Ma-wan; Kai-check-mûn, between the two last mentioned islands and the mainland itself, and Ly-yue-mûn and East-tong-mûn, which constitute the Eastern passage from Hongkong harbour. According to Chinese authorities, the greater diameter of the district, from North to South, measures 380 le, and the lesser, from East to West, 270 le. But it must be remembered that the measurement from North to South extends to the southermost of the small islands which are reckoned as belonging to the district. The district is generally mountainous, and the mountain ridges extend nearly to the shore, leaving only small plains at their feet, which are occupied by villages and hamlets. These mountains have usually a dreary and barren aspect, and resemble those of Hong-kong and the opposite mainland. The granite rocks are scantily covered with soil, and are overgrown with grass. A luxuriant underwood is found in the ravines, but trees are seldom met with, though groves of them, evidently planted, are generally found in the neighbourhood of villages, Buddhist monasteries, and temples. The Chinese are accustomed to burn down the grass on the tops.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205355, "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-1967", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "110\n\nREV, MR. KRONE\n\nseveral times taking a cruise in his Tea-cup, the mountain was named after it “Poi-tou.' \n\n\"Poi-tou.\" Among the common people, however, the mountain is known by the name \"Shing-shan\", or holy mountain. The rough, barren, mountainous country I have described, has given birth to many superstitions and legends. Some of the huge stones on the hill sides are supposed to represent the tiger, the dragon, and the phoenix. The stones on some hills are said to have locomotive powers, and to pursue any adventurous traveller who attempts to mount their sides; other stones are said, when touched, to have the power of producing pains in the stomach, and others to emit white vapours from their surface. But these matters are of but little importance to us; of more interest are the caves which are found in some of the mountains. The most remarkable of these caves is near the market-place of U-shek-ngam, &, at the base of the mountain. For some centuries this cave has been used as a temple, and its aspect is so changed by the architecture and furniture which have been introduced, that one cannot get a good idea of its natural size and appearance.\n\nNatural History. Quadrumana, A number of small monkeys inhabit the island of Lintin; but this animal is not found in any other part of the district, though Chinese books relate that in former times they were found on 'Ng-tung, and most of the high mountains of the district.\n\nQuadrupeds, — The Chinese tiger, which seems to be a true tiger, is found about 'Ng-tung, and in the neighbourhood of most of the high mountains. It sometimes reaches a considerable size, weighing 200 catties, or 266lb. It feeds generally upon pigs and dogs, and the country people say it occasionally carries off a grass-cutter, but this seems doubtful. It is taken in traps, and is a great prize to its captor, as it will bring him in a sum of $150 to $200; for the bones are in great repute as a tonic medicine, and the flesh is eaten with the idea that the courage of the devourer is improved by the meal.\n\nMore than one species of deer, a fox, and a badger, have also been seen, and a large ant-eater -- the flesh of which is considered a delicacy, and is also supposed to possess medicinal powers. There are many snakes, and among them a large species of python, which sometimes grows to the length of twenty to twenty-four feet;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205378, "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-1967", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n133\n\na rock on this hill, and on another rock near the tomb is inscribed the name of the interred official.\n\nWhen this Emperor passed the island of Lintin with his faithful minister Man, he asked the name of it; and on being told, he remarked how well the name of the island applied to his own solitary situation. On this the Minister Mân composed the following ode:\n\n過零丁洋\n\n彈\n\n身世\n\n零丁洋裏嘆零丁\n\n惶恐灘頭說惶恐\n\n人生自\n\n死丁\n\n山干妾\n\n世河戈浮破落\n\n沉碎\n\n風水\n\n辛苦遭逢起一經\n\n零惶打飄\n\n彈絮星經\n\n留取丹心照汗青\n\n宋·文大祥1\n\nPage 140\n\nOn passing the Linting Sea.\n\n\"We have gone through bitter experience from beginning to end. Shields and spears (or the weapons of war) have surrounded us, just as if stars had fallen from heaven. Our dominions are dismembered, like as the flowers of the willow are scattered by the wind; we ourselves are tossed about by fate, like the ping grass which floats on the waves.\n\nTong-kiang-shan by its name proved to us a dreadful omen; at Lin-ting in the ocean we bemoaned our solitude. Since man exists, his fate is also to die; let us only preserve our innocence, and the brightness of it will reflect even up to the milky way.\"\n\nThis minister, who remained faithful to the Emperor, was afterwards taken prisoner by the Mongols, and suffered much maltreatment from them for three years, when he was put to death with many tortures. A younger brother of his proved less faithful, and delivered the city of Wei-chau# into the hands of the enemy. His nephew, a son of the minister, was so much ashamed at the treason of his uncle, that he retired with his two sons into seclusion, and settled down in the west of the Sanon district. The numerous and powerful clan of Mân, which dwells in the plain of San-keaou, and whose chief place is the village of Poo-mee 莆尾, claim to be descended from this man.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205411, "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-1967", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nheld office for many years on the main advisory bodies representing the Chinese community in the Colony, including the District Watchmen's Committee, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee and the Po Leung Kuk.15\n\nSir Show-son CHOW's son, Mr. CHOW Yat-kwong, J.P. has kindly given permission for members to visit the house in the New Village which contains the family's ancestral hall,\n\nIII. THE Hung Shing Temple And AP LEI CHAU\n\nThe Hung Shing Temple, The Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau, judging by the temple bell, dates from the 18th century.16 It appears to have been enlarged in 1847 and some wall-tablets show that it was given a major repair in 1888. The present building dates from that time or earlier. Its origin is uncertain because it is not clear who built it in the first instance. Records show that the Ap Li Chau land population was \"no more than two or three families of Hakka grass cutters\" before 1841, so that we must look elsewhere for the builders. It could have only been built and supported by the joint efforts of the local (i.e. Aberdeen) land people and boat population. The former only amounted to a few hundreds before the British came, but the boat population was probably as considerable before 1841 as after, e.g. 415 boats and 2,243 persons at the 1856 census18 and 424 boats and 4,130 persons in 1866.19\n\nThe temple is interesting in that it has old-style flagpoles still standing in front of the building. Old prints frequently show this kind of pole; but though a few bases can still be seen nowadays in Hong Kong, Macau and the New Territories these could be the only ones left with the poles and their basket-like tops still in place.\n\nAp Lei Chau before 1911. The present land settlement on Ap Lei Chau was founded in the early decades of British rule. By the mid-1860's there were 60 houses there, which implies that several hundred residents were living on the island at that time.20 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123 rising to 1,437 at the Colony Census of 1911.21 This population gained its livelihood to a great extent from concerns directly associated with the fishing industry, such as boat-building yards, ship chandlers and rope and sail works, and from provision shops and general stores that also catered for the fishermen's daily needs.22 There was very", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205626, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n163 \n\ncloth, of which they make their winter dresses. In the Jin-on district [= San On] the spinning of the hemp of which grass-cloth is made, is more frequently seen, but the women do not weave it, and there are journeymen weavers who go round in the villages with their primitive looms to do the weaving for the families.\n\nIt is interesting to note that these Hakkas did not restrict their visits only to Cantonese villages in this region, but that their services were also utilised in Hakka ones. An old Hakka man born in 1886 in the village of San Tsuen at Pui O, Lantau Island states:\n\nWhen I was a boy we wore clothes made from hemp cloth. We grew the hemp ourselves and the village women cleaned and sorted it and prepared it for weaving. They did not weave the cloth themselves but relied on itinerant Hakka-speaking men from the Lung Kong and Tam Shui districts who came yearly to our village and the nearby settlements to weave the hemp yarn into cloth. They brought their tools with them. I think this was an old practice and had been going on for a long time before I was born. These people stopped coming when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. The cloth they wove was very strong and hard-wearing, suitable for wear in both seasons but best for summer use. Though they did not weave, our village people knew how to make clothes. Clothes were much simpler then and much wider, the sleeves being 6-8 inches wide,\n\nSan Tsuen is a Hakka village in a mixed Hakka-Punti complex where both dialect groups are of equally long settlement. According to his family's genealogical record, my informant's ancestors have been settled there since about 1710.\n\nYet it appears that not all local Hakkas relied on visits from their fellow-countrymen from North-east Kwangtung. An old Hakka woman who was married into the Hakka stone-cutters' settlement of Ngau Tau Kok in East Kowloon at the age of nine in 1897, recalls that her sister-in-law bought hemp in Kowloon City market and brought it home to weave, took it back to Kowloon City to be dyed and later brought it back to the village to make into clothes for the family. Making bed-clothes and mosquito nets was also mentioned. Most items were dyed black in colour. Her", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205859, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n159 \n\nthe poorest class each man owns one or more houses. Besides those used for habitation some of these houses are used for keeping cattle or storage of grass etc...... Some are ancestral and joss temples which are for worshipping purposes, and most of these were left by their ancestors, the cost of originally building each of them amounting to thousands of dollars. \n\nIt was usual for a family to own more than one small house in one of the rows of houses that characterised local villages, and for its members to spread into several whilst still feeding as one household. Among specific cases is the following statement of the position at Li Cheng Uk, New Kowloon about 1910: \n\n44 \n\nWhen I went to the LING clan of Cheng Uk as a sun po tsai (童養媳) or child fiancée at the age of eight, my future husband's parents occupied five houses in a row. I slept in one with my mother-in-law, two adult but unmarried sisters-in-law slept in another, my father-in-law and two adult unmarried sons in the third, an old uncle and aunt in a fourth, and the family's hired labourers in the last. \n\n++ \n\nIn the adjoining village of Sheung Li Uk another informant's family occupied five houses next to the clan's main ancestral hall: \n\nOne of these houses was an additional ancestral hall, built to honour my own grandfather, whilst the first of the other four was used at night by my mother and father and myself; the second and third were used by my unmarried brothers in their twenties; and the fourth and last by a married brother, his wife and their small daughter. All these persons fed together. Our domestic animals were housed in a wooden barn, though it was common for dwelling houses to be used as cow houses and pigsties and for storage of grass and firewood, agricultural implements and farm produce. Our family was quite prosperous but most other families in the village occupied only a pair of house.\" (Period circa 1900 - 1910) \n\nOn Hong Kong island a few similar examples have come to my notice in the course of reading and enquiry. \n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206063, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "138 \n\nS. F. BALFOUR \n\ninto two parts: the one, Tanka and Hoklo, and the other, Punti and Hakka. \n\nThe Tanka live for the most part in boats. They support themselves almost entirely by fishing. Their only industries are net and rope-making, and dyeing with betel nut. They are rarely shopkeepers and never agriculturalists. In certain centres they form vast congregations of craft of all sizes but the nearest thing they achieve towards living on the shore is a kind of dwelling formed from what was originally an old boat too leaky to stay afloat which has been placed on struts. The very curious town of Tai O on Lantao Island is an example of this peculiar culture-dwelling. Whole streets of house-boats line the creeks, their front doors giving onto the water which is reached by a ladder. Every household has a boat moored beneath it and the traffic of boats to and fro is comparable to that of a town. Except that sometimes the struts of these dwellings are formed of granite slabs, probably borrowed elsewhere, there is a complete absence of stone or even of any notion of construction. The houses are constructed of old planks nailed together without system, their roofs are very poorly thatched with dried grass, there are no rooms beyond a covered verandah on which the cooking is done and an interior bedroom with one raised corner which forms a bed for the whole family.* \n\nOn the other hand, their boats are extremely well made. The biggest junks are constructed either for trawling or line fishing in deep water. They are made of teak or pine wood and have high sterns with accommodation for several generations of families. A feature which has apparently only been recently adopted in Europe is their water-tight compartments, so that if a leak is sprung, only one part of the ship need be baled out. Another feature which is more efficient than our European sailing craft is the rudder full of holes that can be easily turned without impairing its breaking value. The ships are cared for most regularly. Careening is done once a fortnight for pine wood craft and once a month in the case of teak. It is rather typical of their makeshift methods of house-building that they use the grass most suitable for careening in thatching their house-boats, \n\nThe Hoklo are also boat dwellers and are found in most of the main anchorages but their numbers are more frequent towards the east of the region, and in parts of Mirs Bay they predominate over \n\n* See also pp. 197-200 of this Journal. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206405, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "196\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge, old temples in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. it is not under the management of the Chinese Temples Committee but is exempted from the provisions of the Chinese Temples Ordinance No. 7 of 1928. At that time it was allowed to remain in the hands of the private family to eight of whose members a Crown Lease had been issued on 14th May, 1897. This was the Tai (...) clan formerly of Po Kong Village, Kowloon which was demolished during the Japanese occupation to make way for an extension to the Kai Tak airfield. The temple remains in the hands of their descendants to this day.\n\nJust when the Tai clan began the connection and whether they were responsible for the foundation and successive reconstruction cannot now be established for certain, as no written records remain. A document that might have helped, their clan record, (...) was lost during the Japanese occupation, and we are left with oral tradition. Conversations with the present manager and with an old village woman, a Tai, born in 1887 at Po Kong, gives information that the family are Hakkas from Tam Shui district, not far from Hong Kong. When they came to Po Kong to settle is not now known, but it was certainly before the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. The story goes that members of the family used to come over to Hong Kong Island to cut grass. They found an image of Tin Hau among rocks on the sea-shore where the temple now stands—the coast-line has since been altered by reclamation—and built a modest shelter for it. By degrees it became a popular shrine with boat people and others, especially at the goddess' birthday on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. A proper temple building was erected later by the Tai family who are said to have collected subscriptions for the purpose, leading in time to the major reconstruction of 1868.\n\n―\n\nThere is some doubt in my mind whether the bell now in the temple was cast specially for it. The Chinese characters on it do not mention that it was for the Tin Hau Temple. Alternatively, though the bell may have been made for this temple, the Tais may not have been the founders, despite their traditions, as not one of the five persons who presented it, and whose names appear on it, was a Tai.\n\nThe Crown Lease of 1897 was issued to eight persons, and from what the old lady has said it appears that this followed a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206409, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "200 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nains in Kiang-Si, the charcoal burners constitute the population of almost all the villages. The houses of these landowners may be at once recognised by the vast piles of charcoal in front of them.' \n\n** \n\nGray may be right in implying that charcoal was in great demand for domestic use at the time he wrote, but observation and enquiries in New Territories' villages show that wood has long been in general use at the kitchen stove and even in the portable earthenware stoves known as fung lo () in this area. \n\nThe observant traveller on the local hills can still find evidence of charcoal burning in the past, but first-hand information is now hard to come by. This note only deals with a few areas where I am familiar with the older local people. \n\nOn Lamma, for instance, an old person born in Yung Shue Long Village about 1887 recalls that there were a lot of charcoal burners on the island when she was a girl, mostly outsiders who employed the village women and girls to carry the charcoal from the kilns to the waiting junks or to barges towed by steamboats. These Lamma kilns were mostly situated in the more wooded south of the island, at the village localities of Mau Tat, Yung Shue Ha and Tung O. Too young to help, she followed her mother and her aunt there from their village in the northern part of Lamma. Along with other villagers, they were paid 2 cents (sin) a day for the work. \n\nOn the south coast of Lantau Island an old villager of Tong Fuk, born in 1889, recalled, as a boy, having seen charcoal burners at work near his village and on the hills above. He said that (as on Lamma) these were not local people. A few miles east, there are pits on the hills above the Pui O group of villages; but though linked by village tradition with charcoal burning, the oldest men said they had not been worked in their lifetime. \n\nIn the first few decades of this century charcoal burners were still to be seen on the hills behind north-west Kowloon, near the present Shek Lei Pui reservoir, formerly the site of a Hakka farming village of that name removed for the water scheme in 1923. An old village woman from Cheung Sha Wan, born 1892, recalls seeing them there as a young girl when grass cutting in the area. A second woman who married into another of the Cheung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206484, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "26\n\nP. H. COLLIN\n\nMajor George Augustus Schomberg was then aged 36, and in command of the artillery company which accompanied the Royal Marine battalions. After staying at the Bogue for some days, the attacking forces moved up towards Canton. The authors of The Royal Marine Artillery, 1804-1923 give the general plan of attack: “It was arranged that the ships should bombard the city on its river front, in conjunction with a bombardment by a battery of heavy mortars, in charge of the marine artillery, which was placed in position on December 24th and 25th on Dutch Folly Island, opposite the southwest front of the city. Under cover of the bombardment the military and naval brigades were to land to the east of Canton and carry by escalade the eastern wall of the city. The First Brigade comprised the two Marine battalions and was led by Colonel Holloway. The mortar battery on Dutch Folly Island was manned by the Royal Marine Artillery Company, under Major Schomberg.”\n\nThe bombardment at first proceeded according to plan, though Wingrove Cooke suggests that Schomberg's battery had difficulty in finding the range of Gough's Fort which was over 4000 yards away, on the other side of the city. After the successful landing of the troops, relates the Royal Marine Artillery history, \"Major Schomberg's gunners, whose task it was to clear the way for the assailants at the point of escalade, began shelling the eastern wall between the two gates, firing across the city, at daylight. They kept up their bombardment until the moment fixed for the assault, just before nine o'clock; until, indeed, after the first scaling ladder parties had reached the walls and the foremost of the stormers had mounted to the ramparts. Major Schomberg was watching with his glass from a crow's nest above the battery, a signaller beside him, but, in spite of that, some of the leading men of the stormers, who had swarmed up the ladders too impetuously and got in advance, were hit by pieces of shell before their presence on the ramparts could be made out from Dutch Folly Island.”\n\nDetails of the casualties occasioned in this incident vary according to the source of information. Cooke simply states that \"the men had been brought up so near the walls, that the shells from our ships were falling among them\", while Fisher says \"the French escaladed on our left, but advanced to the attack a few minutes before the time agreed upon, an act of impatience which caused", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207542, "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": 310, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "302\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlaughter, gonging, shouting and shoving. The men either kept out of the way or were completely unmoved by what was going on.\n\n(III) 16th November, 1975\n\nI observed a bridegroom from a fishing family being escorted along the causeway at Island House presumably to the hut or 'un-boat' of his bride's family. He was preceded by two youngish women with sticks, with which they were pretending to pole or paddle along a 'boat' followed by another two women carrying two baskets of gifts each on carrying poles. The bridegroom was being led along by two men. He himself was wearing a black hat and walking under a black umbrella, over which a red sash was fastened. His face was carefully concealed behind an extended paper fan so that he could not see where he was going and had to be led by the hand. He was followed by gongs and drum.\n\nIt was obviously a good time for weddings, because the next day I witnessed another assault by two boats in succession on another group of boats. The assault craft were manned by women in the manner in which I have previously described in my preceding notes; a group leader in a frenzy at the bow, a gong beated in a frenzy on the roof, and the women rowing in a curious bouncing rhythm. When they reached the target boat, presumably the bridegroom's boat, there was a mock battle and an attempt to repel boarders. The bridegroom's boat had hoisted on it a red cloth on a pole and a basket upside down on another pole. Furious gonging took place throughout the occasion.\n\nI have at other times seen the bride going off to her husband's boat, dressed up in her finery of blue embroidered gown with an elaborate head-dress, sometimes of silver, sometimes of intricately plaited rushes or grass. Often her face is hidden by a black coil-like head-dress projecting in front of her about eighteen inches with only a narrow aperture through which to see. When wearing this head-dress the bride has to be led along by her chaperons, edging along the gunwale of her fiance's boat without any assistance from him or his family.\n\nIsland House, Tai Po, N.T.\n\nHong Kong, 1976\n\nD. AKERS-Jones", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208112, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW - LONG ISLAND\n\n135\n\nburned or sunbaked. There are many mean huts of wood and wattle, and except in the main street where the Public Works Department of Hong Kong has insisted on drainage and paving, the streets are full of wallows, and the wallows full of pigs. As often as not the sleeping pig is being carefully searched by a fowl or so.\n\nOf the foreign buildings the most conspicuous are the Meeting Hall of the European residents situated in the midst of their rather scattered bungalows, and in the village, the red brick Police Station and the new School. All through Hong Kong the territory the Police Stations occupy the strategic positions, looking like a strange modern variant of the frowning castle which overhangs so many ancient settlements in Europe. And the analogy is not far-fetched, for there are raiding kidnappers and pirates to be repulsed, and Cheung Chow Police Station has itself been besieged, and successfully too, by pirates. The present building is surrounded by barbed wire, and garrisoned by Sikh police, and could stand siege long enough to enable it to summon a swift and powerful police launch by wireless from Hong Kong. The new school was opened only last year, and while the Police Station holds itself aloof on the ridge just outside the village, the school nestles more intimately among the good people, some of whose children pursue learning within those cheerful walls.\n\nThe Europeans are the Highlanders of Cheung Chow. Like the Hebrews in Canaan, they leave the plains to the original inhabitants and occupy patches of the bare hills. The Chinese use these little hills only to pasture a few tiny cattle, to supply fuel, and to afford a last resting place for their dead. Among the grass and the graves the missionaries have built small stone huts in the strangest of styles. Some are reminiscent of little Bethels and Bethesdas which drew their original inspiration from the stone barns where sectaries used to meet. Others are refuges among the great clusters of rocks, to which and between which they cling and clamber like the nests of some strange and gigantic insect. Amongst these there are some half-dozen more comfortable bungalows of permanent residents. All these Europeans live in amity with one another. There are British, Americans, and now and then some Germans. They elect a little committee and officers for their Association to deal with the Colonial Government, and with the Kaifong which governs the village. A tiny fund is expended with admirable results.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "184\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nnée Yau, of Mang Kung Uk is not untypical. She grew up in Tseng Lan Shue, was betrothed at 4 years old, but continued to live in her father's village. At 7 she helped to look after three cows, driving them up the hill early in the morning, returning at approximately 8.00 am or 9.00 am for breakfast, and going back to the hill to drive them home in the early afternoon. At 10, she began to help her mother to carry firewood into Kowloon, carrying approximately 30 catties on each trip. She married at 19, and worked under the supervision of her mother-in-law. Her husband was a seaman, and received only 8 dollars per month. Her mother-in-law looked after the children, and she cooked, farmed, raised pigs, cut firewood and grass, and carried water. She often had to rise at 4.00 in the morning and work till late at night.64\n\nUp to the eve of World War II, daily life in Sai Kung did not change significantly from the description given in this chapter. This background is needed for an understanding of the impact of the War on Sai Kung's residents.\n\nTHE WAR YEARS\n\nThe coming of the Japanese\n\nIt was 3.00 o'clock in the morning, December 10, 1941. Mr. Chung P'oon was awakened by loud banging on his door. Thinking that these might be bandits, he answered the door with knife in hand. He opened the door to find several guns pointing at him. The Japanese army had arrived at Wong Chuk Shan Village. For him and for the rest of the Sai Kung population, the occupation had begun....\n\nThrough an interpreter, the Japanese told him they wanted to be taken to Kowloon. Mr. Chung did not know it then, but we now know that two days earlier, the Japanese army had overrun Tai Po and Sha Tin, and the day before had taken what was known as the \"Shingmun redoubt\". British forces were withdrawing from the New Territories to Hong Kong Island, and a contingent of Sepoy soldiers were covering the retreat at Devil's Peak. The Japanese soldiers in Wong Chuk Shan had probably strayed into the village by mistake. They had come over from Shap Sz Heung, intending to find their way into Kowloon. Now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208619, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The next day, the twenty-third, snipers' bullets began pelting our house from the north and we promptly retreated to the south. A couple of these bullets came in through the glass windows in our front hall, and our only casualty was Father Meyer who received a very slight scratch on the cheek evidently from a piece of flying glass. Artillery shells now began coming our way, apparently from the west and north, proof enough that the Japanese had succeeded in getting on the island of Hong Kong. The targets of these shells were evidently gun emplacements in and around Stanley village and near the Prison, for the shells struck along the water's edge—sometimes in the sea itself—and along the military road leading to the fort. A number of these shells actually hit the Anglican School and the Police Station in Stanley village. Some also struck buildings of St. Stephen's College and the various buildings on the Prison Compound. Many shells seemed to fall just between the buildings on St. Stephen's campus, one building of which had been turned into a hospital. From our own hilltop we again had a grandstand view, but our interest was not exactly that which one has when viewing a competitive game.\n\nBombs also dropped out of the sky on the fort and attempts were made to cripple \"Big Bertha\", but she came out of the fracas unscathed and continued to hurl her deadly missiles over the hills until the end. One Japanese bomb fell at the foot of our hill, striking a portion of the village market and killing eight or nine people. All around our hill the British had constructed trenches and machine gun nests, and we were in momentary fear of the shells finding these objectives. British soldiers could be seen moving steadily in among the trees, and many came in to our house occasionally for a drink of water.\n\nAs a further safeguard against snipers' bullets we barricaded the exposed doors and windows. We also moved our provisional recreation room from the lower chapel to the refectory, this latter being on the south side. During these hectic days we could do nothing but huddle downstairs in the corridors while air raids and shelling were in progress, and look forward to the night time when the din (except from \"Big Bertha\") was silenced. As we had no electricity we retired early and rose late.\n\nOccasionally we could observe a few straggling soldiers on the mountain just across from us, but could not distinguish whether", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208784, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "214\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe location of the first major incident was the wooded slope of a steep hillside covered with pine trees and shrubs which was held under forestry licence by the Tsing Yi Rural Committee on behalf of the island community. The occasion for it was the entry of a bulldozer in connection with site investigation surveys (by boring rigs) to this area, where engineering works were held up pending negotiations with the villagers for the removal of several villages.\n\nIn the event, an unauthorized entry was made without the knowledge of the supervising engineer or District Office land staff. The bulldozer made tracks some 300 yards long in several zig-zags across the front of the hill, to the imagined and claimed detriment of three old villages whose fung shui area it has long been. The bulldozer's tracks were approximately 8 feet wide and it had effectively knocked over trees, taken up shrubs and exposed red earth, as clearly shown in Plate 4.\n\nThe villagers were prompt in their response; not only to complain to the District Office, but also to take early action to reduce the harm thought to emanate from the uncovered earth scars across the hill face. They sent parties of people to the spot who quickly cut adjoining grass, shrubs and the lower branches of trees to cover up the red earth. This took place over much of the tracks (Plate 4). They also hired a geomancer from Kowloon who set up a shrine beside a major clan grave whose side had been closely skirted by the bulldozer (Plate 5). He also provided charms which were set beside the shrine, to avert any bad influences coming from the uncovered earth nearby (Plate 6). In their turn the villagers sent a man at early morning and dusk to light joss-sticks and candles, change the oil in the little lamps on the shrine, so as to try to ensure that harm was averted by showing devotion to the earth god and to the ancestors. This service was provided in turn by a certain class of men styled fuk chù (±) from each of the villages affected by the excavation. This term means elderly persons who are thought to have received blessings from the gods e.g. by having many sons and health in old age.\n\nThe District Office 'made amends' by paying for the expenses/labour costs of the remedial work, and for the cost of the ceremonial rites styled tun fu (#). The effect of the remedial work thus undertaken was estimated to last for 6 months, after which the process would be repeated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209857, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "94\n\nOn drier land are grown pea-nuts, taro, ginger, onions, and many other crops. Pineapples are grown in some places, always on the hillsides, and nearly always among pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years. On the Islands pineapples are grown only on Tsing Yi, Ma Wan, and Lantau. Other fruit is grown near villages: laichis, oranges, lungngan, pumeloes, and papaya; the last especially in North Lamma.\n\nFishing is almost entirely in the hands of the Tan Ka and the Hoklos. Big junks go out from Tai O, Cheung Chau, and Hong Kong to trawl on the continental shelf beyond and around the Lemas and Ladrones; smaller boats go in for line fishing and prawn catching; the dried and salted shrimp paste is what gives to Cheung Chau its \"ancient and fishlike smell\". But the main fishery of the year is that of the \"wong fa\", which migrate from near Kwongchau Wan every autumn up the coast towards Swatow. Night fishing with acetylene lamps is very common: these first came into favour about 1920. Stakenet fishing is very common, but does not pay very well. Rock oysters, the sort that cut your feet when bathing, are picked in great numbers by women and children, especially at low tides in summer, all round the coast. Crabs and lobsters (the sort without claws) are caught in nets and traps.\n\nForestry is confined to the growing of firewood for use and sale. The plantations are generally near villages, but some on the islands belong to owners who live elsewhere. Nearly all Tsing Yi is divided between three forestry lots: yet on Lamma there are no forest lots, though there are trees all right. The biggest forestry lot is at Tung Chung. Very little planting is done except when encouraged by the District Officer: trees are allowed to sow themselves. Grass, growing thick in summer, is cut for fuel everywhere in autumn; it is the chief cooking fuel of the New Territories. Its cutting is women's work.\n\nOther island industries are salt-making, confined to Tai O; lime-burning at Pingchau, Tsing Yi, and formerly at Naikwuchau; shell and coral are used. Limekilns on a small scale are found everywhere along the coasts; the place-name \"fui yiu\", not ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209867, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "104\n\nBefore moving on to discuss the larger islands to the south-east of Lantau, it is worth just mentioning the small islands off Lantau. There are small islands both to the north and the south of the main island.\n\nThe Islands north of Lantau are six in number.\n\nEast Brother, Reef Island and West Brother; fishermen sometimes live there.\n\nChek Lap Kok (\"Red Sea-perch Point\") is a barren island of low granite hills which lies in front of Tung Chung, sheltering its harbour. Big reefs of quartz run through it. Two formerly prosperous quarries on this island were ruined by the 1925 strike. Now there is only farming and fishing. Kwo Lo Wan is a ruined village on the southern isthmus: it is a common placename.\n\nShau Chau (\"Guard-station Isle\") 18; has three dumb-bell isthmuses, two covered at high water, and a third, on which there is a settlement of early man. There is a deserted temple here.\n\nTongkwu (“Brass Drum\") 19 has the chief early settlement of men in this area. The objects found show very little Chinese influence. Later settlements in Sung and Ming times were at the northern end of the beach. The island is used now for fishing and pasturing cattle, and there is a lighthouse. It is a very good example of a dumb-bell island - a sandy isthmus connecting two hills.\n\nUrmston Roads, as the waters between Tongkwu and the mainland are known, was a frequent anchorage for foreign fleets in the 1839 and 1857 wars, despite a strong tidal flow. It was used by a French squadron in 1857, and one ship left a record of her presence by inscribing a stone at Castle Peak with \"Nemesis 1857\".\n\nWe now pass south of Lantau. All this coast suffers from lack of harbours: only bays facing south-west are any good. There is always some swell; and it can be very violent sometimes.\n\nTaking the small islands to the south of Lantau, we have firstly the Soko Islands. There are eight islands in this group", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209873, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "110\n\nThe very latest is that some enterprising folk of these parts have committed a piracy on a junk there, and five or six of them are up before the District Officer, South, on a committal charge.\n\nAt the northern end of High Island is the interesting feature called the Dry Channel or Kon Mun. It is a fiord formed by the sunken mouth of the valley running northwest by Lan Nai Wan, which is connected on the west with the other channels. Into it has poured the whole of the silt from the upper valley: and as this point is precisely where the two tidal waves sweeping round High Island meet, the silt is heaped up there without any chance of it getting carried away. Nothing bigger than a small sampan can traverse it, and then only at high water.3\n\nLeaving this fascinating island group by the often stormy route past Conic Island and Fung Head, we reach the mouth of Taipo Harbour, with Kang Chau (a little rock built up of volcanic ash beds), Grass Island, with the fishing village of Tap Mun on it, and Port Island. This last island is uninhabited.\n\nThe islands in Taipo Harbour are mostly of sandstone and shale, but are otherwise of little interest. They are Harbour Island, Centre Island, and lastly, the island near Taipo station where the District Officer, North, lives, though since the causeway carrying the road was built, this is no longer an island.\n\nGoing out again round Bluff Head, we come to another island-studded stretch of sea. Three large and sixteen small islands occupy it, and it is a most beautiful piece of water. Double Island, the first you come to, is in two halves joined by a low, narrow neck: the Crescent Island, beside it, is uninhabited, but Kat (\"Lucky Harbour\") Island, not being very lofty, has a good deal of its surface under cultivation.\n\nThere is yet one more island, and this is in some ways the most curious of all. It lies away across Mirs Bay, two miles from the Chinese coast, from which it draws a good deal of its drinking water by means of waterboats. It is called, very appropriately, Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). When I was there, I did not see any paddy whatever; all cultivation was dry, and often the fields were unterraced and sloping, quite different from other parts of the New Territory, yet the island is populous, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209879, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "116\n\nIn selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7\n\nAp Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival\n\nAp Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than \"two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters\" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11\n\nBy 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210155, "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-1984", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "105\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND BEFORE 1841\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHail, little isle! and Hong's fair haven, hail!\n\nFirst-fruits of China to the ocean-queen! New orient realms, new navies' embryo sail Glass'd in thy shifting horoscope are seen. May British virtue shine, in thee confest; And in her colony be Britain blest!'*\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong evoked different feelings in both China and Britain. In China, needless to say, there was scarcely rejoicing. The sixty-year-old Tao Kuang emperor, monarch of China since 1820, when asked to sanction the proposed Treaty of Peace that granted Hong Kong to Britain, spent the rest of the day and most of the night pacing up and down the corridor of his Palace, deep in anxious thought. Several times he was heard to mutter \"impossible\" and to sigh deeply. At last, at 3 a.m., he stamped his foot and proceeded to the audience chamber where he affixed the \"vermilion pencil\" to the draft. One of his subjects, the great Chinese statesman Tso Tsung-tang (1812-1885), then an unknown and rather unsuccessful scholar, wrote four poems in which he expressed grief and indignation when he heard that the British had taken over Hong Kong; and when he learned the final terms of the peace he was so overcome that he thought seriously of retiring to some lonely mountain retreat for the rest of his days.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nIn England the young Queen Victoria, twenty-two years old and married with a baby daughter wrote to her uncle, the king of the Belgians, \"Albert is so much amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong and we think Victoria ought to be called Princess of Hong Kong in addition to Princess Royal\".2\n\nHer Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was not amused. He received the news of the Chuenpi agreement (January 1841) between Captain Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary, and the Imperial Commissioner Kishen, with disappointment and disapproval.\n\n* See Plates 1-3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210349, "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-1984", "page_number": 320, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "299\n\n(at the corner of Hoi Tan Street and Pei Ho Street) and finally to Tsing Yi Island.\n\nIn those days security was a matter of self-defence. The factory in consequence kept swords, rattan shields, and six handguns as weapons for defence against bandits.\n\nThe San Shing Lei kiln moved to Tsing Yi in 1915, buying the land to build the factory, and preparing the site by levelling it and reclaiming the sea frontage. It was the first factory to invest and set up there. The factory occupied about 150,000 square feet and had eight kilns for lime burning, and a good number of shelters and other buildings. Every month it could produce 10,000 piculs of lime.\n\nAt that time Tsing Yi was very remote, with only a few residents. Following the establishment of the kiln, this immediately encouraged the development and prosperity of the area. Since the kiln required to buy huge quantities of dried grass from the villagers, and employed more than one hundred workers to operate the kilns, crush the shells and to act as general coolies (most of these workers were Hoi Luk Fung people), and since many of the workers, for their convenience in getting to work, started to live near the factory, so shops could set up nearby and hope for business. Moreover, the pier built by the factory as its private pier was available for general use. Because of this the area around the factory became steadily more prosperous, and outsiders started to invest there, building houses and factories, until the area became a regular market.\n\nIn 1959 the Government built a pier near this market, with ferries to and from Tsuen Wan, Tsing Yi and Hong Kong, thus making it much easier for factories and shops on the island to transport goods, and for residents to travel backwards and forwards.\n\nWhy the Industry declined\n\nIn the 1950s the property industry in Hong Kong began to be very prosperous. Lime was supplied not only to the local industry", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210464, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "52\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nSai, where the rise and fall of spring tides could be as much as 25 feet, was that it had such a place. It lay on the east side of the temple and was in fairly constant use during spring tides. Legs to support the junks were kept in the temple, as a rule, and freely used by all. The purpose of careening was, of course, to examine the boat's bottom, and remove the accumulation of marine growth. This was done by burning, with bundles of dried grass held on pitch forks, and scraping by hand. Any cracks in the hull were caulked, and the whole bottom then treated with tung oil. One of the innovations of the late 'fifties was the use of anti-fouling paint instead of tung oil. This, though more expensive, gave better protection and cut down the frequency of careening to about once in every two months.\n\nAnother regular task, performed at least once a month in the days of sail and before the introduction of nylon, was the dyeing of sails, sail cloth and nets. This process, intended as a preservative measure, involved a whole day's work for an entire crew, preceded by several days' preparation on the part of one or two members. The dye-stuff used was prepared by crushing and soaking a root known as shue-leung. This was then transferred to the dyeing tanks on the second island where nets and sailcloth were dipped, dried and dipped again two or three times before being steamed for several hours and finally spread out to dry. Dyeing had to start early in the morning. It required good weather and the payment of $4 dollars a day to the Hakka 'headman' who owned the tanks and steaming vat. With mechanisation and the nylon revolution regular dyeing sessions were no longer necessary, but sail cloth (used for awnings) and some pieces of netting still had to be dyed from time to time.\n\nSeasonal rhythms\n\nSeasonal rhythms naturally varied with the type of fishing. The long-liners' main season was during the first four months of the lunar calendar, the purse-seiners' in the sixth, seventh and eighth months. The main seasons were looked to for the extra profit that would go into boat building or repairs, buying new gear, marrying a son or daughter, or installing a new engine. For the rest of the year subsistence was about all that could be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210733, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "67\n\nmore can be planted. . . . The Fernery in Glenealy Ravine in the New Garden, which was made about five years since, has succeeded admirably.\n\nThe administration of the gardens also became independent of the Survey Department and emerged as the Botanical Department.\n\nMr. Ford also botanised widely in the area and started a collection of plant specimens as soon as he arrived in Hong Kong. The Herbarium was formally established in 1878 and in 1881 he started a series of botanical expeditions to southern China for the purpose of obtaining more knowledge of its then little known flora, especially the economic plants.\n\n\"The living plants introduced to cultivation by this expedition contain many things of very much interest which will be valuable acquisitions to (the) gardens.\"\n\nIn addition to his duties in the Botanic Gardens, Ford also had a much wider outlook on the flora of Hong Kong and in a letter to T. Thistleton-Dyer F.R.S. (dated 16/8/81) he illustrates his interest in the conservation of the natural flora on the hillsides:\n\n\"From the commencement of this year I have had two 'Forest Guards' at work whose special duty is to patrol the Island and prevent wanton destruction of trees and shrubs by grass cutters and other people. They are doing excellent service and I believe that we shall in consequence, get many more new plants. There are many shrubs growing on the hills which are unknown to me, and which, I believe have never been found in flower because of their having been so frequently cut down that they could not attain sufficient size to flower, but which, now that they are being preserved, will be able to flower.\"\n\nIn his report to Kew 1882 Ford estimated that about one-tenth of Hong Kong (including the New Territories, Lantao and Lamma islands) was planted. \"There might be about 25,000,000 trees", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "133\n\nger ferry service direct to Hong Kong has already been established, and airports at Haikou and Sanya are being up-graded to international standard for direct air links with Hong Kong. A 50-km railway link will complete the link between Ba Suo, Lintau and Yulin. For energy, an open-cut mine will be developed at Changpo with capital investment of US$ 60 million (Bulletin, May 10, 1983) and the estimated output of 500,000 tonne of coal will be used at power stations at Changpo and Haikou (China Daily, November 25, 1983).\n\nThe projects which the Hainan authorities would like to proceed as joint ventures with foreign capital are listed in Table 1 (Anon., 1982a). These projects were presented to the Australian Department of Trade as being indicative of the range of the island's ambitions rather than as specific projects to which they\n\n \n Product\n Location\n size\n Comments\n \n \n Cement\n Dong Fang\n 1 Mt/a\n Export through Basuo.\n \n \n Petroleum refinery\n West Coast\n 1 Mt/a\n Based on expectations of offshore oil.\n \n \n Silicon carbide\n Dong Fang\n 15000 tpa\n Based on planned hydro expansion on Changhua River. High quality silica sand.\n \n \n Plate glass\n Daxian\n \n Rebuilding of facilities.\n \n \n Paper\n Daxian\n \n \n \n \n Aluminium\n \n 30000 tpa\n Long-term ambition.\n \n \n Tourism\n Five potential locations.\n \n \n \n \n Tropical agriculture\n \n \n Sugar cane, pineapple, cashews, coffee, cocoa macadamia nuts, beef and dairy cattle.\n \n \n Fish, prawns\n 27 sites available for fish farms.\n \n \n \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211715, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "105\n\nbamboo comes from Vietnam. Saigon Bamboo, as it is often called, has the double advantage of high inflammability and resistance to worm. Not every factory can afford to buy this type of bamboo cane, however, especially those engaging in the production of low-priced commodities. These factories, instead, often use Haifang Bamboo (T), Peihai Bamboo (EV), Shant'ou Hairy Bamboo (€, Phyllostachys edulis) and Formosan Bamboo (A). These sticks are cheaper but their fibrous surface makes the manufacturing processes difficult.\n\nThe second type of bamboo used is called Grass Bamboo (#†, ts’ao chu) which comes mainly from China. The species is more often used to manufacture joss sticks of greater length. The length of this type of joss stick demands a species of bamboo which has the joints wide apart. Moreover, the bamboo exploited must be old and dry enough so that the bamboo core can support the immense weight added to it by the incense powder. As a result, bamboo bark and cambium are very seldom used as they are either too brittle or too slender. Instead, the xylem of old bamboo is used since it alone is hard enough.\n\nIn the field study, it was found that other than three incense wood mills and four factories specializing in the production of incense coils, all the factories used bamboo canes from China as their basic raw materials. Nevertheless, three of them reported the use of bamboo from Singapore as a supplement in the production of higher grade joss sticks. Only one uses the canes from Thailand.\n\nTo prepare bamboo trees for joss stick manufacture, they are first felled into logs, and then cut into canes. The canes must have a square cross-section so that the final products do not flatten out. In addition, the longitudinal cross-section of the canes has to be uniform in order to produce fine joss sticks.\n\nb) Incense Wood Milling\n\nWithin the broad categories of joss sticks and incense coils, incense products can be further sub-classified on the basis of their fragrances. In general, the fragrances of joss sticks include Aloe-scented, Sandal-scented, Cypress-scented, Rose-scented, Lign-aloe-scented, benzoin-scented and scentless. These different kinds of scents come from different kinds of fragrant trees. Today, aloewood is obtained from Aquilaria agallocha which is widely grown in Hainan Island and Annam. Ch'ên-hsiang (D), as it is often called, is not commonly used because it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211890, "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": 305, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "280\n\nWe are now going on very slowly indeed, and unless the breeze very much strengthens it will be a while even now before we reach Batavia. The weather is much warmer today and I have spent nearly all the time on deck. No one can imagine, unless placed in my circumstances, how much I long to see land once more, and to tread on \"Terra Firma\".\n\nWednesday, July 3rd\n\nI am now writing under far different circumstances to my last. Here I am in a fine hotel in Batavia, recreating and resting till the vessel is able to proceed to her destination. How I came here I will endeavour to describe as clearly as possible, although I have had to pass through so much that I have forgotten one half of it.\n\nNow to proceed. The day after we spoke with the \"whaler\" I have just mentioned, we spoke to another which came from the same town. She had lately caught a whale, and as she sailed past I saw the greater part of the blubber upon deck, cut up in large pieces. They were boiling some at the time, and the scent was quite alarming, as it blew toward our ship. They wrote their longitude by their chronometers on a large board, and we did the same. We were 90 miles out, and this is the result of the captain's ignorance and negligence in all probability.\n\nThe next few days we had a complete calm so that we were only making a few miles a day. The ship having only half of her sails that were capable of being used, made it slow work indeed. Day after day we went on till at last one afternoon we sighted \"Java Head\". The captain's impatience at the lightness of the wind knew no bounds. He walked about and swore, and stamped, and bullied, but all to no purpose. The next day we got off Prince's Island, and just moved a few miles along the shore.\n\nPleasant indeed it was to be in sight of land once more after such a long stay on the wide ocean, with nothing to vary the tediousness and monotony. If it had been a dreary desert land it would have been a treat to look at it, but how great the pleasure to see with the glass the most fertile and luxuriant island in the world, completely embossed with trees, of the most graceful and imposing appearance. We could see the waves as they washed the shores, and hear their dashing against the sandy beach. The heat was something considerable on account of the calm. Butterflies and small insects came off to the ship from the shore, and were the first", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211893, "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": 308, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "283\n\nBatavia Roads to carry to and fro from the ship to the shore. These boats are always used by ships in Batavia and are paid four rupees or guilders a day. They are pulled by four Malays except when the wind allows sailing. The head man came on board. They had plenty of rice and fish with them which they ate with their fingers, as all Musselmen do. They are regular Mohammedans,\n\nThe one who stayed on board could speak a little English, and on the next evening I got alongside of him to try what I could make of him. I asked him a few questions but could not understand his answers, so I thought I would give up. At last he said, \"You not know her! You not sabby her? Her name Roleston. Not you sabby Roleston?\" I was very much surprised, as you may imagine, to hear him repeat that name, and how to think of it I could not imagine. What, thought I, can he know about Roleston, and whoever could he be talking about? At last I made out that there is a mercantile house in Batavia of that name, who have a ship of the same name, and this man had served the ship with his boat only a few days before, during the time she was loading. He was a fine intelligent-looking man, for a Malay.\n\nThe captain became more unbearable every day. From morning to night it was nothing but curses, grumbling, bullying, and threatening.\n\nOn Saturday night, June 30th, we stopped off Amsterdam, a small island about 12 miles from Batavia. Here I sat on deck and with the glass looked over the island, which was about a quarter mile off. It looked very pretty by moonlight. There were several native huts on the shore and in the interior, and at night each had a light burning, which looked pretty among the trees.\n\nIt is very pleasant to be sailing among these islands, all covered thick with trees wherever there is room for one to grow. It is truly sailing as the poet says:-\n\nAmid the green islands of glittering seas\n\nWhere fragrant forests perfume the breeze.'\n\nOn Sunday, July 1st, we had several boats come off to the ship from parties in Batavia who were canvassing for trade and patronage. One of them brought a Portuguese, who from being born and brought up in the tropics was as black as a negro. He delivered his card, and was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211923, "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": 338, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "313\n\nDocuments confirm that Sing-Ngok's descendants had a large portion of the more than 160 acres of Kam Tin Dang land-holdings on Hong Kong island.\n\nD. Sung-Kok jou and the Gwong-Yu Tong and Lei-Ging Tong\n\nI have mentioned before that the second ancestor of the fourth branch, Naam-Kai, had been adopted from the first branch. This connection might be expected to serve to make the two branches feel closer together. However, fung-sheui stories hint at feelings of rivalry between the first and the fourth branches, especially after the rise of the latter during or after Dang Man-Wai's time in the later seventeenth century. However, it was only a few segments of the fourth branch which prospered: a letter from the leaders of the Kam Tin Dangs in 1941 claimed that the ancestral fund for Naam-Kai used to be a broken house in the county town of Xin'an until it was expanded to a farmland holding of over 200 sek in rent value under the management of the youngest son of Dang Kyun-Hin (1755-1822). It was only the families of Dang Man-Wai and of his brothers who enjoyed great prosperity from early in the Qing dynasty.\n\nThe present descendants of Dang Man-Wai attribute the prosperity of their segment (known as Gwong-Yu Tong) to the jeun-si degree of Man-Wai, which he won in 1685. But from 1657, i.e. almost 20 years earlier, he was already a geui-yan, one of only two or three ever achieved from the Hong Kong region, which should have placed him in a very advantageous position especially in this period. According to a stone inscription, Man-Wai started the Yuen Long Market in 1669, and until it was replaced by the New Market in 1898 this market was run by the ancestral trust of Man-Wai, the Gwong-Yu Tong. Man-Wai was also credited with having compiled a genealogy and having initiated the building of an ancestral hall for the larger Dang clan. His sons and grandsons included many imperial degree/title holders involved in lineage matters.\n\nThe spirit tablets of two of Dang Man-wai's brothers are housed in the Lei-Ging Tong, an ancestral hall which used to be in the present playground, but which was later moved to near the Sun Ngai Brass factory on Kam Sheung Road. The original building was only a little smaller than the Gwong-Yu Tong. One of the two brothers was Dang Ng-sang, who, according to Sung (1974:185), built the ancestral hall. Some village elders confirmed that he was the same Ng-sang who was the leader of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212237, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "156\n\nThe Portuguese are in considerable numbers here, since they can generally stand the climate better than the English: Many of them have come from the neighbouring island of Macao which is Portuguese. They are a swarthy indolent looking set. They have a strong Roman Catholic College, which is not far from ours.\" Their undermining influence is very strong. The students, priests and friars, etc., wander about of an evening in their long black dresses. The Catholics are very active.\n\nThe Americans are mostly men of business. The Germans are mostly Lutheran missionaries, and capital fellows they are. The French and Arabs are comparatively few in number. There is an English jail, generally full of sailors: Two of the men from the \"Prince Alfred\" I suppose were put in there. I am going regularly to visit the prisoners, Mr Irwin having wished me to do so to assist him. Then there is the Chinese jail; a wretched place. Every hour or two as I sit here, I hear a long heavy clanking of chains as a great gang of them go past in the road, carrying heavy burdens. They make them work hard on the roads, and the continual sight of them has a salutary effect on the Chinese mind. Yet crime is very common.\n\n14\n\nI come in the next place to speak of the college, and of my domestic arrangements. In my former letter\" I gave a brief description of it, which I will amplify a little. I have just made a miserable sketch, or rather ground plan of the college, just to show within a little the relative positions of each of the parts. I will now ask you to accompany me through the establishment. We enter the gateway, as you see in the plan, and go through the shrubbery. We notice it is thickly planted with trees, and here and there on the grass is a small bed with flowers. There are some gigantic specimens of cactus and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212365, "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": 307, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "284\n\nsituated exactly north of here. When I look out of the shutter I have it exactly in front of me. Its slope to the plain is gradual, which is also the case with the whole of the mountain range. It is strange that all these mountains are so bare of trees. All the mountain ranges which you can see from here are, in the lower parts, only wooded in some places, while the rest of the range is covered with grass. The poor cover causes a shortage of fuel. Because of this, fuel is very expensive.\n\nConcerning the cultivable land which is closed in by the sea and the mountains, this strip is only about half an hour's walk wide and just a bit more than one hour's walk long. The soil is a mixture of clay and sand, with the clay dominant. The soil is cultivated diligently but brings only mediocre returns. That is the reason why the owners of the land only have to pay a modest rate of tax. In some places the soil is sandy far inland from the sea-coast and therefore cannot be cultivated.\n\nThis little strip of land is covered with villages. One can count 12 to 13 though admittedly some consist of only a few houses. Most of them are situated near the foot of the mountain range. They are separated from each other by only short distances. Such a village is built without any plan, and totally irregularly. There is no main street that runs through the village, with houses on both sides of the street, but as roads they use tiny lanes, full of corners here and there. This fact alone must contribute a lot, apart from all other circumstances, to the filth. Similarly, in the larger villages and towns, the streets are very narrow and dirty, and the stench that is found there lets the traveller who walks through them anticipate what it might be like inside the houses. A superficial glance at a Chinese village makes you understand that what is most important to the inhabitants is for them to find a shelter against wind and rain, and that regularity, tidiness and cleanliness are very minor features of the living-quarters. Possibly they do not even feel the need for these things.\n\n―\n\nThis statement is justified by the following description\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212386, "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": 328, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "305\n\nWilson decided that the only option open to them for survival lay in a group taking one of the Norna's boats and attempting to reach civilization. A rescue party could then be arranged to retrieve the others.\n\nWilson himself led the party, taking with him his family, four Europeans, and two lascars. On the 17th April they set out in one of the Norna's open boats for Guam and arrived there seven days later. A small rescue party was organised but was driven back after encountering a severe storm and running short of supplies.\n\nWilson and his party then left Guam for Manila in a Spanish Trader and from there sailed to Hong Kong. When they arrived in Hong Kong in July, Captain Wilson reported the loss of his ship to Dent & Co. who in turn relayed the situation to the naval authorities.\n\nOn the 18th August 1861, Admiral Hope despatched the auxiliary paddle steamer HMS Pioneer from the colony to bring back the remainder of the Norna's crew. The Pioneer arrived at St Augustine on the 22nd September only to find the island deserted, save for a message left behind in a glass bottle attached to a tree. Nailed to the tree above the bottle was the Norna's wooden nameboard.\n\nThe letter stated that the crew had left the island on 19th August in one of the Norna's patched-up long boats because their provisions were long exhausted, there was little water and there were now no coconuts, turtle or wild fowl left on the island. They went on to say that they intended to make for Palau in their frail craft, 1,200 miles to the west.\n\nHMS Pioneer arrived back in Hong Kong on the 19th October and reported her findings to Admiral Hope. He promptly ordered another paddle steamer, HMS Sphinx, to be prepared and sail back into the Western Pacific, with explicit instructions to make a thorough search of the Caroline Islands,\n\nHope's written orders to Sphinx's captain, Cmdr Brown, included the route he was to follow, the contacts from whom he might get assistance in the Philippines and the charts he should take with him. On the 4th December 1861, HMS Sphinx sailed through Lei Yue Mun and headed for Manila. From there the Sphinx passed through", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212390, "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": 332, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "309\n\nSOJOURNERS IN XIAMEN: NOTES ON THE RAS VISIT\n\nIt was up-up-and-away' on Friday March 6, 1992, as 18 stalwart RAS Members took a one-hour flight to Xiamen Island, in Fujian Province. Also known as Amoy, the town is similar, in some ways, to Hong Kong. Both are situated in the typhoon belt. Also, like Macau, there are isolated 'dip-nets' for coastal fishing, mournful water buffalo haul ploughs as in Guangdong and 'knife-bean' and flame trees adorn skylines as at Repulse Bay. As in most of China for the past decade, 'free markets' exist in Xiamen with intriguing street stall smells.\n\nBut this city, where Chinese still stare at Europeans, is also different from Hong Kong. Limited English is spoken, and, when it is, people often have Japanese accents. Nor is there the same high-rise concrete jungle, sampans and junks have more pronounced curves, straining bare-footed labourers pull carts and street sweepers use brooms made from branches of trees.\n\nAlthough one of the People's Republic's Special Economic Zones, Xiamen cannot be compared to hectic Shenzhen. But if direct relations can be established across the shallow, 150 kilometre wide, Taiwan Straits, instead of routing transactions through Hong Kong, the volume of trade could increase rapidly. To make it easier for the Taiwanese, to attract business many of the street signs in Xiamen are in conventional Chinese characters, as in Hong Kong, rather than the simplified ideograms normally used in China.\n\nThe Group's first stop on arrival in Xiamen, arranged by Member David Norris, was to 'Meixia Arts and Handicrafts' established and run by American Bill Job and wife Kitty. They manufacture and export stained art glass murals, windows and lampshades.\n\nThe following day, the couple invited the Party to their spartan but adequate house, built in 1928, for which the present rent is US$120 a month. An open well and grapevines grace the forecourt. Their two young daughters attend the Chinese school and are fluent in both Putonghua and the local dialect. The latter sounds more nasal than Cantonese. When the Group arrived the two girls were playing ball with Chinese friends in the narrow street at the front of their home.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212602, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "136\n\nThe charming English custom of dressing for dinner is ill adapted to the perspiring tropics.\n\nWhen the walla-walla boat took me out to the coaster anchored in the harbour, I found she was even smaller than the ship I had come on from Shanghai, and slower. The run to Singapore, which the larger ships cover in a little over three days, again took a week. It is true we had to make a considerable detour to avoid the extensive belt of mines laid round the Singapore harbour, and we were kept waiting outside pending permission to enter.\n\nWhile anchored there, I was astonished to observe a launch, flying the Japanese flag, and towing a string of fishing craft, steam in over the minefield. On enquiry I was told that Singapore could not do without fish. It later transpired that many of the fishermen were Japanese naval officers in disguise, and that there was little they did not know about the British minefields. Only a few months previously, while undergoing cross-examination in court, a Japanese consular official detained on a charge of espionage had swallowed poison to avoid having to give evidence; but, presumably in the interest of the breakfast table, the Japanese fishermen continued to receive the benefit of the doubt. The big talk of the moment was the scandal of the bribes which had been paid on large contracts for the construction of the new concrete pill-boxes, which were being erected around the island. It was alleged that the quality of the concrete supplied was sometimes little better than plaster, and that some of the leading British firms were implicated. It was all a trifle disturbing.\n\nThe further you got from Shanghai and the nearer to India the worse the plumbing. In Shanghai, American influence had overcome British conservatism with happy results. In the foreign home there was generally a bathroom to each bedroom, and the fixtures were as pleasing to the eye as in use. Stainless steel vied with coloured plastic and the right use of glass to gratify the visitor. In Hongkong the standard lagged a bit. In Singapore it was a long way behind. The bathroom floor might be mere wood, and the walls just homely white tiles. No incentive here to dawdle in delectable contemplation. Even in the famous Raffles Hotel, a barrack descended from earlier times, the bathroom, though no doubt sumptuous enough by English standards, left much to be desired. If I remember rightly it even contained a primeval article of furniture called a \"wash-hand stand”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213499, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "63\n\nwaters.\n\nSai Ying Pun During the Early Years of British Colonization\n\nOn 20 January 1841, Captain Elliot announced the conclusion of preliminary arrangements with the Chinese Imperial Commissioner involving the cession of the Hong Kong Island and harbour to the British Government. Lord Palmerston in April 1841, hearing of Captain Elliot's restoration of Chusan to the Chinese government in return for the cession of Hong Kong, relieved him of his post and contemptuously remarked that Captain Elliot had obtained a barren island with hardly a house upon it.\n\nLord Palmerston was right in describing Hong Kong as a barren island. It was then almost entirely grass-covered, as the fine drawing of Collinson in 1845 showed. When on 26 January 1841, a party of marines landed and raised the British flag, Hong Kong was virtually unoccupied, apart from the little villages and hamlets, like Chek Chu, Shek Pai Wan, and Shau Kei Wan, which were inhabited by a few fishermen, stonecutters, and farmers.\n\nAt that time, the area of Sai Ying Pun was mere rugged slopes of rocks with a narrow, hard-trodded pathway winding along the cliffs, to which the fanciful name of Kwantailou was given by the fishermen and villagers. It was said that the path was used by the local inhabitants to go up to the hillside to cut the grasses and wood for fuel. E.J. Eitel, in his book \"Europe in China\", gave a rather detailed description of the path. He said:\n\n“Along the northern shore of the Island, there used to be, previous to the British occupation, a narrow bridle-path leading, high above the beach, across rocks and boulders, all the way from Westpoint to a hamlet near Eastpoint called Kwantalou, described in the first census (May 15, 1841) as a fishing village with 50 inhabitants. This path was used by the crews of trading junks in cases of wind and tide being unfavourable to track the junks along by a towing line attached to the peak of the foremast. Now, this hard-trodden path standing, to an observer from the opposite shore, clear out from the grass-grown hillside, like a fringe or border along the skirts of the hill, was by the natives called Kwantailou (petticoat string road), and the hamlet...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213577, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "143\n\nTHE USE OF HILL LAND FOR VILLAGE FORESTRY AND FUEL GATHERING IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG.\n\nRICHARD WEBB\n\nWhile recent economic and social changes in the New Territories of Hong Kong have wrought irrevocable changes to the rural villages, until perhaps twenty years ago, villagers appeared to have used the hillsides much as they pleased, even though some of the larger clans claimed payments for hill land. The villagers of Cheung Sha Wan, west Kowloon, for example, paid regular sums in silver to the Tangs of Kam Tin for their forest land. The Liu family of Sheung Shui was leasing forest land to the villagers of Long Keng under a deed of 1867 (Hayes 1983). However, hill and forest land was usually annexed by the nearest village. Each village had its forestry lot, apportioned to families according to natural boundaries. There was a major difference in people's minds between land under pine tree cultivation (Pinus massoniana) and other hill land used for fuel gathering, grass cutting, and grazing. The British administration carried over the common usage of hill areas for pine cultivation into their village forestry licenses, or \"t'sung shaan p'aai\", which allowed villagers to occupy Crown Land for the purpose of growing these trees on which they relied for fuel, poles, and timber. It was the 'pine hills' that mattered more to the village families, even though they possessed no proper title to them, save under British rule, an undifferentiated notional share in the village license through being part of its community. Like houses and fields, hillside plots could be passed from father to son.\n\nDaley (1975) provides an account of forestry activities, although it is not clear if this refers to village forestry, in which 211,015 trees were planted in 1880, rising to 1,157,609 in 1883. The British administration established the Botanical and Forestry Department in 1880, with the objective of planting the badly eroded areas and water catchments. From 1881 to 1891, an average of around 647,223 trees were planted every year, of which 95% was Pinus massoniana, a local pine which can establish on very poor soil. By 1938, 70% of Hong Kong island had been afforested with government plantations, and 200 km2 of the New Territories were occupied by leased forestry lots used as a source of firewood. By this time, the government plantations were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213579, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "145\n\n4000 acres. The creation of Government Forestry reserves would however probably involve considerable expenditure in the acquisition of the trees, and in watching and preserving the reserves. Hitherto funds have not been available to meet this expenditure\" (Dunn, 1907).\n\nIt was a delicate matter for graves to be sited within a village forestry area, even within a family's own portion. Agreements had to be forthcoming from village elders and from other families. Sometimes these areas had a secondary fung shui significance. For example, a fung shui hill on Tsing Yi island, consisted of a steep slope covered with pine trees, which was held under a forestry license by the Rural Committee on behalf of the villagers (Hayes 1983).\n\nTsing Yi seems to have been the exception with regard to the islands as Schofield (1983) comments, “Forestry is confined to the growing of firewood for use and sale. The plantations are generally near villages, but some on the islands belong to owners who live elsewhere. Nearly all Tsing Yi is divided between three forestry lots: yet on Lamma there are no forest lots, though there are trees all right. The biggest forestry lot is at Tung Chung. Very little planting is done except when encouraged by the District Officer: trees are allowed to sow themselves. Grass, growing thick in summer, is cut for fuel everywhere in autumn; it is the chief cooking fuel of the New Territories. Its cutting is women's work.” Coates (1968) observes that the natural regeneration of trees and shrubs was severely limited by this regular grass cutting, as young trees could not be seen in the long grass.\n\nThe problems of village forestry were described by Schofield (1977) from his time as a District Officer in the islands in the 1920s: \"During my periods in office I made an attempt to get the Chinese communities and villages owning forest lots to look after them and to plant trees. Free seed was distributed and planting instructions given, and a forest guard appointed to supervise and watch results. The difficulties of forest conservation in such scattered and isolated areas were certainly formidable: one was that the boat people could land almost anywhere and steal trees; another that the grass-cutters who annually collect fuel in the autumn are quite likely to cut and take young seedlings: to say nothing of true diseases and caterpillar infestation, often very serious. One bad case was at Tai O, where an entire hillside was laid bare at one swoop by its licensee instead of being cut in stages, and I told him", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214413, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "237\n\nHONG KONG\n\nView of the Harbour and City - Street with Palaces and Chinese Quarter - Chinese Men and Women - Club and Barracks - Visit to the Frigate by the Bishop and Governor-General - Jardine and Matheson Establishment.\n\nI didn't write to you from Hong Kong: there was no possibility of writing - it was so hot. I can't understand how people there sit in offices writing, counting, publishing journals! The sun was in its zenith, when we were there, the rays shone straight down; how could anyone possibly do anything! I am now writing at sea and don't know when and where I'll post this letter; perhaps in China; but we'll only be going to China after Japan. In any case, I just want to say a few words about Hong Kong, and that only because I promised to tell you about every place we visited; strictly speaking, there is nothing to tell about Hong Kong, unless one does it properly, in which case one would have to write a whole commercial or political treatise, which is not my aim: remember our agreement - about what to write!\n\nWhen one first anchors in Hong Kong harbour, one has the impression of having arrived at a reasonable place: wherever one looks, there are high green hills, treeless, it's true, but maritime areas just beyond the equator and the tropics are almost all devoid of vegetation. One expects that the trees are there somewhere, further in the valleys: but here one has to imagine them very much further, with no hope of reaching them by foot or otherwise. If you look right at the island of Hong Kong, your gaze will everywhere meet, as with a wall, with a reddish-yellow mountain, green in parts from grass. At its foot, along the shore, cluster houses, and peering out amongst them, as if for show, are bunches of banana leaves, splitting and yellowed from the sun's rays, and sometimes from behind a fence, one can see, looking like a wide broom, the top of a tree, killed by the sun.\n\nHowever, there is an inexhaustible abundance of sand and rocks. The English have managed to make use of this material too. At different points on the mountain side, you see either a solitary stone house or a clearing prepared for building: labour and skill have already even reached the rock face. Having seen the splendid houses of the embank-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214421, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "245\n\ncontinuing battle between Fadeev and the coolie, for the basket. I hired a boat and placed Fadeev in it, but the coolie followed him and resumed the fighting. The Chinese in the surrounding boats started shouting; Fadeev was about to sit down in the boat, like a mandarin, holding the basket in both hands, but the coolie wouldn't leave him alone. The boatman didn't want to take us, waiting for a resolution of the matter. Fadeev moved to go ashore again - but they wouldn't let him. \"With your permission, Your Excellency, I'll settle them,\" he said, taking the basket in one hand, and energetically pushing the Chinese aside with the other, he got ashore. I left, leaving him to sort it out as best he knew, only from afar I could see him beating off the Chinese like a bear amongst a pack of dogs, hitting them on their outstretched arms. Then later I saw him proudly moving away on our ship's boat, with just the purchases, and not the basket, which had belonged to the coolie and was, through our slow-wittedness, the cause of the conflict.\n\nAt one end of Hong Kong's extensive roadstead the trading house of Jardine and Matheson has been established. The four of us went to have a look at this example of the indefatigable energy and insatiable greed and enterprise of the English. Sten-Bil, the commander of the Danish corvette \"Galatea\" believes the English have invested too much labour and money in Hong Kong and the undertaking will not vindicate itself. On the appropriation of this island, merchants from Calcutta and Singapore rushed here and some of them sank all their capital, counting on the proximity of the Chinese mainland and on the sale of opium. But so far this has not been justified. Perhaps misgivings about the commercial imprudence of some Jardine may be warranted but nevertheless the possession of Hong Kong, the cannons, their own harbour - all this at China's doorstep, assures the English of trade with China for ever, and this little island will, it seems, be an everlasting eyesore for the Chinese government.\n\nA palace has been built at the Jardine establishment, and a garden and path laid out nearby; other buildings are being erected. While we were there hoards of Chinese were paving the ground with slabs; a few vessels stood by the shore. It was not yet midday when we walked onto the wharf and then hurriedly disappeared into the scant shade of the young garden. The chirping of the insects, with the approach of midday was so loud, that it could have challenged a large orchestra. We sat wearily on a bench, glancing occasionally at the glass doors of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215568, "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": 345, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "295\n\nof small, mostly single-storey buildings, such as quarters, as well as paved areas which drained into channels, gullies, and pipes. These led into tanks both above and below ground.34 A record was kept and a plan for the use of water. Following Hong Kong custom, water was boiled before being used for drinking.\n\nDuring an especially dry period, after storage tanks became empty, they were cleaned and limed. Orders used to be posted in the look-out room to this effect. To reduce requirements, salt water was pumped up from the sea for flushing toilets. It is understood that on one occasion, a building worker who had gone to the island to carry out repairs was caught in the nick of time as he stood behind a building about to relieve himself into a gully. Had he done so, the fresh-water supply system would have been contaminated.\n\nUp to the 1970s, Hong Kong as a whole was generally short of water and, together with rainfall, it was a common topic at cocktail parties. For several months in 1963, and again in parts of July and August 1967, water for the average household was on tap for only four hours once every four days. Water shortages were part of every Hong Kong resident's lifestyle in those times and for no one more so than the keepers on Waglan. There, during especially dry periods, water had to be brought in by tanker.\n\nManpower\n\nOver the years, lengths of tours of duty varied. After World War One, keepers, it is understood, spent one month at a stretch on Waglan, which was followed by only one week's leave. Later, this arrangement was changed to one month on duty and two weeks' leave (Bruce; 1990, 6).\n\nIn an interview with the Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, the author was told that the establishment on Waglan comprised 1 Principal Lighthouse Keeper, 2 Lighthouse Keepers, 5 Attendants (who cut the grass and cleaned the windows, etc.) and 1 Cook. This made a total of 9.35 Figures have, of course, varied, off and on, over the years.\n\nIn the years leading up to 1989 (when Waglan was automated), one team would be on duty for one week. They would then be relieved\n\nPage 345\n\nPage 346", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215572, "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": 349, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "299\n\nBeing cooped up on a steep, precipitous, hummock of rock, which consisted of a small, high island and a second island forming, as it were, a long straggling tail meant there were limitations to physical activity. There is a sea-water channel varying from seven to nine metres wide separating the two islands. In a total area of approximately 11.75 hectares, there were obvious limitations to taking exercise.\n\nAlthough the overall length of the \"main\" island is only about 0.8 of a kilometre, like being on board ship there are certain things that an enthusiast can do. Some lighthouse keepers did not bother to exercise. Lai Tak-wah, however, told the author that he used to try to get in 30 minutes every day. Some of this would include climbing up and down the 224 steps which led from the new pier at sea level to the buildings at the top of the Island.38 Some keepers liked to swim. Others practiced Chinese martial arts.\n\nWildlife\n\nApart from higher up towards the crest, little vegetation grows on the main island. Except for a small sisal tree and a chilli tree which stood there in 1990, the author recalls there were no real trees although there are a few bushes. On the smaller \"tail\" island there is even less - just the odd patch of sparse grass.\n\nThe top part of the main Island is partly covered with vegetation, including a few plants and flowers, such as Chinese Hibiscus.39 For those interested in wildlife, when the Royal Asiatic Society members paid their visit in 1990, there was a colony of red-rumped swallows nesting in the cliffs on the leeward side of the main Island. However, on subsequent visits the author did not spot these birds, although there are usually a few swifts and the odd black-eared kite circling in the sky. But no matter whether a person is interested in wildlife or not, Waglan, with the waves breaking together with the foam, is a beautiful spot,\n\nNear the end of the low, straggling island, surrounding a cavern that goes right through the island, you can see two very large rocks. Using a little imagination, these, some proclaim, seem to be leaning over \"kissing.\"40 Yes, there is even romance at Waglan!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215579, "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": 356, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "306\n\nWhen it was manned there was that special feeling of the island being \"inhabited.\" Hands were always available to tend flowerbeds or to do odd jobs in off-duty hours. That was when a small group of buildings and its contents were \"loved\" and better looked after - with brass gleaming like treasured altar plate - than the most fastidious housewife cares for her home. Without a human presence, a lighthouse is dead.\n\nThe smell of cooking, the clink of cups, and the buzz of conversation were replaced by the silent, cadaverous chill of the tomb. Yet at times this is broken by weird insect-like noises emitted by banks of grey cabinets of electrical equipment which demand neither leave nor pensions.\n\nIn 1989, with automation, at Waglan an era had ended.\n\nConclusions\n\nSome people, both visitors and lighthouse keepers, saw Waglan in the days when it was manned as a place lacking creature comforts and mod cons. Life was simple and austere. Conversely, others viewed it as a jewel in the South China Sea and close to nature.\n\nNear the shores of Hong Kong Island or Kowloon, especially in the vicinity of the harbour and to the west of the Territory, pollution is commonplace. There are the murky, estuarine waters of the Pearl River. But out at Waglan, one can experience the true tang of the ocean. One feels at peace. This is how lighthouse keeper Sydney Frank Bamsey, whose ashes were at one time buried there, saw it.\n\nConversely, it is also possible to feel like another keeper, Lai Kwok-keung. He told the press when automation was introduced in 1989, ‘I am not sad to leave.’\n\nHave you been to Waglan? What were your feelings about the island? One thing, however, is certain. Lighthouse keepers around the world are a fast-dying breed.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nThe two authors are deeply indebted to the staffs of the Antiquities", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216162, "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": 461, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "395\n\nso on. I owe this information to our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, who has also referred me to an article on the subject by Professor James L. Watson, \"Eating from the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society\", published in Anthropos, Vol. 82, 1987, pp. 389-401.\n\nIn the course of enquiries (1970s) into foods made at festival time, I came across some interesting facts about the preparation process. This was often laborious. The \"cakes\" made at the lunar New Year are a case in point. The materials comprised pounded glutinous rice and cane sugar. According to men from two of the former Tsuen Wan villages, sixteen hours were needed to cook the mixture in a very large, deep wok (the Chinese frying pan) in effect for a whole day, from dawn till dusk or later. Cooking in an old-fashioned village stove, fuelled by dried grass or firewood, was essential; since the taste would be different were charcoal or gas to be used. Some of the Sham Tseng elders (also Tsuen Wan District) said that each \"cake\" might require between 30 to 50 catties of glutinous rice, resulting in very large \"cakes\". In one household of my acquaintance (originally from Shek Pik on Lantau Island, resited to Tsuen Wan in 1960), it had been usual for them to make four large \"cakes\" every lunar New Year. These were distributed as goodwill gifts to shops in the market towns of Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the boat people's families in the Shek Pik anchorage - indicative of this household's economic and social ties. People also gave and received portions of such cakes during the customary visiting to mark the arrival of the New Year.\n\nThe Sham Tseng men had also mentioned a rather curious requirement involved in the preparation of the dumplings made for the fifth day of the fifth lunar month festival, commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. The dumplings had to be made with a preparation of wood ash, placed between bamboo leaves, and filtered with water. This watery ash, known as kan shui [the character I was given for 'kan' is that for 'root', but though this sits oddly with the context, I have not been able to find anything more suitable in a dictionary search] had to come from \"new\" wood, though not necessarily of any particular kind. It was no use trying to filter ash from anything that came to hand, like old boards or drift-wood.\n\nTurning to other topics, I had earmarked but subsequently overlooked two interesting items in the course of shaping the chapters.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216202, "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": 501, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "435\n\nVISITING ST JOHN'S ISLAND\n\nPETER STUCKEY AND CHRIS BAILEY\n\nIntroduction\n\nSt John's Island is about 160 kms WSW of Hong Kong. It is about the size of Lantau Island and is the largest of the Chuan Shan Islands which form part of Tai Shan County. The adoption of the name St John's Island appears to be through anglicisation of the Chinese name for the island, variously spelt as \"Shang Chuan Island\" on current Chinese maps, or as \"Sancian\". \"Ilhas de San Joao\" or \"St Jean\" Island on older western maps. Our interest in visiting the island was aroused by the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society's visit to Goa in January 2001. There, in the Basilica of Bom Jesus, in Old Goa, we had seen the preserved remains of St Francis Xavier. His corpse is displayed in an elaborate glass-sided, silver ornamented casket that rests high up on a Florentine marble mausoleum. St Francis, we learnt, had died on St John's Island on the night of 2/3 December 1552, aged 46.\n\nIn view of the local interest two visits were made by members of the HK Branch, one travelling “independently\" and the other through an organised China Travel Services guided tour. Here follow their accounts of the visits.\n\nIndependent travel\n\nTwo Branch members, Rocky Dang and myself, Peter Stuckey, went to the Island on 20th and 21st October 2001. We took a Chu Kong Shipping (CKS) ferry from the China Hong Kong ferry terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui, to Xin Hui, leaving at 8:45 a.m. The ferry passes between Macau and Taipa and then follows up the river system past the Yamen Fort to Xin Hui for a fare of HKD 188. At Xin Hui we took a short taxi ride to visit the \"Bird's Paradise.\" Here egrets fly over a huge banyan tree. The tree is reputed to be 500 years old. It extends to cover over a hectare with many trunks formed from the aerial roots descending from the branches of the single organism. Similar trees exist in the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta and in Phimai in NE Thailand.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]