[ { "id": 205288, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n43\n\nHalf-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested.\n\nRice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid.\n\nIn earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205290, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n45\n\nOrchards with pineapples and tangerine oranges are located in Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village. These orchards seem to be much exposed to typhoon damage, and are more or less of an experimental nature. Orchards form a new feature in the valley and have been introduced only in the last decade. They are not very profitable.\n\nThe terraces mentioned above were once used for tea plantations also. It is possible to trace the remains of such terraces on the steep slopes all along the valley. They are the remains of plantations of tea and a shrub giving a dye, most probably the indigo plant Indigofera tinctoria, common in South China. The tea plantations are mentioned in an early report:\n\nTea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill. The bushes are grown in lines on narrow steps or terraces out in the rich soil of recently felled woods or along the dividing banks of sheltered vegetable fields, in either case only in fairly elevated situations. There is a tradition that tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces similar to the above are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation has diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone count for it.5\n\nTea plantation in South-eastern China experienced a general crisis towards the end of the last century as Indian and Ceylon tea invaded the Western market. There is no reason to assume that these circumstances had a direct effect on the New Territories plantations, but generally unsettled conditions on the tea market might have contributed to the actual decline. Wild-growing tea shrubs are still plucked of their leaves for local use. As to the dye plant cultivation, it seems reasonable to suggest that the introduction of foreign artificial indigo and aniline dyes in the beginning of this century was the main reason for the abandonment of these plantations. During an earlier period, however, the production of tea and dye-stuff will have been prominent features in the economic activity, complementary to rice production.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205295, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205296, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n51\n\nKowloon. They engaged in the construction of small bridges, pig-sties, village houses, and urban structures. On the look-out for chances of work, leaving their families behind them in the village, they began to settle, more or less temporarily, in the market towns of the New Territories, and on the Kowloon Peninsula. They lived a life oscillating between the rural and urban areas.\n\nThis uniform specialization in a skilled labour trade is difficult to explain. However, I venture to suggest a possible explanation. It seems reasonable to assume that specialization in the masonry trade was a gradually developing process. Some men were making use of the slack season in farming to obtain an extra income. This was a period when rapid urbanization in Kowloon, and increased building by New Territories emigrants in their native villages, would have raised the demand for such labour. Some success could have encouraged them to work on a larger scale, and to recruit extra hands by way of their agnatic bonds of kinship. The enterprise ramified, and more relatives became engaged. Through the stimulus supplied by the possibility of earning money in a short time when the traditional village economy was suffering from the strain of foreign industrialism, more Grass Field people sought a new income along lines already established by agnatic kinsmen. For a time, most households in the village had male members in the masonry trade. The fact that very few people chose existing alternatives can be explained in terms of a strongly kinship-orientated society.\n\nA more drastic solution to maintain livelihood was emigration abroad. All three settlements have experienced this type of migration. But here also there are differences. Before the Pacific War, Grass Village had only a few migrants working in South-east Asia, while in Big Stream Village nearly every household had overseas members. In fact, emigration abroad seems to have started one generation earlier in the latter place than in the other two valley settlements; that is around 1890. In this generation, several men left for the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. I was told that mostly they entered the new countries illegally. They made a start as recruited crew members of ocean-going ships, and later deserted in convenient ports, thus avoiding poll-taxes and other obstacles to unwelcome Chinese immigration. The next generation, setting out in about the second decade of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205298, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "the market, permitted themselves to claim excessive privileges and to harass marketers from other lineages. Tang control of the market was repeatedly challenged by the Man people of another village, and on suffering a decisive setback in their campaign to force a relaxation, the latter organized a league of already existing intervillage units in order jointly to establish, in 1893, a new market in the close vicinity of the old.10\n\n53\n\nAlso, Tai Po was relatively distant, and by rowing-boat the trip there would take a couple of hours in good weather. The conditions prevailing at the Tai Po Old Market will have created economic difficulties that did not exist in the Sai Kung Market, and which placed the Big Stream people in a relatively bad situation.\n\nThe Plum Grove villagers used the market at Sai Kung, and often do so still but its possibly declining importance may have been less decisive in determining the extent of their work outside the old-style village economy. The land under cultivation around this settlement is regarded as the best land in the valley, though a large proportion of the fields here is owned by people from Grass Field Village, and also by people from Yellow Bamboo Mountain Village in another valley. In a small village the agricultural output might still have been sufficient enough to make emigration less attractive. The Plum Grove people also had some bad experience as some 10 men left the village for Southeast Asia around 1910 and were never heard of since.\n\nIII\n\nI wish now to turn aside to provide a background for migration in the context of the social structure of these villages.\n\nThe youngest children in Grass Field Village are of the 25th generation of a patrilineal kin group, all members of which share a common surname, Lau. The early ancestors lived in Mui Yuen (Mei Hsien, M), a Hakka district in the north-eastern corner of Kwangtung Province. A branch of the Mui Yuen people migrated down to what is now the New Territories, where they first settled in the Sai Kung area. A group soon branched off, and left the immediate coastal area, supposedly because of the constant threat\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "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": 205316, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n71\n\ngeneral rule. Unlike the Punti population, among whom it was customarily expected that groom and bride were total strangers to each other,40 the Hakka go-between arranged a meeting on a selected day at a tea house in a market town. The boy and the girl each brought along their 'friends', which presumably meant mainly the age-mates of their respective major lineages. The parents were not present on this occasion. If the couple consented, the boy's parents selected an auspicious day and informed the girl's family at least a month in advance of the date of the wedding.\n\nThe bride's family now started to arrange the dowry, which mainly consisted of clothes, at an amount that was supposed to be sufficient for her entire lifetime, and which was maintained under her control after the marriage. If it could be afforded, the dowry also contained some jewellery.\n\nAt the wedding the bride was transferred from her native village to her future one by means of a sedan chair. This ceremony is supposed to have limited the area in which a marriageable girl was to be found, as in this mountain district it would be difficult for a bridal procession to move too long a distance. Most wives of the valley seem to have been recruited from the surrounding mountain villages and from the Three Fathoms Cove area. Big Stream Village also has had many wives coming from one particular village in the Lam Chuen Valley in the hinterland of the Tai Po Market. It was also pointed out that in 'old times' marriage connections stretched as far as the border town of Sha Tau Kok and Sham Chun Market in Chinese territory.4 Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village have frequently had marriage connections with the Sai Kung area. Some of the community members working overseas took secondary wives in the country they were working in.42\n\nAdoption of infant or child brides into the household was also very frequent, as this was a more economic solution for poor people who had not then to feed an extra mouth until the girl was of marriageable age and provide a dowry for her. In both cases the woman maintained the surname of the clan of which she was born a member.\n\nAt the present-day go-betweens are not used. The youths make their own contacts during work and recreation. Bonds of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205318, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n73\n\n2 There are indications that this mountain area at one time was inhabited by non-Chinese Yao people; Barnett 1957, p. 261. The present inhabitants, however, are all Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese, settled here for only about 300 years.\n\n3 The estimated average price for local unmilled rice is (1965) HK$28 per picul for first crop rice. The corresponding figure for second crop rice is HK$36 a picul.\n\n4 Chiu 1964, p. 77.\n\n5 Bot. Report 1906, p. 221.\n\nIt could be added that a fish hawker is touring the area daily. He is from Sai Kung and his route includes Grass Field Village and Plum Grove Village. There are also other occasional peddlers, trading in food and sweets. Some shops can be found at the mining workers' settlement at Ma On Shan. Fishermen call at the pier there every morning. People from Big Stream Village often take advantage of these facilities.\n\n7 S., D. W. 1900, p. 202f. See also Tregear & Berry 1959, p. 12ff, and Hayes 1966, p. 128f.\n\n8 In a village just outside Canton, \"almost all those who went to work on ships were Wongs. This was chiefly due to the functioning of kinship relations in economic life. One who knew of an opportunity in one's own occupation usually recommended it to a kinsman. A Lee already engaged in business in Hong Kong would hire his own relatives as help or recommend them to fellow businessmen who might need help. A Wong in the 'hard labour' business, an activity tightly controlled by secret societies, or in marine work, did the same for his own kinsmen.\" Yang 1959, p. 73.\n\n9 Lockhart Report, p. 557. Census 1911, p. 103.\n\n10 Skinner 1964/65, p. 202. For further details, see Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n11 The Ng people in Plum Grove Village have no connections with the former Grass Field people of the same surname.\n\n12 The coastal area of Kwangtung was the scene of a dramatic mass deportation, executed by the Ch'ing occupants as a counter-measure in the struggle against raiding Ming loyalists. This course of action was carried out from 1661. Eight years later the coastal strip was declared open for settlement and an active policy by the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, A Ke-min, lured immigrants to the waste lands. The main influx of Hakka to the New Territories was in the following decades. If this is correct it may be that the Lau people appeared in this area during the course of this re-occupation. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff.\n\nSee Hui 1963, p. 89ff. However, Professor Freedman (1967) has quite correctly pointed out that the data are by no means conclusive on the effective evacuation of the area.\n\n13 Skinner 1964/65, p. 37.\n\n14 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n15 In the Hakka village in the Tolo Harbour area, studied by Jean Pratt, at the Chinese New Year 'all the men go to the lineage hall in a village across the valley, where they claim their ancestors lived. Pratt 1960, p. 149. But note supplementary information in Freedman 1966, p. 41; this issue, however, has no bearing on my argument. Similar social ceremonialism seems to have occurred among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population. See Hayes 1962, p. 28.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205319, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "74\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\n16 The still wider surname groups, hsing (M), in Chinese society, based on entirely fictitious agnatic relationships, expressed in at least preferred exogamy, have often indiscriminately been designated 'clans'. See e.g. Lee 1960, p. 134f. and Willmott 1964, p. 33. This purely conventional consanguinal kin group comes close to the sociological concept of 'phratry', and kin group constellations of this kind may be described better as units of this higher order. The Hakka nomenclature may vary but the units discussed are always conceived of,\n\n17 Freedman 1958, pp. 47, 129.\n\n18 Census 1911, p. 103f.\n\n19 Nine villages with Cantonese-speaking Punti population in the same district at the same time display numbers ranging between 346 and 9, with an average of 108.\n\n20 However, Jean Pratt, in her account of a Hakka village to the north of Tolo Harbour in the New Territories, gives an example of a non-symmetrical segmentation, reflected in the establishment of a new ancestral hall; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n21 This also applies to the Hakka village studied by Miss Pratt: 'The three lineage halls are merely buildings in a row like an ordinary dwelling house'; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n22 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n23 Skinner, in discussing the importance of marketing communities, points out that in Szechuan there existed organizations of Hakka 'composite lineages', with headquarters in teahouses in the market towns (Skinner 1964/65, p. 37). I have no knowledge of similar organizations in the New Territories. One would have expected something of this kind in a portion of China where the Hakka groups suffered political strain from the Punti population. Local groupings on a non-kin basis may sometimes have fulfilled a protective function. Such local organizations, with headquarters in small temples, are for instance to be found in the Sha Tin Valley, and in the Three Fathom Cove area. All three villages studied belonged in pre-British times to an administrative organization called Luk Yeuk, focussed on the old government centre of Kowloon City. Freedman (1966, p. 86) sees yeuk organizations as means for weak communities to seek 'protection against being molested by local powers'. For a discussion of yeuk see op. cit., pp. 82-89 and for the Luk Yeuk especially pp. 85f.\n\n24 A map of Hakka migrations is, for instance, provided by Kuo 1964, facing p. 6. But there are also other views as to the origin of the Hakka, see e.g. Barnett 1958, p. 2.\n\n25 Izikowitz 1963, p. 171.\n\n26 One man from Grass Field Village has settled for good in Borneo. He has taken his wife and children there. This is the only instance of permanent overseas settlement I have come across.\n\n27 This particular migration is said to have been encouraged and even given financial assistance by the Chinese Government as an aftermath of the war mentioned below; Dyer Ball 1925, p. 282. Another author thinks less of the generosity of the government:\n\n'Comme ces tribus Hak-ka se montraient particulièrement turbulentes, les mandarins chinois ne pensaient qu'à les éloigner de leur territoire; c'est ainsi qu'en 1864 et 1866, à la suite de nombreuses revoltes, ils furent expulsés dans le sud du Kouang-Si, vers ces marches frontières qui, comme la province de Moncay, étaient peu habitées et dans un état habituel d'anarchie politique.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205538, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n75\n\nphenomena. Fêngshui is a ritual language: a set of symbols and ways of combining these symbols into ritual statements. The fêngshui language is largely shared and understood by all Chinese and it provides an important instrument in Chinese society for a diffusion of local ideas into the larger society. The system of symbols can also be manipulated; individuals in the process of maximizing their resources employ special techniques — ‘geomancy’ — to discover and map localized symbolic sub-systems. Natural surroundings are explored in terms of fêngshui. The natural influences the interaction between the symbols can be played upon to the benefit of the player. This facet of fêngshui has recently been discussed in anthropological literature. The argument of this paper is concerned with its communicative aspect.\n\nThe fêngshui influences of a given ecological setting are of extreme importance to the people who are dependent on this setting. They are not static, but are changing in 60-year cycles. The fêngshui has a bearing not only on the particular individuals, but is equally important for the whole localized group. The effect of the influences can be measured in terms of good or bad fortune; the latter experienced in few sons, bad crops, and so on. In the same way as individuals are maximizing their resources, a whole community may try to manipulate the fêngshui. An example of this was to be found in Grass Field Village, further up the valley mentioned above. A most striking feature in the scenery there is one of the two peaks of the imposing mountain Maanshan (Ma On Shan) peeping up from behind the lower mountain ridges surrounding the village. Villagers explained that they always have a feeling that this mountain top is watching them from above. Apparently this watching implied a negative influence; people tried to check it by planting trees on the ridge in order to screen off the sinister mountain top. However, during the Japanese Occupation these trees were cut down, fuel being reckoned then as more essential than negative influences.\n\nOn the other hand, one seldom finds a general agreement as to the positive or negative character of the fêngshui influences in a certain setting. Poor people tend to regard the fêngshui of their locality as a 'killing breath', while better-off persons in the same settlement may say that it is after all ‘not too bad'. Fêngshui language, then, is used to express social and economic differentiation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206403, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nVISIT TO THE TUNG LIN KOK YUEN, TAM KUNG TEMPLE, HAPPY VALLEY, AND TIN HAU TEMPLE, CAUSEWAY BAY, SATURDAY, 7TH NOVEMBER 1970\n\nTung Lin Kok Yuen\n\nThe Tung Lin Kok Yuen(t) is a Buddhist nunnery situated at Shan Kwong Road, Happy Valley, not far from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club stables. It was founded by the late Lady Hotung (1878-1938), wife of that well-known Hong Kong figure, Sir Robert Hotung. The Yuen comprises a Buddhist temple and the Po Kok Vocational Middle School. The main building was completed in mid-1935 when two other institutions founded by Lady Hotung, the Po Kok Free School in Percival Street and a Buddhist seminary in Castle Peak were moved to it. The Yuen is said to be the only place in the Colony which provides a seminary for Buddhist nuns, and the study of Buddhism forms a major part of the curriculum. A new school building was opened in November, 1951 and an extension for teachers' quarters in 1954.\n\nAlthough the Yuen is not very old, it is of special interest in that the religious images, furniture and other fittings survived the Japanese occupation when so much else in the Colony was dispersed or destroyed, so that we can see today, more or less, how the Yuen looked when it was completed in 1935. Readers of Mrs. Jean Gittins' recently published book Eastern Windows Western Skies (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., 1969) pp. 106-7, will recall how many of the internal fittings for the Yuen were carried out by Shanghainese craftsmen in Sir Robert Hotung's house on the Peak.\n\nOf particular interest are two halls devoted to the maintenance of memorial tablets for the dead. One of these, named after one of Sir Robert Hotung's sons who died early, there is a painting of him in the hall is part of the original building, whilst an extension was added about 10 years ago. The persons depositing memorial tablets in these halls are said to pay a once-for-all donation to the Yuen. Besides memorial tablets kept under glass-fronted altars, there are also lists of names written on pink paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207484, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "244\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nsive demonstration of American air power. I do not know if any Japanese planes took part in the defence. After the raid we picked up a great many jagged fragments of bombs and shells in our grounds though the hospital itself suffered no obvious damage. The history of the war shows that this raid came from Admiral Halsey's Sixth Fleet which had passed to the north of the Philippine Islands and approached the China coast searching for some remaining ships of the Japanese fleet. On this occasion the attackers failed to find the ships which at the time were lying up much further to the south but we got enormous encouragement from the successes we saw. The bombing was very accurate but during one raid on another occasion a fleet of large American bombers came in from the sea aiming from high altitude no doubt at dockyards and Japanese headquarters. Unfortunately their bombs fell short and damaged a large part of Wan Chai. As maybe imagined we had no newspapers for some days after these occasions.\n\nOn 21 January bombs from another raid fell very close to the hospital and we lost a good deal of glass and plaster and picked up many fragments of shells and bombs in the grounds. Our guards never overcame their excitement during air raids and added their own defence contribution by rapid fire from their rifles at the attacking aeroplanes. It would be interesting to learn how much ammunition the Japanese had left at the date of their surrender.\n\nFrom the end of January 140 men from Sham Shui Po camp were accommodated on the top floor of the hospital which was wired off from the rest of the building. They were marched off daily to prepare ground in Happy Valley to grow vegetables there and were accompanied each day by one of our nursing orderlies. The original orders to me were to house the working party in the now vacant barrack block from which the hospital was by now wired off, but when these orders were changed Seino quite courteously apologised for the alteration. We cooked for the newcomers and helped their own 10 maintenance men to draw and hoist water daily to their quarters. The work in Happy Valley was arduous at first and the weather was cold and wet. Later the conditions were easier and the hours of work were less. The ration scale allowed by the Japanese for the working party was on a substantially higher level than that in the hospital in rice, fish, vegetables, beans, oil and sugar. I pressed this precedent and I got our official rice ration raised by 30 grammes to 510 grammes; the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207910, "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-1976", "page_number": 298, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n283\n\nFrom Eastern No. 88, Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907), Enclosure D in No. 59, Governor Sir M. Nathan to Mr. Lyttelton, 11 January, 1905.\n\n\"Tsun Wan-Two passage boats ply daily between Hong Kong and Tsun Wan; the number of passengers carried each way averages about 60. The principal goods carried are rice, pineapples when in season, grass and wood in connection with the 24 sandal-wood mills, worked by water power, and situated in the various valleys of the Tsun Wan district.\"\n\nFrom G.S.P. Heywood, Rambles in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 2nd Edition 1951, p. 19.\n\n\"Tsun Wan has several local industries; silk-weaving is carried on in an up-to-date mill next door to the primitive and unhygienic sheds where noodles are made from powdered beans. In the valley running up into the hills to the south-west of Tai Mo Shan there is a village consisting entirely of watermills, where wood is ground up for the manufacture of joss sticks. This picturesque place is easily reached from the road; the path starts at the bridge about half a mile beyond Tsun Wan, near the 9th milestone, and follows the stream upwards, first on one bank and then on the other. The first watermill is reached in 5 minutes' walk from the road, and beyond are a dozen more little houses perched on the sides of the valley, each with its waterwheel busily turning. For a small tip the owner of one of these mills will show you inside; the atmosphere is thick with fragrant dust, and through it you can dimly see great stone-headed hammers pounding away at the aromatic wood.\"*\n\nHong Kong, 1974.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nCHINESE IN THE VOLUNTEER FORCES OF HONG KONG\n\nIn my article \"A Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong\" (Volume 11 of this Journal, 1971: 151-171) I mentioned the uncertainty which surrounded the membership of the successive volunteer units by local Chinese (pages 164-5 refer). I suggested that it was possible that the late Sir Man-kam Lo was the first or among the first to join, in the 1920s.\n\n* Plate 26 illustrates this Note.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208192, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE FUNG-SHUI OF KAM TIN\n\n215\n\n(A short explanatory introduction on the fung-shui of Kam Tin is here attached.\n\nThe ancestral hall of the Tang clan, Ching Lok Tso Tong (#), which is situated at Pak Wai Tsuen of Kam Tin, has its Fung-shui main branch near Tai Mo Shan (*). It curls its way through the valley of Kwun Yam Shan ( ). From Wang Toi Shan (#) rises the \"dragon\". Its uprising, so to speak, is very magnificent. The Dragon then starts to serpent up and down, passing through Chiu Keng (£) with more strength. Forging forward vigorously to the left, there comes the Kei Lun Shan (t) to protect it. On the right, a branch stretches out from Tai Mo Shan to Shek Wu Tong () and Ma On Kong (4), to pave its way forward. A short distance from Au Tau (1ƒƒ) see the circling round of all these ranges.\n\nIt is from this setting that the Dragon threads its way out, with various small and big ranges on all sides. Here, the Dragon once again finds its way via Kai Kung Shan (A) with Kwai Kok Shan (圭角山) on the right and Chat Sing Ngor (七星崗) on the left. The Dragon surges up and then down, turning left and right, like thousands of horses racing together, and when it comes to Tai Kong ( j ), the land slopes down gradually. Ngor Nar Lan (A) on the left leaves space for its soaring down and the Cheung Shan (✯ J.) on the right blocks any obstacles that would harm it. This range then dips into the water, passes through the grasslands and comes up to Gau Gan (i). Here it stretches out its wings to protect the Dragon to settle on the cave. The naturally formed reservoirs on both sides of Gau Gan (4) resemble the Food Store (4) and the Wealth Store (✯).\n\nThe place where the Dragon settles is the ancestral hall of Ching Lok Tso (##). The Dragon dives down into the water and the surface becomes peaceful. So now the Dragon is hiding here. With this setting, the place is bound to be very prosperous. To begin with, the green carpet of grass just in front of the hall means the outcome of a big \"esteemed clan\" (†) Furthermore, with all the water from nearby fields flowing towards the hall, and the streams from Tai Kong Po (which follow the Dragon and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208957, "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-1980", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n87\n\nvalley surrounded by hills in the east, north and south forming an armchair embracing it. It is located at the crosspoint where the breath of the azure dragon and the white tiger meet. The entire valley is fed by flowing streams like the sinews and veins within a body. It is also the confluence of meandering tributaries before the main river runs off to the sea. According to a geomancer who never saw Kam Tin, \"It is said [in the geomancy classics] that the Dragon [Water Dragon, not the same as the Azure Dragon] follows the watercourse, and the meeting-place of waters is the meeting-place of the dragons, where the virtues of hills and streams are united and the grass ever green.\" He continued, \"In the distance there should be groups of mountains with streams of water encircling them; in front a stretch of level plain, a pond, or lake. In the wider circuit, the space should be large enough for 10,000 horses, and the watercourse be sufficient to admit a dragon [large] boat... If the expanse be wide, children and grandchildren will multiply and be strong. From the top of the hill the view should extend for miles, with mountains and streams interspersed.\"16 Such vivid and precise description of the geographical features of Kam Tin by a fung-shui professor who never saw the place can only lead to the conclusion that the siting of Kam Tin was done piously in accordance with the geomancy canons. Moreover, \"the place where the flow out being low, with no hill or high embankment to obstruct the escape of good influences, a pagoda is erected to check these influences and throw them back over the land.”17 Indeed a fung-shui pagoda called Man Ch'eung Kok was erected near where I Tai College now stands in Shui-tau hamlet.* By the year 1850, \"the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them passed the highest government examination and a census taken that year showed that there were more than 1,800 males living...\"18 But the family experienced a decline in population and wealth after the pagoda was torn down and the course of the river was altered to accommodate three fish ponds and buildings of a school that blocked the view of the village.19 This mistake was remedied by repairing the banks of the river in 1930 and family membership was said to be on the increase again.\n\nFig. 2 in the original version of this article, published in Asian Architect and Builder, October 1979, which contains many other drawings and diagrams not reproduced here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "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": 209983, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "220 \n\nand loved the hills, a keen shot and a good one, above all a very good sport who took his failures with a grin and exposed all his mistakes with an engaging candour. There were little gems of descriptive story-telling that made you feel you were with him in all his adventures, and you got to know his favourite spots by his brief and vivid descriptions and little sketches.\n\nI came eventually to several stories about a mystery pig he called the Old Grey Boar, a hermit who was never seen in company with other pigs or who, as he explained it, had been thrown out by the other pigs because he was too bad-tempered. Now this pig could apparently carry without discomfort all the lead the hunters could pump into him, and he had given them the slip on several occasions when they felt sure they had bagged him. Currie always went out with three companions, but he alone wrote up the day. Finally he mentioned that the Chinese beaters firmly believed this was a Joss pig that could not be killed. They were also afraid of him, for after he had been wounded he terrorised the villagers, especially the grass-cutters, and had killed several of them. I did not pay much attention to the story at the time, but I was fascinated by Currie's general descriptions and sat up reading till after midnight, I think I got pig fever that night, a great urge to roam those hills with a few good companions like Currie and, like him, to find new strength up there. Finding good companions was the rub, and the only one I could think of was Hunter. The others had given up the struggle and would not move out of the Club; the hills were too far out and pig-shooting too much like hard work.\n\nThe next day I explored the country around and made myself familiar with the various ranges of hills. To the south was a long range called Chang Shan, on the top of which was a small temple. In between the two main mountains were rolling hills with the main road to Chinkiang twisting through the valley, past a solitary hill like a hog's back, sticking out of the flat country to eastward. This was called Tung Shan, and close to its northern base lay Chakamen, or the beaters' village, as we called it, for most of the beaters lived there.\"\n\nThose readers who wish to read more should turn to page 51 of Rasmussen's fascinating book. My own interest is in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210483, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "71\n\nusually ate in the after shelter or on the poop near the galley. Sleeping arrangements naturally varied a little from family to family according to numbers, ages and sexes. In general the most recently married couples slept in the after shelter. Hired men always slept in the forward shelter, or, in summer, on the open deck. It has to be remembered that purse-seiner fishing normally takes place at night. Young children and perhaps the very old may sleep right through, but the able-bodied sleep only in snatches and have to make up for it during the day. Junk owners and women normally do this on board, but numbers of young men, including most of the hired hands, can be seen any day stretched out on the floor of the temple or in one of the shops or other houses for several hours. The provision of day-time sleeping places for the night-time fishermen is thought of as one of the major advantages of building a house ashore. Shortage of sleep is endemic among purse-seiners in the main season; it is compensated somewhat by an ability to fall asleep anywhere, any time and in any position.\n\nSmall Long-Liners\n\nRather less beamy than the purse-seiners and lacking the wooden cabin amidships, the small long-liners can also easily be distinguished by the different gear they carry. Instead of kerosene lamps with dark blue or blue-green cylinders and huge glass globes like goldfish bowls, there are small rectangular flags on short bamboo sticks fluttering in the wind at the prow or in the shrouds. They are usually black, occasionally red or white, and act as markers when the lines are put down.\n\nKau Sai's small liners were of two types, known locally as sharp-nosed boats (tsim tau teng) and blunt-nosed boats (tai t’au t’eng) respectively. The former, with an average length of about 21' to 31' overall and a breadth of, say, 8' or 9', is normally the larger of the two, Kau Sai's handliners were essentially similar in hold and deck layout to the blunt nosed boats.\n\nTwo major differences between the use of the holds on the larger of the two types of small long-liner and the purse-seiners illustrate their different kinds of catch and ways of living. Purse-\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211421, "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-1988", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "113\n\nat MIT, he travelled around the country to observe and learn more before returning to the University of Washington, where, after another year of study, he received a M.S. degree in 1925, specializing in Aquaculture. He returned to China, becoming Director of the Kwangtung Fisheries Experiment Station in 1929, and later Director of the Chekiang Fisheries Experiment Station. In 1946, he became President of the Taiwan Fisheries Corporation. His comprehensive knowledge and experience in the field of aquaculture made him a leading and respected authority of national and international renown,\n\nIn Canton on March 1928, Toby married Louise Dung Yuk Bow, a vivacious beauty from Grass Valley, California. Stricken with Parkinson's Disease and gradually weakened by it, she died on 27 January 1971. While I was teaching in Canton, Toby and Louise welcomed me as an immediate member of their family and I spent many weekends in their home - I am grateful for this hospitality to this day. They had six children, five daughters and one son:\n\nMelody Wil married Johnson C. J. Chen\n\nCarol Kit married John Lee\n\nSonia Cíl married Tai Min Wan\n\nJade Ef married Eddy Lin\n\nLloyd married Deborah\n\nLena ft married Jeffrey Lo\n\nThe girls leaned towards the arts like their mother, and Lloyd, an ichthyologist, towards science like his father.\n\nCousin Helen Moo Ching married a nephew of Tong Siu Yee (T'ang Shao-i) Hill, a Chinese diplomat during the late Ch'ing and one time Prime Minister of the Republic of China. Her married life was spent in Peking where her husband was head of the Postal Savings Bureau. After his death she moved south and finally retreated to Taiwan where she died in 1974 of cancer.\n\nCharles Ting Hing began his career in banking but switched to dentistry. He was married twice, both times to non-Chinese girls, and had children by both of them. He died in Shanghai in 1978.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211682, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "72\n\n―\n\nthe companion-way you entered the sleeping cabin; it had a bunk on either side above three rows of drawers, where the traveller could stow all his gear. Small electric lights were fixed in the ceiling, and at the head of each bunk, to facilitate reading in bed. A wardrobe and gun-racks completed the furniture, but the wardrobe was generally full of deck-chairs, spare bedding, and the laodah's brass cleaning materials. Down either side throughout the length of the craft sliding windows one could not really call them ports gave ample light. The saloon came next with sofas that could also be used as bunks: in the centre stood the dining table, with flaps which folded to give more room; at the far end on the side stood a sideboard balanced on the other side by a built-in ice-box; fixed above were rows of shelves with circular holes into which the crockery and glass-ware would fit. There was also an arm-chair and a desk at which reports could conveniently be written.\n\n-\n\nThe two doors at the far end led, the one to a small galley fitted with a tiny coal cooking stove and an assortment of cooking utensils, where the cook-boy would turn out a succession of appetising dishes; the other door led to the bathroom.\n\nTo raise the waste-pipe above the level of the river water outside, the diminutive bath was mounted on a platform, which brought it nearer to the low ceiling. A tap let water in from a tank installed on the deck above. By a combination of levitation and contortion it was possible to introduce the body, in a folded condition, into the bath without contusing the head or committing hara-kiri on the bath-tap; but most, after one or two attempts, would give the effort up. In my time the bath was usually filled with eggs, and cabbages, or potatoes or fish.\n\nThe other contraption of the bathroom was one of those anomalies, which throw doubt on the sanity of ship-builders. It gleamed with brass, and glass, and knobs that you had to turn in the right order. At one side was a pump handle, which you worked vigorously up and down with a noise audible above the purr of the motors, and if you had manipulated the knobs properly guggling sounds indicated that the mechanism was functioning correctly. If you turned the knobs in the wrong order, the consequences were disastrous to you. It only remains to add that the seat provided for this curiosity of the ship-builder's art was so very small as to preclude any thought of comfort in its use.\n\nA bulkhead separated these fancy fixtures from the engine room. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212837, "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-1992", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "131\n\nwith him.\n\nThe marriage customs are many and curious. We happened to be passing a village on the day of a wedding and were invited to see the communal dancing; the ceremony included inspecting the bride and groom in bed by the fitful light of torches. It seems that immediately after the feast the lucky couple retire to bed and are there visited by all and sundry to an accompaniment of the sort of joking which does not appear in print. The custom of men seizing their brides in mock raiding attacks, staged for the purpose, is also common. During one such attack, until we discovered what it was about, we thought that we were being sniped at by the Japanese.\n\nNancha is high up the mountain, some 6,000 feet, overlooking the Salween, which here flows at 1,000 feet above sea level. The river itself was out of sight in the bottom of the valley where it ran between steeply-sloping banks. Across the valley on the mountain on the far side a mile away we could see in the bright sunlight the villages occupied by the Japanese. Their system of garrisoning was not continuous; they had one or two central posts, and from these they would man one or other of the lesser posts. Through my glasses I could see the posts; trenches with grass huts screened in the jungle nearby, and the ubiquitous Japanese flag. They were sited where the path entered the village high above the river: a mile away as the crow flies, to reach Nancha from one of those villages would take the best part of a day.\n\nFrom Nancha, Jack left to reconnoitre the Salween ferries, while I moved on more slowly as I wished to study the country and make friends with the people; we took three days to reach the Lihsaw village of Hsintang. Despite the small size of our party our progress was triumphal: the young women were shy and kept out of the way; the men were still cowed and not sure of their position; but the old women everywhere came out to greet us. They met us with gifts of bananas, brought up from the hot valleys below, chickens and eggs, neatly done up in long tubes of plaited rice-straw; and being of Chinese blood they prepared tea for our refreshment and invited us indoors to drink it. They said, \"We have not seen you Englishmen for a long time. Where have you been for the last two years? We have waited for you a long time, and now conditions are so bad that they are no longer to be borne. But you have at last returned and set our minds at ease.\" This blind confidence was very touching: may Britain long prove worthy of it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212844, "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-1992", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "138\n\nconcerted a system of secret signs by which the Chinese troops watching the ferry could recognise our men; it was all unnecessarily complicated because with Jack there the Chinese, when in doubt, could quickly inform themselves; it was in fact part of their policy of making things as complicated as possible, the policy of obstruction.\n\nMeanwhile Stan was supervising the clearing of the d.z.; we hired men from the village to cut down trees and to burn off the long grass. At Lunghtang the mountain slope was less steep; we looked down into the small valley of a stream, which ran into one of the larger tributaries of the Salween at an angle, so that the far ridge interposed between us and the main river. Thus the fires which we would light at night on our d.z., to guide the aircraft, would be screened from the view of the Japanese posts on the far side.\n\nLunghtang was a large village off the beaten track, and because of that it had grown larger; people had migrated from the troop nuisance on the more popular tracks. There were really three separate villages, grouped near each other; rice terraces had been cut out of the slopes below, and in other less level fields maize and the opium poppy were planted. The water supply was not good; it was led in by a ditch which had been dug a long way, following the contour of the mountain. The water also drove a series of wooden hammers for polishing rice. The method was ingenious; a log, scooped hollow at one end, was balanced so that when water poured in from a bamboo spout and filled the hollow, that end became too heavy and dropped. The drop would tip out the water, whereupon the other end, to which the hammer was attached, dropped down with a thump and the hammer fell into the small hole, scooped out of stone in which the rice was held. The movement repeated itself without end. The circle headman was a close relative of the Myosa; he was a heavy opium smoker and at first was cautious in his attitude towards us, but later gave us much help, information about local politics, and good advice.\n\nI decided to establish our headquarters at Lunghtang. The headman selected a site, to one side and above the villages, to which we could lead clear water from the mountain through split bamboo channels. The water was first to serve the kitchens, then the wash-houses, and finally it would flow through and flush out the latrines. We were very pleased with our water-works. The walls of the buildings were made of bamboo lath and mud plaster; the roofs were thatched. There were quarters and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215469, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "in Paro. This is housed in the circular Ta Dzong, a former watchtower built in 1649 by the first governor of the Paro valley to safeguard the main dzong from inroads by Tibetans. The museum is well stocked with a great deal of Buddhist artefacts, including a number of *miraculous footprints*; a whole floor dedicated to postage stamps, for which Bhutan is famous in the world of philately; copper teapots and spittoons, the latter being for the use of betel-chewing monks during religious ceremonies; and costumes and coins. Having been frustrated at the hotel, I still wanted to buy some post cards. I saw some, together with other articles for sale, in a glass cabinet that was being guarded by three members of the museum staff. However, I was told that I could not buy any as nobody had the key to the cabinet. It transpired that this was only to be used by the official responsible for collecting the cash, and she had been taken ill and gone to distant Thimpu for treatment. The poor thing could have derived some comfort from the knowledge that her three minions were guarding her stock-in-trade against all comers - especially those that wanted to buy things.\n\nPerfect posers\n\nFrom the museum there were spectacular views up and down the Paro valley from its floor at 7,000 feet to the surrounding mountains, some of which, snow-capped, reached 17,000 feet. And it was up the valley we went to look at the ruined Drukgyel Dzong. Originally built in 1647 but destroyed by fire in 1951, this was one of the many fortresses designed to counter the frequent Tibetan invasions. Our visit included a wander round the village, where we found for the first of countless times to come how willing the people are to be photographed. It almost seemed as though they automatically adopted perfect poses and groupings, even very small children, because they knew that better photographs would be the result. I regretted later, when my films were developed in Hong Kong, that they could not also advise on apertures and exposures. Maybe this will come.\n\nWith a glance up to the sharp and snowy peak of Jhomolhari, Bhutan's second-highest peak at over 24,000 feet, we set off again down the valley for afternoon tea and bickies at the Eye of the Tiger Lodge. Sipping our refreshments we could gaze over the valley at the famous Taktsang Monastery (the Tiger's Nest), perched 3,000 feet above the road up a cliff face, and be thankful that we did not quite have the time", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215475, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "201\n\nus and welcomed us, at the same time giving a brief background history of his library. With very limited resources, he has made good use of his previous 20 years experience with the National Museum to bring order and inspiration to his new project. There are a great many books in the Bhutanese language, mainly on Buddhist issues, and an increasing number of books in English and other foreign languages. We increased this number further by presenting the library with a full set of HKBRAS Journals.\n\nLunch was in the delightfully named Plum's Café, including a slice of their famous apple pie. As shopping never seemed to be far from the thoughts of us Honkies, a visit to Choki Handicrafts and then the National Handicrafts Emporium sated the appetite sufficiently to face the next leg of the journey.\n\nThis was to be an enormous climb up to the Dochu-la pass (10,140 feet), being the gateway to the Wangdiphodrang Valley. The weather had been fine on the trip so far, but coming to the top of the pass the clouds descended, and with them came snow. However, as luck would have it, just as the army of RAS photographers took up their positions the clouds lifted, a rainbow appeared and we were offered enormous vistas of Himalayan peaks stretching off to the west. Thereafter the weather became (and stayed) clear as a bell.\n\nThat bell rings a name\n\nDid I say bell? Was that a yak approaching? No. In one of the handicraft shops in Thimpu, Brian had bought himself a brass bell. We were to hear that bell a lot in the coming days. It was to become his method of signalling to his unruly brood that it was time to board the buses and move on. So effective was it that when a “real” bell sounded in one of the temples, it had the effect of causing a stampede to the transport by all of us - except, of course, Brian.\n\nFrom the heights of the pass it was a very long and bouncy ride down to the hotel in Punakha at 4,300 feet. Thankfully, it was an early dinner and early to bed. Orders had already been issued for a 6:15 a.m. wake-up the following day. Even though the guide told us that we were in a sub-tropical climate zone, I had to break open my Chinese Emporium silk long johns before climbing in to bed. (Any man thinking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216103, "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": 402, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "336\n\nGovernment servants completed four-year tours up until the early 1960s. When we went on leave, being seen off was a grand occasion. One would normally organise a reception for a number of friends. They boarded the ship. Occasionally, there was a bit of gate crashing by people known as \"professional see'ers off\" who enjoyed the company and a few free drinks.\n\nBrass bands would play Auld Lang Syne on the quay and paper streamers would be thrown to friends on shore. As the ship pulled away the streamers would break and the \"umbilical cord\" would be severed, as it were. After a four-year tour a government servant would earn something like seven months leave plus 30 days travelling each way. That meant you were away from the colony for about nine months. Being seen off was an important affair for Chinese too and, in the 1950s when the growing of rice was not profitable any more and the \"vegetable revolution\" was underway, many New Territories' Chinese made their way to England to work in restaurants. On being seen off just about the entire village would sometimes turn out!\n\nOn one occasion I was on leave in England and a fellow passenger on a train spotted my suitcase. 'Ah,' he said, 'you're from Hong Kong. Tell me. Do they still put paint on with their hands?' I had to admit that painters stick their woollen-gloved hand into a pot of paint when they paint metal railings and the like. They still do. It's labour saving. It's surprising what people remember about Hong Kong after they have left.\n\nPestilence\n\nThe colony was not a healthy place in its young days and many expatriates died young, as a wander through what we used to call the Colonial Cemetery (now the Hong Kong Cemetery) in Happy Valley reveals. There were cases of bubonic plague up until the 1920s with an especially bad epidemic in 1894. There was a worrying outbreak of cholera in the early summer of 1961. Stalls were manned by nurses in the street, for example by the Star Ferry. There was no wasting of time and no paperwork. All you did was roll up your sleeve. Now, from the days of pestilence and being an unhealthy place, Hong Kong has a life expectancy greater than most western countries, including Britain and the USA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216497, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 256, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "207\n\nTHE MIDDLESEX (“TYNDAREUS”) STONE\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nFor those of you who can picture Hong Kong's Victoria Peak, on the small, flat, grassy, sitting-out area in the saddle between High West and Victoria Peak, there used to lie a Boulder. This sitting out area complete with pavilion is close to where Lugard Road joins Harlech Road. The Boulder used to lie just above where Hatton Road joins Harlech Road. A ring of small stones roughly three metres in diameter, partially overgrown with grass, still marks the position. The Boulder is in its natural state except for one side which was flattened to take the original plaque. As far as can be measured the Stone is 110cms x 130cms x 71cms and it is estimated to weigh a little less than one tonne.\n\nThen suddenly one afternoon I spotted it was missing. While trying to find out what had happened to it, over the next week or so two letters appeared in the South China Morning Post. Both writers expressed concern. One letter, dated 8 April 1994, from the late Martin Booth the well-known author who spent time in Hong Kong as a child - but in later years lived in England - was headed, 'An outrage.' He said the Stone also celebrated, by association, those men of the Middlesex Regiment who so valiantly defended Hong Kong in 1941 against the Japanese. Booth went on to say that the monument was also of interest because it was erected by Lieutenant Colonel John Ward \"whose prompt action, military efficiency and strong sense of humanity saved many during the disastrous Happy Valley Race Course fire. This took place in February 1918 and has been well documented. Booth states the death toll in the fire was 570. 'That [the \"Middlesex Boulder\"] has disappeared is an outrage to local history and an insult to those it commemorates. A patch of newly seeded grass is all that remains.'\n\nThe two letters were followed by another from R I Goodwin, Director of Public Relations HQ British Forces Hong Kong, dated 18 April 1994. He stated he wished to reassure Mr Booth that the Middlesex Stone was in good hands and that it was en route back to the Regiment's safe keeping in the United Kingdom. Goodwin then went on to mix up the whole issue. He took the figure of 570 lives lost in the Hong Kong Racecourse Fire in 1918 (as quoted by Booth) and quotes this as the number of lives lost when the troopship Tyndareus was mined off South", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]