[ { "id": 204474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n95\n\n2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British\", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin.\n\nIt is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory.\n\nThe market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had \"seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc.\" Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs\". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there \"used to be over two hundred shops trading here\". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205086, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "THE FIVE GREAT CLANS\n\n37\n\nMainland livestock. Rice cannot be grown to compete with the Mainland and Thailand. The vegetable revolution did not come early enough to alleviate the situation, and still has not spread wide enough to provide an answer. The clans one by one were forced to look elsewhere for income, and one after another began to send men overseas. While I have no figures to prove my point, it is clear that the order in which they succumbed to this process is in inverse order of wealth. In other words, the first to start sending people overseas were the Mans of San Tin, while the last were the Tangs of Kam Tin. The process of modernisation and rebuilding of villages throughout the New Territories shows the pattern in pictorial form. Some of what were previously poor, small villages are almost completely rebuilt now with a more modern style of house and many modern amenities. Then come the Mans of San Tin, whose large village is perhaps approaching one-quarter rebuilt with money earned overseas; and lastly comes Kam Tin, where the rebuilding has only recently started,\n\n97\n\nV\n\nMany writers on and observers of Southeastern Chinese society have drawn attention to the constant rivalry and feuding between clans in the area, and the New Territories have been no exception to this. In the past, and to a lesser extent now, the five clans have been rivals for power and influence in the area, the animosity between them at times breaking out into open warfare; but while rivalry and bad blood was the norm between the clans, they did draw together and cooperate when faced with danger from outside or with some other form of external stimulus. Two major historical examples of cooperation between the clans can be cited.\n\nIn 1662, the first year of the K'ang Hsi reign,99 all inhabitants of a wide strip of land on the Southeastern seaboard of China were ordered to move inland as part of a scorched earth policy formulated to help control pirate forces. All the five clans were involved in this evacuation, and it was not until seven years later in 1669—that they were allowed to return, and then only through the intercession and memorialisation of the throne of two high officials of the Kwangtung provincial administration, Chau Yau-tak and Wong Loi-yam.100 As thanks offerings to these two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205829, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "NOTES ON ETHNO-BOTANY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n129\n\nGlochidion eriocarpum (tsat tai koo ✯✯★★) is a hillside plant. The leaves are first boiled and then applied to sores to relieve irritation.\n\nHydrocotyle asiatica (pang tai woon). A tonic drink is made from this plant as a yuet hei reliever. It is considered especially good for nursing mothers. The leaves and stalks may be eaten as a vegetable with rice, and an excellent soup can be made from it.\n\nHedyotis uncinella (po chau tsai). The plants are dried in the sun and used in making a tonic drink to relieve yuet hei and to offset general debility.\n\nThese are only ten of many economic simples with reputed curative or medicinal qualities. As already suggested, some of them may have been emergency famine food at one time or another, particularly those that also serve as vegetables or as soup stock.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 In 1962-63, most of the nets in small sampans appeared to have been made from commercial natural fibres (abaca, ramie or coconut coir fibers). However, Agave fiber was still used for making twine. Fishermen then were readily accepting synthetic nets. Some fishermen I talked to believed that synthetic nets were too expensive for small craft as snagged nets meant costly losses because it is harder to salvage nets of synthetic fiber than those of natural fiber, so I was told.\n\n2 I haven't seen cochineal insects used for dye myself and the information given me was essentially \"before the use of chemical dyes, in olden days, this kind of cactus (Opuntia) harboured yin chi insects that were used for a red dye.\" Whether the cochineal insect was used or not in the lifetime of the older villagers I talked with, I do not know. Personally I suspect it was used extensively in the past and the dyeing technique diffused through the Philippines to the China coast from Acapulco, Mexico in the days of the Manila Galleon (i.e., Acapulco to Manila to Macau and thence along the South Chinese coast).\n\n3 Kong Nim and Pei Kwan Kong terms for Rhodomyrtus tomentosa berry, are used interchangeably at Fan Lau. Fan Lau as well as most of the other Lantau villages were, I suspect, pirate hideouts and it may well be that Pei Kwan Kong may have been a term derived from the time of the Great Evacuation, 1662-1669. For details of the latter see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its Communications before 1842. (Hong Kong 1963, Chinese version 1960) chapter VI,\n\n4 Tuk yuc tung (\"fish poison vine\"). Many cultivators buy an insecticide powder called tuk yue fun (fish poison powder). This powder is usually first mixed with sawdust before application. It is the same powder used by gardeners to rid the lawn of white grubs! This powder too is dusted on the heads of children suspected of having lice in their hair.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207054, "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-1974", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n119\n\nwho had gone over to the Manchus.1 Its adoption was due to a conviction that Cheng's campaigning against the new dynasty could not be continued if aid and supplies were denied him in this way. As the plan has it, \"the end of the enemy comes without war\".2\n\nEnforcement of this drastic measure was extended to the Hsin-an and adjacent districts of Kwangtung in 1661. Two inspections determined the areas to be cleared. At the time of the first inspection up to a distance of 50 li from the coast, it was calculated that two-thirds of the territory of the hsien would be affected. A year later the boundary was extended further inland, and what remained of the district was to be absorbed into the adjoining Tung-kuan county. By the 5th year of K'ang Hsi, Hsin-an had ceased to be a separate administrative district.\n\nWhen the new boundaries were fixed, the inhabitants living outside them were given notice to move inland. These orders were enforced by troops. The result was that whole communities were uprooted from their native place, deprived of their means of livelihood and compelled to settle where they could. The rural people risked their lives if they ignored the government edict to move, or ventured back into the prohibited area. It is recorded that about 16,000 persons from Hsin-an were driven inland. Only 1,648 of those who left are said to have returned when the evacuation was rescinded in 1669.4 The survivors' hardships did not end when they returned to take up their interrupted lives in their old homes, for it is recorded that destructive typhoons in 1669 and 1671 destroyed the new houses in many places.5\n\nThis chapter of unprecedented hardship and suffering has had a great impact on the minds of local people and their descendants. It is recalled in the genealogies and traditions of some of the long-settled clans of the district: it is commemorated in the construction and continued repair of temples to the two officials, a Governor of Kwangtung and a Viceroy of the Liang-kuang, who strove to have\n\n1 Hsieh, pp. 565-566.\n\n2 Hsieh, pp. 566 and 580-581.\n\n3 For the local areas to be cleared see Lo, 1963, pp. 94-95. See also Sung 1939, which details some local events on land and sea.\n\n4 Barnett, 1957, p. 262. A supplementary check in 1667 gave 3,667 persons still living within the district; ibid, p. 263. We cannot be sure whether the figures relate to persons or only to males over 16; or whether they are accurate.\n\n5 HNHC 13/3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208037, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "60\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nexercise of ownership, and are contented to do nothing further than to receive a yearly rent. They can sell this right of receiving rent, but the land is otherwise under the absolute control of the cultivators, who often sell their perpetual leases.\n\nThe landlord is called the owner of the \"T'i Kwat\" (note: Cantonese equivalent for t’i k’u), which may be termed the right of receiving rent. The tenant is said to possess the T'i P'i, or right of cultivation. Constant lawsuits result from this double ownership and the contending interests which it necessarily involves16\n\nTo summarize, perpetual lease in Hsin-An was characterized by the division of land into two values, surface-value, which corresponded to cultivation-value, and subsurface-value, which corresponded to rent-value. Landlords held rights over the rent-value, conceptualized locally as t'ien-ku-chuan (†), while tenants held title to the cultivation-value, or t'ien-p’i-ch’üan (✯✯). The process by which rent-value became separated from cultivation-value, i.e. the process of its primary accumulation, becomes manifest in an examination of the social and economic evolution of the county following the resettlement during the early 18th-century.\n\nOf the several kin groups displaced by the Kang-Hsi evacuation, the Tangs were among the least adversely affected. This was so for two reasons: 1) the proximity of the Hsin-An Tangs to several Tang settlements in Tung-Kuan,17 and 2) close relationships between Tang gentry and local officialdom.18 Not only were the Tangs able to keep abreast of developments while residing in a secure base not far from the evacuated county, moreover, the evacuation had the unintended result of increasing clan solidarity. In this regard, the establishment of the Tu-Ch'ing Tang (**)- the largest order ancestral trust uniting the clan, was most significant:\n\nTang Pao-sheng (£), a chin-shih of the Ch'ing Dynasty, had the intention of constructing an ancestral temple, but his plans were not realized. An official, Tang Hsu-chou (✯✯✯), seeing that the five branches of his clan resided in different places far from one another, decided to fulfill Pao-sheng's wishes. After choosing a beautiful site at Chiu-Ch'iao (**), Tung-Kuan, the clan gathered together to construct a great temple. At each winter sacrifice (), the male descendents of the various branches would assemble and encourage each other to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208159, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "182\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTANG Fu-hip must have lived to a venerable old age because during his lifetime he established a famous school not far from present-day Kam Tin and had close contacts with the officials and gentry of his day.\n\nAfter the death of TANG Fu-hip, the Sung dynasty was much in decline. Plagued by official corruption from within, the dynasty was also hard-pressed by the Mongols without. When the pressure became too great, the emperors would buy temporary relief by giving up more territory to the enemy.\n\nIn one of the customary evacuations before the advancing Mongols, 160 persons of the royal court, mostly women and children, were either drowned or scattered with fate unknown.\n\nTANG Yuen-leung (††), the great-grandson of TANG Fu-hip, was garrison commander of the northern Kiangsi town of Kim Chau (M). The situation was very tense: the imperial army fell back constantly and refugees were streaming south. He did his utmost to alleviate the suffering of the refugees and spared no efforts to repatriate those who wanted to go back to their homes in the north. In one of the flood tides of refugees, he came across a teenage girl on whom he took pity. He adopted her, and the girl did much to hide her true identity.\n\nAfterward, he retired from the army and returned to his native Kam Tin, bringing the refugee girl with him. Only at that time was he told the refugee girl was one of the princesses of the royal family of Sung.\n\nHe married her to his son TANG Wai-kap (x). By this marriage, four sons were born, whose descendants founded most of the Tang clan's branch settlements in Ha Tsuen, Yuen Long, Tai Po Tau, and Lung Yeuk Tau, all in the N.T.\n\nWhen TANG Wai-kap died, he was buried on a small knoll just to the left of the present Au Tau crossroads leading from Yuen Long to Fanling. The site of the grave is named Wu Lei Kuo Shui (£), “the fox is swimming the river”, because there is indeed a small creek in front of the knoll to the present day.\n\nThe princess was not buried in the same grave as her husband. She was buried in a grave on Lion's Hill near Shek Tseng (G&#) in Tung Kwun County (✯) to the north of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209694, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 351, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n329\n\nAugustus K. K. Siu and Anthony K. K. Siu, Studies on Chinese Genealogies and the History of the Hong Kong Region, Fung Chin Institute, Hong Kong, 1982.\n\nThis book consists of eleven essays on the Hong Kong region (Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories, and neighbouring areas). Four of them deal with genealogies, six principally with the history of the New Territories, and the last with boat people's songs. The central theme is that genealogies are valuable source materials for writing the history of this area, and this theme is illustrated with numerous examples.\n\nThere should be no dispute on the central theme: the question is how to put it into practice. The essay on migration into the Hong Kong region (chapter 5), despite the misleading reference in the title to all immigrant lineages as \"guest lineages\", is a useful example. In this essay, the authors list the time periods during which fifty-three surname groups first settled here from evidence recorded in their genealogies. The Tangs of Kam Tin, Lung Yeuk Tau, etc., and the P'aangs of Fan Ling came at the end of the Sung dynasty, the Lams of Shek Po Tsuen, and the Lius of Wu Kai Sha came in the Ming, and so on. The list is a useful first approximation, but obviously much more needs to be done.\n\nAnother interesting essay (chapter 4) describes ten historical “events” recorded in the genealogies. They include the marriage of the Sung princess to the ancestor of the Tangs, several famines and piratical attacks, the coastal evacuation from 1662 to 1668, the establishment of Tai Po New Market, the burial of a Chinese Christian at a Protestant cemetery on Hong Kong Island in 1854, the establishment of charity schools by philanthropist Fung Ping Shan, and flooding in Tsuen Wan in 1954. Similar \"events\" are discussed in greater detail in four other chapters (6, 8, 9 and 10), i.e., the establishment of the \"five great clans\" of the New Territories, the legend often referred to as \"letting go of the wooden goose\", the experience of the Southern Sung court in Kowloon, and the Tsuen Wan village feud of 1862 to 1864. Quite a few of these events have been discussed by other authors, notably Lo Hsiang-lin and James Hayes.\n\nThese later chapters make use of stone tablets and oral", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210177, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "127\n\npractices dating back to the complainants childhood and before suggests that the Tanka were using the Tai Tam Tuk anchorage from at least the very beginning of the nineteenth century.\n\nI turn now to the important question of how far back was Hong Kong occupied? This is practically an impossible question to answer for lack of sufficient information. As in many other places, like Tsuen Wan and north-west Kowloon, the present old, local, formerly tenant families appear mainly to have come into the area after the Great Evacuation of the Coast ordered by the Kanghsi emperor, 1662-69, and many of them not until the eighteenth century or even after. Yet it is an interesting fact that the maps in a later 16th century geographical work on Kwangtung, the Yueh ta-chi(A) contain names that are familiar to us today, on Hong Kong island as well as on the other islands and mainland of the Hong Kong region. Thus we find Chek Chu (Stanley), Tai Tam, Wong Nei Chung, Tit Hang, Chun Hoi and Shau Kei Wan, as well as Hong Kong itself, implying surely, that these places were settled at that time or were at least resorted to periodically. Also, the Tang correspondence from the 1840s quoted above specifically refers to recultivation of their land in various places in the late seventeenth century — though not necessarily by the former tenant farmers after revocation of the edict of 1662 referred to above. We also learn that the Tang land on Hong Kong island was entered in the Tung Kwun district land registry, suggesting that the registration might well be earlier than 1573, at which date the San On district was carved out of Tung Kwun and established as a separate county.\n\n71\n\nThe island was certainly well-established in settled communities long before 1841. The temples alone give proof of that. To this day, two existing temples at Stanley, and two at Aberdeen (one at the former village and one on an islet now joined by reclamation to Ap Lei Chau) and the Tin Hau Temple at Tin Hau Temple Road, Causeway Bay (formerly called Hung Heung Lo or \"Crimson Incense Burner\") contain items that go back to the eighteenth or very early nineteenth century. There were others now demolished or resited that probably predated 1841. Details are given in the Table below.\n\n72", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212003, "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": 418, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "393\n\nforces were defeated. In 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. According to the Census taken on 15th May, 1841, there were sixteen villages, with 7,450 people, on the island,\n\nAt that time, pirates still caused great disturbance along the coast. Those of outstanding importance were Shap Ngai Tsai+ and Tsui Ah-po. In the 30th year of Tao Kuang (1850), piracy along the coast was suppressed by the combined force of the British and the Ch'ing navies.7 With this, the island gained its name 'Tai Ping Shan'\n\nwhich means 'the Mountain of Peace'.\n\nDuring the early years of British rule on the island, Chek Chu was considered as a suitable place for the capital city of the Colony.5 However, because it was subject to severe tropical disease, the British built the capital city between the Central and Upper Bays (Chung Wan and Sheung Wan :). It was named Victoria after the name of the British Queen at the time of the early colonization.\n\nFrom then on, development on the island continued. With political changes in mainland China,8 more people flocked to Hong Kong, and they helped to make the city famous in the world.\n\nConclusion\n\nHong Kong, an isolated island at the mouth of the Pearl River, was only sparsely populated with fishermen. During the Ming Dynasty, because of the cultivation of incense trees, which gave great profit, population increased rapidly. However, the Coastal Evacuation at the 1st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign obliged the people to retreat to the mainland. Fields were left barren, and houses were pulled down.\n\nWhen the Edict of the Coastal Evacuation was abandoned, people were encouraged to return to their old dwellings. Villages were rebuilt, people from the neighbouring counties came and settled in the Hong Kong region, too.\n\nWith political changes in mainland China, more people came to Hong Kong. They helped to develop Hong Kong into a densely populated commercial city.\n\nANTHONY SIU Kwok-Kin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "covered over 300 years, and must have required at least 10 generations, even counting at a 30-year generation gap. Reading back from the end of the Ming, and assuming that the recorded ancestors are those living at the end of the Ming, the first recorded Ming ancestor cannot have been born earlier than about 1430-1450. Three or four generations have been omitted, it is clear, from the Tsuk Po, from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. This is not unusual. Usually the Tsuk Po was only brought up to date at long intervals, and, when it was, the oldest unrecorded ancestors were liable to have been forgotten, the oldest remembered ancestor being entered as the son of the last recorded in the old Tsuk Po. It is, therefore, likely that the Tsuk Po was brought up to date very early in the Ming, and then again very late in that dynasty.\n\nOf the ancestors recorded from the Ming, the third is Chan Chiu-yin (UK). His date of birth is likely to have been about 1510-1530. The Tsuk Po claims that he was the first ancestor to settle in Nga Tsin Wai: the date must be somewhat close to, or shortly after, the middle of the sixteenth century.\n\nThe Chan clan Tsuk Po records four ancestors who died after 1644 before an ancestor whose dates are given as 1828-1891. Again, at least one or two generations have been dropped out of the record. Errors in Tsuk Po from the New Territories from the early years of the Ching are very common. The years 1662-1668 were the years when the residents along the coast were driven inland by Imperial troops, to deny support to Koxinga and his Ming remnants on Taiwan. Villagers were unable to take much with them. Records were lost, even if the Tsuk Po itself was saved. The first ancestor recorded after the Coastal Evacuation in the Chan clan Tsuk Po is the founder of the Tseung Kwan O branch of the clan, Chan Kwan-fu (M). This village was founded in the early eighteenth century. This Founding Ancestor cannot have been born earlier than about 1690-1700 (his oldest great-great-grandson was not born until 1828). Long generation gaps (30-33 years) are possible here because of the time needed to recover from the traumas of the Coastal Evacuation and the difficulties involved in founding the new village at Tseung Kwan O: the clan may well have married late in these years. But, if Chan Kwan-fu was born about 1690-1700, he cannot have been the son of Chan Pak-wai (1), the last Ming recorded ancestor, who died before 1644. One or two generations have been forgotten, probably men who died during the Coastal Evacuation, or the decades", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214633, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "12\n\nrefers to, is probably to be considered the date when the settlement of the Ngs was complete.\n\nThe Ng clan Tsuk Po must have been brought up to date in the early fifteenth century, when Ng Shing-tak's six grandsons were the heads of the clan. No further ancestors are recorded however, until the ancestor alive at the end of the Coastal Evacuation, in 1668. The Tsuk Po states that details of \"four generations\" were lost \"because of political troubles\". This clearly refers to the Coastal Evacuation: as with the Chans, the Ngs were able to take their Tsuk Po with them, but nothing else, and so lost details of the ancestors after Ng Shing-Tak's grandsons. From the late fourteenth century, when these grandsons were born, to about 1625 when the ancestor still alive at the end of the Coastal Evacuation must have been born, is a period of some 250 years. Clearly, more than four generations have been forgotten. Ten generations at a 25-year generation gap, or eight at a 30-year generation gap would be more likely. Effectively, the whole of the Ming history of the clan has disappeared. Unfortunately, this gap includes the crucial period around 1570 when the walls of the village were built.\n\nThe Ng clan Tsuk Po gives dates for the generations born after the Coastal Evacuation - the ancestors recorded were born in 1674, 1719, 1751, 1775, 1807-1819, 1821-1860 (mostly 1839-1847). This represents a rather late average age of marriage - the generation gap is very large in the early years (45 years followed by 32 years), doubtless reflecting the traumas of the post Coastal Evacuation period, but averages out at about 30 years thereafter.\n\nIt is interesting to note that both the Chans and the Ngs claim descent from scholars active at the time of the establishment of the Southern Sung (i.e., 1126 and the following years). This was a time of great difficulty, with barbarian invaders capturing the north of China, and establishing there a non-Chinese dynasty, the Chin, and the native Sung only just managing to hold onto the south, from their \"temporary capital\" at Hangchow. Throughout the wider Hong Kong area, many of the major clans resident today claim as their Founding Ancestors men active during this period. Many were refugees from the Chin invaders, settling where they could in the still Chinese south; others were scholar-officials who rallied to the first Southern Sung Emperor, and in due course received the reward due for their fidelity and support.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "The Chans and the Ngs, therefore, insofar as their clans originated in these difficult years, fall entirely into a widespread local pattern.\n\nThe Ngs today divide their clan into four Fong, or branches, and twelve descent lines (see Table 1). The four Fong are the descendants of the four eldest of the six grandsons of Ng Shing-tat (the descent lines from the youngest two died out, probably during the troubles of the Coastal Evacuation). There are few descendants of the first three Fong, which each comprise only one descent line, stemming from the single sole survivor of that Fong still alive after the Coastal Evacuation. The fourth Fong comprises the remaining nine descent lines. Of these, three stem from the three eldest of the five descendants of the fourth grandson of Ng Shing-tat who remained alive after the Coastal Evacuation (the descent line of the youngest of these five later died out). The remaining six Fourth Fong descent lines all stem from the fourth eldest of the Coastal Evacuation survivors from the fourth Fong. Three stem from the three eldest great-grandsons of this man, and the final three from the three sons of the fourth great-grandson. It would seem likely that only eight males survived the Coastal Evacuation from this clan, i.e., the stem ancestor of the first three Fong and the five survivors from the fourth Fong. Thus the present clan divisions reflect the post-Coastal Evacuation history of the clan, in the period 1668-1750.\n\nThere is very little in the records to support the villagers' belief that their ancestors were followers of the Sung boy-Emperor Ping. It would have been Ng Shing-tak's great-grandfather who would have been the head of the clan at the time of the boy-Emperor Ping, but the Tsuk Po merely records that he lived at Ng Ka Chung, and is buried there. The last of the Sung members of the Chan clan, Chan Yu-wa, BARVE, must have died very young, and very close to the end of the dynasty: it is possible that he was connected with the Sung remnant court, and possible that he died in their service, but the Tsuk Po is silent on this. Given that the Chans were living at Nga Pin Heung a hundred years before the Sung Court came to Kowloon, it is very likely that they would have been swept up in its support in the period when they found themselves living on the doorsteps of the Court.\n\nThus the first people to settle near Nga Tsin Wai seem to have been the Chans, who settled at Nga Pin Heung about 1150-1170, probably in a development associated with the removal of the Salt Intendancy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]