[
    {
        "id": 207340,
        "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": 108,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "100 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nbesides music-halls and lodging-houses, the haunts of vagabonds well known to the police.19 \n\nThe spectacle of Jack Tars, returning from the grog-shops of Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun, tipsily and rowdily weaving their way along Queen's Road, affronted respectable Britons. A Wesleyan missionary complained in 1894 that the colony was always upset by the arrival of a fresh man-of-war whose crew once ashore would behave like wild animals. \"They drink like fishes,\" he complained, \"ride round the town in rickshaws, making night hideous with their shouts, eat over-ripe fruit from street stalls, are stricken with cholera, and die in a few hours.\" He insisted that for soldiers and sailors (and possibly for most others in the East at the present moment) \"total abstinence is a duty\".20 \n\nThe Wesleyan missionary, a fervent supporter of the temperance movement, misunderstood the reasons for excessive drinking among servicemen in Hong Kong. It was not due to innate depravity or irreligion. Soldiers and sailors drank because of the tedium, the hideous boredom they had to endure as pariahs in Hong Kong. They were totally excluded from polite European society; there were no young white women of their own class to walk out with; there were few entertainments, except lugubrious church or mission functions, provided for them. Off duty the only pleasures available, apart from a climb up the Peak, a jaunt in a sampan, or a visit to the Botanical Gardens, were the drinking dens and brothels of the more welcoming Chinese quarters of the town. \n\nSailors, in particular, led almost completely isolated lives in the Far East. News from home could take months to reach their ships. Often they spent over a year without going ashore on leave. Walter White, a ship's painter, joined H.M.S. Scout at Sheerness in 1859, left England in that year and did not return from service on the China Station until 1864.21 His experience was typical. He spent New Year's Day, 1862, in Hong Kong and put up at the European Hotel, a hostelry overlooking Tai Ping Shan. From the verandah of his hotel, he wrote home, \"you can sit and look down upon the teeming, squalid living, jangling and evil smelling Chinese quarters.\"22 But it was in this teeming quarter that White and his naval companions were obliged to spend their evenings of leave, \n\nMajor Henry Knollys epitomises the life of the British gunner in Hong Kong in the 1880s thus:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211777,
        "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": 192,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "The Rivals. 1861 saw some entertainment on board H.M.S. Scout, and in March 1864 there was a Prussian ship, the Gazelle, in port, and its amateur society performed three plays, two of which were by Kotzebue and Körner, whether in German or English is unknown, but the audience \"frequently expressed their approval by enthusiastic applause”. \n\nAs was stated in the introduction, there were times in the history of Shanghai when the Settlement was threatened from outside and foreign troops had to assist in its defence. Thus in the early sixties several regiments were brought down to the city. Both the British 31st and 67th regiment came out in 1861, to sail home in July 1863 and July 1865 respectively. The Royal Artillery started operations in 1862. After the military tasks had been largely completed in 1863, there was time left for whatever amusement could be organised — among these, of course, theatricals. Mid-March 1863 the amateurs of the 31st staged Lover's The White Horse of the Peppers and Brough's Crinoline \"before the largest audience of the season\".\" Some weeks later the Royal Artillery scored an equal success. Shortly before their return to England the 67th amateurs put on Selby's The Unfinished Gentleman on June 17, 1865, which was \"well attended and gave great satisfaction\".\" On more than one occasion the officers and local amateurs joined forces for the staging, for instance, of Morton's farces Where there's a Will there's a Way and Fitzsmythe of Fitzsmythe Hall on March 26, 1863 \"before a crowded audience of subscribers to the fund for defraying the expenses\".42 \n\nTravelling Companies \n\nUntil the heyday of theatrical entertainment in Shanghai during the years 1864 and 1865 only one professional company visited the city: On August 9, 1856 Messrs Baker, Woodward and Montgomery (\"formerly of the New York Serenaders\") advertised that they would give, on the 14th, a \"Grand Ethiopian Musical Soiree\" which “could not fail to please all lovers of fun and harmony\" and at which among others \"the sidesplitting Negro farce 'The Nigger Doctor and his Patient, or The First Lesson in Surgery' \"' would be performed. Ethiopian Soirees were another name for the minstrel shows given by blackened whites; they originated in the early 1830s and became hugely popular, especially in America, but later also in Britain,40 and to some extent in Shanghai too. These Ethiopian entertainments were given sometimes by amateurs (May 15, 1854) and sometimes by touring companies like the one mentioned above and later, in November and December 1864, by the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211786,
        "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": 201,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "176\n\nOr perhaps Miss Durable might suit your views. Such beauty on a stage is rarely seen\n\nHow well too they contrived their Crinoline! Oh! Bachelors give up your wretched lives.\n\nAnd take these beauteous damsels for your wives\". 85\n\nWith hindsight it is of course easy enough to see the wit and irony of these lines and for contemporaries they must have been crystal clear.\n\n96\n\nNot many other accounts have been left to us, but some photographs of a French amateur performance in the early seventies have been published, and there is the following amusing description of a staging on board H.M.S. Scout, when she lay in Shanghai in 1861, of J.M. Morton's farce \"Lend me Five Shillings\" by one of the participants:\n\nJimmy Towers and I, being the only ladies, had to go ashore to be measured for our clothes which we thought was great fun and I must say Towers who was a handsome boy, when made up and after judicious padding and paint made a most bewitching Julia. I, being rather thin, had to be padded up also and as the sun had taken such liberties with my complexion it required a great deal of paint and labour to make me presentable, and as it was a ballroom scene we had low-neck dresses and bare arms. However we were a success and I believe that those who came off shore never knew that Towers was not really a girl. A discussion then arose as to what to wear under our dresses, and it was decided that white duck trousers were admirably fitted to represent an important article of feminine attire. This, as the sequel proved, was quite correct. The play went on well, until getting too near the footlights I had to turn quickly to prevent my clothes catching fire [candles were used JH] and being unable to manage my crinoline properly, it flew in the air and a young wretch right behind remarked in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear: 'Look at her drawers'. This of course raised a great laugh at my expense\". (see also Appendix III, p. 91-93.)\n\n―\n\nDespite the often benevolent attitude of the local paper, the actors were well aware of their limitations, as witness the prologue by Peter Proteus on February 18, 1857:\n\nAnd tho' our Acting may not be the best\n\nApprove what's pleasing and forgive the rest\n\nRememb'ring what we all must e'en confess",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]