[ { "id": 204340, "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-1961", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n104\n\nVol 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\npremises rented, they can operate on a low budget and their financial position tends to be sound.\n\nThis cannot be said of the regular monasteries and nunneries of Hong Kong, few of which are endowed with income-producing properties as were the monasteries of China proper under the Empire. Their ratio of inmates to supporters is usually high. Their buildings, donated by rich patrons of an earlier day, are usually rambling and expensive to maintain. In general, their income comes from the following sources, listed in order of importance.\n\n(1) Fees for ancestor worship. In many monasteries there is a room called the tso t'ong where ancestor tablets are hung and where after services in the Buddha Hall the monks pray for the welfare of the ancestors represented. For this service, the descendents contribute a lump sum at the time the tablet is erected plus a maintenance fee each year (usually at Ch'ing Ming or the Double Seventh). The fee varies according to the position and size of the tablet. A large tablet hung in a prominent place can be quite expensive. This system provides some monasteries with their only dependable source of income. Ancestor worship is also a feature of dharma meetings, which may be held twice a month, or be very special occasions in which thousands of Buddhists participate. In 1959, for example, the Po Lin Tsz held a most elaborate dharma meeting according to the rites of the Surangamasutra, and reportedly received HK$200,000 in donations, mostly from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia who wished to have their ancestors remembered.\n\n(2) Rents on land or buildings. Some institutions have paddy; some have houses in neighboring villages; some (like the Po Lin Tsz) have both. But the rental income is usually small.\n\n(3) Donations made by the admirers or lay disciples of one of the monks (usually the abbot of the monastery) for some special purpose (like building repairs); or for the performance of funeral and other services.\n\n(4) Small donations (usually HK$1 to HK$10) made by visitors who come to celebrate the birthdays of the gods worshipped in the particular institution. Fortunately some deities, like Kuan Yin, have several \"birthdays\".\n\n(5) Donations made by patrons of lodging or restaurant facilities offered by the monastery (which are always free of charge).\n\n5 Actually, only one is her birthday. The other two are celebrations of her enlightenment and nirvana (sic).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204352, "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-1961", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch \n\nORASHKB and author \n\n116 \n\nVol. 1 (1961) \n\nISSN 1991-7295 \n\nnearly 10,000 coffins, urns and containers. The accommodation ranges from single rooms, where one or more coffins rest on trestles, to larger rooms holding hundreds of coffins, together with exhumed remains in a variety of receptacles, e.g. earthenware urns, rattan baskets, wooden boxes and even second-hand tin containers. In some cases, all trace of the relatives of the deceased has been lost and it is proposed to re-inter such remains in a special Tung Wah plot at the Sandy Ridge Cemetery, to which further reference will presently be made.\n\nA clear pattern is now emerging, whereby Hong Kong has almost ceased to be a transit centre for the conveyance of deceased Chinese to their native place. The next best alternative, both for overseas dead and Chinese residents of Hong Kong itself, is to bury in Hong Kong instead, though that is not to imply that local cemeteries are doing a brisk business in snapping up overseas trade.\n\nIn examining the details of current burial procedure, a distinction must be drawn between the urban areas and the New Territories. In the congested urban areas, where land is needed for development and health measures assume greater importance, there is not the same freedom in choice of burial grounds. Relatives must decide whether to bury the dead in a private cemetery, with higher fees, or in a public cemetery, with lower fees and compulsory exhumation of remains after a period of years.\n\nTaking the urban areas first, let us trace the events of a typical funeral. Unlike the earlier traditional habits of mainland China, where preparations for burial were largely carried out by members of the family, the current practice in Hong Kong is for the relatives, on death occurring in their midst, at once to call in an undertaker or someone from a funeral parlour. The undertaker provides a coffin, encoffins the body and conveys it thus to a cemetery for burial, but he is debarred by law from bringing dead bodies on to his own business premises. A funeral parlour on the other hand has wider scope. Its staff will enter the home of the deceased and remove the body to the parlour, either in a basket-woven container coloured silver, blue or yellow, or on a plain canvas stretcher. The advantage of using a funeral parlour instead of an undertaker lies in the fact that, with the body actually held temporarily on the premises of the parlour, it is possible there to carry out funeral rites which would be otherwise inconvenient where an undertaker conveyed the encoffined body direct from the home to the cemetery.\n\nChinese in Hong Kong dislike holding a dead body overnight in the private home. They much prefer its immediate removal after death. Neighbours too are far from happy at the thought of death in the near vicinity, nor in earlier days used they to be\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204353, "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-1961", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n117\n\nin favour of allowing the body to be removed in a coffin past their particular floor in a two or three-storeyed tenement building. Chinese coffins usually consist lengthwise of four sections of tree trunk and are therefore bulky, irrespective of whether the coffin is cheap or one of the expensive polished varieties. Manoeuvring these coffins up and down narrow tenement staircases, with inevitable banging against walls, might be likened to death tapping at the door: a harbinger of bad luck.\n\nTo meet this problem of removal from upper floors in the urban areas, it used to be the custom up till five or six years ago to construct a bamboo staging outside the building, so that the coffin could be taken out of the window and be brought down the staging to the hearse in the roadway. The custom has now almost entirely disappeared for a number of reasons, largely economic: new buildings have grown too high for stagings to reach most upper storeys; the cost of long bamboo from China has risen enormously as a result of its use for scaffolding in the current building boom; the practice of glassing-in verandahs and balconies has made windows too small for coffins to fit through; traffic congestion in the streets makes the authorities chary of allowing even more obstruction in the form of these stagings on roads and pavements. To take their place as a means of removing the body from the private premises, basket-woven containers or stretchers have come to be used, and they are far less expensive.\n\nIf an undertaker is engaged, he will prepare the body in the deceased's home, encoffin and remove it either direct to the cemetery or to a Government cemetery depot in Hong Kong or Kowloon, where it can be held overnight pending Government conveyance to a public cemetery. A farewell pavilion at each depot provides free facilities for the relatives to hold services of any denomination or to perform other last rites.\n\nIf a funeral parlour is engaged, the body is conveyed in the basket-woven container or stretcher to the parlour for preparation, encoffining and almost invariably a service. In a few cases, embalming is carried out but this is a refinement that seems to hold no particular significance, since burial takes place normally within the forty-eight hours allowed by law for the body to remain on the premises. In parts of China, it apparently used to be the custom to delay burial for periods of up to seven weeks. But the more tropical climate of Hong Kong and the ever-present risk of disease has made it necessary to insist on a forty-eight hours limit in funeral parlours.\n\nWhen encoffined in a funeral parlour, the body is placed in a farewell room where it is customary for the immediate relatives to maintain a vigil (overnight, if necessary) until the time comes for conveyance to a cemetery or crematorium. During the vigil and funeral, the close relatives (i.e. widow and widower, sons and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204356, "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-1961", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n120\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nIn the New Territories, there are at present no funeral parlours and few undertakers. As in the agricultural interior of China, practical responsibility still falls mainly on the kinsmen of the deceased. The customary burial of villagers is in two stages: initial coffin burial, and subsequent exhumation and re-interment of remains. Having encoffined the body, the relatives normally sustain the vigil directly outside the home under a temporary shelter. Burial then takes place in a traditional village area, but no monument is erected beyond a small unshaped stone at the head of the grave. After five years or more, the body is exhumed. The bones will be cleaned by the family and be placed either in a funerary urn (kam t'aàp) or in a formal masonry grave (shaan fan) shaped like a horseshoe. In the funerary urn, the bones will be arranged in a manner as if the deceased were sitting in the Buddhist lotus posture.\n\nThe siting of funerary urns and horseshoe graves is of particular importance. Relatives will go to great lengths to ensure that the jung shui of the site is propitious. In other words, they wish to ensure that the benevolent influence of the site will protect the deceased, as a member of the family, so that he in turn will look kindly upon his relatives. The site is usually high up, commanding a view of water, and on a ridge or spur which represents, for instance, a dragon, snake, shrimp or crab in its formation. Standing with one's back to a horseshoe grave, one sees a half circle within a radius of ten yards, which is normally regarded as sacrosanct. Disturbance of the ground is regarded with strong disfavour. Traditionally, the left arm of the panorama in front should consist of a long ridge (containing a \"green dragon”) and the right arm of a shorter ridge (containing a \"white tiger\"). In a horseshoe grave, the exhumed remains are buried in a jar in the centre, just in front of a stone plaque (pei shek) that records the name of the deceased, the date of his death, and other details. Important graves of recorded ancestors or founders of a clan are often flanked by a small shrine (haû tỏ) on either side and sometimes another behind, at a distance of ten to twenty feet from the main grave. The object of the shrines is to persuade the earth god to look after the grave.\n\nWhether the exhumed remains are to be placed in a funerary urn or in a horseshoe grave seems to be governed by the sex and general standing of the deceased in the clan, or even by the financial state of the relatives at the time of exhumation. The remains are normally fit for exhumation after a minimum of five years of burial, but, even so, exhumation should not strictly take place unless there has been no pregnancy amongst the deceased's close female relatives in the immediately preceding nine months. This requirement, which would tend to impose some hardship", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204358, "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-1961", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n122\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\ntouch the dead is to run the risk of becoming infected by an aura of ill-luck (sz yan fung) whereby all the misfortunes of the deceased will be transmitted.\n\nAmongst fishermen fear of the dead and of ill-luck is particularly pronounced. At Tai O on the north-western end of Lantau, fisherfolk on their death bed may be taken from their boats to die in a special house maintained for the purpose near the cemetery.\n\nDuring funeral processions in both the urban areas and the New Territories it is the practice to scatter different types of paper, representing money, along the route to the burial ground, particularly at cross-roads where traditionally malevolent spirits tend to congregate. It is hoped that in the confusion caused by the evil spirits grabbing the money the spirit of the deceased will be able to pass unscathed. The remainder of the paper money thrown out at points other than cross-roads is for the use of the spirit of the deceased in making his way back to his home three days after death (saam ch'iu ooi wan). In many homes, a corner in a hall or passage may be reserved for a tablet and memorial, to house the spirit on its return to the home. This return of the spirit may at first sight be difficult to reconcile with the belief that the spirit descends into hell. The answer is that according to Chinese belief each dead person has a number of spirits. The descent of one of these spirits into hell is often assisted at the burial by the scattering and burning of specially printed hell bank notes (meng t'ung chí paî), together with paper effigies of clothes, suit-cases, motor cars, steam ships, aeroplanes, etc., often of most elaborate and detailed construction.\n\nThe impact of crowded living conditions, economy and improved public health have had their gradual effect in changing the pattern of Hong Kong burial custom. Except for paupers, by far the greater proportion of Chinese dead from the urban areas (numbering some 10,000) are now buried in the public cemetery at Wo Hop Shek, near Fan Ling in the New Territories. Coffins may be conveyed by rail from Kowloon daily as a service included within the burial fees that are $5 or $15 according to size of coffin. Only some 20% of the coffins are carried to the cemetery by private hearses at the expense of the relatives. Of the balance brought by rail, not more than half are attended by relatives. It is obviously not possible in a public cemetery to site graves in accordance with individual interpretations of good fung shui. The fact that each coffin is simply allotted the next vacant space in the burial terrace is readily accepted, although it must be admitted that the majority of terraces are well up the hillside with a commanding view of distance and water. Similarly, when the routine six months' notice of intention to exhume remains from the coffin sections is given, it is unusual for relatives", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205022, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n121\n\n(v) Loans were often outstanding for a long time, e.g., two separate cases appear in the papers where loans were not concluded until thirty-eight months had passed. Where such delays occurred, fields were taken during the course of the loan as additional security for it, or on settlement in lieu of repayment in cash.\n\n(vi) Money loans were also made under different initial arrangements, i.e., on the security of a deed of mortgage of land to the Tong. This alternative procedure was presumably adopted in cases where repayment in cash was doubtful. Where it occurred, a debtor lost the use of his fields, which were placed at the complete disposal of his creditor. On the other hand, he paid no interest for his loan.\n\n(vii) Sometimes a time limit was placed on repayment of the loan. This was done in one case relating to a man from an adjoining village. His fields were to become the property of the Tong if repayment was not made within a period of two years.\n\nA Tong such as this would only come into being and flourish where a member of the clan was literate, i.e., could keep written accounts, and possessed business acumen. This particular Tong appears not to have survived the death of its architect. It was not known of by the present Chi elder (b. 1900), nor did it appear in the schedules of ownership completed by the Hong Kong Government after the land settlement which followed the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898.\n\nOther Points\n\n1. The papers give no indication of the objects for which villagers sought to raise money by joining a money association or getting a loan on repayment of interest. But where land was given as security by way of mortgage, or where land was sold, reasons were usually given in the deed of transfer, and some of these were specific, e.g., debts incurred by a younger brother; the need to pay government taxes; money to pay for a father's funeral; capital for business, etc.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205599, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "136 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nBuddhism, and are perhaps better known to the general reader in this context; and they are found in connexion with a number of esoteric sects with mixed beliefs of which Hsien-t'ien Tao is one of the most popular in the region of Hong Kong. Their main purpose is to provide members of the connected faith with a place where they can meet and engage in common worship and also practise certain individual religious tasks, especially in the sect. They are usually residential today. \n\nThe diet provided in such halls, is, as one would expect from their name, entirely vegetarian. Many halls today welcome members of the public who wish either to worship one of their deities, some of which are generally popular with the Chinese, or to take vegetarian food. Vegetarian meals are often provided, for example on such popular festivals as those of Kuan-yin: “Goddess of Mercy\". \n\nThe halls of all faiths are particularly popular in Hong Kong with unattached women especially working and retired domestic servants (amahs). They provide a home in old age and a pied-à-terre for the working woman. Many of the residents of the halls visited were retired amahs and several of their occasional inmates were said to be working amahs and factory girls. Halls also provide funeral benefits and house the soul-tablets of deceased members. It is usual for women to make regular payments during their working life for permanent residence and funeral arrangements later on, \n\nAnother attraction of the halls, both Buddhist and sectarian, is that they recruit members through what one might term a pseudo-kinship system. One joins through a master who is regarded as something like a father; the fellow disciples of this man are termed (paternal) \"uncles\" and one's own fellow disciples \"brothers\". Halls normally house \"family\" households, and one hall may be connected with others through extended \"family\" relationships, and, in the case of the Buddhist halls, with monasteries and nunneries occupied by monk and nun \"brothers\" in the \"family\". Genealogies may be constructed and kept. \n\nSuch \"families\" practise \"ancestor\" worship (unmarried persons may receive such ritual attentions and have tablets placed for them in the hall: not customary in the traditional Chinese actual kinship system). They also engage in many social activities", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207490, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "250\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\ned out of bounds. One Volunteer died at 11.15 a.m. on 27 April and having no acceptable mortuary we conducted the funeral at once to a site near Argyle Street, a short distance from the hospital.\n\nThe Japanese celebrated 29 April as a holiday in honour of the Emperor's birthday, and we received two issues of cigarettes for staff from the Japanese. Early in May we got plants including tomato and pakchoi, from a Chinese garden and had already planted onions. On 2 May Saito told me to try the main switch and true enough on the following day the mains electricity supply was restored. More mail came in and on 4 May parcels arrived from our visitor friends, two being for the Hong Kong Volunteer who had died on 27 April.\n\nOn 5 May Saito put on the lights on the platform of the Assembly Hall and there was a concert which my diary shows to have included items in Japanese and English, though my memory does not recall details. On 7 May we ran a lottery for a consignment of Red Cross pullovers, blankets, underpants, vests, gloves, wool hats, green hats, mosquito nets, towels, jackets, and cardigans. There were two towels and eighteen jackets, but in all other cases the numbers were between thirty and thirty-five. By 10 May engineers were wiring up the room used as the operating theatre and X-ray room and were arranging to run our generator two days later to allow examination of our tuberculous patients and to allow a couple of minor operations to be performed. By now we had an additional supper meal including at times sweet meatless rissoles, cake, buns, and soup. For a time we had no ration beans and the vegetables were poor. The absence of beans was serious for us since we had been issuing 28 grammes daily after fish ceased to be provided. About this time pay for staff and officers came in and I asked that those who were attending the blind might also be paid. We had another concert on 12 May and by the middle of the month I estimated that we had 42 patients who on their expected recovery would be eligible for turn-over with patients from Sham Shui Po. Some of these were already being employed by us on the one-month temporary basis. On 19 May we had a concert for the third Saturday running though I record that the turns were of mixed interest but that the standard was poor.\n\nSmall quantities of mail continued to come every week or two and I received a card dated July 1944. We were carrying out anti-mosquito measures both inside and outside our wire and we received", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207717, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "90\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nloom does not appear to have been part of the inventory of Han Chinese material culture, this leads one to speculate that the Hakka may have learned the technique through contact with pre-Han people in the hill areas of Kwangtung where they settled. This is, at least, one possible explanation for their use of this technique.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The research reported here was done in Kwan Mun Hau Village, Tsuen Wan, during 1975-76, following my dissertation research which was done in the same village in 1968-70. The work was supported by the Joint Centre on Modern East Asia, at York University in Toronto.\n\n2 Recent research reports on Tsuen Wan include:\n\nGraham E. Johnson, \"Leaders and Leadership in an Expanding New Territories Town\", The China Quarterly, March 1977, pp. 109-125. Elizabeth L. Johnson, \"Women and Childbearing in Kwan Mun Hau Village\", in Women in Chinese Society, Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds., Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1975.\n\nAn exhibit of patterned bands, and Szechwan peasant embroideries, was held at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology from April 15-June 15 of this year, with the title \"Chinese Peasant Textile Arts: Kwangtung and Szechwan Provinces\". The exhibit was prepared by the students of Anthropology 431.\n\n3 I wish to express my gratitude to my informants in Kwan Mun Hau Village, who not only introduced me to the subject of patterned bands but were also very patient in supplying me with information about them. I should also like to thank my very able research assistant, Jennifer Woon Chi-yee.\n\n4 Dr. James Hayes has raised the interesting question of whether the bands used on these occasions would be woven in the colour and style of the wife's or the husband's village or would always be red (a lucky colour). Unfortunately I cannot answer this question without further research.\n\n5 Some of the mountain songs were learned while others were sung in a kind of spontaneous repartee between two groups, often of men and women. The form of the wedding and funeral songs was learned, but the content varied according to the feelings which the individual singer wished to express.\n\n6 See: James Hayes, \"Itinerant Hakka Weavers\", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch. Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 162-165. Aijmer, in his article \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society” (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 42-79 (p.48)) mentions home weaving of fabrics, but this was apparently not done in Tsuen Wan, at least in recent memory.\n\n7 For a general study of this phenomenon, see Aijmer, op. cit.\n\n8 G. W. Skinner states that this was also true of Szechwan peasant embroideries. G. William Skinner, \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I\" The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. xxiv, no. 1, November 1964, pp. 3-44 (p.40)\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208676, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "106\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nHospital. Funeral at 3:00 p.m. with Father Charles Murphy officiating.\n\nJUNE\n\n1- Father Haughey and Brother Bernard Toohill, Salesians, sign their papers and are allowed to leave Camp. The British do not yet believe that we Americans are going to be repatriated, but at the same time, they are hoping for some news about their own release. There are rumors, of course, but nothing definite as yet. The Canadians, too, are also hoping, and are even now trying to join the Americans. Swimming was supposed to start today, but no permission has yet been received. As the weather is beginning to get a little warm, the language school goes on vacation schedule of but one class a day. Strictly speaking, with all the interruptions and distractions of Camp life, we haven't made much progress on the language, but a start has been made.\n\n2- As it is now quite definite that the bulk of the Americans will be repatriated (some forty or so remaining voluntarily) a meeting was held today in which new officers were elected. Consequently, Mr. Bennett becomes Chairman of the Council; Father Meyer Vice-Chairman, Mr. Gregory, Secretary and Mr. Kiley, Treasurer. A tiger cub was reported seen around the Camp. At last, the first parcels of that $300,000.00 food loan are beginning to come in. Each internee had been instructed to make out a list of what articles he would like and individual parcels containing these items are made up in town and sent out to the Camp.\n\n3- Fathers Moore and Madison, again, slightly indisposed.\n\n4- Feast of Corpus Christi. Benediction at 6:45. Report has it now that the newspaper men among the repatriates are to receive one thousand yen from the Japanese authorities for the trip. Incidentally, it may be chronicled that shortly after taking possession of Hong Kong, the Japanese Army introduced the Military Yen, one yen being on a par with two Hong Kong dollars. Later on, this was boosted to one yen for four Hong Kong dollars, and as food prices have risen considerably, this has been a great hardship on the populace, especially those who had Hong Kong money. Then the further discount on high denomination bills made it still more difficult.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208678, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "108\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nthat $30.00 go to the community kitchens, the rest to the individual. However, now, due to discounts, the increase in prices and the delay in getting these parcels moving, we get about 37% less than we otherwise would. Again we Maryknollers divided out $75.00 into two portions, one of $50.00 for our own little community kitchen, and the remaining $25.00 being personal. So in the final analysis, each individual got about $16.00 worth of food and toilet articles. To satisfy our craving for sweets, most of us got bulk chocolate, only to find that this was a bit wormy. However, we soon boiled the worms out of their happy home, and consumed the home. The repatriation boat delayed until the 23rd of the month, and there will be a choice of first, second and third-class passage.\n\n12- Another funeral service for Mr. Engdall, with Father Toomey officiating and Father Allie giving the eulogy. Drawing takes place today for staterooms on the Asama Maru. The American kitchen staff quits, in order to pack up for departure. No tears shed!\n\n13- The International Welfare Association hands out a few more goods, such as handkerchiefs, toilet paper, etc. A new squad of cooks take over and everybody pronounces the food better cooked. Photographs of the repatriates taken on the lawn. An entertainment this evening outside on the Bowling Green in front of the American Club building. It is surprising what talent there is in the Camp, and these entertainments are well received.\n\n14-Sunday. Masses change to 8:15 and 9:00. We learn from the Bamboo Wireless that Bishop O'Gara and three Maryknoll Sisters have left Hong Kong for Kwongchauwan for the interior.\n\nThe following days were quite uneventful. On the 17th, a meeting was held in which a little more information on repatriation was given out. The examination of baggage is to be very strict — no books, no diaries, no money, not even Bibles with notes scribbled on the margin to be allowed. The Hong Kong News says that several Maryknoll Fathers have been released from Camp. That's certainly news to us! Another report says that each repatriate is to receive one hundred yen for the trip, while another says that $250.00 U.S. currency will be allowed to be taken aboard the boat.\n\nOn the 19th, a dance was held in the Club from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., the curfew being extended half an hour by special permission.\n\nPage 135\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211458, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "150\n\nHome would be beneficial. It was a harrowing experience when the sedan chair carrying Father did not reach the junk on time, and Mother had me run back to the wharf to wait for him, just in time to help him up the junk as it was edging out. If I had fallen off the narrow plank which served as the passageway between land and boat, no one would have wanted to take my place to appease the water spirits.\n\nWe left Hong Kong on the S.S. Nile, this time first class, in December 1919. The passengers were required to line up on deck on that very cold New Year's Day at Kobe (?) to pass inspection by Japanese officers. As a result, Father became seriously ill and died the next day, 2 January 1920, reportedly of double pneumonia. Mother was extremely grief-stricken and I was too stunned to be of support to her then. A telegraph to Mr. C. K. Ai paved the way for Father's remains to be admitted into Hawaii without difficulty, because Father had been originally admitted under the status 'labourer' which gave him no right of re-entry in those days of strict immigration regulations for the Chinese. Father was laid to rest in the Pauoa Chinese Christian Cemetery that had just been organized in 1919. Because he had often expressed his distaste for an elaborate funeral that included a noisy Hawaii band, Father's services at the church were simple and dignified. In 1932, Mother had his remains cremated and reburied in a beautiful porcelain urn beside the cremated remains of Ruth and Me Yuk in the Pokfulam Chinese Christian Cemetery in Hong Kong, since Father had often expressed a longing for the land of his birth. And he, like his father, never saw his native village again once he had left it.\n\nIn his letter of recommendation dated 14 September 1899, F. W. Damon described Father as 'faithful, industrious, and of good and reliable character'. Father was more than that. His love for his family is revealed in his frequent letters to his father and his brothers. His gift of Me Yuk to First Paternal Uncle and the gift of Ting Cheong to Second Paternal Uncle to Father's memory are manifestations of their closeness and love for each other. Whenever I recall Father reading to us \"The Children's Hour\" by Longfellow, I feel his tremendous love for his children and sense the happiness we gave him. Always striving to increase his knowledge and to better himself and his family, he often quoted his favourite poet, 'Let us be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait'. For, from his own past experience,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211486, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "178\n\nWe climbed half-way up Mount Tai, sweltered in Nanking, found Hangchow entrancing, and considered Shanghai too foreign and bustling to be interesting. The great discrepancy between the rich and the poor was evident everywhere. The extreme poverty and degradation of life with no prospect of change for the poor influenced my decision to become a social worker when I left China.\n\nIn 1931 Bung Fong returned to the University of Nebraska for graduate work in electrical engineering, but left in 1933 to join me in Canton hoping to find employment there. On a brief visit to Hong Kong he became infected with a \"boil\" on his chin, and a dentist friend, not realizing it was a carbuncle that gave Bung Fong a toothache, extracted the teeth. This was a disastrous procedure for it spread the infection into the soft tissues, leading to septicemia and his death on 23 November 1933. Antibiotics had not been discovered then, and surgery and medication were not effective. It was a long and agonizing night as I stood vigil by his hospital bed and watched him slowly losing hold of life. The Rev. Chong Jook Ling, who had served in Honolulu, was a great help and support to me in making funeral arrangements and in conducting a service at the Hop Yat Church for Bung Fong before burial in the Christian cemetery in Pokfulam. Some years later, in the 1960s, his brother, Robert Wong, re-interred his remains in Honolulu. Again, like Ruth, a young person with a promising future had died. It left me depressed for several years until I felt he would have wanted me to have a happy life. In reaction, I pursued life with complete abandon the next few years.\n\nIn my last year at True Light, I served reluctantly under the new principal, who expressed a condescending attitude toward us American-born Chinese. Inasmuch as Mother was very much worried about my safety when Japan began to rattle her sword, I returned to Honolulu upon fulfilment of my contract. To have a new outlook on life, Mother had built a two-bedroom cottage in Puunui on a lot that I had found for her when I was working for Judge Robinson. This has been our home ever since and it holds many fond memories, especially of Mother who enjoyed this humble abode to the end. I arrived home very much out of touch with what had been going on in the United States. The social programmes, such as the WPA, FERA, CCC, etc. were just alphabets to me at first. It was still difficult to find employment,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212570, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "104\n\nCHINESE FUNERALS: A CASE STUDY\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nThe boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,\n\nAnd all that beauty, all that wealth ever gave\n\nAwaits alike the inevitable hour;\n\nThe paths of glory lead but to the grave.\n\nThomas Gray, Elegy Written in Country Churchyard.\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis paper examines an actual, fairly typical, present-day Chinese death in urban Hong Kong and the funeral services and mourning that follow. Comparisons are made with past customs in Hong Kong, with traditional Hong Kong New Territories funerals and European funerals. Because this paper is largely about Hong Kong, Cantonese terms and Romanisations are mainly used rather than pinyin. Currency quoted is in Hong Kong dollars.\n\nThe author is grateful to Mr Gerald C.S. Siu, manager of the Hong Kong Funeral Home, Doctor James Hayes, the Reverend Carl T. Smith, Mrs Judy Kant Young and other persons and organisations named in this paper. Help varied from recommending source material to providing information.\n\nThe Case Study\n\nOne November night in 1988, a couple received a call saying the wife's mother had been taken to hospital. Shortly after midnight the couple, together with the wife's two younger sisters and two granddaughters, gathered around the corpse.\n\nTraditionally, Chinese hope for a peaceful death in old age with family mustered around the deathbed. In this case the end came suddenly. As Chuang Tzu, sometimes named as the first important Taoist writer, phrased it:\n\nWe are born as from a quiet sleep,\n\nWe die to a calm awakening.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212576, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "110\n\nbuildings, traffic congestion and increased costs, erecting stagings became impracticable.\n\nWith the advent of death the 'blue lantern' used to be hung outside the house. This corresponded to the matt black 'mourning boards' that were fixed outside a home in Britain. The latter went out of fashion in the early part of this century.\n\nThe three important events in a Chinese life are birth, marriage and burial. If a person is not 'buried well' he may suffer in the next world. A great deal of money can be expended on a funeral and giving a parent a good 'send off' epitomises filial piety. Relatives are unlikely to haggle over cost. Although the undertaking profession has few bad debts, and is said to enjoy a profit margin of from 30 to 45 per cent, it is not seen as a salubrious occupation: 'Such men are bad luck and their touch is very filthy.' Misfortunes of the deceased can be transmitted to the toucher. In slang, a corpse is known as 'salt fish' (MA).\n\nThe Day Before the Funeral\n\nIn sub-tropical Hong Kong there used to be a 48-hour limit for storing corpses. With refrigeration and 70 to 80 per cent of bodies being embalmed, which includes injections, this is no longer so. A cadaver can be kept for two months. The ceremony in this study took place seven days after death and close relatives arrived at the 'Hong Kong Hotel' (slang for funeral parlour where a funeral is known as the 'complete menu') the day before, at three o'clock.\n\nA multi-storey funeral home contains many halls to cater to both Christian and (like this one) non-Christian funerals. Two large 'blue lanterns' hung outside the hall. These are in fact white, with the family name in large, purple (at a Roman Court this was the royal or imperial colour) characters and the deceased's age in smaller red characters. On that day and the day of the funeral close relatives were 'not allowed to kill'; namely to eat meat, fish or eggs. Also, sexual intercourse should not take place during the mourning period.\n\nIn addition to the deceased's 16 by 20 inch photograph, incense was burning on the altar. Western candles (candles are normally burnt in pairs) symbolised Christianity and Chinese candles Buddhism, another example of hedging. Also on the altar were tasty snacks that the dead person", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212579, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "113\n\nBe born in Soochow; Live in Hangchow; \n\nEat in Kwangchow; \n\nDie in Liuchow, \n\nThe first is noted for beautiful women, the second magnificent scenery, the third tastiest cuisine, and the last durable timber for making coffins.\n\nIn 1988 coffins ranged from about $2,500, for a humble pine ‘box', to $300,000 for one smelling of eucalyptus. The coffin in this study cost $7,200. Coffins, known in slang as 'four half boards' (*), come, basically, in either Chinese or western styles. Timber for western coffins, say teak or rosewood, is often imported from Malaysia. For Chinese coffins, boards can be roughly hewn, up to four or five inches thick, retaining the curved outside of the tree trunk and hollowed out on the inside. Good quality China fir (**) from Luchow, in Kwangsi Province, can last, buried, for up to 100 years as demonstrated by old buildings in Hong Kong with their China Fir, piled, foundations. There are a number of coffin shops, some watched over by Ts'oi Shan the God of Wealth, at the western end of Hollywood Road. Many coffins with their white or yellow cloth linings are imported from China.\n\n23\n\nBy comparison, a British coffin is normally made of English oak (elm was used for cheaper coffins before World War II) with boards one-inch thick.24 This is usually rendered watertight with pitch or mastic and lined with a bed of sawdust, white drapery and a pillow stuffed with fine wood shavings.\n\nBecause of space, in present day Hong Kong it is not practicable for the elderly to have coffins made in advance and stored in an ancestral hall or at home, as was the custom in old China. They were revarnished every year. But if a person is too interested and 'finds the smell of coffins more appealing than the smell of cooked rice' (聞見棺材香過飯) the gods may come after him. (Similar words are occasionally uttered as a curse.) Some believe a small piece of coffin wood, if boiled and the water drunk, will keep away ghosts.\n\nContinuously, from three o'clock the day before to the actual funeral ceremony in this study, relatives and friends visited the hall to give face to the family and the departed. It is a greater offence not to attend a person's funeral than not to attend his wedding. The author recalls", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212593, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "127\n\nwhere offerings are burned. In another dream the deceased said money was wasted. Excessive food was placed on the altar. Conversely, in another dream she complained that people were hon (cold) and foo (bitter) because they did not put out enough for her to eat. But she was pleased with the arrangements for her funeral.\n\nA friend was told in a dream to go to the home of the deceased to collect a piece of jade which she wished her to have. Another person dreamt that the deceased instructed the young to respect their elders more. In another dream an associate had been informed by the dead person that the maid had wiped her face, first with a cold and then with a hot towel. The previous morning, it transpired, the maid had, in fact, wiped the deceased's picture, first with a wet and then with a dry cloth.\n\nIn another dream the dead woman told a friend she was staying in the house of the Chan family and that she was to be reincarnated as a boy. \"He\" would be easy to recognise, playful and would turn a somersault in front of \"her\" eldest daughter. The eldest daughter later dreamt that the deceased, who seemed neither happy nor sad, appeared. She then disappeared and a little boy stood in her place.\n\nSurvey\n\nDuring 1992 and 1993, the author questioned 122 Hong Kong Chinese men and women to ascertain whether they believe in reincarnation. This sample can be divided roughly into two. Most of the first section of interviewees (but not all) had completed secondary studies. Generally, they live in housing estates and work at white or blue-collar level, similar to the bulk of the population in Hong Kong. Of this group of 46 persons, 35 said in a convincing way that they believed in reincarnation, eight did not and three \"did not know\".\n\nThe interviewees in the second group work in the professions or at senior management level. They had all received university or college education and most had studied or worked for periods overseas. Of this better-educated group of 76, 35 said they believed, 25 did not, and 16 \"did not know\".\n\nThe conclusions emerging from this survey were not only that the better-educated and the western-educated are less likely to believe, but that men are less likely to believe than women. In six cases women admitted they believed in reincarnation although they were Christians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212598, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "132\n\nNOTES\n\nThis paper is based largely on the author's own experiences while attending and being involved with Chinese funerals over a period of four decades.\n\n2. B.D. Wilson, 'Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 1 (1960-1), pp. 115-123.\n\nMartin K. Whyte, 'Death in the People's Republic of China', Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, Eds. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, University of California Press (1988), pp. 289-316, (p. 313); Laurence G. Thompson, Chinese Religion, An Introduction, Fourth Edition, The Religious Life of Man Series (1979), pp. 50-54.\n\nPatrick Hase, 'Traditional funerals', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 21 (1981), pp. 192-6; Patrick Hase, 'Observations at a Village Funeral', From Village in the City: Studies in the Traditional Roots of Hong Kong Society, Ed. Davis Faure et al., Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (1984), pp. 129-163; Hugh Baker, 'Burial, Geomancy and Ancestor Worship', Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Week-end Symposium, 9th-10th May 1964, pp. 36-39.\n\n5. VR Burkhardt, 'Funerals, Requiem Masses and the Path to Purgatory', Chinese Creeds and Customs (1982), pp. 96-110.\n\nEvelyn S. Rawski, \"The Imperial Way of Death: Ming and Ching Emperors and Death Ritual\", Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., pp. 228-253 (p. 238).\n\n7. T.C. Lai, Husein Rofe, and Philip Mao, Things Chinese, ed. T.C. Lai (1971), p. 70.\n\n9. Ibid., p. 71.\n\nJohn Z. Bowers, 'Surgery Past and Present', Medicine and Public Health in the People's Republic of China, ed. Joseph R. Quinn (1973), pp. 53-62.\n\n10. Linda Chih-ling Koo, Nourishment of Life: Health in Chinese Society (1982), p. 7, and discussion between Dr. Koo and the author, 18 June 1992.\n\n11. Hugh Baker, 'Soul', More Ancestral Images, A Second Hong Kong Album (1980), pp. 5-8.\n\n12. Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital (1989).\n\n13. James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Institutions and Leadership in Towns and Countryside (1977), pp. 67-8.\n\n14. James Hayes, The Rural Committees of Hong Kong - Studies and Themes (1983), p. 45.\n\n15. Frena Bloomfield, The Book of Chinese Beliefs (1983), pp. 100, 101, and 112.\n\n16. The author has visited this 'Coffin Home' on various occasions.\n\n18. Harold Ingrams, Hong Kong (1952), plate vi; James L. Watson, 'Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society: Pollution, Performance and Social Hierarchy', Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., p. 109.\n\n19. James Hayes, 'Sandal Wood Mills at Tsun Wan', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 16 (1976), pp. 283-3.\n\n20. Gems of Langzhu Culture, exhibition at Hong Kong Museum of History, 11 April to 9 August 1992.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213260, "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-1994", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "62\n\nWhen the Technical College (now the Hong Kong Polytechnic University) moved to its new campus at Hung Hom in 1957, expatriates as well as Chinese staff were not pleased to find a funeral parlour sited next door. Not all the Europeans, the author recalls, blamed the deaths and illnesses that followed (among family members of the staff) on bad fung shui. The Chinese, of course, sought advice and took appropriate action. Nevertheless, generally, if staff were advised to swing their desks around so many degrees, all things being more or less equal, Europeans tended not to argue. After some months people stopped falling sick and nobody mentioned the funeral home any more. Some Britons argued it had all been psychosomatic. But it had been a reality, and, unless it was coincidence, what everyone had been advised to do by the fung shui master seemed to have worked.\n\nThe truth is, however, that although a few Chinese go out of their way to explain to Westerners that they do not believe in fung shui, in some cases because they think that is what Europeans wish to hear, all sorts of people living in Hong Kong do believe in it. This includes Chinese in all walks of life, including the western educated and the erudite, some Legislative Councillors, rich businessmen and 'old one-hundred names' (the average Chinese).\n\nA private social function held in 1994 included 20 Chinese women ranging in ages from approximately 20 to 45. On being questioned by the author 16 said they believed, two more believed 'more or less', and two did not believe in fung shui.\n\nMany Chinese are not prepared to risk 'not believing'. There are indications, however, that, with the spread of westernisation and 'modern enlightenment', the views of younger Chinese are changing (see Appendix B). But the process is slow and opinions are mixed as the following (the words of a well-educated Chinese girl) illustrates:\n\n'I would not go to the trouble and expense of inviting a fung shui man to my flat. But if I knew I was not supposed to do something I would not do it, just in case. I would listen'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213264, "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-1994", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "66\n\nBanks, Hongs and Government House\n\nMany old established western hongs have long come to terms with the 'breath of the dragon'. As one senior Standard Chartered Bank staff member phrased it (partly with tongue in cheek perhaps?): 'Some Europeans are more concerned about fung shui than the Chinese. Besides, paying attention to it is good for business.'\n\nThe British Standard Chartered is the oldest foreign bank in Hong Kong (its forerunner, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, was established in Hong Kong in 1859). Management was advised that for its new building, completed in 1990, one main door was not enough to 'catch all the good fortune and allow money to flow in'. An additional entrance, facing northeast, was included in the plan, 'to capture \"luck\" from Central District and from the harbour and business from the Hong Kong Banking Corporation next door'. The main entrance is very important. It is subjected to more foot traffic than any other part of a building. Its door should be well-hinged, upright and in scale with the building as a whole.\n\nSimilarly, the decor of Chartered Bank's interior includes a number of features synonymous with prosperity in Chinese culture. The stained-glass windows in the entrance hall portray a bus with registration number 28 (homonyms in Cantonese also meaning 'easy to prosper'). A red (a lucky colour) tram car has the number 88 (signifying 'doubly prosperous') and steps have been constructed in flights of eight. Lucky numbers are popular in Chinese communities around the world.\n\nSimilarly it is good if one's grave, or niche in a columbarium where one's ashes are deposited, has a fortuitous number. In Europe numbers carry different meanings. Seven (among Chinese, this number is often associated with how many dishes mourners partake of at a funeral wake) is sometimes considered lucky, while 13 is deemed unlucky. Consequently, a 13th floor is sometimes omitted in a building.\n\nAs is common in many commercial premises in Hong Kong, running water is good because water signifies money. While having a water feature may not mean much in a bank in York or New York, such beliefs do imply a great deal to many customers in Hong Kong. Yet, surprisingly, few appeared to have been too upset when the fountain at the 'Landmark', in Central District, was done away with.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213800, "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-1996", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "123\n\nbis being implication and subsequent death. One version says that as a result of 'pollution' by pregnancy of which his mother was unaware the bamboo horse on which he rode failed, causing a half-day delay in his arrival at court. As a result the Emperor was convinced of accusations that he had rebellious migntions. The other version, in a rather obscute passage, is that some method was devised by his enemies at court to show his magical power to the Emperor. The method worked and the Emperor was convinced by the accusation by his enemies. The Emperor ordered destruction of the fengshui of the lineage. Upon his return home he died suddenly. According to genealogy the Emperor wept upon hearing about bis death and ordered execution of the official responsible for the destruction of the Cheng's fengshui. The story bears striking similarity to stories in Faute op cup 229, about Huo Zhen and his sister Wu.\n\nL\n\n2. Those are Fa Xuan in the 10th generation, Wan Yi Lang, Wan Er Lang, Fa Xing, Xian Yi Lang, Ning Yi Lang to Ning Wu Lang, and a Nian San Lang in the 12th generation, Gao Yi(1) Lang to Gao San(3) Lang, Zheng Si(4) Lang, Qian Wu(5) Lang, and Zheng Shi(10) Lang in the 13th generation, Fa Tang, Tong San(3) Lang, Pin San Lang and Fa Wen in the 14th generation.\n\nAccording to the genealogy his father died soon after arrival in the county and his young age was the reason given for an important event in the history of the family.\n\n**Reproduced in Sin, op cit, plate 4**\n\n\"The same ancestors were traced to by the Chens of Lok Keng.\n\n76 In the same interview he also said: 1312 generations. I did not ask about the apparent discrepancy.\n\nJH\n\nIN\n\nIn a telephone conversation with the Hakka Buddhist funeral ritual expert Mr. Zhang on 5th March 1991, JH learned that Mr. Miao died years ago. His assistant Mr. Zheng Tangsheng moved to Hong Kong, lived in Tai Po, and died before Mr. Miao.\n\nTelephone conversation 5th March 1991\n\nZhang Zupu, Chonghua Juhu Lusuo 1993, reprinted from Zhongyuan Zazhi 1980.\n\n10. The document reproduced in ZEILS indicates that a new name given to a troubled child in the rite does not resemble the ordination names seen in genealogies.\n\n* The author does not explain the meaning of \"faona\", \"old house\". Some of them were probably a kind of ancestral hall as he mentioned that money was collected from different branches for the celebration and where there was a wealthy ancestral trust money can be drawn for that purpose. See also a reference later to Nelson's article about a kind of ancestral hall known as \"shengung\".\n\n*2 Voc, 3, under Ankong\n\n14\n\nUntitled volume by Guangdong Sheng Xiju Yanjiu She, prefaced 1980, pp. 132-138.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215611, "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": 388, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "338\n\ninterpreter, a Hong Kong Baptist University doctoral graduate, Professor Zhang Meifang, without whose help I wouldn't have got very far. After lengthy negotiation with the bureaucratic hierarchy, officials in the Guangdong Provincial Government were most generous, both in offering me a lengthy interview and also a guided tour of important sites, including the new Funeral Centre, then just approaching completion. Lots of additional fieldwork was necessary too, of course, by bus, taxi and on foot in that dusty, confusing, reconstructing and ancient city.\n\nTeather, E.K. (2001). Seoul's deathscapes: incorporating tradition into modern time-space. Environment and Planning A 33: 1489-1506.\n\nIn order to accomplish this piece of work, conceived of as another element in the pattern of deathspace in societies with a Confucian heritage, I asked Professor Hae Un Rii, Head of the Department of Geography at Dongguk University, Seoul, if she would like to collaborate. Her personal contacts and organisational skills were invaluable. I had hit on a hot topical issue, because a big public debate had just emerged in South Korea, reflecting concern in some government quarters about land lost to graves each year in this, the second most densely populated country in the world. Cremation is being strongly promoted but, unlike in Hong Kong in the 1970s, the public is strongly resisting official urges to consider cremation.\n\nWe found that the grass dome design of the ancient royal graves was influential on architectural responses to the need for columbaria. A small, space-saving family tomb has been devised to hold the ashes of up to twenty-four family members within a small, grass-covered dome. Although we came across several architect-designed columbaria, we were most impressed with an unusual and extraordinarily beautiful, newly opened, series of open-air niche walls winding gently down a wooded hillside. This serene site reduced my two young research assistants/interpreters to tears.\n\nThe public cemeteries that I visited are utterly different from those in Hong Kong. They were spacious and green, and some were incorporated into the system of walking trails around Seoul without, apparently, any fears relating to the spirit world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]