[ { "id": 204351, "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": 119, "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\n115\n\nCHINESE BURIAL CUSTOMS IN HONG KONG *\n\nB. D. WILSON, M.A.\n\nBefore 1949, burial customs in China were largely geared to the traditions of a predominantly agricultural country. Except in the New Territories, however, Hong Kong was not in a position to follow the same rural traditions of burial procedure and therefore was forced to evolve a pattern more or less of its own. The postwar change of Government in China has led to even further changes in local burial customs.\n\nFor non-Christian Chinese in Hong Kong the focus of burial practices is the veneration of family ancestors. In its extreme form this can be taken to mean the belief that if surviving relatives and descendants pay sufficient respect to their dead, the dead in their turn will exercise a benevolent influence over the lives and prosperity of their family.\n\nThe deceased is considered to be in a better position to watch over his earthly descendants if buried close to his native place, where it is also, of course, easier for his family to pay their respects to him. This has led to the practice of conveying the deceased back to the place in China whence he came and interring him in a traditional burial ground. It is well known that, no matter where they die, the bodies of overseas Chinese have, where possible, usually been conveyed back to their homes for burial; when they could afford to do so, relatives have followed this same principle where death occurred in Hong Kong. Coffins and remains of Chinese who died in various parts of the world, e.g. Borneo, the Philippines, Indonesia, the U.S.A., have been shipped to China via Hong Kong which in prewar and immediately postwar days enjoyed a certain pre-eminence as a transit centre for the onward movement of human remains.\n\nThe trans-shipment was not always immediate. Circumstances often imposed some delay. To meet the difficulties of holding the coffin temporarily, the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals in prewar days set up in Hong Kong a coffin repository in Sandy Bay where remains could be stored on payment of a monthly fee. This repository served its original purpose well till 1949 when difficulties arose in the way of transferring bodies into China. At present, there is virtually no movement of coffins into China, with the result that the repository has gradually accumulated\n\n* The writer wishes to make it clear that, in putting forward this article, he has simply recorded information which has come to his notice incidentally in connection with other duties. He is neither an anthropologist nor a trained research worker, but simply an amateur with an interest.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205321, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "76\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nthe carrying and other heavy work, \"The men do not even know how to carry water\" and probably do not demand that the women give them lessons at it.' \n\nFrank 1925, p. 210f. Even among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population in Kwangtung, traditional women's participation in the work in the fields occurred; cf. Yang 1959, p. 21f. The notes above, however, are to be read as contrasts to Punti custom.\n\n35 Investments in house building on a large scale seem to be typical for all Chinese peasant communities with a marked inflow of external income. Generalizing from his experiences with three emigrant communities in Fukien and Kwangtung, Chen Ta writes:\n\n\"The most practical way to gratify their vanity is to build a house. Even when he does not contemplate a return in the immediate future, a Chinese emigrant who has made a fortune in the Nan Yang is quite likely to send a sum of money home for the express purpose of buying a new house\"; Chen 1939, p. 109.\n\nFrom another part of China, Francis Hsu notes that\n\n\"in this Yunnan community people became rich not through South-Seas emigration, but through tin mines and trading. As soon as a family becomes wealthy, it begins to build huge but largely unused houses ...\"; Hsu 1945, p. 48.\n\nBoth authors interpret house building as the symbolic aspect of the move from one social position to another by the sojourner in his home community, the big house being closely associated with gentry status. A comment on increasing house building in the New Territories in the beginning of this century is made in the N. T. Report 1899-1912, p. 56.\n\n36 Although these people have spent many years in English-speaking countries, none of them can converse in the English language. Also, this is largely true for the younger generation now residing in Britain. The Chinese emigrant is often sojourning in a Chinese enclave, the structure of which, in many important respects, is very different from that of his home community; it is still basically Chinese and offers social security in a foreign country. I have the impression that the sojourners have a fairly limited direct contact with the people of the country where they stay, especially if this is in Europe or America. Such contacts are also often highly formalized, of the type client-waiter relations in a restaurant. The surrounding social milieu is, I feel, experienced filtered through the culture of the enclave.\n\n37 In 1963 overseas remittances, in the form of postal and money orders cashed at the New Territories post offices, amounted to the value of HK$20,973,152. The corresponding figure for 1964 was HK$24,076,719; Hong Kong 1963, p. 60; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Considerable sums will also have been remitted through banks: these figures are not known. One item of information from the New Territories tells that one farmer annually receives about HK$1,500 from his two sons working in England; Topley 1964, p. 176. Ronald Ng (1965, p. 35) estimates the monthly remittances at £30, or HK$5,760 annually.\n\n38 This means that the daily income for a restaurant worker in Britain would amount to nearly HK$23. This may be compared to the daily wage of a worker in the New Territories which is about HK$10. Ng gives a similar figure for restaurant workers in the U.K.; Ng (1965, p. 35).\n\n39 The situation of the members of the overseas community in Britain could be compared to that of a villager of Big Stream Village working in a grocer's shop on the island of Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. His salary there is 'over' US$100, i.e., at least HK$130, a month. The daily", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "SALT MANUFACTURE IN HONG KONG\n\n149\n\nencouraged seeing the important connection it has with the food supply of the Chinese, one of whose staple articles of food is salt fish.\n\nThe Salt Workers at Tai O after 1899\n\nLin states that the solar process of salt production was only introduced at Tai O when natives of Swabue, Haifong, north-east Kwangtung, were first engaged by the salt companies. Enquiries at Tai O indicate that this was apparently about a decade after the British took over the New Territories, since a retired foreman has told me that he came here when he was 18 years old to join his father. This was about 1910. His father had come to Tai O only two or three years previously from Po Mei Heung (*) about three hours walk from Swabue (). Father and son in turn were foreman at one of the salt-fields, and I am informed that all foremen in the Tai O pans since that time have been from that place. My informant was illiterate and it is very likely his father was too.\n\nThe father had been a salt worker all his life and his father before him. In fact, the whole village of Po Mei was apparently engaged in salt-production and must have been so employed for generations. This explains why one of the Tai O salt manufacturers thought of employing people from that area. They must have gradually displaced local workers using the leaching process of salt production since in 1940, when Lin wrote his article, it appears (from the estimate given in the first paragraph of his) that the major part of the salt-pans were used to produce salt by the solar or Swabue method. These \"outside\" workers usually went back to Swabue, at will or when they became too old to work. Even in 1962, when I collected information for these notes, there were only 8 or 9 retired salt workers living in Tai O.\n\nWomen came from Swabue to work as well as men. In 1962 I spoke to a woman, married to a salt worker, who had been in Tai O for 20-30 years; and to a young man of Swabue parentage, also a salt-worker, who had been born in Tai O, whilst his parents were working there. In 1962 a few families were still working some of the pans for themselves. Each consisted of a man, one or two women and a few children. In two of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205421, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "176\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\npopulation is involved in all this and its relationship to the institutional life of the society. There are a few useful pieces on such matters however. A section worth mentioning here is on the city gods who are second only in importance on the island to the goddess Ma Tsu. The section includes a detailed description of the temple to the city god in Hsinchu,\n\nIt appears that before the Ch'ing dynasty set up official law and order in Taiwan the need for public control in the early days of immigration was met largely by the city gods and their temples. In some cases temple attendants became the administrators of local justice and a group of bone-healers (associated with the temples?) the police force. Their shops in Taiwan, says the author, still display swords and helmets associated with their former role. Mandarin officials sent by the Ch'ing court in Peking had first to report to the city god temple and ask permission for any changes in local administration, and this went on until the Japanese curtailed the activity during their administration. Not only did the city gods \"take the place of the Imperial government\" in the early days, but \"each were given titles and enfeoffed (sic) with their territories\" (p. 58).\n\nThe resident in Hong Kong might be interested particularly in a section on Ma Tsu, who has assumed something of the status of patron saint in Taiwan. Ma Tsu, in fact, is none other than T'in Hau, \"Goddess of Heaven\" who is so important here to the boat population. The author gives us various legends of her origin which are popular in Taiwan and show us why she should have such importance for sea-faring folk (interestingly enough T'in Hau is similarly known as Ma Tsu in Macau and some believe Macau is in fact named after her). It is also interesting to note that those seven \"fairies\" known as the Seven Sisters in Hong Kong and worshipped by girls looking for husbands appear in Taiwan as the Seven Old Maids, with a particular role in care of children.\n\nIt is my impression that this book is probably written more with the interests of the foreign visitor or new foreign resident to Taiwan in mind, and perhaps those also of people working in Christian missions on the island. However, even if not directed especially to the research worker or resident elsewhere, there is much in this account to repay study by them. Hong Kong, 1967.\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205564, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "PLOVER COVE VILLAGE TO TAIPO MARKET\n\n101\n\nand two of these had been tutored and had no formal school experience. Ability to speak Cantonese, the lingua franca of Hong Kong, also made a strong difference: where the interviewer needed a translator, preference for the village was stronger.\n\nThis point is even further brought out with the combination of several indicators which enable us to look at the population of people who have high income drawn from at least two sources. We define in these terms those families where the husband is working and there is rent from one or more flats, or there is a husband working plus income from some other worker, or there is rent from four or more flats and the wife is working at home industry. There are thirteen such families not all of which enjoy very high income but undoubtedly have other fortunate social characteristics, such as involvement in family economic affairs by both husbands and wives and probably, therefore, better social relationships within the family. Only one of these families indicate that they were happier in the village. The rest of these data are summarized in Table II. It would be unreasonable to conclude\n\nTABLE II\n\nMULTIPLE SOURCES OF HIGH INCOME\n\nBY WHERE HAPPIER\n\n(Village or Resettlement Area)\n\n \n \n Multiple source high income*\n Not multiple source high income\n \n \n Where happier\n 5 (males) 10 (females)\n \n \n \n Village\n 1 (male)\n0 (female)\n 3 (males)\n2 (females)\n \n \n Resettlement area\n 6 (males)\n1 (female)\n 2 (males)\n1 (female)\n \n \n Both, same, don't know, no answer\n 2 (males)\n1 (female)\n 2 (males)\n1 (female)\n \n\n* Rent (1 or more flats) plus husband or other worker, or 4 or more flats plus wife or wife doing home industry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205729, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nJI13 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 205.\n\n29\n\n12 Now known as the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital. Its subsequent history is described in a brochure privately published by the Hospital in 1957, enlarged and re-issued for the eightieth anniversary in 1967.\n\n13 區德,又名區仰德,列字澤民,\n\n14 The Government took over the project in 1927 and turned it into the Kai Tak airfield which came into being in 1928.\n\n15 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 200.\n\n16 Ho Kai's sister was married to Wu Ting-fang, i.e. Ng Choy.\n\n17 韋寶珊\n\n18 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, pp. 120-124.\n\n19 Chinese members of the Legislative Council were ex-officio members; the other members were elected by the Chinese Justices of the Peace,\n\n20 Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, p. 39. Wei Yuk is, however, wrongly described as a member also of the Executive Council.\n\n21 The Hong Kong Government later built the Kowloon Canton Railway which was started in 1906 and completed in 1910. It may be of interest here to mention that the Beacon Hill Tunnel was designed and constructed by Mr. F. Southey, a former student of Diocesan Boys School who won a Hong Kong Government Scholarship in 1890 to study in England.\n\n22 Named after the first and outstanding headmaster of the Central School, Dr. Frederick Stewart who later became Colonial Secretary in the years 1887 and 1888, under the Governor Sir George William Des Voeux.\n\n23 G. Stokes, Queen's College, 1862-1962, Hong Kong, p. 221.\n\n24 Among his grandchildren whom I know personally are the following distinguished officers in the Hong Kong Government Service: Dr. Ho Hung-chiu, O.B.E., Senior Specialist in Radiology, Mr. Eric Ho, Staff-grade Administrative Officer, Miss Daphne Ho, M.B.E., Principal Social Welfare Officer and Miss Helen He, O.B.E., Senior Medical Social Worker, Mr. Stanley Ho, a prominent businessman in Hong Kong and Macao, is also his grandson,\n\n25 The ages of the boys ranged from 10 to 16. It is said that because of their pig-tails, they were often mistaken to be girls and had often times to fight very hard to repel the advances made to them by the American boys!\n\n26 On p. 294 of Endacott's A History of Hong Kong, it is stated that \"a Chinese member was added to the Executive Council in 1921\". This is presumably a typographic error,\n\n27 Sir Robert Kotewall left eight daughters and one son. His son, Cyril, is now practising as a solicitor in Hong Kong and one daughter, Bobbie, is the principal of the well-known St. Paul's Co-educational College.\n\n28 Sir Alexander Grantham, Via Ports, p. 110.\n\n29 Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, London, Victor Gollancz, 1964.\n\n30 At one time, a director of the Bank of East Asia. Educated at Queen's College, Mr. Chan was a generous benefactor of education. In 1917 he donated HK$50,000 to the University of Hong Kong for the erection and equipment of the School of Pathology. He also endowed prizes in all the faculties of the University.\n\n31 Father of Sir Tsun-nin Chau,\n\n32 Father of Mr. Li Fook-wo, O.B.E., Deputy Chief Manager of The Bank of East Asia, and Mr. F. K. Li, Staff-grade Administrative Officer in the Hong Kong Government.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205878, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "178\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nand clubs, on their families, and on their ties with home. All these contain much of interest, though there are many points small and large on which one might quibble, from the trivial matter of the delusion which the author has that Chinese restaurants in general serve Chinese food which derives its virtue from Cantonese culinary supremacy (p. 28), to the important matter of omitting to mention that many Chinese employees receive in cash their total wage, their employers paying for them their tax, National Insurance, etc. over and above the wage (p. 81).\n\nMore important is the lack of organisation of the approach to this subject. One has the feeling that little attempt was made to extract meaning from the facts with which Mr. Ng presents us. If there had been, then surely they would have been presented differently? Certain basic considerations seem to have been neglected. Why London? for instance. Granted that London is an important centre for Chinese immigrants, why is it so? and how is it possible to study London as a centre without reference to the area of which it is a centre? Would not The Chinese in Britain have been a more valid topic? (Of course, the research worker's time and finances are important factors here, but there should be justification for the choice of field.) Again, was it not possible for Mr. Ng to approach this subject from an angle which would give more meaning to the whole to impose a pattern on it, as it were? To be constructive, could he not have started with the individual and worked outwards from there? the three case studies in Chapter IV are very enlightening.\n\nSince the work for this study was done (in 1963-64) the situation of the Chinese in Britain has changed a great deal. There seems to have been achieved a greater degree of coalescence (particularly in the provincial cities), political awareness has heightened, the Hong Kong Government has attempted to help its people overseas, the Gerrard Street area of London has become more and more clearly defined as a Chinese centre (the world's only new Chinatown?), and so on. There is call now for much more detailed and wide-ranging study of the field; and whoever undertakes it will be fortunate in having Mr. Ng's general survey to start from.\n\nSchool of Oriental and African Studies,\n\nMarch, 1969.\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207336, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "96\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nand China Gas Company, the Hong Kong Electric Company, the Hong Kong Distillery Company, all needed skilled European labour.\n\nThe Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company employed European foremen, clerks, book-keepers, shipwrights, engineers, boiler-makers, storekeepers, and superintendents. 'Where the eastern seas', J.S. Thomson enthuses, 'bubble up hot to the flame of an equatorial sun, Chinese workmen, with Scotch overseers, turn out six thousand ton steel ships and do battleship repairing worthy of Woolwich or Devonport.' The skilled British mechanic experienced a degree of upward social mobility in Hong Kong: the skilled worker became an overseer, with all the compensations of improved status and salary.\n\n13\n\nApart from any non-qualified engineers, mechanics and artisans, there were a number of Europeans employed in other low status occupations. We should mention lighthouse keepers, employed by the Harbour Master's Department (later Marine Department), tide-waiters in the Chinese Maritime Customs, whose duty it was to board ships and junks at the various treaty ports, some of whom were domiciled in Hong Kong. They were, like the skippers and engineers of the vessels owned by the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macau Steamboat Company, mostly retired A.B.s from the Royal Navy and non-commissioned officers who had served their time. Lastly, there was a sprinkling of European tailors, hairdressers, milliners, confectioners, bakers, booksellers, printers, photographers, owners of sporting-goods shops, livery stable keepers, and gunsmiths. Most bars and tap-rooms employed Europeans as managers and barmen, though many were not of British nationality. As Macmillan concludes:\n\nThe bulk of the foreign population is employed in commerce, but the police, revenue, and sanitary staffs, schools, public works, docks, etc., give employment to a large number of overseers and supervisors, mostly engaged direct from home or from military and naval men whose service with the garrison is completed.1 Macmillan, however, forgot to mention the important beachcomber element in the overseer force.\n\n14\n\nEuropean outcastes were mainly prostitutes, nearly all of whom were of working class origin. Many of these women were professionals from the red light districts of San Francisco, Honolulu, Sydney, and Melbourne, who, for one reason or another (usually", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207433, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n193\n\nviously prepared note addressed to her mother which was successfully picked up. Her mother and two of her sisters then got to work on the Kempeitai, the formidable and feared gendarmerie, sometimes called the 'thought police' and somehow secured her release. When Mrs. Selwyn-Clarke was eventually interned in 1943 the work went on and Helen Ho continued to bring supplies to our hospital until our release. We had the privilege of welcoming her in person in the Central British School in August 1945, and expressing our thanks to her for her work whose value it is almost impossible to overestimate. Miss Ho was awarded the O.B.E. and after the war qualified in England as an almoner, the medical social worker of today. My wife and I have maintained friendship with Helen and her family ever since and I have had the privilege of calling on the family in Hong Kong in 1964.\n\nSelwyn-Clarke was arrested by the gendarmerie on 2 May 1943, and his wife was interned in Stanley. A civil medical man had escaped from internment in Hong Kong in 1942 and this may have impaired Selwyn-Clarke's position with the Japanese to some extent. However this may be, conditions became very hard in 1942 for his subordinates who were still working to improve the health conditions generally. When some of these had been reduced to burning their own furniture for fuel and had been forbidden to draw funds from their banks a number sought permission to leave the Colony and seek a life in Chinese mainland villages. Selwyn-Clarke had power to sign recommendations for permission to leave in the case of those who had served directly under him before and during hostilities. He suspected that one man severely wounded during the fighting, in whose case he had very slightly stretched the facts in his certificate because of his deep sympathy with his plight, was detected and stopped by the Japanese on his way to China. He was intensively questioned and eventually broke down and gave the answers his questioners wanted, answers relating to Selwyn-Clarke's alleged spying activities which were quite untrue. Selwyn-Clarke was an upright man who would never break his word even to the Japanese occupiers and he told me subsequently that in the case of the certificate he gave to the man he suspects was immediately responsible for his arrest, this was the only occasion in his life that he had ever compromised on a matter of principle. This I accept. It shows the kind of man he was. Besides this incident which fired the train of events leading to his arrest he had of course", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207686, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG\n\n59\n\nassociation leaders in the area, there are about 1500 Teochiu households which suggests a total of approximately 9,000 Teochiu in the estate or about 13% of the total population. All other ethnic groups are found in much smaller numbers, Hakka being the next largest. Hoi Luk Fung are very small in number, perhaps one-tenth of the total number of Teochiu, and are usually classified as Teochiu by non-Teochiu within the estate. That is, Cantonese are usually unaware of the distinction between Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung and simply consider an individual Hoi Luk Fung as being Teochiu. This is largely due to the fact that the languages spoken by Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung are very similar and for the most part mutually intelligible, and most non-Teochiu do not and cannot tell them apart.\n\nThere are no clear ethnic occupational patterns within the estate, with the exception of several occupations which are dominated by particular ethnic groups. Most rice retail shops are run by Teochiu families, although there are a few Cantonese rice shops. At least one third of the hundreds of small retail shops within the estate are managed by Teochiu, and many of the legal and illegal hawkers are Teochiu. Most of the minibus drivers whose routes originate in the estate are Teochiu, and I have been told that it is difficult for a non-Teochiu to become a driver in the local area.\n\nThe majority of men in the estate work in nearby factories or as laborers and coolies. Virtually anyone who needs a job can find one within several weeks, but it is usually a low paid factory or coolie job which results in a great deal of temporary unemployment as men are laid off or become tired of a particular job and remain at home and in the estate for several weeks or even months. Most unmarried females work in local factories or in their families' business from the ages of 13 or 14, and many married women with children do some kind of piece work at home. Access to jobs within the industrial sector are generally available to anyone, regardless of ethnic identity. Almost always, however, individuals obtain a job through personal contacts with a foreman or worker in a particular factory and this contact is usually with a member of the same ethnic group. With the exception of the occupations mentioned above, there is relatively little economic competition between ethnic groups within the estate. The organization of inter-ethnic hostility is, for the most part, not based on competition for scarce resources or access to jobs within the local area. The major", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207747, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "120 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\nthe instruction of the Rev. Theodore Hamberg, preparatory to baptism. On 26 April, 1852, Fung Sen introduced Hung Jen-kan to Hamberg. Two days later, Fung was baptized with ten others at the small chapel of the Basel Missionary Society in Hong Kong. The entry in Hamberg's report lists him as \"Fung Asen, aged 21 years, from Lilong, tailor's worker.\" When Hamberg left Hong Kong at the end of March, 1853 to establish a station at Pukak (Pu-kit, Hsin-an District), Fung Sen accompanied him. He was employed by the Mission as a watchman. \n\nA biographical notice of one of the Taiping refugees, Li Tsin-kau (†), which was published in the missionary magazine of the Basel Society, Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, June, 1868, provides interesting sidelights on Hung Jen-kan's unsuccessful effort to reach Nanking in 1854. It also illustrates the connections established between missionaries and those who had been influenced by personal association with Hung Hsiu-ch'uan before he became the Taiping Wang. \n\nLi Tsin-kau was a native of Wo Kuk Lyan, in the Ch'ing-yüan District, Kwangtung. Hung Hsiu-ch'uan had been a teacher in the household of the maternal grandfather of Li Tsin-kau, and Tsin-kau's father was a good friend of Hsiu-ch'uan. He had often heard his father tell of Hung and his visions. Was the father the Li Ching-fan who drew the attention of Hung to Liang A-fa's Christian tract? Hung himself often visited Wo Kuk Lyang. During these visits there would be discussions regarding the moral and political conditions of China and hopes expressed that these could be improved and the rule of Heaven (T’ien-kuo) established. Hung Hsiu-ch'uan and Li Tsin-kau discussed especially the benefits of fasting and abstaining from meats and the worship of idols. Tsin-kau remembered that Hung spoke often of the power of God to conquer the demons. He also spoke of Jesus as our Heavenly Brother who forgave men's sins, but this was not the main theme of Hung's thoughts, \"It was though it had not much touched his heart (“Wenigstens sei es ihm nicht sehr zu Herzen gegangen\"). \n\nLi Tsin-kau was caught up in the displacement of the former friends and relatives of the Taiping leaders. When the authorities frustrated the plan to join the Taiping movement in Kwangsi, he fled to Macao. He lost track of his brothers and father, and later believed that they were imprisoned. His mother was taken in and \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207863, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "236\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nworking). As long, then, as village life remains the kind of community life it has been, fung shui is likely to continue undiminished. But in fact, life in the New Territories cannot remain unchanged; industrialisation and the blurring of community limits by the penetration of newcomers have already gone too far. So that there is a prospect that, just as in the city today, so in the New Territories tomorrow, geomantic ideas will survive (affecting the behaviour of people striving for status and providing a retrospective explanation of fortune and misfortune) without involving everybody in a sharp geomantic response to a challenge to his rights.\n\n71. My analysis, as I have stressed, is provisional, and I should certainly hope that it will be checked by later research and against the experience of administrators. Once again, I should like to suggest the possibility of District Officers systematising the data they have in their files, so that, by comparing the situation in different areas and at different points in time, we may get a clearer picture of what is afoot and the likely direction of change. Of course, any field study by an anthropologist which sets out to analyse the life of a community will almost certainly produce case material on fung shui, but there would be no point in suggesting that the subject be made the centre of an extended anthropological enquiry unless a specialist in Chinese religion were available and willing to undertake the task. There is certainly a need for a broad enquiry into religious life in the New Territories—ancestor worship, cults, spirit-mediumship, temples, and so on—but it would take a mature and experienced research worker to do it.\n\n72. There is a third and final problem I propose to discuss at some length: emigration and its effects. It is generally assumed that there are some 20,000 Hong Kong men in the United Kingdom at the present time, most of them in the restaurant trade. (The figure may be larger; the head of the biggest travel agency in the New Territories puts it at 25,000). Most of these men are from the New Territories. In addition, men have gone to other parts of the world to seek a living. It is known that the money remitted home is a sizeable portion of the annual income of the New Territories. I write without a copy of the 1961 census before me, and I am unable to calculate very accurately how large a proportion the emigrants must form of the relevant sector of the population; but if we remember (a) that very few of the emigrants are men from the city,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207874, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "85. It is obvious that the Administration has given much thought to the technical problems of land tenure, and there is probably little that I could contribute to the discussion of them. On the other hand, there are certain kinds of facts that the Administration would presumably like to know and some sociological analysis that would be of service to it which the field worker would be in a position to supply. Let me take an example from land in relation to clan structure. There was a time when wealth was regularly invested in the establishment of estates attached to ancestral halls in such a way that new branches (fong) of the clan came into being; and these estates were added to on occasion. The system of founding new estates-cum-ancestral halls is now generally (perhaps completely) dead, for segmentation (see paras. 31-3 above) is no longer an important feature of the clan; but the existing estates have waxed and waned in modern times and accordingly affected the areas of land to which members of the relevant clan units have had access for cultivation. These estates have grown by bequests and purchase, and they have diminished by being divided up among constituent members, but in this latter regard the powers given to the District Officer* may well have slowed down in the New Territories a process of disintegration which was much commented on elsewhere in southeastern China in the present century. That is to say, the District Officer, by taking general opinion into account instead of giving a free hand to managers, has made the system more democratic and the estates more difficult to break up; in China itself the managers wielded greater independent authority. (Although the estates continue to exist the halls associated with them are often no longer kept in repair. I stood in the ruins of one of them one day to hear a villager comment: 'In the old days when there was no emigration our ancestors could manage to put up a fine hall. Now, when the men go overseas and to town and make money, they can't repair what was built long ago.' But there are some interesting exceptions. An ancestral hall was recently rebuilt in San Tin in a modern style; most of the money for the work seems to have come from emigrants in the United Kingdom). The estates associated with ancestral halls are one kind of tso; other kinds of tso have been created and dissolved, as when small groups of kinsmen have for a time held property in common. In many settlements there appears to be a constantly shifting patchwork of\n\n* Under Section 27 of the New Territories Regulation Ordinance, No. 34 of 1910—Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207876, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n249\n\nclearer picture of what is being thought in the countryside about development would no doubt be of help to it. On the housing question itself I suggest that it would be worth organising an enquiry into the present arrangement of space and the uses to which it is put; the current modifications which are being made by villagers (increasing daylight by making windows, altering kitchens and bathrooms, re-arranging sleeping accommodation, and so on) to old houses; the departures from tradition in the design of new houses; and the social causes and consequences of these changes. In connection with the last point, it hardly needs stressing that changes in family structure may both precede and follow changes in accommodation. Some of the assessment of housing in relation to new needs and tastes will be made in the course of community studies, for it is an inevitable part of the work of a student of family life; but it might be an interesting and useful exercise to get an architect and a social investigator to work together on the many sides of the question.\n\n87. If an anthropological field worker with the necessary economic skills were available it would be sensible to put him on to a study of land tenure in conjunction with the other economic institutions and activities of a community where both new and old forms of agriculture are being practised. The new agriculture would probably imply the presence of immigrants and there would be an opportunity to study the extent to which the old-established population has taken over the new forms and techniques. A rounded economic investigation of this sort would, of course, need to go into questions of credit, capital accumulation, marketing, investment, management (of both farms and small businesses), the penetration of industry (as in domestic work on plastic flowers and toys and in factory labour), and the sources and nature of entrepreneurial enterprise. I envisage a study in depth and therefore confined to one or two communities, but a list of crucial indices might emerge from it which could be used as the basis for a wide-ranging enquiry by questionnaire methods. Presumably the Agriculture and Forestry Department and the Co-operative Development and Fisheries Department might consider taking part in such an investigation.\n\n88. I was much struck in the New Territories by both the success of the efforts of recent years to provide schools and the strength of the desire on the part of some people to go beyond what official policy is thought to contemplate for the near future. There is now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208177, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "200\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nvided useful suggestions concerning possible lines of enquiry; their assistance promised to complement the substantial resources Government placed at our disposal. Most significant of all was the enthusiasm displayed by the village representatives and elders of Kam Tin. The Kam Tin area, populated chiefly by members of the Tang clan, has a long and rich history; we decided, therefore, to concentrate our efforts in this area. On 25 June, Government hired Chan Sin-wai, a fourth-year history student at Chinese University and longtime resident of Kam Tin, to assist in carrying out the project. Another unpaid co-worker, Chen Ka-won, a graduate of C.U.H.K. and a resident of Ping Shan, joined the project in late July.\n\nAn examination of available knowledge and questions of methodology absorbed the next few days. A field headquarters was established in Ng Ka Tsuen, and the long process of “introduction” was begun. On 11 July, Mr. Paul Wong, liaison officer attached to your Office, arranged a meeting of interested elders from the Tang villages of Kam Tin. During the meeting, we explained the goals of the project, and their warm reception assured us of every cooperation.\n\nThe success of this \"mass meeting\" prompted a series of formal interviews which have been taking place over the last six weeks and will continue into September. We have interviewed nearly twenty-five elders possessing knowledge of Kam Tin's history and traditions. Several have proved to be exceptionally valuable informants, and closer, more \"informal\" relationships have developed.\n\nWe have made a number of tape recordings of important tales ranging over a variety of topics. One collection of stories centers around the resistance by the Tangs to British occupation. We are especially hopeful that these tales and personal remembrances will shed light on the events of 1898-99 and subsequent land disputes, and will lead to the solution of certain perplexing questions regarding land tenure and rural class structure (the 'Sai Man' question).\n\nWe have been granted access to clan and fong genealogies, and have received permission to make photo-copies. Documents, paintings, and plaques dating from Ming and Ch'ing have also come to light. Field trips were undertaken to every village in the Kam Tin area, and we have been guided through the major temples, tsz tong, and graves of historical interest.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n87\n\nImplicit in the actions of the nationalist group was the desire to prove the superiority of its political stripe by winning greater gains for its constituents. Capital may indeed have been receptive to nationalist attempts to upstage the Communist rival.\n\nDespite its divisions, organized labor had signalled the end of what had been an era of relative industrial peace during the 1950's. Not to be caught unawares in the future, the art carved furniture shop and factory proprietors organized the Art Carved Furniture and Camphorwood Chests Merchants Association as the bargaining agent for capital within the year. When the next strike occurred in the industry in 1964, the merchants were prepared to take full advantage of both the traditional as well as political divisions within the ranks of their workers. As the strike of 1964 dragged into its second month, the Merchants' Association succeeded in wooing a group of painters away from the main body of striking workers and concluded an agreement with them which successfully broke the back of the strike. Next, they were able to isolate the Communist Woodwork Carvers' Union by continuing negotiations with the nationalist unions after their workers had returned to work. The Woodwork Carvers' Union never came to formal terms in 1964, claiming in the local press that it had succeeded in exacting more favorable terms for its members from individual employers.\n\nThe center stage of the 1964 dispute was clearly occupied by the Merchants' Association in its manoeuverings and dealings with separate groups of its divided labor force. The merchants were waxing strong as power-driven machinery had by that time been introduced into production, increasing the capital required to operate competitively in the industry, widening the income gulf between worker and boss and increasingly alienating the workers from the tools of their trade. Labor's position was still being undermined by the persistence of a labor force divided along craft occupational lines, although politics had by now been established as the dominant divisive factor.\n\nAnother work stoppage occurred in 1967 when communist workers answered the call for a general strike put forward by the communist Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, the umbrella labor organization charged with implementing the Maoist political line radiating from Peking at the local Hong Kong level. The call for a general strike and the large-scale rioting which precipitated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208382, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "90\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nalso keeps them closely informed of events on the Mainland. Membership in an affiliated union may also facilitate return trips to one's native village in China during New Years and at other times as well, since the Federation provides a link up with Chinese representatives and bureaucracy in Hong Kong.\n\nThe contradiction between the interest of the Hong Kong worker in his own material well being, and the requirement that he subordinate his immediate interests to the long run national interests of Peking, has surely not made life easy for the constituent unions of the pro-communist Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions in their organizing efforts in the post-war Hong Kong setting.\n\nNevertheless, in more recent years, as Peking pursued the resolution of what it took to be \"principle contradictions\", namely admission to the U.N. and the liberation of Taiwan, developments in Hong Kong tended to bear out the appropriateness of their strategy. In 1971, when the Peking government displaced the Taiwan government as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people at the United Nations, the political influence that Peking was able to exercise in the political balance of Hong Kong grew enormously at the expense of the Nationalists. Organs of Peking power like the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions gained an enormous legitimacy in the new aura that came to surround the Peking government. Allegiance to the People's Republic, long an obstacle to effective organizing among Hong Kong's largely political-refugee population, became somewhat more of an asset for groups like the Woodwork Carvers' Union. 1971 marked a turning point in the fortunes of their organizing. Indeed one could argue that the relegation of the \"Hong Kong problem\" to the status of a secondary contradiction made a great deal of sense, as the political balance tipped noticeably in favor of the Peking government after 1971 with the resolution of a higher order contradiction, i.e. the seating of the Peking government at the U.N.\n\nThese developments have helped the Woodwork Carvers' Union immeasurably in its attempt to organize an increasingly proletarianized work force according to principles consistent with Maoist ideology, although the apparent contradiction between genuinely class oriented, as opposed to nation oriented, loyalties and its peculiar configuration in Hong Kong remains.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208384, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "92\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\ninstilling old social forms with new revolutionary content, making them serve new purposes.\n\nThe current premises of the union are in an apartment block in Tokwawan in Kowloon. They occupy a flat decorated with Communist slogans and a picture of Chairman Mao Tse-tung flanked by two Chinese flags. The Federation of Trade Unions runs a small school for children of \"patriotic\" workers in the union headquarters, although the children are not generally those of art-carved furniture workers. The union premises are seldom used by the workers before the evening as they are all off working; thus the flat was made available to the Federation for the operation of the school. Curricular and extra-curricular activities are structured around revolutionary and pro-Peking themes with texts and reading materials published in Peking. Shortly before my departure from Hong Kong this school was discontinued and the teacher, a middle school graduate, went to work in a factory.\n\nOther Federation affiliated unions have also used the union's premises for meetings and other activities such as preparing for the celebrations of October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The premises are, however, under the control of the Woodwork Carvers' Union, and it is my impression that any such use of their premises by affiliated Federation unions must be agreed to by them.\n\nThe flat serves as a place where workers without means to afford a private apartment in Hong Kong's over-inflated real estate market, and without family in Hong Kong to take care of them, may sleep at night. However, one must be prepared to put up with the regulations, which include lights out and lock up at 11:00 p.m. One worker friend of mine, forced by circumstances to stay temporarily at the union, had a serious falling out with the union because of these regulations. Nevertheless, during the year that I was acquainted with the union, two or three workers made the union premises their more or less permanent dwelling place. There were no bunk beds in the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises, although I observed them built into the walls of other union halls I visited in Hong Kong. Workers just unrolled their bed-rolls across boards which had been laid across the students' desks.\n\nOnce every week or two these same desks were pulled together to form a long table and the officers and activists in the union", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n93\n\nwould hold a meeting. Attendance usually ran upwards of twenty people and various items of business to which the union had to see were dealt with, such as: a response to a letter from the Registry of Trade Unions of the Hong Kong government; preparations for the October 1st celebration; discussion of the wage raise to be demanded and ultimately attained in 1973, planning of a picnic which was to take place on the birthday of the historic founder of the carpentry and carving trades, Lupan (discussed below), etc.\n\nOn occasion a representative from the Federation of Trade Unions would sit in on a meeting to see how the union was doing, bringing with him or her news of significance to the labor movement in general for workers to discuss, and these discussions were usually fairly lively, most participants doing their best to give a favorable impression of the workings of their union.\n\nOnce a month the union receives copies of a Federation of Trade Union newspaper entitled Hong Kong Worker (*1st) in which various sorts of articles concerning the working class in Hong Kong appear. There are also articles about China, explanations of current policy initiatives, sports news, a regular women's column and political cartoons as well. On March 29, 1973 I was invited to sit in on a discussion of the articles in the latest issue. The headline article concerned the death of several construction workers who had fallen from scaffolding during the construction of the new Connaught Center Building on Hong Kong island. A free-ranging discussion followed the reading aloud of the article, with those workers who could read with facility taking turns reading successive paragraphs. Industrial safety and industrial accidents in Hong Kong were the main topic of the discussion and the question of how this topic applied to workers in the art carved furniture industry was raised and discussed as well. Lest one think the extrapolation to the furniture industry a bit strained, Labor Department figures for industrial accidents for the first four months of 1973 \"were the worst in Hong Kong's history, with an average of one death and 70 injuries every day\" (Hong Kong Standard, June 29, 1973).\n\nA high degree of class identity was expressed by the workers during the discussion and the question of industrial safety linked to relations between workers and capitalists, the drive for profit, lack of concern for workers' welfare, etc. The sessions occur on a regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208386, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "94\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nbasis coinciding with the monthly publication of Hong Kong Worker and were known as \"discussions of our livelihood”. On June 29, 1973, a similar discussion occurred, this one concerning developments in Shansi province, printed and sent around in a circular by the Federation of Trade Unions. The article was also read aloud paragraph by paragraph, but the discussion was not as lengthy as that which accompanied the reading of Hong Kong Worker. The event seemed designed to promote national consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, and the news did not seem to so directly affect the lives of the art carved furniture workers as the articles in Hong Kong Worker,\n\nOn any given weekday evening at union headquarters, there may be three or four Chinese chess games in progress with a number of persons standing around giving advice on which pieces to move. Anyone near enough to give advice to one or another of the players usually does, and any given game serves as a focus for endless voicing and countervoicing of opinion as to what constitutes the right move. There is also a chance that when one enters the union premises there may be a game of bumper checker pool in progress, involving four participants and a great ruckus about the board. One may be teased to within an inch of one's life for a poorly executed shot.\n\nMah jong is significantly absent as a diversion at Union premises, although it is played regularly at union halls not affiliated with the pro-communist Federation of Trade Unions. It would not, however, be true to say that many pro-communist union members never play the game.\n\nUnion representatives come in from time to time with dues they have collected in their particular geographical area, laying the money and receipts before the treasurer who enters the transactions carefully into the books. The representative may also pick up the latest copy of China Pictorial or China Reconstructs to distribute to the union members in his area. He keeps a careful checklist of who's received one every month. Sometimes a union representative will bring an application form from a worker who has just joined the union, together with three pictures, one of which is pasted in a huge membership book along with a great deal of personal data, name, place of origin, age, date of first registration, address, etc., another affixed to a small certificate of membership, and a third", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208387, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n95\n\ngoing into a small red numbered membership book, which the worker keeps in his possession at all times, and which has a space for stamping receipt of dues, as well as a list of union regulations. A numbered badge is also given out to new members, on which is embossed a yellow star on a red background, with the carpenter's hammer, the carver's carving tool, and the painter's brush crossed beneath and tied with a ribbon, and the union's name around the lower perimeter of the badge.\n\nThe union keeps scrupulous records of every action and transaction that occurs within its purview. Every member who has given money, bought a ticket, received a magazine, or whatever, is given a chit to receipt his every transaction, all of which are dutifully recorded in the account books.\n\nIn August-September, 1973 a membership drive began and a chart posted on the bulletin board showed in bar graphs the increases in membership for the various districts in which art carved furniture factories are located: Cheung Sha Wan, San Po Kong, Kwun Tong, Chun Shek Shan (Diamond Hill), Tsim Sha Tsui and New Territories/Tsuen Wan, with Kwun Tong well in the lead. Kwun Tong is the site of the largest carving factories in Hong Kong where it could be argued the concentration of capital, and the alienation of the worker from his tools and from his product have progressed furthest. According to the union vice-chairman, about 200 additional members were recruited in the recent drive bringing current membership up to somewhere around 800 workers.\n\nI had occasion to witness the actual recruitment of a new member in progress at Heng Lung Co. where I worked. There was quite an enthusiastic union member working there, one who had been back to visit his native village in Kwangtung province in the San Wei district several times and came back with glowing reports about the progress of his home village under socialism. He even had several arguments with other workers in the factory concerning how accurate his observations and glowing reports were. This fellow began working on a younger worker in the factory proselytising. The younger worker had previously explained to me that he had no use for the union or anything political at all. In the course of their work the older worker talked to the younger one about the benefits of union membership and ultimately invited the younger worker to a weekly meeting. While I have no idea what the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208388, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "96\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nthoughts of the younger worker actually were on the matter, it was apparent that the older fellow eventually carried the day. His younger colleague eventually joined the union. Nor would he have done so simply on a whim. Association with a communist cause is not something casually assumed in the Hong Kong context. The episode shows clearly how the membership drive in progress was implemented at the factory level.\n\nIn the foregoing, one gets a feel for the role of the Woodwork Carvers' Union both as a carrier of a proletarian message and as an agent of Peking policy. Its close association with the Federation of Trade Unions is also highlighted. The union premises are the site of meetings of various kinds, political discussions and planning sessions all of which are oriented in one way or another toward the promotion and consolidation of a unified class conscious labor force, with the Peking government the object of its members' patriotism.\n\nThe use of the union premises as a center of recreation, the provision of board to its indigent members, the linkup with Communist Chinese bureaucracies like China Travel Service, are all examples of ways in which the union can cater to its members' needs.\n\nThe operation of a school in the union hall is particularly noteworthy. Traditional Chinese guilds often provided charitable services to their members, such as medical care, proper burials and relief to workers during periods of unemployment. It was not unusual for guilds to establish schools for children of their members (Gamble, 1921: 198) so that they might be able to better themselves, or more properly, the fortunes of their families. In this sense, the use of the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises as a site for the operation of a small primary school may be seen as a significant continuity with traditional guild practice. With curriculum updated in political content, and text and reading materials from the Mainland, the small patriotic school in the union premises turns our attention to the ways in which the union has adapted the practices of traditional guilds to the contemporary scene and incorporated them into its organizational repertoire.\n\nThere are two other occasions which are of special interest in highlighting this process. The first is the Woodwork Carvers' Union", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208796, "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "226\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n8. The Hong's notices shall be posted at prominent places inside member's shop premises.\n\n9. When acting as a sales agent, the member should first place the consigned goods in storage. If the owner of the goods intends to transfer the stock to other companies or places, he will have to pay the goods' price at current market value plus storage and transportation fees in accordance with the company's sales regulation before such a transference takes place.\n\n10. Goods should be weighed in the presence of more than one worker, and the weight should be marked down by those present to avoid any mistake or omission. The goods should then be checked by the buyer himself.\n\n11. Goods are delivered on production of the consignors' vouchers. The consignee company bears no responsibility for any insufficiency, arrears, loss or omission. Nor is it responsible for any accidents.\n\n12. The buyer who purchases goods from any of the Hong's members should take over the goods as scheduled, or an additional sum will be charged as storage fees. He is also responsible for goods which deteriorate during storage. Under no circumstances should the buyer reduce the price or withdraw his purchase.\n\n13. An interest of $12.50 on every $1,000, i.e. 1.25%, is charged in money exchange.\n\n!r", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209230, "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-1981", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND KINSHIP TIES AMONG URBAN CHINESE FAMILIES IN HK\n\n119\n\nTable 6 Community Environment Compared With Previous Residence\n\n \n Aspects of Environment\n Better\n Same\n Worse\n Total\n No Response\n \n \n Groceries Department Stores\n 52.6%\n 27.0%\n 20.3%\n 99.9%\n (3)\n \n \n Neighbour\n 39.5%\n 51.3%\n 9.1%\n 99.9%\n (17)\n \n \n Security\n 76.7%\n 22.5%\n 0.7%\n 99.9%\n (3)\n \n \n Quietness\n 69.8%\n 13.2%\n 17.0%\n 100.0%\n (3)\n \n \n Air\n 93.1%\n 4.5%\n 2.4%\n 100.0%\n (1)\n \n \n Health-Care\n 49.9%\n 34.4%\n 15.7%\n 100.0%\n (13)\n \n \n \n 44.8%\n 30.0%\n 24.5%\n 100.0%\n (417)\n \n\nThe Oi Man resident interviewed was therefore a person whose after-work social life was closely tied to home, family and the neighbourhood. There should be little wonder that he saw more of his neighbours. But that did not displace the importance of \"close relatives\", for Oi Man families maintained contact with many of them.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. R.E. Mitchell, Family Life in Urban Hong Kong, (Taipei, 1972), p. 430.\n\n2. F.M. Wong, \"Family Change,\" in Chung Chi College, A Quarter Century of Hong Kong, (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1977), pp. 47-68. Citation from p.64.\n\n3. D. Podmore and D. Chaney, \"Family Norms in a Rapidly Changing Society: Hong Kong,\" Journal of Marriage and the Family, 36(1974), pp. 400-407. Citation from p.405.\n\n4. Statisticians at the Research and Statistics Section at the Housing Department were most helpful in the sampling process. Mr. M.K. Cheung, Senior Statistician, and Mr. Dominic Leung, are particularly to be thanked. The samples were formed by systematically selecting 1 in 12 tenant-households.\n\n5. See the following: John H. Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, (Cambridge University Press, 1969); M. Young and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964).\n\n6. Angela K.S. Kan, \"A Study of Neighbourly Interaction in Public Housing: The Case of Hong Kong,\" in Luke S. Wong (ed.) Housing in Hong Kong: A Multi-Disciplinary Study, (Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books, 1978), pp. 160-182.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209265, "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-1981", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "154\n\nWEI PEH-T'I\n\nthe Chinese point of view, Juan Yuan reported Barrowcliff as the guilty party in his memorial to the Emperor dated 12 December 1820. It was at this time that he wrote the secret memorial proposing strong measures to control the British, and receiving in return instructions from the Emperor to hold to a more moderate line.**\n\nPerhaps Juan Yuan only displayed the willingness to make the best of a situation in the Barrowcliff case, the kind of co-operative spirit that led the British to refer to him as a “man of singular moderation and wisdom”35 only because no opium was involved. The next major crisis over jurisdiction took place not quite a year later. By then, the new Emperor had proclaimed a policy to strengthen the law prohibiting importation of opium and exportation of silver. In October 1821, Terranova, an Italian seaman serving on an American ship, the Emily, accidentally killed a Chinese boat woman. He was sacrificed to Chinese justice in order to prevent the Canton government from investigating further into the cargo of opium that was on various foreign ships in port at that time. This is a well-known case in the West and is often cited as an example of the barbarity of Chinese justice. Terranova, who had been turned over to Chinese officials, was strangled to death as punishment for having taken a life.\n\nThe incident arose when on 29 September, a boat woman, Kuo-Liang shih (surnamed Kao née Liang), who spoke \"pidgin\", sculled her sampan to the Emily, peddling fruit. Terranova, leaning against the railing of the ship above her, lowered her five copper cash in a basket. Not satisfied with the number of oranges and bananas he had been given by the woman, he negotiated further. Somehow, the argument became heated, ending with Terranova throwing a pottery jar at the woman, hitting her on the head, cracking her skull, causing her to fall into the water, and resulting in her death. This was a serious matter, for, in addition to murder, there were other violations. Terranova, as a foreigner, was buying goods from a Chinese directly without going through the regular channel of the hong merchants. The security merchant of the Emily was Exchin, but, as in other serious cases over jurisdiction, Puiqua, as head of the hong merchants, was also involved.\n\nJuan Yüan's investigations showed that the act of the jar striking Kuo-Liang shih on the head had been witnessed by another woman, Ch'en-Li shih, who had shouted for help. A worker for the Canton customs, Yeh Hsia, in a boat nearby, attempted a rescue, but failed. The body of the dead woman was not pulled out of the water until her husband arrived at the scene of the accident. The injury on the woman's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209395, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "30\n\nIkels, Charlotte\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\n1983 Personal Communication.\n\nJones, John F., K. F. Ho, B. Lo Chau, M. C. Lam, and B. H. Mok\n\n1978 Neighborhood Associations in a New Town: The Mutual Aid Committees in Shatin. Social Research Centre, Occasional Paper No. 76. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nScott, Janet Lee\n\n1980 \"Action and Meaning: Women's Participation in the Mutual Aid Committees, Kowloon.\" Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1980.\n\nSouth China Morning Post (Hong Kong)\n\n\"A Horrifying Crime Wave.\" 6 January 1977, p. 2.\n\n\"Little Mutual Aid in Kim Shin Lane.\" 7 January 1977, p. 1. \"Mutual Aid Committees to Disband.\" 8 May 1977, p. 10. \"Grandpa Ready to Fight.\" 7 August 1977, p. 6.\n\n\"Ding Blasts CDO 'Sham'.\" 17 April 1978, p. 1.\n\n\"MAC Officials Frustrated, Worker Claims.\" 22 April 1978, p. 6. \"Why Residents Are Unhappy about MACs.\" 23 April 1978, p. 7.\n\nWong, Aline K.\n\n1972 The Kaifong Associations and the Society of Hong Kong. Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, Vol. 43. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service.\n\nYu, Jeffrey, Pui-man\n\n1976 \"The Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign. An Evaluation.\" M.A. thesis, Stanford University, 1967.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "60\n\n(f) Finally, in entering business or commerce, a man will frequently assume yet another name, “pit tsz” (筆子), for purposes of business only.\n\n(g) Apart from the milk name, proper name and school name, a girl will at marriage assume her husband's clan name in front of her own, e.g. HO Fung Ling (何鳳玲), on marrying TANG Man Lin (鄧文連), becomes TANG HO Fung Ling (鄧何鳳玲).\n\n(h) The reluctance of married women to reveal their full maiden name often leads them to leave off their final name and instead to add the suffix \"shi” (氏).\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The notes were later amended and in this amended form were put on a file (Ref1/477/54) which is now in the Public Records Office. The notes as given here represent the original form, with footnotes, introduction and minor amendments by the author (Hon. Ed.).\n\n* Wills, of whatever sort, were, whatever the legal position, very rare among New Territories villagers. I remember only one, of a wealthy Cantonese landowner.\n\n* I met such a case in Tai Po where the wife, fortunately, did not contest the husband's claim that she was not a virgin.\n\n* I must have come across up to half a dozen cases of sam p'o tsai, including two or three disputes where the girl refused to marry her intended groom. The groom's family did not attempt to force marriage, but were concerned about a formal separation. The groom's family had of course for some time received the free use of the girl's services as a household worker, and so could not validly demand compensation from the girl's natural parents. A sam p'o tsai is quite different to a mui tsai who was to all intents and purposes a slave girl. (Mui tsai were banned in Hong Kong before World War II.)\n\n* Up till the 1950's, huet chong graves were normally left untouched for 5 years, this being the period needed for bodies to decompose completely. But, from the 1950's onwards, bodies took longer to decompose, and 7 years is now the standard time. I know this, because from 1958-60 I was in the Urban Services Department in charge of disposal of the dead. I was also in the Urban Services Department from 1968-71, when again I was connected with this aspect. In those days, the coffin section at Wo Hop Shek cemetery used to be cleared every 5 years, but there were so many unfit graves that this period was extended to 7 years. The need for the longer period arose apparently from the wider use of antibiotics and other drugs which seem to have the effect of preserving bodies and which were then coming into much greater use.\n\nSee in general on Burial Customs the author's Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong, journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 1, 1960, pp 115-124.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209902, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "139\n\n50 workers and only 0.3% had 500 workers or more at that time. Lastly, these mills were among the most highly mechanized factories in Hong Kong. In the 1970's, the spindle to worker ratio in this industry had exceeded 40.\n\nMost of the data on the cotton spinners were obtained by face-to-face interviews. I attempted to interview two directors—the chief executive who held the title of chairman or managing director, and the director with the second largest share-holding as shown in the company records from each of the thirty-two mills. Forty interviews were completed and twenty-three mills were covered.\n\n'Forced choice' questionnaire items were used to assess the business attitudes of my respondents. Some of these items were developed by Nichols in his study of British businessmen (1969). I borrowed them for comparative purposes. As Nichols has restricted his attention to just one aspect of business ideology, namely the businessman's conception of social responsibility, I have added other items to cover a broader range of themes. This forced choice method differs from two other major approaches in the study of business ideology. The research of Bendix represents the historical, cross-cultural approach (1954; 1956; 1959). It is legitimate for him to eschew the use of questionnaires as he is primarily concerned with what Karl Mannheim calls the 'total conception of ideology' (1936: 49-53). He wants to assess the ethos of an entire age and society with special reference to the authority relationship between employers and workers. The stress is on the ideology about industrial activities, not the ideology of industrialists. He considers the ideas of theorists who were not businessmen themselves as he is concerned with broad ideological drifts, not individual or group beliefs. The second approach, which may be called an elitist approach (Sutton et al. 1956; Heilbroner, 1964; Christ, 1970; Seider, 1974), is closer to the forced choice method in that both are dealing with 'particular conceptions of ideology' or the attitudes of a specific sector in society. Beyond this similarity, however, the elitist approach has its focus on the public statements of prominent businessmen. The contents of the speeches or writings of the 'industrial statesmen' are analysed with various degrees of rigour. Such a focus has", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210333, "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": 304, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "283\n\n11\n\nMurrow, Stephenson & Co. (AAR1-MIMO). He seized every chance to gain advantage and became rich. He was respected by the Chinese as well as by the foreigners. Later, he established the Heng Ch'ang (97) fuel company (R) by himself. At his suggestion, three steamers, the Russell (M), the Shamrock (A), and the Merry (4), began running between Hong Kong and Macao. Then he opened a Yü-sheng (4) Store (19) and a Yu-cheng (M = Esing) Bakery. The businesses expanded daily. Yu-cheng was a Bakery using western methods to produce the finest quality goods. Its products supplied all the water and land (residents) of Hong Kong.\n\nBecause he had too many workers, he had no time to check minute details. One day, through carelessness, a worker dropped some odd things (*) into the flour. When the westerners bought and ate the bread, they all felt sick and fainted. At that time, because the French and British had attacked Canton in 1856, the Chinese Government was preparing to declare war on the French and the British. Thus, the British suspected that he was commanded by the Chinese Government to poison the British, and prepared to prosecute him. However, because of his truth and honesty, he was soon released.\n\nBecause of this unhappy incident, he went back to Macao and opened a Hang-tai (48) store to sell western goods. He lived as if nothing had happened. Four years after, in 1860, when the French captured the six prefectures of Vietnam, a French lieutenant came to Macao and met him. The lieutenant made a contract with him for building several dozen junks (##). In 1862, when the construction was completed, he went personally to deliver the junks to the French in Vietnam.\n\nBecause of his loyalty and honesty, the French Governor (iti) requested him to do business in Vietnam. Thus, he stayed in Vietnam and travelled around the country. He saw that the country was rather poor, and that the houses were all made of mat and grass. He then bought machines and established four brick-kilns, (Yuan-heng (V), Li-cheng (i), Chien-mei (#), and Kun-mei (1)), and employed workers to make bricks and tiles for building houses.\n\nThe country soon became prosperous and populated, and merchants started to congregate in the country. There were 200 Hainan Chinese who sailed directly to Vietnam at that time. Because they did not know the French law, they were arrested and accused as pirates. Before they were all sent to be shot, he personally exerted himself in their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210368, "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": 339, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "318\n\nDIOCESAN BOYS SCHOOL SEVENTY YEARS AGO\n\nW.J. HOWARD*I\n\nFor over half a century St John's Cathedral has been untroubled by the attendance of the boys of the Church of England's Diocesan Boys' School. During this long period the silence has been broken only once by the boys, when a memorial service was held at the Cathedral on 11 December 1979 in honour of the late Rev. George Samuel Zimmern, M.A. (Oxon), who was an old boy, a chaplain of the Cathedral, a headmaster of the school, a magistrate, a barrister-at-law and a social worker. George died in Bristol, England, in November 1979, aged 75. During the service the school's string band played \"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring\", one of George's favourite anthems. The entire school came over from Kowloon to attend and the Cathedral was filled to overflowing.\n\nExcept on this one occasion the Cathedral's silence has remained unbroken by the boys. But in my time, as a member of the school's matriculation class of 1919, I can recall vividly St John's Cathedral ringing with the mirthful sounds of myriads of boys Sunday after Sunday. That was before the school was removed from Hong Kong to Kowloon.\n\nThe school at that time was a puritanical one. Discipline was strict. As boarders we had to attend numerous church services. The senior boys had first to attend Communion at St John's at 6.50 a.m. every Sunday morning. This entailed a long walk from the school, which was then situated in Bonham Road at its junction with Eastern Street. This entailed rising before the normal reveille bell sounded at 6 a.m. It was usually the Rev. W.T. Featherstone, M.A. (Oxon), who was headmaster of the school, who officiated at that early morning service. He had a melodious voice which was well suited to the sung Eucharist.\n\nOn returning to school after communion, all the boys including the very young ones had to march to St Peter's Church in\n\n* See plate 48.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210520, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "108\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nintelligent and a willing worker. With about four years' village schooling as a boy in China behind him, he was better educated than most Kau Sai fishermen at the time. Nevertheless, he remained a foki, unmarried and without prospects. This was largely because he had no kinsmen of any kind, all having been lost to him during the Japanese occupation of Kwangtung and Hong Kong. By birth a land child, he had taken to work on fishing boats faute de mieux when he found himself alone in the world at the age of about 16. Now, a dozen or so years later, he was indistinguishably a boat man. His earnings were too small to make it possible for him to marry, unless someone else would put up the bride-price for him (a most unlikely occurrence, though not unknown), and although he could have saved enough to buy at least a sampan of his own, he preferred the freedom from responsibility of a hired man's life on his employer's boat, with all found and a chance to supplement his earnings every now and again.\n\nIn this, he but followed the pattern of all the other unmarried fokis: a married man liked to have his own boat, however small, or a woman alone might also own her sampan; unmarried men seldom, if ever, did so. Only 3 of the 31 fokis employed in Kau Sai in 1953 owned small boats of their own. All were married men over thirty years of age with more than one child. Two of these boats were small sampans, normally acting as houseboats for the man's wife and two or three young children, occasionally journeying to Sai Kung, where the boat population was much larger, or to one of the local Boat Peoples' festivals, when short-haul water transport was in demand to make a small income from ferrying passengers. The third boat, with a somewhat larger complement, including the owner's two adult brothers as well as his wife and children, acted as a hand liner catching smallish quantities of good-quality fish and selling them direct to local consumers or tea-houses in Sai Kung. Both the adult men on this boat were unmarried and had previously worked as fokis on other men's boats. They were prepared to do so again if their present experiment failed. Unfortunately, on my return to Kau Sai in 1959, I found they had moved away, and I have no further record of their story. The other 3 married fokis in Kau Sai in 1953 had their wives living with them on their employers' boats.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210736, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "70\n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU\n\nBy 1884 all the land available for the extension of the Gardens had been completed.\n\n\"The exceptionally sterile nature of the soil of this barren rock, the exposed aspect of the Gardens and absence of water for artificial watering in the dry season, necessitate the expenditure of a great deal of thought, time, and means than is usually experienced in establishments of this kind.\"\n\nAt least one specimen of each kind of tree or shrub by now carried a label and an exchange of plants and seeds was established with more than 40 organisations. On the cultural side the Annual Flower Show had been organized since 1872 and there was a weekly musical performance by the Regimental Band. Plants were also on sale to the public.\n\nFord had become a tireless worker in establishing a scientific approach to Hong Kong's flora and he was undoubtedly the person to whom credit must be given in establishing, describing and preserving a wide variety of botanical finds both in Hongkong and in China as well as further afield in the Island of Taiwan. He was deeply committed to the more economic aspects of Botany and introduced a wide variety of economically important exotic plants to the area. He also had an abiding interest in forestry and was one of the first people to realise the importance of forest trees as objects of beauty as well as instruments to prevent further soil erosion and thus preserve what little remained of the barren soil of the island.\n\nIn 1886 Ford explains how expenditure had outstripped estimates but sensibly sugars the unpalatable pill:\n\n\"The actual revenue for this year will be at least $200,000 in excess of the estimated revenue. Our plantations are thriving splendidly. I am planting very extensively true Camphor trees which will be, I estimate, most valuable to the Colony in due time. I planted many thousands last year and they have all done amazingly well.\n\nIn 1887 (July 26th) he is again complaining about the lack of support from within the Government but knowing he has the tacit support of Governor he states philosophically:\n\n¦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211363, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "55\n\nDr. Hickling suggested that the space required for each worker should be put at twenty square feet floor area. This suggestion was accepted. Another minor change was made by eliminating the word \"overtime\" in reference to work after 6 p.m.\n\n6\n\nThe editor of the Daily Press, in commenting on the proposals of the Sanitary Board, reviewed some of the steps which had led up to them: Miss Pitts' talk, followed by Mr. Bowley's statements at the meeting of the Church of England Men's Society. Their efforts were seen as examples of the good results \"that may flow from the discussion of matters of public concern by private individuals, and should encourage interest in local affairs\". The editor was confident the proposal would appeal to British pride, \"For every Briton in Hong Kong whose pride of race is based upon his country's efforts on behalf of humanity must hope that the resolutions passed by the Sanitary Board will be endorsed by the Legislative Council\". He believed that the enlightened members of the Chinese community would have no objections to them, as, in his opinion, they were extremely modest and were submitted in the interests of public health.\n\nThe editor recognised that the root of the problem lay in the Colony's educational efforts, but he contended that no matter how many schools were provided, there would not be enough “unless we are willing to educate the whole of South China\". A policy of unrestricted immigration made it impossible to make school attendance either compulsory or free.\n\nThe editor restated the views of Mr. Alabaster that it was better for the children to accompany their parents to work, so long as their little bodies are not strained beyond their endurance, as they would thus be both physically and morally better off than left to their own devices, and their earnings provided them with more food than they otherwise would have. He did advocate that some restriction be placed on the load they carried, as this responsibility could not be left to the parents' discretion.\n\nCase of Child Labour before the Magistrate\n\nApril 1920\n\nThe principles in the agitation for child labour laws had been a missionary and a solicitor, but in April 1920 a doctor publicly took up", "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": 211717, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "107\n\nas it is just an imitation of the fragrant joss stick. Occasionally, cypresswood or rosewood powder is added to the mixture. Yet, one thing peculiar to cypress wood and rosewood is that the two never constitute a basic raw material in production of joss sticks. Very often, a chemically produced perfume of the scent Jasmine or Rose is added onto the outer coat of these joss sticks (see Table 2).\n\nRAW MATERIALS\n\nTable 2 Incense Powder Used\n\n \n NUMBER OF FACTORIES\n FRAGRANT INCENSE WOOD\n \n \n 15\n Aloewood\n \n \n 51\n Sandalwood\n \n \n 6\n \n \n \n 4\n Benzoin\n \n \n 9\n Lign-aloe-wood\n \n \n 20\n Cypress Wood\n \n \n 15\n Sawdust\n \n \n 44\n Artificial Perfume\n \n \n \n COLOUR POWDER\n \n \n COLOUR POWDER\n \n \n\nSource: Fieldwork, Hong Kong, 1987.\n\nc) Manufacturing Processes\n\nThe primary basis of classification of incense products is the method of production. There are four ways by which incense products can be manufactured, namely the Lin-hsiang Method, the Nuo-hsiang Method, Moulding and Winding.\n\nLin-hsiang Method (#7)\n\nLin-hsiang is a method of mass production by which incense sticks are produced bundle by bundle. The joss stick worker first mixes the different incense powders in the correct proportion. There are more or less six types of powder mixed together in the manufacture of each coat of the joss sticks. The most basic one is a glutinous incense powder, or shih-fên (Zī). This is a kind of powder obtained from a species of tree called Litsea glutinosa. This powder has the characteristics of being sticky when wet so it is used to make the fragrant incense powder adhere to the bamboo canes. The shih-fên so produced is divided into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211718, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "108\n\ntwo types: shih-ch'ing (literally meaning “dark green\"), which is less sticky and thus is used in lesser amount when higher grades of joss sticks are produced; and shang-shin, meaning superior shih-ch'ing, which is more adhesive and is indispensable in the production of Ch'ên-hsiung and Tan-hsiang (see Table 3).\n\nTable 3 Glutinous Incense Wood Used\n\n \n NUMBER OF FACTORIES\n RAW MATERIALS\n GLUTINOUS INCENSE WOOD\n \n \n 49\n \n \n \n \n 44\n China Shih-ch'ing\n \n \n \n 6\n China Shang-shih\n \n \n \n \n Vietnam Shih-fen\n \n \n \n Source: Fieldworks, Hong Kong, 1987.\n \n\nFor the fragrant incense powder, a number of varieties from different species and different parts of the tree would be mixed together according to a special formula unique to each factory. It is often impossible for the workers to tell the exact quantity of each component as the accuracy of proportion is felt by experienced hands rather than measured objectively or scientifically. However, as a general rule, one unit of the glutinous incense powder is mixed with two units of fragrant incense powder. Too little of the glutinous powder and the mixture will not adhere, too little fragrant powder and the mixture will be too sticky and the odour too dull. Incense powder is first measured by a dust pan and sieved. Occasionally, some water is added to the powder so that the atmosphere will not be too dusty when the different kinds of powder are mixed. Mixing is done by bare hands and a piece of wood is needed to press the incense powder to facilitate the mixing.\n\nAfter preparing the mixture, the joss stick worker picks up a bundle of bamboo canes and rejects the sticks which bend, since they are too slender for use. Then the bundle of sticks is dipped into a bucket of water lying next to the worker, leaving three inches for the handle of the sticks. The worker then twists the sticks into a rosette, circling to the left. This expands the gap between each wetted end and eases the adherence of incense powder onto the bamboo sticks. These ends are pushed into the pile of prepared incense powder with the left hand of the worker. At the same time, his right hand is busy spreading the incense powder over the sticks to ensure that even the top of the rosette is well coated with incense. Then the dry ends of the bundle are tapped on the table to knock", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211720, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "110 \n\nand colour powder. The colour powder is either mei-hong-fên (rose red powder, *) which is red in colour, or chiai-huang-fên (mustard yellow powder), which is yellow in colour. As these joss sticks are coated only five times, they are called Hsiang-ts'ai, literally meaning \"little joss sticks\" (f). \n\nBesides these, some thickly coated joss sticks are also produced. Joss sticks of lengths 9 ts'un, 1 ch'ih 2 ts'un and 1 ch'ih 5 ts'un are sometimes wrapped with seven coats of incense powder and are called Ta-hsiang (large joss stick, ). For such lengths sawdust is often used in lieu of fragrant incense powder, and the joss sticks produced are called \"longevity joss sticks” (ch'ang-shou hsiang, EBA). \n\nThe prepared joss sticks are then collected and spread under the sun for drying. This process is best accomplished under the sun, as the sunlight, in evaporating the water content of the incense powder, keeps the scent and the colour of the sticks. Drying takes 5-6 hours under bright sunlight and 8-9 hours on cloudy days. Halfway through the drying process, an odd-job man will collect the joss sticks and dye the handles of the joss sticks with red paint. The dyed sticks are then spread out once again under the sun for drying. Finally, quality control is done by the joss stick worker so that joss sticks which are crooked, broken or stuck together are rejected. \n\nNuo-hsiang Method () \n\nThe second method by which joss sticks are fabricated is by the Nuo-hsiang method, that is, rubbing against a wooden slab. In contrast to Lin-hsiang, by which joss sticks are mass produced, manufacture of joss sticks by the Nuo-hsiang method requires individual attention to each stick. Moreover, the dyeing process for Nuo-hsiang is done before any of the manufacturing processes, unlike in the Lin-hsiang method. The scrutiny of the bamboo canes is also stricter since those bamboo canes which are flattened or which are not uniform in their width cannot be rubbed under the wooden slab. Meanwhile, glutinous incense powder and fragrant incense powder are mixed with water and kneaded to form a dough. These joss sticks are made by rubbing the incense paste onto the surface of a bamboo cane, then colour powder is rubbed onto the outer surface. A slab is used to smooth over the roughness.* In contrast to the lin-hsiang method, by which several coats of incense powder are put onto the sticks in several stages, joss sticks manufactured by Nuo-\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212255, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 197, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "174\n\nmost important part is to fix a piece of ritualistic red sash to the black hat which is to be worn by the Deity of Fortune. Often a pair of gem fu TE (golden flower), which are made of thin metallic foil and used for decorating a deity's shrine, is placed on both sides of the hat, and sometimes the pair of \"wings\" on the hat are turned upright to imitate the hat worn by the deity Zung Kwae who is well known for his exorcistic power. In either case, the hat's peculiar features illustrate that the one who wears it is a deity and not a mortal. Once the hat is ready, troupe members should hide themselves and follow the taboo in an absolute manner.\n\nAfter putting on the appropriate costume, the actor who plays the Deity of Fortune paints his face black with only some white spots, and puts on the mock black beard. Another actor who plays the White Tiger dresses in the tiger costume, and gets the mask but does not put it on until he has to enter the stage. The actors then quietly offer incense at the shrine of the deity Wa Gwong #, who is the major patron of the Cantonese operatic profession. Often incense, fruit and meat are also offered at the shrines of the other patron deities of the numbers of the troupe, which are also placed on the same altar alongside the shrine of Wa Gwong. When the chosen time is approaching, the two actors wait behind the Tiger Gate at stage right. One of the backstage workers hands over the wooden staff to the actor who plays the Deity of Fortune. A string of firecrackers has already been tied to the end of the staff. Holding a joss candle, the worker stands close to the Deity of Fortune and is ready to light the firecrackers when the time comes.\n\nThe Performance of the White Tiger Ritual\n\nThe complete White Tiger ritual is described below and the key episodes are highlighted.\n\n1. With the lighting of the firecrackers and the playing of the gong, cymbals, drum and woodblocks, the Deity of Fortune holds the wooden staff upright, enters the stage from stage right, runs straight across the stage, enters the backstage, runs through the corridor at backstage right behind the backdrop and immediately re-appears onstage.\n\n2. After making a posture, known as zat ga loeng soeng (扎架亮相)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212384, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 326, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "303\n\nmiddle for the upper part of the grinder to turn on.\n\nThey then filled the baskets with a kind of very fine earth called \"Wong Nei\" (黃泥) (which contains no sand grains) which was available only in some places like Au Tau (凹頭) in Yuen Long. Kei Lun Wai (雞卵圍) in Tuen Mun and Pak Fan Chin (白粉田) in Lam Tsuen. They crushed and tamped the earth with wooden poles until the basket was packed. On the surface of the earth they then drew some geometrical patterns according to which the grinder teeth (*) would be placed. The grinder teeth were made of bamboo strips two to three inches long and 2/3 inch wide. These were made from a different type of bamboo. The bamboo teeth were inserted vertically into the earth with a wooden hammer according to the pattern drawn on the earth surface. When all the bamboo teeth were fixed side by side with one another into the earth, the worker had to make sure that there was no room for the teeth to move. If the teeth still had room to move, they either set more teeth into the earth or filled the grinder with very fine silt and packed it with the wooden hammer again until the teeth stayed very firm. They usually finished the work of the lower part of the husk remover first and then started work for its upper part. A hole would be reserved in the middle to accommodate the axis. It took about three days' time of two skilled workers to produce a husk-grinder.*\n\nRiden Sung Chi-Pui\n\nTHE BRITISH MERCHANTMAN “NORNA”\n\nOn the 24th of April 1862, the Hong Kong China Mail reported that the sailing barque Norna had been wrecked on an uninhabited atoll in the Caroline Islands. The facts surrounding the rescue of her crew highlight the tenacity and application of the naval authorities of the China Station in Hong Kong.\n\nThe Norna was built in Sunderland in 1851 and, although no complete details of her exist today, it is known that she was barque rigged and measured 460 tons gross. Her length was about 100 feet.\n\n* See Plates 10-13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213043, "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-1993", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "91\n\nmen who would accept such a position.\n\nIn like manner the students, who have certain duties assigned to them in the clinical ward of the hospitals, would object to taking orders from a lady doctor.\n\nDr. Mitchell continued that Dr. Ho Kai volunteered the information that the Chinese subscribers would not sanction any disturbance of the present superintendency of the wards, making it very clear that he had not consulted Dr. Ho Kai on ‘our little internal difficulty’. General medicine was thereby closed to the lady doctor, but a concession was made: she was allowed two clinic sessions per week for women and children at the Nethersole Hospital. With this, Dr. Mitchell trusted that Mr. Cousins would ‘not be troubled with any further complaints from this quarter’.\n\nAlthough in Britain women doctors had won the battle to train in general medicine, the restriction in role in Hong Kong was defined in terms culturally appropriate to Chinese patients and was exacerbated by the persistent patriarchal attitudes of Dr. Sibree's male colleagues. In 1908, Dr. Gibson suggested that if Dr. Sibree wanted to expand her work, then she could set up a ‘sanitarium for consumptives, convalescent home, home for incurables,’ and noted that he had ‘no desire to give up work which has been my sphere for the past ten years’. This statement powerfully differentiates the female doctor's role as caring for the chronically ill, and the male's as intervention by surgery, consistent with Broom's view of ‘masculine medicine’.\n\nMr. Cousins continued to be troubled by Dr. Sibree's dissatisfaction with her role in Hong Kong, even when Mr. Pearce asserted the support of the District Committee for their lady doctor: ‘Dr. Sibree must at all costs be protected in her rights and privileges as a co-worker with us all’. One suspects that open communication with Dr. Gibson was difficult, leading Dr. Sibree to ask for intercession from London through private correspondence, both personally and by way of her father. Mr. Pearce in October, 1906, commented that\n\nI shall fully and fearlessly act up to my own sense of duty as respects Dr. Gibson. The state of his health and the extraordinary excitement and agitation to which he seemed prone when his will was crossed by colleagues in the mission are the only excuses I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213969, "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-1997", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "Africa and South-east Asia to be suspicious of the pretensions of local leaders whose personal interests were not always easily identifiable with those of the common man—or, in their new surroundings, the worker in the plastics factory and his family. They had been conditioned by British policy and practice elsewhere to accept a goal of parliamentary democracy and self-determination as the norm; and while admitting that Hong Kong was, in the other cant phrase, “unique,” they saw no reason for it to be utterly different in ethos.\n\nSomeone who appreciated the subtle differences within colonies and between their officials was the last Colonial Service Governor, Sir David Clive Crosbie Trench GCMG MC. Trench had started his service in the Western Pacific, where as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands he had been a wartime \"coastwatcher\" in the mountains, reporting on Japanese activity, and had earned a military decoration during the Allies' reoccupation. He was one of the few Administrative Officers to benefit from the old Colonial Office's unspoken \"seven year rule.\" Under this, those who had spent that length of time in the supposedly enervating climate and mores of the Pacific should be sent to more politically and mentally bracing parts of the empire, the better to come back refreshed when more senior (determined Resident Commissioners in the Western Pacific, who thought seven years only just enough to train their juniors in the proper ways, usually managed to circumvent this best-laid plan.) Trench came to Hong Kong after the war, where he acquired a strong and popular reputation, notably in the Labour Department, as reorganiser of the Fire Brigade and as Deputy Colonial Secretary (DCS). It was no surprise when he went back to the Western Pacific as High Commissioner; there he presided over the creation for the egalitarian Melanesian society in the Solomon Islands of a novel democratic form of government based, via a constitution already adapted for Ceylon, on the pre-war London County Council, with committees instead of ministers (some of whose chairmen, however, inevitably assumed ministerial pretensions.) After three years, he returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1964.\n\nBefore he had left, Trench had naturally always shown greater sympathy with and understanding of the \"interlopers,\" as the aforesaid subset was vulgarly known, than did some of his senior colleagues. Although relations with a governor were inevitably more remote than those with a senior secretariat officer had been, he contrived not to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214408, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 266, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "232\n\nnext morning the case came before our enlightened Assistant Magistrate, who with the discretion and sense of justice characteristic of him, instead of incarcerating the defendant for ten days on bread and water, recommended settling the matter amicably and hinted at five dollars being a satisfactory recompense to the plaintiff; but whether the defendant followed this advice or not - I have not been informed. (The China Mail, No 558, the 25 Oct. 1855).\n\nHong Kong is not actually a place of trade with China, but merchants and agents trading in Canton, in Shanghai and in other Chinese ports, which are open to Europeans, live here. That is why the local anchorage (harbour) is very busy: during the whole course of my two month stay, there were always up to sixty or more merchant vessels there, one or two changing every day. The grocery and chandlery trade is all in the hands of the Chinese. With the exception of two or three large stores designated strictly for incoming vessels and filled with all that is necessary for the needs and even some whims of the seamen, all the rest belong to Chinese. The richest Chinese merchant is extremely temperate in his way of life: a few bowls of rice make up his main food, he is clothed in calico or linen - unpretentiously; and that is why even when selling things he is satisfied with low returns; he even sells European things cheaper, than the European, who needs greater profits for his table, his attire and his abode.\n\nPiece payment is, perhaps, nowhere in the world as cheap as in China. For this reason all their crafted goods are particularly well finished, even display signs of overwork; but elegance perhaps somehow slips through accidentally, in spite of the will of the worker. And indeed for an object to be sold well, it is essential, that it displays in itself signs of much labour spent on it. Whereas we, on looking at an object, say: “how lovely! how exquisite!\" the best praise for a Chinese is yu gup fu i.e. a lot of time and work has gone into this! And so in all these curio shops you find objects carved out of ivory: spheres revolving one in another, chess pieces, fans etc., also lacquer boxes, decorated with the finest of designs. This is even more noticeable in their picture shops, of which there are up to five in Canton, if not more. With them, painting is reduced to the level of a craft, or better put does not rise to the level of an art. And certainly, the technical side of it almost reaches perfection: the eye can barely follow the brushes, placed between all the fingers of the hand, and the way, one after the other, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214409, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "233\n\nappear now next to the thumb, tip to painting, now return to their place back in the reverse position. Generally speaking the Chinese are very good copiers. I saw a copy of Raphael's Madonna in a reduced size, brought from Berlin and another made from it here by a Chinese: it's difficult to distinguish one from the other. They themselves only paint flowers and insects well, copying each little leaf of a flower, each little butterfly's wing with such thoroughness, that they seem to be glued on to the paper. Much beauty is brought to these drawings by the paper itself which is like fine velvet and which the English call rice-paper but which is actually made from the pith of a plant belonging to the family araliacea and known in Chinese as den-tsao i.e. the lamp plant because lamps are made from its thin stems. It is said to grow exclusively on the island of Formosa, at least it is only there that they cultivate it and make paper from it. Paper used primarily for making artificial flowers.\n\nThat same ability of the Chinese - to be satisfied with little together with their imitativeness results in that all artisans and workers here, as well as all household servants - are of their number. A Chinese tailor will guilelessly offer you to chose from a fashion picture of three to four years earlier; a Chinese stone-mason builds magnificent houses according to European plans. But for whatever kind of work it might be it is easier to find a Chinese man than a Chinese woman; and that is why positions which are elsewhere occupied by female servants are here mainly occupied by men. And if it is strange to see a footman in a long tunic and with a long plait by the table, then it is stranger still, as is often the case, to see a similar Chinese in the role of a children's nanny.\n\nIn Hong Kong I had the opportunity of seeing for the first time the drying of tea; and although it was not the preparation of tea from fresh leaves, but the drying of tea that had become slightly damp, the process is nevertheless in essence the same. Cauldrons, in the form of hemispheres, are fixed into the hearth at an incline: their back part is raised sufficiently to allow the plane of the opening to make an angle of up to 50° with the horizontal. A worker, standing before each such cauldron continuously stirs the tea placed there with his hand always in one direction, thus imparting to it a circular motion until, with the fire burning under the cauldron the tea dries as required.\n\nTalking of tea, it would be opportune to mention an incident which occurred while I was in Hong Kong. A vessel carrying tea sank; the cargo was salvaged and sold at public auction. The dealer-speculator, who bought it, took", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215568, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 345, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "295\n\nof small, mostly single-storey buildings, such as quarters, as well as paved areas which drained into channels, gullies, and pipes. These led into tanks both above and below ground.34 A record was kept and a plan for the use of water. Following Hong Kong custom, water was boiled before being used for drinking.\n\nDuring an especially dry period, after storage tanks became empty, they were cleaned and limed. Orders used to be posted in the look-out room to this effect. To reduce requirements, salt water was pumped up from the sea for flushing toilets. It is understood that on one occasion, a building worker who had gone to the island to carry out repairs was caught in the nick of time as he stood behind a building about to relieve himself into a gully. Had he done so, the fresh-water supply system would have been contaminated.\n\nUp to the 1970s, Hong Kong as a whole was generally short of water and, together with rainfall, it was a common topic at cocktail parties. For several months in 1963, and again in parts of July and August 1967, water for the average household was on tap for only four hours once every four days. Water shortages were part of every Hong Kong resident's lifestyle in those times and for no one more so than the keepers on Waglan. There, during especially dry periods, water had to be brought in by tanker.\n\nManpower\n\nOver the years, lengths of tours of duty varied. After World War One, keepers, it is understood, spent one month at a stretch on Waglan, which was followed by only one week's leave. Later, this arrangement was changed to one month on duty and two weeks' leave (Bruce; 1990, 6).\n\nIn an interview with the Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, the author was told that the establishment on Waglan comprised 1 Principal Lighthouse Keeper, 2 Lighthouse Keepers, 5 Attendants (who cut the grass and cleaned the windows, etc.) and 1 Cook. This made a total of 9.35 Figures have, of course, varied, off and on, over the years.\n\nIn the years leading up to 1989 (when Waglan was automated), one team would be on duty for one week. They would then be relieved\n\nPage 345\n\nPage 346", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216069, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 368, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "302\n\nso that I may die childless, as I am now old and not likely to have any more children. I had never met or seen Mason before he presented himself to me as being the United States Consular Marshal at Hankou, which was a lie, he being actually a Custom House Officer at Zhenjiang.'\n\nLet us try to unravel the sorry story of Mason and Mesny. It is involved and still has aspects which are difficult to fathom. We have a number of versions or parts of it available to us but will confine ourselves to three: Mason's own story, briefly described below, written some 30 odd years later after he had roamed the world as a vagrant worker; the letters from the Inspector General of the Imperial Customs, Sir Robert Hart; and Mesny's bitter accusation. Mason, according to Mesny, practically ruined him and certainly caused Mesny great personal problems as he explained in great detail in his Miscellany. It is difficult to fit these three pieces of jigsaw together as there are few elements in common; however, the basic story is there. Mason bought a large quantity of foreign arms, ammunition, and explosives with which to arm a rising against the Imperial government, and having been arrested in Shanghai, was tried, sentenced, gaoled, and finally deported. Mesny was called as a witness but was accused to his face by the Chinese Premier, Li Hongzhang, of being the chief or very senior in the anti-Imperialist bandit body, the Elder Brother Society. This led to Mesny being ostracised by Chinese officialdom and, as his be-all and end-all as a business go-between was his contacts with Chinese officials, his life quietly slipped downhill thereafter.\n\nAccording to records — ‘Charles Welsh Mason, a young Englishman, had joined the Imperial Maritime Customs in December 1887 and was sent to Zhenjiang, an important post but a minor port on the Yangzi, as 4th assistant B, where he joined the Gelao Hui and became involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government. In July of 1891, he took two months' leave and went to Hong Kong, where he purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition for the Society and arranged for it to be shipped to Shanghai and from there on to Zhenjiang. He also recruited men for the Society and bought a quantity of dynamite, which he carried with him to Shanghai, where he requested Commissioner Bredon of the Imperial Maritime Customs to allow it to be shipped on to Zhenjiang so that he, Mason, could uncover more of the Chinese rebels' plans. Bredon refused the \"sting\" and instructed Mason to report to Hart in Beijing. Instead, Mason took a river steamer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216428, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "137\n\nMost were mounted on Manchurian ponies, and were rough, brutal and, beyond the bounds of towns, unrestrained. Occasional bandit-suppression campaigns and schemes to tame or buy off thugs were only temporary checks. There were two generic names for bandits in Manchuria, one mainly reported across the south, was Red Beards, Hong Huzi (in the romanisation of the day - Hung Hutse) while the less well-known term for those across the north was Chunchuse. Red Beards included a mixture of seasonal bandits who came over to rob and pillage from Shandong. This mutated into the Red Beards, local criminal thugs, both individual groups and those part of a larger network, thieving as a way of life due to endemic poverty.\n\nAny act of brigandry in southern Manchuria was blamed on the Hong Huzi; hence, sketches in British illustrated journals of Chinese robbing the dead and dying on the field of battle all bore the caption naming the robbers as Hong Huzi.\n\nOne of the better-known Chinese \"brigands,\" a seasonal worker from Shandong, was Wang Delin.* By 1899 he had established a considerable following among Chinese workers in Manchuria opposed to Russian encroachment, and in 1903 he openly declared his opposition to both the Russians and the non-Chinese Qing dynasty. His band operated along the eastern part of the China Eastern Railway, attacking trains and Russian shipping on the rivers. His men had a code of conduct based on three rules:\n\nThey were forbidden to harass or harm Chinese\n\nThey should not kill captured Russians without reason\n\nAnd, they should assist the poor and helpless.\n\nHis band was typical of the gangs roaming Manchuria with their various motives, some simply thugs and robbers others political, but all were generically referred to as Hong Huzi.\n\nWesterners writing about their travels in Manchuria were not slow in providing valid reasons for their nickname. Harvey Howard in his Ten Weeks with Chinese Bandits [1927] explained that 'during the 18th and 19th centuries roving bands of unshaven, red-bearded Russians", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216515, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 274, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "226\n\nprints available from the first survey, some 85 photographs, with accompanying text, were included in Hong Kong: Going and Gone, published by the Branch in 1980. A reprint, using enhanced negatives from the first edition, is now being contemplated. The prints from Yaumatei helped identify locations of interest when a second photographic survey with the help of the Cathay Camera Club resulted in a later RAS publication, The Heart of the Metropolis: Yaumatei and its People which appeared in the late 1990s.\n\nIan's article on the new Hong Kong PRO (The Paper Chase Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong) was published in Vol. 14 of the Journal (1974), and is both informative and entertaining. Another useful essay, Facilities for Research in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong (Alan Birch, Y.C. Jao and Elizabeth Sinn [eds.]) appeared between pages 153-192 of Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies, published by the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong in 1984. Ian also produced an interesting Note on Lieutenant T.B. Collinson, Royal Engineers (later Major-General) who served in Hong Kong in the 1840s and was responsible for the early mapping and accurate sketching of the area. Some of Collinson's letters had survived through the philatelic interest of their covers, and Ian had somehow spotted them, but I am unclear as to whether the Note was published, or where.\n\nA humorous man, dry and contained in the Australian way, Ian was quick to see the funny side of any situation, and was a good raconteur. He made full use of these attributes in his article on the PRO, when he described what he styled 'the classic delusions about us [archivists].' One was that he 'should look like a cross between Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their old age, and that when not poring over old papers all day, he should be scouring cellars or attics for more documents, and 'making delighted chuckling sounds in my [his] throat like Ben Gunn discovering a cheese' when he lit upon a choice specimen. And I shall always recall his unbounded glee when he found (I think in the Far Eastern Economic Review, or else in a leading English daily) a reference to ‘a Sawn-off Damocles' instead of the famed 'Sword of'!\n\nIan was a skilful, extraordinarily patient worker in wood and metal, as well as a collector of Peking and also Afghan glass, the latter being Roman-like glass work found in the bazaars of Kabul (he had gone to Afghanistan in 1974 on a UNESCO consultancy).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]