[
    {
        "id": 205413,
        "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": 175,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "168\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nble for financing and managing these arrangements, and its leaders were not allowed to canvas outside their own Fong to obtain funds. The Hung Shing Temple, being the larger and older of the island's two temples, was the hub of these activities.26\n\nIV. ABERDEEN DOCKS\n\nWhilst passing through Aberdeen you should note the old Dry Docks a little to the west of the Post Office. One was built in 1863 but two years later (to quote from the Centenary Brochure of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Co., Ltd.):\n\n\"In 1865, the Company concluded negotiations with Mr. John Lamont for the purchase of his property at Aberdeen, comprising the Lamont Dock then in working order, and the Hope Dock then in course of construction, together with the Workshops, Machines, etc.\n\nThe Hope Dock was opened in June, 1867, by the then Governor of Hong Kong, Sir R. G. MacDonnell, and for a number of years was largely used for docking ships of Her Majesty's Navy and other large vessels.\n\nV. SHEK WAN POTTERY FIGURES AT THE TIN HAU TEMPLE, ABERDEEN.\n\nOn your way from the Ap Lei Chau ferry pier to the Resettlement Department Office in the Shek Pai Wan Estate (for tea), you should note the Tin Hau Temple on the left at the foot of Aberdeen Reservoir Road. This is an old temple which was given its last major repair in 1873. Any members who attended Professor Skinsnes' recent illustrated talk on Shek Wan Pottery should have a look at the roof decoration on the way. It gives the name of the firm who made it and is dated the equivalent of 1873.",
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    {
        "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",
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    {
        "id": 207558,
        "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": 326,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "318\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\neverlasting as the Southern Mountain (a classical allusion symbolizing the “realm of longevity”). Providence has showered blessings of prosperity upon the family and bestowed her posterity with divine qualities. Here are gathered the young and the old to offer her their greetings and celebrations. May she live long like the evergreen pine-trees. Her descendants, who devote themselves to academic studies or engage in husbandry, have come forth with their fervent blessings of the \"Nine Similes\" [a psalm from the Book of Poetry].* Your mother, sitting in the North Hall, is presented with auspicious peaches [the \"fruit of longevity\" in Chinese legend]. She radiates with the spirit of the Dragon and the vigour of the Horse. Assembled at this Birthday party in this sumptuously decorated hall are honourable guests, all from noble and dignified families (Scribbled by Sun Ying-suet).\n\nHong Kong, 1976.\n\nFRANCIS SHAM AND JAMES HAYES\n\nHƯNG HȮM (£): AN EARLY INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE IN OLD BRITISH KOWLOON.\n\nBritish Kowloon was ceded in March 1860. Its population at that time was around the few thousand mark, and its growth was steady over the next twenty years. In 1881 the population numbered 9,021. Thereafter the population rose sharply and by 1897 it was 26,402, of which 19,202 were male, (Sessional Papers 1897, p. 485).\n\nThe increase in the Kowloon population from 1860 on may be attributed to the establishment of industrial and manufacturing concerns, that undoubtedly owed their existence to the presence of nearby Hong Kong, then making great strides towards its establishment as a great entrepôt and commercial and financial centre. Among them the Hong Kong Whampoa Dock Company set up its yard at Hung Hom in the 1860's, the Cosmopolitan Dock began at\n\n*The \"9 Similes\" (*) from the Book of Poetry()\n\n(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)\n\n如山如阜,如同如陵,如川之方至,以莫不增,\n\n(6)\n\n(7)\n\n(8)\n\n如月之恒,如日之升,如南山之壽,不騫不崩,\n\n(9)\n\n如松柏之茂,無不爾或承 [FSYS]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207559,
        "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": 327,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n319 \n\nTai Kok Tsui in 1880 and in 1898 the Green Island Cement Company moved its works from Macao to Hung Hom. This fact helps to explain the predominantly male population in the census.\n\nThe Hung Hom community was among the largest of these new commercial and industrial settlements. By 1897, its population was 5,876, standing second only to Yau Ma Tei with 8,051 (SP1897 p.485).\n\n(1) Details of the earliest settlement up to 1898\n\nThe first list of occupants of Hung Hom is the 1867 Return of Squatter's Licences.* This shows that the village was composed of forty-four premises held under licence by thirty-four individuals, of whom eleven bore the surname Tsang and nine Lee. Near the village was 31 mow of land under cultivation. These also were largely held by the Tsang and Lee families. As the village grew, due to the growth of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Yard with its opportunities for employment and for providing services for its ever-growing staff of employees, the amount of land under cultivation declined; only three years after the 1867 list, the amount of cultivated land had been cut in half. Between 1867 and 1874 the number of listed properties remained fairly constant, but in 1875 there was an increase from fifty-four to seventy-five. In succeeding years, however, the number of individuals occupying land by squatter's licences slowly declined.\n\nThe first collection book for Village Rates in Kowloon is dated 1873.† It lists the occupant of the premise, with the use of the premise, its value, and the owner. Aside from the Dock Company's extensive establishment, thirty-nine buildings are listed. These included the Police Station (at the time unoccupied), a dwelling used as a school, six chandlery shops, one shop dealing in sundries, two carpenter's establishments, a fruit seller, and a barber. Of the shops, only three were rented out; the others were occupied by their owners. The remaining premises were all small family residences occupied by their owners.\n\nIn two years, the properties upon which rates were collected had increased by twenty-five. Among the new premises listed was a Joss House rated at $50 and a house for the Joss House keeper,\n\n* H.K. Public Records Office, H.K. Record Series 183. † H.K. Public Records Office, H.K. Record Series 83.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212314,
        "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": 256,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "233\n\nHong Kong for several years, Bill Wyllie, was seconded to Hutchison in 1975 by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, as 'company doctor' to put the business house's finances in order. After he had achieved this he left Hutchison's in 1981.\n\nThen in the early 1980s Li Ka-shing, believed to be the richest man in Hong Kong, became the largest shareholder in Hutchison's. His company, Cheung Kong (meaning long river and signifying 'everlasting'), held a 37 per cent stake. With a Chinese Taipan the company was no longer the bastion of British management that it had been in earlier days. However, under Chairman Li Ka-shing there is an English Group Managing Director, Simon Murray.\n\nToday Hutchison-Whampoa is thriving, and its activities range from general trading, including importing and exporting, to property, engineering and building materials. The group also has major interests in such subsidiaries as Hong Kong United Dockyards (in the past Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks), Hong Kong Electric Holdings, and A.S. Watson and Company of which more later. These firms, which in the past were basically British, are thus now largely Chinese controlled.\n\nDockyards\n\nThe first Hong Kong built vessel, the 80-ton Celestial, was launched from a slip at East Point on 7th February 1843, and a Royal Naval Dockyard started in 1854 (this was phased out in the late 1950s). Docks were also built by Douglas Lapraik and J. Lamont at Aberdeen in 1857.\n\nNevertheless, it has been claimed the first 'great firm' to be established in the Colony was really the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company, although the industry had its origins, regionally, in Canton. That is why the word Whampoa (a place in Canton) is included in the above name. The firm is No.1 on the Register of Companies. Austin Coates maintains in his book, Whampoa, Ships on the Shore, that the formation of Union Docks (which was absorbed into the Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks in 1870), in 1863, was\n\nthe most significant commercial and industrial moment in Hong Kong's history.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
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    {
        "id": 212327,
        "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": 269,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "246\n\nlater, made up part of the Lombard Insurance Company.\n\nHong Kong Hotel Company\n\nThe Company started in 1866, and the Hong Kong Hotel opened in 1867 on the site of the defunct Dent and Company's offices on the then waterfront at Queen's Road Central. In 1893, in addition to the 'Hong Kong', other leading hotels included 'Windsor' and 'Victoria', in Central, and 'Mount Austin' and 'Peak' hotels, both on the Peak.\n\nThe Professions\n\nAs well as traders, a few British professionals set up practices in Hong Kong in the last century. Victor Hobart Deacon, for example, arrived in the Colony in 1880 to join a firm of lawyers that was already 30 years old. In the 1840s, the nearest lawyer was said to be in Calcutta.\n\nAt about the same time there were a number of people who described themselves as architects, but they were probably only draughtsmen. One such man was named Langer, who arrived in 1842 to supervise the erection of buildings for Jardine's. He was stricken with fever after only working for two months. The civilian architects produced nothing of the calibre of the military architects who designed such structures as Murray House and Headquarters House.\n\nWilson and Salway, architects and engineers, were established in 1872; and Leigh and Orange, although not the first, was among the early practices to be set up. This latter firm dates back to 1874, under the name of Sharp and Danby who were engineers, and in 1894 it became Leigh and Orange. The founding fathers were ex-Public Works Department employees. The Ohel Leah synagogue in Robinson Road, completed in 1902, is one of their buildings, as were the old Queen's Building and the old Prince's Building, both completed in Central in 1904.\n\nOther structures, since demolished, were the entire premises of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company, at Hung Hom, and the wharves and premises of the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf",
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    {
        "id": 215285,
        "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": 62,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "Singapore were being exported to the West Indian colonies. In November 1932 a Canadian manufacturer of rubber shoes complained to the Canadian minister of trade and commerce that in the last two months 15,000 pairs of rubber shoes had been imported into Barbados from Singapore at prices far below that of shoes produced in Canada. The Canadian minister wrote directly to Cunliffe-Lister asking for his help. He expressed the fear that unless something was done additional factories would be erected in Singapore and Hong Kong to take advantage of the new tariff and cheap Asiatic labour. The colonial secretary replied that it would be impossible to introduce in any colony legislation discriminating against goods produced in another colony; this would cut across the principle of solidarity between various parts of the empire which had been accepted at Ottawa and would inevitably cause a serious revulsion of feeling in these colonies.35\n\nExports of rubber boots and shoes to the West Indian colonies continued to increase at an alarming rate throughout 1933. They even penetrated the Canadian home market. Factories in Hong Kong which had previously exported their boots and shoes to China and the Philippines found themselves priced out of these markets by new protective tariffs and turned to export their products to the West Indies and Britain. Canadian and British footwear manufacturers faced with the loss of markets which they had formerly monopolised claimed that the Singapore factory was owned by Japanese interests who were seeking to evade heavy duties by setting up factories within the empire. In fact all the factories in Singapore and Hong Kong were owned and managed by Chinese businessmen. The empire content of the shoes was over 90 per cent since they were made from Malayan rubber and British canvas by British subjects working in a British colony and carried to Britain in British ships. There were no grounds for denying imperial preference to Hong Kong products in accordance with the Ottawa agreements. The Canadian prime minister, R.B. Bennett, complained to Cunliffe-Lister that the importation of rubber shoes was utterly demoralising the Canadian industry; thousands of workers would lose their jobs unless action was taken to prevent the continuation of this destructive and unfair competition.\" The colonial secretary replied that it would obviously not be politically possible to invite the legislative council of the Straits Settlements to pass legislation prohibiting the manufacture of rubber shoes in Singapore or their export to markets overseas.\" \n\nMeanwhile another industry long established in Hong Kong was causing embarrassment to the Colonial Office. The governor sent a telegram to London complaining that the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company had tendered to build a 500 ton coaster for Australia but had discovered that it was liable to a 15 per cent duty and could not claim exemption since imperial preference was granted only to ships built in Britain. The governor",
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