[
    {
        "id": 204359,
        "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": 127,
        "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\n123\n\nto clear the graves privately in more than half the cases. The balance is left to Government to clear. The deduction might be drawn that, although there may well be relatives still at hand in Hong Kong, they accept the Government service in clearance as perfectly adequate for the purpose and as a useful means of saving themselves expense.\n\nEvery year, in addition to Chinese dead mentioned above, the bodies of nearly 10,000 paupers are left to Government to dispose of. The term \"pauper\" does not imply that the deceased were homeless and abandoned. Most of the deaths occur in charitable institutes and hospitals. In most cases, there were relatives available but for one reason or another, usually economic, they preferred not to claim the body, being satisfied that the free burial (at the Sandy Ridge Cemetery, Lo Wu) and subsequent exhumation provided by Government would be sufficient to meet changed conditions.\n\nWhere possible, attempts are made at public Chinese cemeteries to meet burial customs. Facilities are provided at the Ching Ming and Chung Yeung festivals, in the form of special trains with reduced fares for relatives; crowd control; temporary latrines, etc. Trees and plants with flowers in the traditional mourning colours are planted, e.g. yellow allamanda, white spider lilies, purple thunbergia, white and yellow frangipanni.\n\nIt must be emphasized that this brief description of current Chinese burial customs in Hong Kong represents no more than the observed practice at a particular point of time. Custom is a living body that changes gradually from generation to generation. It would therefore be unwise to assume that all these customs will survive. The impact of congestion, lack of burial space and improving social conditions in Hong Kong may well cause further changes. In particular, the proposed official encouragement of cremation as a means of disposal of the dead may do much to upset the current burial pattern, although it will follow the Buddhist practice more closely. The basic factor seems to be that Hong Kong Chinese are not so much concerned with the means of disposal of the dead as with being able to pinpoint the eventual resting place of the remains of the deceased, whether in the form of bones or ashes. Exhumation, as such, seems to play no significant part in the process except as a practical means of reducing the physical bulk of the deceased to proportions that will either fit into a funerary urn or below a horseshoe grave. Cremation, therefore, which serves the same practical purpose as exhumation in reducing bulk, should equally prove unobjectionable to Hong Kong Chinese, backed as it is by Buddhist belief. In short, one may expect that within a generation cremation may largely replace burial and exhumation as a means of customary disposal of Chinese dead in Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209690,
        "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": 347,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n325\n\nare many other, smaller countries where no newspaper industry has developed.\n\nProfessor Lent is concerned with press freedom. He deplores its disappearance in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. He deplores the repressive situation in Singapore, where the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act enables the government to put its own nominees in control of newspapers. Even the more liberal press atmosphere of Hong Kong comes in for some criticism. Journalists are tempted to take bribes because of their often miserably low salaries, he says, and these bad practices remain outside the reach of the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) because they are condoned by the journalists' employers. Lent also complains that there are many doors of government closed to Hong Kong journalists.\n\nSome of the book gives a somewhat out-of-date impression. It is a recent publication but much of the material was gathered years ago and in some cases there has obviously been difficulty in revising it. This detracts from the value of the survey where it deals with countries like Vietnam.\n\nIt could also be objected that the viewpoint of the editor and contributors is too western-oriented when dealing with the press in developing areas. Freedom of the Press is a hall-mark of civilised modern communities, but it can survive only in a country which is highly literate and politically awake; it has no hope in more primitive places or in countries where the government fears criticism. To expect a free press in such areas may be unrealistic. There is a considerable difference, too, between Asia and the West in attitudes towards the profession of journalism. In the West the image of the journalist as news-gatherer, critic and reformer inspires considerable numbers of young men and women to enter the profession. Its human opportunities and fascinations more than compensate for the relatively mediocre financial rewards. This is far less the case in the Far East where in many countries journalism has little appeal for the educated. Inevitably this affects the value and effectiveness of newspapers.\n\nHowever the fact that the Asian press is surveyed here from a western viewpoint in no way detracts from the impressive",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213040,
        "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": 108,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "88\n\nAlthough Dr. Gibson responded favourably to the Chinese subscribers' request for a lady doctor, and despite his protestations to the contrary, it seems that he had no thought that she would be a full partner in the medical enterprise. From the correspondence, Dr. Gibson emerges as a man committed to the medical mission endeavour, taking every opportunity to expand its influence and asserting the right to be unencumbered in the running of the hospitals. At his arrival in 1897, as a well-qualified graduate of the Edinburgh medical school, he was in conflict with the District Committee over their control of the hospital via the Hospital House Committee, which comprised Dr. Ho Kai, the Hospital Chairman, the medical staff, and the missionaries of the LMS in Hong Kong. He insisted that their role was advisory, and that interference in the appointment of staff would impede the hospital's proper management. The Committee was dissolved, and from 1898, the hospital was managed by the LMS District Committee and the Medical Superintendent, Dr. Gibson. He was also unable to work satisfactorily with the private practitioners, leaders in the Hong Kong medical community, who worked as honoraries in the hospital, and their services were discontinued. Thus, from the beginning, Dr. Gibson attempted and, to some extent, gained his independence regarding what he saw as his sphere.\n\nHow well he coped with the pressures of his expanding role is questionable. Certainly, he regularly replied to LMS London correspondence months later, with apologies and complaints about how overworked he was. In 1906, Mr. Pearce, the Secretary of the Hong Kong District Committee of the LMS, commented that he hoped Dr. Gibson would be refreshed and less difficult after his furlough. Noting that, with the acceptance of an offer from an Australian nurse, Miss Langdon, to work voluntarily in the hospital, the medical mission would have four workers, Dr. Gibson continued: 'we must pray to be kept humble'. His co-operative relationship with Mrs. Stevens until her death in 1903 is apparent, as they shared plans for new services and began their twice-weekly trips to Kowloon to run the new clinic there. At her death on 5 December 1903, his grief and sense of loss were strong. Yet a lady doctor was a different matter and a threat in a way which a hospital matron was not.\n\nWhat Dr. Gibson wanted was a lady doctor who would work in a voluntary or privately funded capacity, as in the LMS China posts, and who, therefore, would not be a member of the hospital's establishment.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214855,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1999",
        "page_number": 270,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "238 \n\nToday, globalisation is going full steam ahead. Who could have forecast in the 1960s, that most of the little compradors' shops on street corners, with their delicious kum wah hams hanging from ceilings, would be nudged out by mighty supermarkets?\n\nWho could have guessed that, with globalisation of palate, McDonald's would become 'haute cuisine' for young Chinese many of who are now overweight?\n\nOf course things were cheaper then and, at my Chinese wedding banquet on the Queen's Birthday in 1960, at the old Sun Ya restaurant on Nathan Road, the cost was an exorbitant HK$130 for each circular table of 12 guests. We tipped $10 a table. That was the going rate. On the afternoon of our wedding day my wife and I were invited to the garden party on the lawn at Government House. In those days people were proud to receive an invitation from His Excellency just as, more recently if they care to admit it, they are proud to receive an invite to the reception on China's National Day.\n\nBut wages for old one hundred names (the man in the street) were low and there was little in the way of social amenities. My Chinese amah was paid $160 a month with half a day off a week. She was lucky. Many received far less and no time off unless they specially requested it. People did not complain. They knew things were much worse in China where famine raged after the failure of the 'Great Leap Forward.' Hong Kong citizens queued up at the post office, in the early 1960s, to send food parcels to relatives on the Mainland. Later Hong Kong changed and, after the 'Star Ferry Riots' of 1966 and the protracted riots of 1967 (an overspill of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), Hong Kong became richer and conditions for the man on a tram began to improve.\n\nCorruption was rampant in those early years before the setting up of the ICAC, although, in my over 26 years of government service working in education, I personally was never once solicited. It was more common in departments such as the Police, Public Works and New Territories Administration. The receiving of presents, however, had to be watched. After the riots, a watershed in many ways, Hong Kong became richer with, more recently, a higher GDP than that of Britain. A large Chinese middle-class formed.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216108,
        "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": 407,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "341\n\ncommunity at all levels. It was not just the big guys.\n\nThe late Sir Murray (later Lord) MacLehose, Governor from 1971 to 1982, soon appreciated the problem, Hong Kong has him to thank for setting up the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), in 1974. It was a bold step but it has been effective.\n\nFor me personally, during my career with Government, I was never directly affected by corruption in any shape or form. Nevertheless, one needs to ask when does tipping and present-giving stop and when does corruption begin?\n\nPersonalities\n\nPeople and personalities have played important parts in Hong Kong's history. Sir John Cowperthwaite, Financial Secretary (FS) from 1961 to 1971, although very successful, worked more on an ad hoc basis than his successors. He saw limited need to collect statistics which would (he believed) encourage government to draw up economic plans and interfere in the private sector and the free movement of market forces. He believed government should not ‘get involved.'\n\nYet, in spite of the post of FS being stressful, many of them were a long-lived breed. Some who served Hong Kong either before or just after World War Two carried on drawing their pensions into their nineties. A great deal of credit must go to our past Financial Secretaries for helping to lay foundations for the Hong Kong we know today.\n\nConclusions\n\nCertainly the 1950s and the '60s were eventful decades and, during the latter part of the 1960s and '70s especially, Hong Kong made strides in leaving its colonial past behind. It took on a new mantle. Many things surreptitiously changed.\n\nEntire skylines altered dramatically every decade or so. In the 1960s, Tsing Yi Island was being considered for the site for a nudist colony. Now it is heavily built upon. From 1857 until 1975 we had a cricket pitch in the centre of town. Gracious, old, colonial style buildings were torn down, We needed those to depend upon for the reassurances",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]