[ { "id": 204477, "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-1962", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\napproval. This authority, with powers of discretion, was given to the D.O. to help preserve the traditional way of managing land within the clan, and to provide a cheap and impartial arbiter in case of dispute.\n\n13 In Shek Pik village the TSUI, CHEUNG, HO and CHI clans owned 1.1, 0.39, 0.55, and 0.04 acres of agricultural land in 1898. With the exception of the HO clan, they were intact in 1959. The TSUI tso probably dates from the fifteenth generation, and is therefore three hundred years old. The FUNG clan in Fan Pui owned 9.2 acres in 1898 but this was sold in 1953.\n\n14 At Fan Pui I dealt with a disputed case of ownership in which the defendant stated that eight lots totalling 9,581 square feet of agricultural land had been specially set aside as joss and oil fields (shen you tian). Fields are also set aside for the worship of earth spirits. At Cheung Kwan O village in 1898 the two clans of CHAN and NG administered 1.41 acres of agricultural land under the name of a to tei wui. The rentals were originally devoted to the maintenance of the to tei or earth spirit who looked after the village, but for many years the revenue has simply gone to the clans. Many other cases are known at Mui Wo and Tung Chung.\n\n15 See Chapter III (iii) and (iv) of H. B. Morse The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1908) which is based on an article by Byron Brenan \"The Office of District Magistrate in China” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society XXII, (1897-98), 36-65, and incorporates his own wide experience of China and her officials in the course of over thirty years' service in the Imperial Maritime Customs. Brenan himself (1847-1927) had served in China from 1866 and was H.B.M.'s Consul-General in Shanghai 1898-1901. Of the district magistrate Brenan wrote, \"The magistrate is the unit of government; he is the backbone of the whole official system; and to ninety per cent of the population he is the Government\"; op. cit. p. 37.\n\n16 Papers 1899 p. 583.\n\nThe text of the stone tablet outside the Tin Hau temple at Kat O, referred to elsewhere in the article, uses this picturesque phraseology. Contrasting their sorry lot beside the power of the yamen officials they had written in their petition to the Viceroy \"We, civilians, whose lives are cheap as ants... who are we to start a lawsuit against the district yamen's worms?\" An interesting feature of this inscription is that it follows the customary form of Ch'ing document in which reference is made in the text to other papers, by summary or quotation, instead of the western method of adding enclosures. See John K. Fairbank, Ch'ing Documents, an introductory syllabus, (Harvard University Press 1952) p. 21.\n\n18 When I asked an old gentleman who graduated sau choi in 1896 about extortion and venality among magistrates, he replied in distinctly extenuating tones \"Some did; but then they had so many people to look after\". He observed that there were some rich districts in Kwangtung in which a magistrate had to do nothing to obtain money as it came rolling into the Office in the way of presents, inducements, additions to land and other taxes etc., whilst there were others which were so poor that the magistrate could squeeze very little from them even if he tried very hard. This is curiously echoed in Morse, Trade and Administration p. 92 “In Kwangtung we (the Imperial Maritime Customs) have regularly applied to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204479, "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-1962", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204613, "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-1963", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n81\n\nthe death of Sir Robert Hart during the siege, and on July 21st it carried a long letter from the President of Queen's College, Belfast, which served as a somewhat premature obituary notice for Hart, who, in fact, lived until 1911.**\n\nThe relieving troops finally entered the British Legation on August 14th, when a Company of mounted Sikhs rode in at about 3 p.m. accompanying General Gaselee and his staff. So ended the siege which had lasted from June 20th until August 14th, a total of 55 days. Fortunately no overwhelming damage had been done to the British Legation, though many of the roofs were badly smashed about and bullets and shells had gone through most of the buildings. One last ironic touch; immediately after the raising of the siege the commissariat functioned so inefficiently that the besieged had to forage for themselves and for some days got less to eat than during the fighting. Meanwhile those who had 'enjoyed' the hospitality of the British Legation during the siege departed and the work of clearing up and repairing the damage began.\n\nThe actual damage suffered by the British Legation buildings was slight in comparison with the damage done to the other foreign Legations. The outer walls were badly damaged and had to be rebuilt, but one small section on the north-east corner facing the Imperial Canal was sufficiently unharmed to be left intact, and on its surface someone painted in black nine-inch letters the words \"LEST WE FORGET”. Most of the buildings in the compound were soon repaired and the Legation again looked substantially the same as before the siege. However, as part of the settlement after the Boxer troubles and the siege of the Legation Quarter Britain acquired considerable ground on the northern and western sides of the old Legation. This consisted of land formerly occupied by the Mongol market, by the Imperial Carriage Park and by the Hanlin Academy, which was burnt out during the fighting. This newly acquired land was later used for\n\n28 Born in 1835 Hart came out to China in the Consular Service in 1854 and spent his first three months as an interpreter at Hong Kong. After various consular appointments he was permitted by the British Government to resign from the consular service in 1859 and to join the newly formed Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs service as Deputy-Commissioner of Customs at Canton. In 1863, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed Inspector-General of the Maritime Customs, a post which he held until his resignation in 1908.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204633, "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-1963", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n101\n\n11 \"The whole of the island (Cheung Chau) was adjudged to belong to the WONG family and it is let out to various tenants on leases renewable every five years. All these leases were registered in 1906\". Administra-tive Report for 1909, District Officer, New Territories. But see also G. N. Orme's unfavourable opinion of the initial survey and Crown rent roll in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46.\n\n12 For example, before its tax-lord rights were extinguished (along with others') by the Hong Kong Government after 1898 as \"not compatible with the principles of British administration\" (Orme, Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46), the LI Kau Yuen Tong of Sha Wan appears to have owned a considerable proportion of all the cultivated land on Lantau island under an imperial grant made in the Sung dynasty (see LO Hsiang-lin \"The Sung Wang T'ai and the location of the Travelling Courts by the sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung\", Journal of Oriental Studies III No. 2 (July 1956) p. 217, note 29). Nineteenth Century land deeds from the village of Shek Pik show that much of the village land paid tax to the LI family, a burden which was passed on to the purchaser when a \"sale\" took place. It is not known whether this Tong owned land elsewhere in the present New Territories but its main estates lay elsewhere. It is curious how the WONG Wai Chak Tong maintained its tax-lord position whilst the LI family's was extinguished.\n\nIt is a pointer to the island's increasing prosperity, as well as to its favoured geographical situation, that when the Chinese Maritime Customs first began to operate in the Hong Kong region in 1887 they set up a post on Cheung Chau. This had previously been operated by the Canton authorities as part of the \"blockade\" system set up in 1868-71. See Stanley F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1950) pp. 385-6, 584-6 and 708, and his earlier Hong Kong and the Chinese Customs (Shanghai 1930) which I have not yet seen. See also note 15. Old villagers on the Lantau coast opposite Cheung Chau can remember having to pass through the customs every time they came to the island to buy daily necessaries and sell their produce in the market.\n\nIt is not the place to discuss whether Cheung Chau's expansion was due to the rise of Hong Kong, or whether it was already in a flourishing condition by the time Hong Kong's expansion began in the 1840's, but available information points to a community which was already well-established and prosperous by the Hsien-feng period (1851-61), which would be rather early for Cheung Chau to owe its rise mainly to Hong Kong. The preamble to the tablet in the defence bureau mentions that \"our forefathers came and lived in Cheung Chau several hundred years ago\"; whilst the attention of pirates in the early years of Hsien-feng, also mentioned in the same tablet, seems more conclusive proof of the island's established prosperity than any other. A spate of repairs and expansion seems to have been going on apace in the T'ung-chih period (1862-75) when most of the island's temples were repaired, the CHU family ancestral hall enlarged, many old houses were built or reconstructed, and the public buildings erected which these tablets commemorate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204640, "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-1963", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "108 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nprovided that the river be opened to foreign shipping. This commenced the modern or more correctly the European history of the river. \n\nBy the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin three ports on the river were opened to foreign shipping and trade - Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow, Hankow, by far the largest and most important of the three, was six hundred miles from the mouth of the river. The Franco-Chinese Treaty, signed at the same time, provided for the opening of Nanking. At that time, however, and for a further six years, Nanking was occupied by the Taiping rebels, and no attempt was made to trade there, and it was not until 1899 that the Chinese Maritime Customs opened a station there. \n\nWhen the Treaty of Tientsin was signed in 1858 most of the Lower Yangtse was in a disturbed state because of the Taiping Rebellion, and a great part of the river was under rebel control. In these circumstances, therefore, it was not expected that the river would be opened to foreign trade until the restoration of Imperial authority. Lord Elgin, the British Plenipotentiary, however, was unwilling to wait for this, and persuaded the Chinese authorities to allow him to make a voyage up the river. His expedition consisted of the frigates Retribution and Furious, and three small gunboats, Cruiser, Lee, and Dove. After being fired on by the rebels at two places, Hankow was reached on 6th December 1858, the first time it had been visited by a foreign ship. \n\nLord Elgin went ashore at several places on the river, and made short excursions into the country. He found the people to have no sympathy with the rebels, and thought they welcomed the prospect of foreign trade. He also thought them reasonably prosperous and contented, and not too heavily taxed. At Hankow he found coal and iron, the latter in abundance, also considerable quantities of imported cotton and woollen goods; but he formed the opinion that British manufacturers would have to exert themselves to supplant native goods. It was a pleasing fallacy, he wrote, to imagine that it was only the malign influence of intriguing mandarins which caused the Chinese to prefer native to foreign goods. James Matheson, one of the founders of Jardine, Matheson and Company, frankly admitted on several occasions the superiority of Chinese nankeens over Manchester cotton goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204748, "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-1964", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "40 \n\nW. C. HUNTER \n\nat Samarang where he served for 3 years. He died at Delft in 1863. (L.T.R.) \n\n32 Viceroy. The Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi at this time was Teng Ting-chen who held this post from early 1836 until early 1840. See Hummel, op. cit., II, 716. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n33 Hoppo. The Superintendent of Maritime Customs at Canton in 1839 was Yu (?). (J.L.C-B.) \n\n34 The Yum Chae. Cantonese pronunciation for the characters (mandarin Ch'in-ch'ai) meaning \"an Imperial Commissioner”. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n35 Innes, James Innes (1787-1841), the \"storm petrel\" of Canton was the 7th Chieftain of the Inneses of Dunkinty, Scotland. He came out to China about 1825 and operated as a Free Trader mostly on his own, but for a time in the firm of Innes, Fletcher & Co. His dealings in opium had not a little to do with precipitating the trouble in 1839. He died in July 1841 and was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery, Macao. (L.T.R.) \n\n36 Chaye Beale. Thomas Chaye Beale was a member of the firm of Magniac & Co. in Canton as early as 1826. He severed his connections with this firm in the early thirties, and operated on his own till 1845 when he set up a house of agency in Shanghai with Lancelot Dent under the name of Dent, Beale & Co. In 1851 he was Portuguese Consul and Vice-Consul for the Netherlands at Shanghai. (L.T.R.) \n\n37 Se-yin. This is probably a reference to the characters Ssu-ying, the officer in command of a ying which corresponded in some ways to a battalion. However, the rank of a ying commander corresponded more to the Western rank of captain or major. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n38 Ta-lao-yeh. The phrase ta-lao-yeh signifies \"revered elder”. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n39 The linguists. Linguists (t'ung shih) were supposed to be able to act as interpreters between the Canton officials and the foreign merchants when instructions needed to be conveyed. The foreigners, for their part, usually enlisted the help of the Hong merchants when they wanted a document translated into Chinese or they needed an interpreter at an important interview. They repeatedly declared that the linguists were useless when it came to linguistic matters. In fact, the linguists appear to have been rather low-grade men of not much education, and able to speak only pidgin English. However, by law a foreign merchant trading at Canton was bound to employ a linguist. Since it was forbidden by the statutes of the Ch'ing dynasty to teach the Chinese language to foreigners, it was reasonable that linguists should be licensed to cope with their language problems. However, in order that the foreigners should not learn much about affairs in the interior, the qualifications needed by a linguist were low and their pidgin vocabulary was restricted to matters of trade. This was part of a deliberate policy which grew up among the officials at Canton, and the linguists merely acted as another cog in the mechanism whereby communication between the foreign merchants and the officials, however minor, was prevented, and the foreigners dealt instead with a number of different unofficial functionaries such as the compradores and linguists. Thus, the foreign merchants were kept at an arm's length and also kept in ignorance. \n\nThe linguists and their servants mentioned in this journal appear to have acted as general clerks and messengers, as much as linguists. The prefix A or Ah (ya) signifies the status of servant. (J.L.C-B.)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204841, "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-1964", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n119\n\nIn 1897, two years before the lease of the New Territories by China to Britain, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs set up a small customs house on Ma Wan in order to supervise trade between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. The building used still stands. See photograph on p. 28 Ma Wan and a very small hamlet called Tin Liu. The total population of Ma Wan island at the 1911 census was 473. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (H.K. Government Printer, 1911) p. 103 (36).\n\n29 Morse, op. cit., I, 178. The name Kapsingmun appears to have been used by foreigners as an alternative for Kapsuimun which should be preferred.\n\n30 Joseph Thomson, Review of Considerations Respecting the Trade with China (London, 1835). At this period both Lord Napier and after him Captain Charles Elliot spoke of obtaining an island and raising the flag somewhere.\n\n31 The Chinese Repository, IV (1835-6), 548.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206512, "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-1972", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "54\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nCouncillors at Jehol at this time: Mu-yin; K'uang-yüan; Tu Han; Chiao Yu-ying. Information on all these officials can be found in Hummel, Eminent Chinese, especially in the biography of Su-shun. Their power relationships are discussed in Banno, China and the West, passim, but especially 55-56. The term \"minister of the imperial presence\" (yü-ch'ien ta-ch'en) is rendered by Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization, p. 28, no. 101, as adjutant-general.\n\nII Tengchow is on the northern side of the Shantung promontory. In fact it was not opened to foreign trade which was carried on at Yen-tai near Chefoo. S. Wells Williams, The Chinese Commercial Guide, 211-212. Ch'aochow was the old name for Swatow; Ch'iungchow is in Hainan. Taiwan City and Tamsui were ports on the island of Taiwan which came under the administration of Fukien province.\n\n12 Ch'ung-hou was appointed to this post by an edict of 20 January with the designation superintendent of trade for the Three Ports, with his headquarters at Tientsin. Hsueh Huan, governor of Kiangsu and acting imperial commissioner at Shanghai, was made responsible for the newly opened ports along the Yangtze and the coast to the south of it, by the same edict. As far back as 1844 the imperial commissioner at Canton was currently designated imperial commissioner for the Five Ports. With the addition of new ports it was made a concurrent post of the governor of Kiangsu in 1861, until 1868 when it was made a concurrent post of the governor-general of Liang Kiang residing at Nanking. In 1870 the post of superintendent of trade for the Three Ports was raised to an imperial commissionership and held concurrently by the governor-general of Chihli. It is not clear when the commonly used designations for these two posts viz: superintendent of trade for the southern ports and superintendent of trade for the northern ports were first used. Meng, The Tsungli Yamen, 40-41; Banno, China and the West, 233-5.\n\n13 Article 3 of the Convention of Peking between Britain and China refers. See W. F. Mayers, Treaties Between the Empire of China and Foreign Powers, 8. The phrase to avoid complications arising is a euphemism for 'to avoid peculation'.\n\n14 Tentatively we have translated the Chinese phrase hui-tan as counter-foil. Note 19 also refers.\n\n15 The term is fuyin. See Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China, 793.\n\n16 See Frank H. H. King, A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers, 1822-1911.\n\n17 Translated in collaboration with Mr. Vei-Tsen Yang. Chinese text in Ch'ow-pan wu shih-mo, Hsien-feng, 72: 2-3. A second edict was issued on the same day, and on the same subject, to the Grand Secretariat. This edict was translated by T. F. Wade along with the six-point memorandum. Note 2 above refers.\n\n18 Not to be confused with the Russian Hostel nor with the language school for the Russians in Peking, both of which were often referred to in Chinese documents as O-lo ssu-kuan, thus making confusion likely with the Russian language school referred to here. See Meng, The Tsungli Yamen, 111, note 48.\n\n19 Lit. 'draw up a joint document'. Glossed by T. F. Wade as a paper signed by both parties showing that the amount deducted is in due proportion to the collection'. Translation of Peking Gazette in F.O. 17/352 p. 42.\n\n20 Presumably referring to Robert Hart, the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and the westerners serving under him. On the general subject of foreigners taking part in the administration of China after the middle of the nineteenth century see Fairbank, The Chinese World Order, 273-5; also Fairbank \"Synarchy under the Treaties\" in Fairbank (ed.) Chinese Thought and Institutions, 204-231.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206534, "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-1972", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "76\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\ntrove is not certain. In Lion and Dragon in Northern China (1910), R.F. Johnston used the folklore material he himself garnered in Weihaiwei for purposes that are now regarded as dubious. It is clear Johnston was influenced by the theories of the cultural diffusionists, who attempted to trace everything back either to a common source or to a process of borrowing from other cultures; in other words, Johnston went far beyond the evidence available and indulged in highly conjectural reconstructions of what could have happened in the past. But Lockhart published only two papers on folklore and, as far as can be ascertained, did not engage in any comparative or theoretical study of the subject. However, it seems plausible to conclude that he, like Johnston, must have been influenced by the climate of anthropological opinion in his time, for both were active in this field before the functionalist anthropologists became intellectually influential.\n\nLockhart had a lifelong interest in numismatics and over the years he was able to build up a fine collection of Chinese copper coins. In 1895 the first two volumes of his The Currency of the Farther East, published by Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, was produced in an edition of 250 copies. The third volume appeared in 1898. The collection of coins illustrated in the work — Chinese, Annamese, Japanese and Korean — had been made by G.B. Glover of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, who had supervised the production of the plates printed from blocks. But Glover died before the book went to press and it was Lockhart who supplied the introductions to the three volumes and information about the dates and inscriptions on the coins. In 1915 The Stewart Lockhart Collection of Chinese Copper Coins appeared as a one-volume supplement to the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 'This book,' wrote a reviewer in 1915, 'is the first of its kind, and is calculated to stimulate the interest of those who have wished to collect Chinese cash, but have been hitherto deterred from doing so by the absence of any guide to the subject.'63 In 1967 an authority on coins stated that: this is one of the all-time standard works on collecting Chinese coins, with 2,070 coins illustrated. He has put a great deal of interesting material in the introductory fifteen pages.'64 The publication of the book caused Lockhart many problems, for he and the Chinese engraver he employed worked on the text and illustrations at Port Edward, Weihaiwei, while the book was being set up piecemeal in Shanghai.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207282, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "42\n\nWELLINGTON K. K. CHAN\n\n23 P'eng Tse-i, \"Shih-chiu shih-chi,\" 1:73, 90-95.\n\n24 Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life (New Haven, 1965), pp. 216-17.\n\n25 Chang Chih-tung, Chang Wen-hsiang-kung chi (The papers of Chang Chih-tung), ed. Hsu T'ung-hsin (Peiping, 1919-21), \"tsou-kao,\" 12:1-5b.\n\n26 Ibid.\n\n27 E.g., Hsiang-kang Hua-tzu jih-pao (Chinese Mail of Hong Kong), 1901: 4/27, 5/9.\n\n28 Hua-tzu jih-pao, 22/3/1901.\n\n29 Mark Elvin, \"The Gentry Democracy in Chinese Shanghai,” in Jack Gray (ed), Modern China's Search for Political Form (Oxford, 1969), pp. 41-65.\n\n30 Imperial Maritime Customs, Decennial Reports 1882-1891 (Shanghai, 1893), p. 34.\n\n31 Morse, Gilds of China, pp. 53-54; Decennial Reports, 1882-1891, pp. 537-38.\n\n32 In 1892, those of Yunnan and Kweichow were added.\n\n33 Decennial Reports, 1882-1891, pp. 119-20.\n\n34 Sheng Hsuan-huai, Yü-chai ts'un-kao ch'u-k'an (Collected drafts of Sheng Hsuan-huai, first issue), ed. Lü Ching-tuan (Shanghai, 1939), 7:36a.\n\n35 The China Weekly Review (Shanghai), 24/7/1926, pp. 188, 190.\n\n36 Hua-tzu jih-pao, 10/10/1907; 28/10/1908.\n\n37 The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce: The Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Issue (Singapore, 1954), pp. 2-3. These practices, somewhat modified, are still going on today, see Sin Chew Jit Poh (Singapore Daily), 9/2/1975, p. 3.\n\n38 See my own forthcoming article \"The Chamber of Commerce in Late Ch'ing China.\"\n\n**\n\n39 North-China Herald (Shanghai), 23/2/1906.\n\n40 Chang Ts'un-wu, Chung-Mei kung-yüeh fang-chiao (Disputes over the Sino-American labor agreement) (Taipei, 1965).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208045, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "68\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nsystem of land distribution had its origins several centuries ago. At the time when the land was distributed, the tenant paid the landlord a certain sum; this sum represented the rent which the tenant thereafter handed over each year. The landlord could not increase the rent, nor could the tenant refuse to pay it. Furthermore, the landlord could not investigate his tenants in order to take back the land.” (G236).\n\n28 Data from the land memorials, which register sales of subsurface values, indicate that a one-mow plot of land seldom exceeded 6 taels during the late 18th century. As we shall see later in the text, these prices necessarily remained constant into the 19th century. In the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846, we learn that the tenants valued each mow of rice paddy at $40.00 (1 tael = 1.11 Mexican dollars in 1846). Granted that tenants made good profits from the sale of land, still this example tends to illustrate the great potential disparity between the two values. (Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846, Note on the Island of Hong Kong by A. R. Johnston; written in 1843).\n\n29 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p 7.\n\n30 CSO306/1899 Extension; \"With reference to the petition of Tang Yung Ping and others they naturally, at present, prefer the old feudal system of payment of rent in kind.\"\n\n31 HKTCSMTC: Hong Kong Almanack, “Note on the Island of HK”.\n\n32 CSO150/1901 gives a detailed account of these negotiations.\n\n33 In general, the maintenance of perpetual tenancy systems presupposes the existence of communal landownership. The British found over 25% of all lots held in clan names in 1898; later Chinese sources place the estimate at 30%. These figures are probably not reliable for the earlier part of the century. The Tangs, as we have seen, held landlord rights over all of Hong Kong Island. They similarly held over 60% of the territory in Kowloon ceded to Britain in 1860, Land in North Kowloon was lost by \"fraudulent sale” in 1898 (CSO2982/1898). Other clans, besides the Tangs, apparently lost sizable tracts as “individual initiative” replaced clan solidarity throughout the period,\n\n34 CSO150/1901.\n\n35 CSO109/1902.\n\n36 Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u, \"Notes on Land Tax.\"\n\n37 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p 18.\n\nESSAY II: TAXLORDISM\n\nThe peasants and gentry of Hsin-An witnessed two concrete manifestations of the growing power of foreign countries in China during the waning years of the nineteenth century. In April 1887, the Kowloon Customs House of the Imperial Maritime Customs was established under provisions of the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreement of September 1886. As was the case with all customs houses established during the era, supervision of the revenue stations was entrusted to a European career officer in Sir Robert Hart's service, J. McLeavy Brown. A great expansion in customs activity", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208057, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "80\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nOne of the earliest petitions received by the British after the occupation relates to the collection of land tax by a group of tax-lords, and illustrates their ability to lobby effectively for the preservation of their \"rights\":\n\nHau Chak Wing (侯澤榮), Liu In Yu (廖延裕), Liu Sut Kam (廖雲錦) and Tang Yui Shan (鄧銳臣) gentry of Sheung Yu Tung, complain that Ho Fung Wing (何鳳榮) of Ki Ling Ha (企嶺下) village, Wong Sin (黃先) of Nai Chung village (坭涌村), Li A Fat (李亞發) of Wong Chuk Yeung (黃竹揚), Tang Shek Tse (鄧錫梓) and Wong Fat Shing (黃佛成), have combined together, and instigated the various villages of Tung Hoi (東海) district to refuse paying the rent in paddy amounting to 2000 stone.\n\nPetitioners have already produced title deeds for the payment of taxes, and the government has already issued notification directing the farmers to pay their rent as hitherto. These farmers have not paid their rent for two years, nor have they been dealt with, although petitioners have brought this matter to the notice of the Government.40\n\nThough considerable confusion initially existed over the issue of whether the sum stated referred to taxes or rents, the matter was eventually resolved with the Land Court's recognition of these gentry as \"taxlords.\"41\n\nExamination of the early history of Britain administration in the New Territories lends final proof to the economic interpretation of the basis of tung. Though the colonial administration attempted to bolster the chu as local judicial bodies, they essentially undermined their power by abolishing taxlordism. As a result, the category tung rapidly dropped out of local usage.42\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Imperial Maritime Customs, Decennial Reports, See Kowloon reports in the volumes for 1882-1891 and 1892-1901.\n\n2 Ibid., 1882-1901: p.682.\n\n3 C. M. Chang, \"Tax Farming in North China,” in Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly 8:4 (1936), pp. 831-836. Chang defines ya shui (牙稅) as \"at first no more than a license fee paid by various brokers for the privilege of doing the business of brokerage, i.e. to bring together prospective...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208058, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n81\n\nbuyers and sellers of commodities and to effect a transaction between them.” By the late 1920's, \"its importance to the Hopei provincial finance was only second to that of the land tax.\" It is difficult to weigh the relative importances of the various taxes in Hsin-An, but we do have figures on the revenue collected on trade between local markets in November 1911, which indicate a relatively low volume of local trade (see Imperial Maritime Customs, 1902-1911, Volume II, p.156). Also, refer to Appendix II, which Lockhart credits as a reliable source. The Tangs of Kam Tin and Lung Kwat Tau (A) were apparently farmed the monopolies of collecting market taxes in Un Long Kau Hui (±##4) and Tai Po Kau Hui (£# #). The Tongs who oversaw the markets in turn \"sub-leased\" the brokerages to traders, merchants, and shop-owners.\n\n4 The CSO files held in the Government Archives of Hong Kong constitute one of the richest stores of first-hand knowledge about local political economy and society in Hsin-An during the period 1890-1910. I am very grateful to Mr. Ian Diamond, Government Archivist, and his staff for their assistance in helping with my research.\n\n5 C. M. Chang, op. cit., pp. 826-828.\n\n6 Lien-sheng Yang, \"Buddhist Monasteries and Four Money-Raising Institutions in Chinese History,\" in his Studies in Chinese Institutional History, pp. 198-199n.\n\n7 Yeh-chien Wang draws heavily on the Ts'ai-cheng Shuo-ming-shu for his research on the land tax in China (Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750-1911). On the basis of the material presented in this paper, Hsin-An conforms to his general thesis of the declining relative importance of the land tax throughout late Ch'ing.\n\n8 Correspondence Respecting the Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony (hereafter Extension Papers), p. 60.\n\n9 For a fuller discussion of li-chia, see Kung-chuan Hsiao's Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 84-143.\n\n10 The annual rotation of these positions (44) constituted the primary mechanism whereby the local magistrate attempted to maintain some measure of centralized power by restricting the excesses of local magnates.\n\n11 Hsiang-kang Teng-ch'u-shui-mau Ts'ung-ch'eng (44¥Æ#*# Z), p. 2: \"All together the cultivated land measured 8 ch'ing 3 mau 6 fen 1 li 9 hau 2 ssu 5 hu (i.e., 803.61925 mau) and was registered under the name of Tang Tin-luk, 6th tu, 7th p'i, 2nd chia. In addition, Tang Chi-cheung and others had purchased from Ho Ch'iu-ping and others plots of land at Wong Nei Chung... having a total area of 1 ch'ing 89 mau registered in Tung-Kuan under the name of Tang Chi-fu of the 2nd tụ, 18th p'i, last chia.\" The formula is often repeated in the land memorials held at the Land Office of the Registrar General in Hong Kong.\n\n12 Kwangchow Fu-chih (1759), ch'uan 4: 43a-b, 46b.\n\n13 Hsin-An Hsien-chih (1819), ch'uan 2.\n\n14 Kwangtung T'u-shuo, Hsin-An Hsien-t'u.\n\n15 Krone, \"A Notice of the Sunon District\", originally published in the Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 6:5, 41-105. This quote, as all the others, is from the reprinted copy in the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society V: p. 119.\n\n16 Tung-Kuan Hsien-chih (1797), 10:10b-11.\n\n17 Lockhart, in the Correspondence Respecting the Affairs in China, writes: \"Small villages and hamlets often place themselves under the protection of large and influential clans to which they refer all complaints and from which they expect assistance in case of attack, robbery, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209659, "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": 316, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "294\n\nG\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn 1884 Brenan was H.B.M. Consul at Chefoo. His position in 1880 is not clear from papers to hand, but he appears to have been making official visits to various places on the China Coast.\n\n* China, Imperial Maritime Customs, Reports on trade at the treaty ports for the year 1879. Shanghai, 1880, p. 246,\n\nIbid., p. 247. It was on behalf of one of Thomas Piry's grandsons that this volume of the trade reports was consulted, leading to the discovery of the two letters to W. Keswick.\n\n& Ibid., p. 246.\n\nTHE VILLAGE WATCH IN THE\n\nHONG KONG REGION\n\nBefore 1899 most New Territories villages of any size had watchmen or constables employed by the elders to enforce local rules, and in the bigger villages these may have had permanent employment. Lockhart wrote of “kang fu (kaang foo) or village constables, who are appointed by the village, and paid out of contributions made by the villagers according to the extent of their holdings in land\". He continued, \"Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power to arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village\". Writing four years after the transfer of the New Territories, another official, F. H. May, added a qualification: \"The so called Police really only village watchmen formerly and still in some instances employed by the villagers were only responsible for prevention of larcenies between villagers. They were not held responsible for robberies by outsiders which were supposed to be beyond their power to prevent\".2\n\nThe village watch was still a feature of the local security arrangements in the 1960s. Baker gives an account of it in the Sheung Shui villages of the northern New Territories in the 1960s, whilst Watson mentions it in his book on the Man lineage of San Tin, in an adjoining area. My own notes, which follow, made at Nga Tsin Wai, the last surviving village of central Kowloon, in the mid 1960s also offer some information on the subject.\n\nBefore and after 1899, this old walled village* had an office\n\nthere was no wall as such, but the houses all faced inward, giving the same effect as an enclosure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211110, "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-1987", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "146\n\nThe Chinese desire to have a consul in Hongkong was tied to the much larger problem of the opium trade. Hongkong had a special place in the trade. As a free port immediately next to the Chinese mainland, it was an excellent base for smuggling opium into China.\n\nThe Chinese Government had for many years prohibited its importation. However, it reluctantly agreed to its legalisation by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. There was the hope that, if legalised, China could better control the trade.\n\nA heavy duty was levied on it, however, and to avoid payment, large quantities continued to be smuggled from Hongkong in Chinese junks.\n\nThe smuggling was difficult to control. Hongkong regarded it strictly as China's problem. It saw no reason why it should be responsible for its suppression.\n\nIt was the peculiar situation of Hongkong that made enforcement by the Chinese difficult. In Hongkong there were ample storage facilities for the drug. The processed opium could be purchased from the Government opium monopolists. There was little difficulty in putting it aboard a junk in Hongkong and delivering it to agents somewhere along the coast or in an inland waterway.\n\nTwo types of charges were levied on opium. There was the duty on goods imported in foreign vessels to the treaty ports. The Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs became responsible for collecting this.\n\nIn addition, there were provincial levies called likin. These varied from province to province and were subject to change at the will of the provincial administrators.\n\nThis is the background for the intermittent suggestion that a Chinese official be placed in Hongkong to supervise the collection of duties imposed by the Chinese upon goods shipped from Hongkong and thereby to check the blatant smuggling.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211136, "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-1987", "page_number": 197, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "172\n\nspeaking as a diplomat and not a merchant.\n\nIn the instructions Wade had sent to Robertson, he had strongly urged the establishment of a branch of the Chinese Imperial Customs in Hongkong.\n\nThe Governor of Hongkong, Sir Arthur Kennedy, endorsed this proposal as a possible solution to the problem. In a despatch to London he stated that he was “convinced that the shortest, best and only remedy for disputes and differences which have existed for years, endangering our good relations with the Canton Government is the recognised establishment of a branch of the Chinese foreign inspectorate in Hongkong itself.\"\n\nIt was not until 1886 that provisions were made for establishing a Maritime Customs collecting station at Kowloon and the Hong-kong Government allowed its Commissioner, a British national, to reside in Hongkong.\n\nWAR OF WORDS OVER CHINESE CONSUL CONTINUES\n\nThe manner in which the appointment of a Chinese consul for Hongkong was announced in 1891 provoked a demand from the expatriate merchants that they be allowed a greater voice in determining policies that affected Hongkong.\n\nThey resented that they had not had an opportunity to express their opinion before the decision regarding the appointment had been made.\n\nThe Colonial Office had informed the local government of its intended decision and had received in reply the opinion of concerned government officials in Hongkong, but the mercantile community had not been consulted.\n\nIn November 1890, the Governor was asked if he had any objections to the proposal. This was followed by a telegram in January 1891 informing him that the Chinese had proposed that Mr. Tso Ping-lung, consul at Singapore, be transferred to the new office in Hongkong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211140, "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-1987", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "176\n\nBefore the public meeting could be held, the Home Government changed its mind about the appointment.\n\nTHE DAY AN ADMIRAL TRIED TO STEAL THE SHOW\n\nIn an attempt to solve the blockade question, Sir Brooke Robertson, the British Consul at Canton, suggested in 1878 that a European be appointed as Chinese Consul in Hongkong. He could check on cargoes of junks and make reports to the Customs authorities in Canton.\n\nIn this way the Chinese could exercise better control over the collection of duties on goods shipped in and out of Hongkong on Chinese vessels. Presumably he would not be prone to engage in all the irregularities allegedly practised by all Chinese officials.\n\nHongkong, however, resisted such an appointment and the matter was dropped at that time.\n\nThe Opium Agreement between Britain and China signed in September 1886, provided for a Chinese Maritime Customs collecting station at Kowloon. The Hongkong Government unofficially condoned the residence of its Commissioner, a British national, in Hongkong.\n\nIn view of this arrangement and the easing of the tensions created by the Chinese blockade of Hongkong, the appointment of a Chinese Consul for Hongkong continued to lay dormant.\n\nIn 1891, however, the Colonial Office suddenly informed Hongkong that a Chinese Consul had been appointed for the port. There was an immediate outcry of indignation. The opposition hauled out the same arguments they had used against any arrangement with China that would have assisted it in collecting customs duties.\n\nIn an editorial comment, the China Mail stated that the arrangement made with China for the Imperial Customs to collect its duties directly had been mutually beneficial, for \"smuggling had been discouraged and legitimate trade promoted, and the Col-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211986, "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": 401, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "376\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nNOTES ON \n\nTHE ROBERT HART PAPERS \n\nAT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARY' \n\nThe Robert Hart Collection at the Hung On-To Memorial Library, University of Hong Kong, is an exciting discovery, and worthy complement to better known Hart papers at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Queen's University, Belfast. The collection is sorted into 9 box files and 3 cartons, with the manuscript letters undoubtedly constituting the most valuable part. In particular, Hart's letters to his wife, 492 in all, from 1866 to 1907, written predominantly on a weekly basis, are really quite priceless. While very personal in tone and content, these letters also tell much about Hart's work, his social life and his reactions to current events in China, and should be of interest to anyone working on Hart, the Imperial Maritime Customs, modern China and Sino-British diplomacy. Moreover, he comes through these letters as a passionate, sensuous and poetic man, and any biography of him would not really be complete without reference to these letters.\n\nBOX I \n\nLetters from Hart to Lady Hart (Hester Bredon) \n\n \n Bundle\n Year\n Number\n Date\n of letters\n \n \n 1.\n 1866\n 8\n (16 June - 18 Aug; letter dated 27 July encloses his photograph)\n \n \n \n 2.\n 1868\n (1 sketch)\n \n \n \n \n 3.\n 1869\n 4\n (#14, 4 Dec - 27 Dec)\n \n \n \n 4.\n 1870\n 44\n (#5 — 39, 9 Jan - 30 July) (#1 — 9, ? Aug - 12 Sept)\n \n \n \n 5.\n 1871\n 31\n (#3 — 30, 4 June - 7 Sept) 3 unnumbered\n \n \n \n 6.\n 1872\n 3\n \n \n \n \n 7.\n 1875\n 21\n (Unnumbered, 26 July - 2 Aug) (#118, 18 June - 11 Oct)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212019, "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": 434, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "409\n\nmore evidence and further substantiation are needed for Faure to argue otherwise.\n\nAlso related to cash-cropping is the question of subsistence which Faure addresses. It is well known that Guangdong was a rice-deficit province throughout the period under study, very much dependent on foreign and extra-provincial supplies even in normal years as the records of the Imperial Maritime Customs clearly show. The conventional view that population pressure and the displacement of food crops by industrial cash-crops necessitated grain imports is, however, regarded by Faure as a 'fallacy', (p. 56). He contends, 'Grain was imported, not because food was short, but because income from export crops had raised the standard of living... an income with which to purchase a preferred foodstuff....' (pp. 56, 58). It follows that the increase in grain consumption in Guangdong was, in all likelihood, not a sign of impoverishment, but of rising prosperity', (p. 58). This contention is, I think, questionable. One wonders why Faure, in tabulating ‘paddy yield estimates' and 'food sufficiency' in Guangdong (Tables A.3 and 3.4), chooses to rely on Guoli Zhongshan daxue nongke xueyuan's surveys and does not make good use of the more comprehensive county paddy acreage and production statistics collected in Chen Qihui's Guangdong tudi liyong yu liangshi zhanxiao as well as the county paddy consumption statistics contained in Guangdong jingji nianjian. Since these latter sources serve to shed light on the patterns of paddy production and consumption in practically all the counties of Guangdong, they ought to have been taken account of in order to achieve a better understanding of the reasons behind the continuous need to import rice. Faure does point out that 'the [county] average figures have been subject to manipulation'. (p. 217). But why are Zhongshan daxue's data, whose coverage is more restricted, considered to be more reliable? Faure does not explain. Indeed, the county statistics show that demand generally exceeded supply, and that rice shortage was fundamentally attributed to an adverse man-land ratio. They do not support Faure's contention that 'the areas that suffered from population pressure or land shortage were not the ones that could have afforded to import grain, while the ones that did were not as short of grain', (p. 56). Dependence on outside supply was accordingly a matter of sheer necessity and not simply \"out of choice' (p. 56), as Faure claims.\n\nSpace does not allow me to comment in detail other aspects covered by Faure. I shall be brief. On certain issues, Faure's work certainly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212089, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "8\n\nfrom being obedient subjects into \"righteous people\". It was possible, as Stuart Schramm has so aptly said, \"to be a rebel within the framework of tradition\". It was this tradition that accounted for the people's readiness to identify unjust actions as \"unrighteous\" and to combine in opposition to the local authorities.\n\nMany examples of indignant or infuriated action by the populace can be cited from the Ch'ing period alone. It is hardly surprising that among them we should find a few local instances. A case in point from Tsuen Wan itself comes from Ma Wan.\n\nWhen the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs took over the duties of the Canton Customs post on Ma Wan in 1897, there were soon serious differences with the local villagers. A large stone inscription in the village, bearing the enigmatic words \"Seven English Feet of Leased Land to the Kowloon Customs\" is a memorial of the dispute. Fortunately, because the tale that emerges has epic qualities, its enigmatic wording can be supplemented by another old text which explains what happened on that occasion:\n\nAn access road was needed from the Kowloon Customs Station to the hills behind it and the sea beyond, and [the authorities] began excavation work without any announcement. Private land was utilized at will, and the objections of the villagers were not heeded. It was intended to build a [new] customs station also. At this time the people's tolerance had been strained to the maximum and furious anger was sparked off. Neighbouring villagers willingly joined in this righteous cause.\n\nThe head Customs Office heard of this incident and feared that the incident would develop into an uncontrollable one. A special mediator was sent to the Heung [Ma Wan] to settle the dispute on the following terms:\n\n1. Land could be leased for constructing the road, provided it was not more than seven feet wide and that its route was not circuitous.\n\n2. The site of the [new] station should be kept close to the hillside and [boundary] stones should be erected to mark the four corners.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212357, "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": 299, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "276\n\nthe river more or less helpless unless a steam launch either towed them out, or at least assisted in turning them round. The wharf proposed was to be built very close to the Imperial Maritime Customs station: the Customs supported the proposal since it would make their anti-smuggling work in the area far easier.\n\n―\n\nA lease (for a smaller area of 850 feet not so obviously blocking the channel) was granted by the Hong Kong Government. The Tung Ping Kuk, however, (represented by two Cheungs and a Wong; by this date the Wongs were normally allies of the Cheungs, being united by their mutual antagonism to the Tsois whose land lay between them) complained to the San On Magistrate, who promptly had the Yuen elders imprisoned for the \"fraudulent attempt to divert the toll from the Kuk to themselves\". The District Magistrate also made a strong statement of the rights to take toll being a Government right, founded on Government ownership of the wastes of the river bank. The Kuk sent young men to tear the new wharf down. The affair then petered out - the Magistrate was willing to take a far more active role in 1903-1905 than in 1875 or earlier, and the opening of the railway a couple of years later made all discussions of rights to toll somewhat academic, since trade now began to flow in different directions altogether.\n\nThese documents show three points of interest: the ineffectiveness of the Magistrate in settling affairs of this sort in the mid/late-nineteenth century; the critical importance of control of markets, roads, ferries, bridges and other nodal points of the traffic system in local politics; and the blood-thirsty and implacable nature which inter-village disputes could assume.\n\nThe disputes over the ownership of the landing place at Sham Chun lasted some seventy years, from the 1830s to 1905. Effective action by the District Magistrate seems to have been limited to the period 1903-1905: the actions of the Magistrate in 1875 were ineffective in the extreme, and there seems to have been no action at all in earlier disputes. In 1875, it was only when the dispute had escalated to such a state that the army was forced to intervene that any effective Government action was seen but it came very late. In other inter-village disputes in the area in this period the same ineffective inaction by the District Magistrate can be seen. There seems to have been no action taken by the District Magistrate in the bloody fighting (about 1850-1860) between Wong Pui Ling and Ta...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212716, "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-1992", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Chinese Military Services which have not before been recorded in English. One aspect of Mesny's writings which will bring wry smiles to a number of western faces was his occasional essay into the ever-popular art of China-watching. In 1896 his conjecture that Earl Li Hung-chang was a likely candidate to be the first ruler of a China ruled by Chinese is now, with the benefit of hindsight, amusing to say the least. Even more so was Mesny's next thought. Li perhaps might even marry the Empress Dowager and thus amalgamate his influence with that of the reigning line. He added that the Empress Dowager was however too old to bear children and would therefore only be a witness to her own departing glory by seeing her husband, [and Li would then have been 74] begetting an heir to the throne through a younger woman.\n\nBetween 1850 and 1873 peasant discontent, both Chinese [Han] and non-Chinese, led to a wave of rebellions, some of exceptional size. These included the Taipins, the Nien and the Moslem revolts, but not Ya'qub Beg's Sinkaing rebellion which ended in 1877. Mesny first became involved in the Taiping rebellion [1850-1864] towards its latter days, a time when the imperialists were gaining the upper hand and had confronted the Taiping leadership in its capital, Nanking where he was held captive for some months. Later, whilst he was working with the Chinese Maritime Customs in Hankow, he became involved with the Nien-fei [the Nien rebels] bandits who ravaged north of the Yangtze between 1851 and 1868.\n\nThe Nien, a decentralised association of peasants, were basically bandits without any ideology as such, whereas the Taiping rebels were a pseudo-Christian movement led against the imperial rulers in Peking by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan who had adopted some elements of Christian beliefs into his ideology. The Taiping rebels, whose capital city was Nanking, enjoyed some sympathy from westerners but eventually the rebellion was defeated but not until many millions had died. When the final defeat came it was due mainly to the Chinese imperialists under Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-t'ang, aided to some extent by several foreign-trained Chinese forces which included the much-vaunted western-trained force, first under an American Frederick Ward and finally under a British colonel in the Royal Engineers, Charles Gordon, together with direct British and French military intervention in Shanghai and Ningpo areas. The rebels, with whom Mesny and many Christian missionaries at first sympathised, introduced many reforms such as monogamy, and the banning of opium, tobacco and alcohol, and foot-binding.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212796, "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-1992", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "90\n\nThree Bold Adventurers to fight alongside the Nien rebels. After being captured and carried to Chin-chiang in a cage, he was saved by two British artillery officers serving with the Taiping forces.\n\nThe third time was in Hankow when Mesny took Damström along with him as a heavy-weight. The incident occurred after Mesny 'arrested' the dishonest Chinese merchant who had swindled Dupuis. [These incidents are probably not in temporal order].\n\nDupuis, Jean\n\nA French merchant born ca. 1828, who arrived and lived in Hankow in about 1860. He built up a thriving trade in armaments. Fluent in Chinese, he introduced Mesny to the Szechuanese officials whose invitation to serve with the Szechuan Force changed his life. Mesny remarked that Dupuis was a distinguished explorer and 'conqueror of Tonkin.'\n\nGill, William J: born Bangalore 1843\n\nServed in India after being commissioned into the Royal Engineers. Inherited a fortune and indulged his passion for exploration. One of his travels was through north Szechuan province, where first he travelled alone and then later with Mesny to Burma. He wrote The River of Golden Sand in 1880, and after several other travels, in Tripoli and Afghanistan, he was murdered by Bedouins in 1882.\n\nGiquel, Prosper M. [1835-1886]\n\nA French naval officer who arrived in China during the Second China War. Formerly Commissioner of Imperial Maritime Customs at Ningpo and Hankow. He assisted the Sino-French 'Ever Triumphant Army' that fought alongside Tso Tsung-t'ang's force in Chekiang province to recapture Hangchow and Ningpo, and later commanded the force in operations that led to the recapture of Hangchow, for which he received high rank and honour from the Ch'ing government. His principal achievement was the construction and administration of the Foochow Arsenal in 1866, and dockyard with its fleet of warships. He was the only foreigner besides Gordon to receive the honour of the Yellow Riding Jacket.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212797, "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-1992", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "91\n\nHart, Sir Robert [1835-1911]\n\nKnown as the \"I G” [Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs]. His Bureau was the one financial stay and prop, the negotiable asset, the one honestly administered and creditable branch within the Imperial government. He left the British Consular Service in 1861 to join the Customs Service, appointed I G in 1863.\n\nHill, David [1840-1896]\n\nWesleyan missionary stationed in Hankow until 1867. Died of typhus in Hankow. Hill was not only a witness with Griffith John at the re-marriage of William Mesny's brother's widow to E.G. Wilson in October 1884; he was also guardian with William Mesny to John's children.\n\nHung Hsiu-ch'uan ## [1813-1864] a Hakka\n\nLeader of the Taiping Rebellion: believed himself to be entrusted as the brother of Jesus to lead China and destroy the Manchu regime. [There is an inexplicable reference in Mesny's Miscellanies to a daughter 'of Hung?' wishing Mesny to return to Nanking to marry her]\n\nGordon, C G [1833-1885]\n\nAn English officer in the Royal Engineers who commanded the 'Ever-Victorious Army' against the Taiping rebels. He was appreciated by the Ch'ing Imperial government and was the first foreigner to be awarded the prestigious Yellow Riding Jacket. He later helped advise the Chinese during the Ili uprising in the early 1880s. He died in Khartoum during the Mahdi Uprising.\n\nJohn, Griffith [1831-1912]\n\nMissionary, LMS, Hankow 1861-1912. (Hill: q.v.)\n\nPrince Kung: also known as I-hsin [1832-1898]\n\nSixth son of the Tao Kuang emperor and half brother of the Hsien Feng emperor. Probably one of the most important Ch'ing dynasty officials in foreign affairs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212802, "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-1992", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "96\n\nCh'in-ch'ai Ta-ch'en ✯✯E : Imperial High Commissioner, a very senior appointment.\n\nEver Victorious Army ET: A European-officered Chinese force of the Imperial Army raised by the American, Ward, which ultimately, under the command of Colonel Gordon, assisted in putting an end to the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nExpectant... (Ho-ju) ✩A : A prefix indicating that an official was qualified and certified to take up duty in the post named.\n\nFan-t'ai #: A provincial treasurer known to foreigners as the Commissioner of Finance; charged with the fiscal or financial administration of a province.\n\nFormosa: The Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan.\n\nHakkas [Ko-chia] ** : One of the southern Chinese ethnic groups said to have migrated from northern China during the Mongol dynasty, ca the thirteenth century AD.\n\nHan-lin Yuan #: The Chinese National Academy, admission to which was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar.\n\nHo-shang : Buddhist monk or priest.\n\nHongkew : Site of the American Settlement in Shanghai, where Mesny later lived.\n\nHsien : Administrative district.\n\nHuang Ma-kua : The Yellow Riding Jacket. A high award from the emperor to his senior officials.\n\nImperial Maritime Customs: Chinese customs service with a foreign inspectorate largely able to control the collection of duties and taxes without the usual Chinese squeeze [q.v.]. Robert Hart became Inspector General in 1863.\n\nJingal (gingal): The Chinese blunderbuss. It was generally fired from a swivel fixed on a wall or wooden post, but sometimes it was fired with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212806, "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-1992", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "100\n\ndynasty in China. It was a non-Chinese dynasty, being Manchu, founded by invaders from Manchuria, with Manchu garrisons stationed at the most important points in the empire. It was established in the capital at Peking in 1644. The military arm of the Manchus was referred to as Tartar, with a Tatar-general commanding Manchu garrisons.\n\nTael: Liang : a Chinese ounce in weight [one third heavier than the avoirdupois weight] derived from the Hindu 'tola'. It was the given weight of silver used in commercial reckonings, and was not a coin. Taels varied in value; there were the long taels of the Imperial maritime Customs and the short taels of Shanghai.\n\n[Mesny notes that the rate of exchange in 1860 was six shillings and eight pence to the silver tael; and in 1868 he noted that 10 taels of silver were worth just over £3.] see also under 'Cash'.\n\nTaiping : the name given to the rebellion which raged over much of central China between 1850 and 1864. Literally \"The Great Peace\" though it is usually translated as the \"Heavenly Peace\". Its founders were influenced by Protestant Christian beliefs as well as misunderstood foreign concepts. The Christian beliefs led many western missionaries to admire the Taipings and created a hope that a Taiping victory would lead to some form of Christianisation of China. However, after the leader, who had declared that he was the son of God and a younger brother of Jesus, led a life of ease in his capital at Nanking, and his armies, though comparatively competent, had been defeated, he committed suicide.\n\nTao-t'ai : a civil official post referred to regularly by Mesny. A tao-t'ai was an Imperial Circuit Intendant, a member of the hierarchy controlling several prefectures, e.g. the Tao-t'ai of Shanghai Hsien.\n\nTartar general : [see under Ta Ch'ing above] Manchu commanders of the Manchu garrisons in key cities in China. Their presence was meant as a check upon the actions of civil authorities.\n\nT'i-t'ai : A high provincial official in charge of the military administration of his province as regards native troops; the Manchu force was under the exclusive command of the Tartar general.\n\nTracking: a common practice whereby scores if not hundreds of coolies were employed to tow junks against the stream up the Yangtze Gorges,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213105, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "155\n\nto the front of the school building, to double the defences of the bridge, probably some time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.\n\n27\n\nThe building of the gun-towers, the school, the Man Mo Temple and Meeting Hall, and the communal grave, is evidence for the prosperity and vitality of the town, and the village society in which it was set, in the later nineteenth century. By 1904, the market had about doubled in size, and in the number of shops operating, from its situation fifty years earlier. From its foundation in 1830-1835, in fact, the prosperity of the town seems to have increased steadily until 1898, with the only check being the very temporary set-back of the Taiping attack.\n\nThe Market and the New Frontier\n\nThe leasing of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898 was traumatic for the villagers of the Sha Tau Kok area. The line originally proposed for the new frontier would have run along the Sha Tau Kok River from source to sea. This would have put two of the eleven village alliance areas of the Shap Yeuk into China, the market and the other village alliance areas into the New Territories. This was unacceptable to the Chinese authorities, who were unwilling to allow so significant a place as Sha Tau Kok to become part of the area administered by Britain. Eventually it was agreed that the frontier should run along the Sha Tau Kok River from the source down to the Sha Tau Kok bridge, and then be diverted from the bridge down the centre of the bridge access road to the sluice at Yim Liu Ha, then in a straight line to the sea, and thence east along the high-water mark to the mouth of Mirs Bay.* This line was drawn very close to the northern and western edges of the market. As such it isolated the market from the rest of Chinese territory; its only access was either over the bridge, which was half in Hong Kong, or through Hong Kong territory, or by sea through Hong Kong waters.\n\nIn the late nineteenth century, China controlled imports and exports through customs regulations, enforced by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. By the drawing of the frontier where it eventually was, the normal, day-to-day trade of Sha Tau Kok market suddenly found itself\n\n* See Map 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213106, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "156\n\nbecoming \"import\" or \"export\", and subject to all these controls.\n\nVillagers from Wo Hang or Nam Chung buying a new plough animal, or seed-pig, were \"exporting live animals\"; if they bought a new plough, or reaping knife, they were \"exporting ironwork\"; if they took cloth to market to be made into a pair of trousers, or to be dyed, then they were \"importing cloth\" - duty in all these cases had to be paid. Traditionally, sugar was grown in this area, carried as cane to Sham Chun, pressed and refined there, and then carried back for sale in the New Territories markets. This now became “importing sugar” in the first instance, and “exporting sugar\" in the second.28 In the 1930s, the Chinese Government imposed a heavy import duty on fish, causing the very important carrying trade in fish from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Chun to face the same problems.29\n\nAs soon as the new frontier was established, the Kowloon Customs (the local division of the Imperial Maritime Customs) moved to control it. The Kowloon Customs was headquartered in Hong Kong, but established its new operational headquarters at Sham Chun. Below this, work was initially conducted through three Divisions: Duty Collection, Border Patrol, and Sea Patrol. The Border Patrol duties were conducted from Patrol Stations, which were arranged in Districts, with a Patrol District Headquarters in each District. Duty was collected at only a relatively few Duty Stations, which were the only places where dutiable imports and exports could legally be handled. The Kowloon Customs also had half a dozen steam launches as gun-boats: each had a Sea Patrol District to control, centred on a Sea Patrol District Headquarters.\n\nSha Tau Kok was chosen as the Patrol District Headquarters for the Patrol District running from Lin Ma Hang to Siu Mui Sha (Xiaomeisha), with sub-stations at Yim Tin (Yantian) and Chan Hang (Chenkeng). It was the Duty Station for the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay. It was also the Sea Patrol District Headquarters for the Mirs Bay Sea Patrol District. It was one of the centres of the Mounted Horse Patrols which, from 1932, patrolled the area behind the zone covered by the foot patrols of the Border Patrol staff. After 1934 it was one of the centres of the new Automobile Patrol, which patrolled the newly completed motor road along the frontier. The Customs Station at Sha Tau Kok was headed by an expatriate Assistant Superintendent of Customs. For most of the time, there were between 70 and 100 customs staff working in Sha Tau Kok.30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213873, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 225, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "199\n\non the Canton-Hong Kong group. As shall be seen in this article, since the opening of China in 1840 to 1927, when China was nominally united by Jiang Jieshi (7), settlers in Hong Kong at least found three good seasons to invest in China - they were the Western Affairs Movement in the 1870s, the late Qing reform in the 1900s, and the post-revolution “rehabilitation” in the 1910s and the early 1920s. Each occasion was accompanied by investment blooms in China - ship-building and mining in the 1870s, railway, steamship land reclamation and port developments in the 1900s, banking (especially for currency redemption) and real estate in the 1910s and 1920s.\n\nThe Western Affairs Movement\n\nSince the forced opening of China in 1840, and the subsequent establishment of trade ports in Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai and Tianjin in 1843, 1844 and 1861 respectively, a commercial axis was gradually extending northward within coastal China. This development gave rise to an urban population which was linked by telegraph, railways, steamship, printing, census, minting, urban planning and western schooling. Before the peasant population in the inner parts of China was appealed to in the political movement of the 1930s, it was this urban population in coastal China that was being appealed to in the national politics of China. Among others things, this coastal population played a significant part in the Western Affairs Movement, as well as the \"late Qing reform\" in 1904.\n\nThanks to the hard work of Rev. Carl Smith, we recognize that in the late nineteenth century a Cantonese group was emerging within this commercial axis along coastal China. They were western-educated Cantonese, including Eurasians, who emerged in Hong Kong and Macau, where western missionary schools found their earliest presence. These Cantonese, without proper education in classical Chinese, were regarded by the Chinese as a group marginal to the Chinese community. Their job market was small - they could not climb up the traditional social ladder in the same way as their Chinese-educated counterparts could through the Imperial Examination, and the number of their potential employers was very few. This explains why their career paths were more or less identical - at one time or another, they were employed by the Maritime Customs, the Hong Kong government, or for the lucky few, they would be employed as compradores in western firms.\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214123, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "ARE THE TANKA PEOPLE DESCENDANTS OF MONGOL SOLDIERS?\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n161\n\nI have not done any research into the origins of the Tanka people of the Pearl River Estuary and have always assumed from something I read many years ago that ethnically they were one of the many original minority groups of southern China.\n\nHowever, I have just come across a paragraph in 'Pulling Strings in China', a book written in the late twenties by W.F. Tyler, suggesting that the Tanka boat people were a mixture of Mongol soldiers and Chinese with whom they had intermarried. Tyler was an interesting character, an Englishman who had been not only a young officer serving with the Chinese Imperial Navy during the Yalu battle in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 but had gone on to be a Commissioner with the Chinese Maritime Customs.\n\nThe relative passage from the paragraph concerned claims that:\n\n*\n\nIn about 1370 the conquering Ming dynasty ordered that the soldiers of the previous Mongol garrisons - descendants of the famous hordes of Ghengis Khan - and their families should be slaughtered. At Canton there had been intermarriage and absorption in a century of Mongol rule, and enmity was dead, so there was reluctance to fulfil this drastic order: consequently it was reported to the capital that they had been driven into the river, and by inference, drowned. They were not drowned; they were allowed to live in boats and in piled shacks below high-water line. And so they lived and bred and grown for five hundred years or more, and it was no one's business to institute a change. These were the Tankas; fine-looking men and pretty girls”.\n\nHas any reader confirmation of Tyler's story?\n\nNOTE\n\nTyler, William Ferdinand Pulling Strings in China Constable London 1929", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214552, "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": 410, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "379\n\nmeeting place where candidates from the two provinces could stay while attending imperial examinations. An opera hall was added in 1830 and it became a centre for Beijing opera masters including Mei Lanfang. The hall was restored in 1992 and the site also houses a small opera museum. We watched a very lively performance of excerpts from famous Beijing Operas, the highlight of which was the Monkey King in Journey to the West defeating a rapid succession of opponents through brilliant acrobatics and martial arts.\n\nOn Monday, our final day, we visited the former Legation Quarter, now called Dong Jiao Min Xiang. This quarter had long been the place where tributary visitors, such as Mongols, Tibetans and Vietnamese stayed, and during late Qing times became a virtual \"state within a state\".\n\nDr Ting guided us on a walk which began at St Michael's Church, in Taijichang Street (formerly known as Rue Marco Polo) and built by French Vincentians in 1901. Inside the church is simple and modest with some of its services still conducted in Latin. We went on past the sites of the Russian Embassy and the former British Embassy, as well as the present Beijing Municipal Government offices, the Supreme People's Court and the Beijing Public Security Bureau. There still exists one interesting road sign, Rue Hart, named after the famous founder of the Imperial Maritime Customs, Sir Robert Hart.\n\nOur visit to Beijing ended with a brief look at the antique market Liulichang (Glazed Tile Factory) an area named after a pottery which, in Ming times, produced tiles for the roofs of the Forbidden City. It had been famous for centuries for its old book shops, pictures, rubbings, jewellery, bronzes and porcelain and for some years now it has been revived as an antique market, (but one has to bargain very hard to get a good price).\n\nWe returned to Hong Kong on Easter Monday afternoon having visited a capital undergoing both revival and development, with room for both Matteo Ricci and Nina Ricci, for both the study of history and plans for a future based on past experience; and for both the tranquillity of the Fa Hai Temple and the boisterous artistry of the Monkey King. We look forward to further insights in Qingdao during Easter 1999.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215562, "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": 339, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "289\n\nIn 1888 the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments reached agreement. Gap Rock Lighthouse would be built by the British and maintained by them. The island remained Chinese territory not to be used for any other purpose. On the Chinese part, the Kowloon Customs was to contribute $7,500 towards the initial cost of the light and $750 annually towards its maintenance.22 The agreement was not put into effect. Towards the close of the nineteenth century, however, the proposal for lighthouses at the two main approaches to Hong Kong, on Gap Rock and Waglan Island, was revived. The previous agreement was then implemented.\n\nIn 1891 a lighthouse was built on Gap Rock, at the south-western extremity of Lema and Kypong Islands. Lighting equipment was constructed in Sweden and the light was first shown in April 1892. Three years later the lantern was smashed by a severe typhoon. According to experts' opinions later the lighthouse should have been built on the northern part instead of the southern part of the rock. But to rebuild it would cost somewhere near $140,000. So, the original light continued to function usefully through forty years of typhoons until the Japanese invasion in 1941.\n\nGap Rock is in the form of two hillocks, about 80 to 100 feet high, and the gap between gave the place its name (in Chinese it is called Man Mei Chau, meaning the last island or Mosquito Tail Island). The lighthouse tower is nearly 50 feet high, and the light is thus about 142 feet above mean sea level. In heavy storms seas broke right over the lighthouse but it stood, as a tribute to its builders and a pointer to the developments which have marked the growth of the port of Hong Kong.23\n\nWaglan Lighthouse\n\nUnlike Gap Rock Lighthouse, Waglan Lighthouse has a different history. It was constructed by a Paris company for the Chinese Customs Light Department of the Imperial Maritime Customs in 1893. It started to operate on 9th May in the same year. It was run by the Chinese Maritime Customs from Shanghai. Following the lease of the New Territories by Britain, in 1898, it was transferred to the administration and control of the Hong Kong Government on 1st January 1901.\n\nWaglan was a First Order light of 45,000 candle-power burning", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216025, "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": 324, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "258\n\nShanghai did not possess, and were undoubtedly conducive to health by promoting exercise. In winter the climate is bracing and healthy though fever and dysentery were to be dreaded in summer'.\n\nThere are a number of highlights for foreign visitors beginning, perhaps, with the former foreign concession, though nowadays more than seventy years on, it is difficult to discern. Outside the Chinese old city with its modern main roads, cobbled side streets and a stone pagoda said to be 13th century Yuan dynasty, though its present condition suggests that it has either been well restored or completely remade within the last century, there are the fourth century Jin Shan temple and pagoda; the Grand Canal; the former British Consulate; the home of Pearl Buck, as well as the sites of the storming of the town by a British brigade on 21st July 1842 during the First China War [commonly referred to as the Opium War]. There are also the remains of the lengthy trench dug by the Taiping rebels to protect the city from recapture by Imperial forces as well as the ruins left after the destruction of the city by the Taipings during the 1850s. And for those who have read a little Chinese literature or attended Chinese opera the widely-known tale of the White Snake Lady is also part of the story of the Jin Shan temple.\n\nBefore waxing too lyrically about its glories let us remember that Zhenjiang is the vinegar capital of China, with, if the wind is in the wrong direction, an evocative sour tang forewarning approaching visitors long before they are anywhere near to the city. The majority of Chinese when confronted with the name of the city almost to a man voice the single word 'vinegar' or to the connoisseur 'brown rice vinegar'.\n\nZhenjiang was a treaty port with a foreign concession for sixty-eight years, from the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860 until 1928, one of the minor footholds foreigners had obtained from China in one of the 'unequal treaties' and the base for numerous foreign interests. There were great hopes for the place and Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, even anticipated that eventually it would eclipse Shanghai as a commercial centre. Despite numerous westerners passing through the place down the years only a few spent full tours of duty there. Many of the temporary visitors were the lesser employees of major western companies such as BAT and Butterfield and Swire, whose regular tours to the many small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216027, "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": 326, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "260\n\none of the ports of call on the routine and customary journey up the Yangzi. It was also within easy reach from Shanghai, no more than a night's sail, with the more adventurous and especially the sportsmen spending a short vacation there. The game varied from wild boar to pheasants and a typical excursion was described by Percival1 who, in April of 1887, was invited by Sir Roderick Runnimede to join him in a voyage up through the Yangzi gorges. Percival wrote that 'it was not a scientific excursion, there were no new countries to discover, no new people to trot out before the world, no new trade routes to open up; it was simply an excursion for health and pleasure combined. In a short time we arrived at the city of Chinkiang [Zhenjiang] itself, the place never having recovered its prosperity since it was burned by the [Taiping] Rebels about 1860. Not more than four or five years earlier [i.e. 1882-3] the shooting around Zhenjiang was all that could be desired; game (principally birds) of every description was most abundant. Sportsmen made Zhenjiang their headquarters. Feathers and fur - everything, in fact, between snipe and leopard - could be found within easy distance. Each year as cultivation advances, population increases, and villages, destroyed by the rebels are gradually being rebuilt, so game is being driven farther and farther into wilder and more remote regions∗. Percival went on to describe how one winter afternoon some years earlier he had joined W. De St. Croix, an old friend, stationed in Zhenjiang in the service of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and using Zhenjiang as a base they had sailed in the Custom's cruiser up stream to shoot wild fowl. After several days shooting they returned and, on the following day, set off on ponies for the Wu-chow-shang [Wuzhou Shan] Hills, about ten miles south of Zhenjiang to round off the trip with three or four days among the boars and deer.\n\nFrom the early 1890s and for about six years local post offices existed in eleven of the treaty ports issuing their own stamps, one of which was Zhenjiang. A contemporary comment noted that just as many of the stamps were sold to tourists and collectors as were used postally.\n\nZhenjiang down the centuries\n\nZhenjiang has been a place of great importance for a great many centuries. In the beginning, no more than a crossing point for boatmen plying their ferries across the Yangzi, it was known in much earlier times first as Dantu and then as Runzhou. Local historians", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216047, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "280\n\nfood and shelter with money he collected from foreigners. He always wore straw sandals, Chinese clothes and cap, and had a strong Chinese complex. The local Chinese adored him, but not so the missionaries; they detested him, even refusing him food and shelter, or any assistance whatsoever - consoling themselves with the reflection that he was a 'disgrace to the cloth'.\n\nDr. James Hayes has reminded me that he produced a note for Volume 23 of this JHKBRAS[1983] in which he provided extracts from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader21 describing the westerner's community shooting bungalow in about 1905. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Zhenjiang, a small, lonely British concession. When first posted there he had been assured by others that Zhenjiang was a very nice and clean Concession, with a good club and excellent shooting. He found this to be a good description of the Concession but not of the native town. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. After several years with the Imperial Maritime Customs he was offered a job representing a foreign firm still in Zhenjiang and found himself now one of the upper set. No longer could he walk down the crowded streets of the Concession but must ride in state in his sedan chair, borne by his four chair bearers garbed in his firm's colours. Rasmussen's sanity was saved by the presence of a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near by, looked after by a caretaker. It was about eight miles away on a hill called Wu Chow where he would stay during his off-duty hours either reading or hunting wild boar. Though it was relatively expensive in ammunition and tips for the beaters he was able to lessen the latter by sharing expenses with shooting companions. Rasmussen spent many happy hours scanning the visitors' book finding out more about previous hunting successes and failures. He describes how he relieved his boredom by walking up and down the Bund, three hundred yards there and three hundred back, and for a change he walked along the only cross street to the south gate of the Concession, two hundred yards there and two hundred yards back.\n\nOne of the most lucrative trades around Shanghai and Zhenjiang used to be that of being shot. Foreign merchants often went up creeks in house-boat parties, or wander about the fields in the outskirts, looking for snipe. There were no hedges or game laws and innumerable", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216066, "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": 365, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "299\n\nrecently disbanded Weihaiwei Regiment of the British Army, trained by British officers.\n\nDuring the Boxer troubles in 1900 a number of missionaries fleeing south from their threatened mission stations, having passed through Anhui, reached safety at Zhenjiang on the south side of the Yangzi.\n\nExtraordinary case of the Englishman who wanted to be King of China\n\nMesny wrote at length some ten years after the event about a case in 1891 into which he had been drawn and which, according to him, caused his name to be dragged through the mud by Li Hongzhang, the most powerful and senior Chinese imperial official in Peking, and to all intents and purposes ended any future credence he might have had as a business adviser to the Chinese. He began by writing that:\n\n*As I was turning over some old notes of mine I found the following [on Mason] almost begging to be printed so as not to be lost.\" He then described his version of his involvement with Mason and the outcome. Mesny claimed that it was believed by many that he [Mesny] had been involved with Mason [Charles Mason was a junior officer in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, stationed in Zhenjiang), as a member, if not the head, of an illegal secret society. This led to him being ostracised by Chinese officials, as well as the desire of the apprehensive and phobic wife of Mesny to separate herself from him and his apparent connection with rebels, even going as far as wishing to divorce him.\n\nThe story as described in Mesny's article is as follows:\n\n'In the early part of 1891 the Municipal Council at Hankou decided to buy a machine gun as a means of protecting the foreign concession and its inhabitants from periodical riots. I therefore wrote to the municipal councillors offering them a machine gun and 30,000 cartridges.\n\nBy some means or other, Mason got this letter and tried to get the gun too. He first wrote me a letter offering me all sorts of good things if I would engage 1000 foreigners, and raise a force wherewith to capture the best ships in the northern squadron also the Wusong, Jiangyin and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216067, "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": 366, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "300\n\nSilver Island forts. I did not answer his letter, but noted the date thereon and the date on which I received it. I was requested to send an answer to someone in Zhenjiang. I gave the letter to Consul Mowat.35\n\nAs I did not answer Mason's letter he called early one morning and I asked who he was and what he wanted. He replied that he was the United States consular marshal at Hankou and had come down to see the machine gun I had offered to sell to the Municipal Council at Hankou and wished to know if my machine was a single action or double action gun. I showed him the gun and how to work it, and he decided to buy it. He then wished me to send it somewhere on the Yangzi, I said I could not let it go out of my house until it was paid for, and would not deliver anywhere outside the limits of a treaty port unless provided with a special passport or huzhao. Mason then said that he was going to Ningbo and would call for the gun on his return. He did not do so. He went to Hongkong engaged a lot of foreigners, instructed them to come and report themselves to me for duty, etc., etc.\n\nOn Mason's return to Shanghai he brought a lot of firearms he had bought in Hongkong. They were seized, and the men he had engaged were looked after. He himself was introduced by Mr R.E. Bredon, Shanghai Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, to the Daotai of Shanghai who invited him to dinner and to witness a theatrical performance as if he, Mason, had been a popular hero.\n\nHe lived in the Central Hotel and was a frequent visitor at the Shanghai Club where he had been introduced by Mr Bredon.\n\nMeanwhile all sorts of tricks were being practised to inveigle me into a trap. Conch shells were blown at all hours of the night about my house under the direction of Mason. A host of extra police officers and detectives were placed on special duty on my property, at the switch-back railway. I suddenly remembered the letter that had been sent me. I thereupon called on Mr acting-consul Mowat and insisted on his reporting the matter to H.M.'s Minister at Beijing. Mowat pooh-poohed the whole thing as a farce and so it proved in reality though very costly and dangerous to me.\n\nInstructions were soon received from H.M.'s Minister at Beijing and Mason was removed from the Central Hotel on the Bund to H.M.'s", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "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": 216291, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "that the tower might have been a lighthouse, silo, Martello tower, fort, folly or a windmill. However, our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, and HKBRAS Council Member and local historian, Mr. Ko Tin-keung, have identified the structure as an old Imperial Maritime Customs Post built probably in the latter half of the 19th century. It was leased by the Hong Kong Milling Company from 1905 to 1925. AMO is looking for a volunteer to carry out further research. Is anyone interested?\n\nEarly Modernist Buildings\n\nThe Executive Secretary (Antiquities & Monuments), Dr. Louis Ng would like us to draw up a list of early modernist style (Bauhaus, International, Art Deco) buildings still remaining. Examples include the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club (1941), Wan Chai Market (1937) and the Vice-Chancellor's Residence, HKU (1950). If anyone knows of any such buildings please let me know the address. When I have got a list together I will organize a field trip to assess them.\n\nGovernment Policy on Built Heritage Conservation\n\nGovernment is now reviewing the policy on built heritage conservation and is consulting the public. A Consultation Document (Executive Summary) can be picked up at the AMO Reception Desk, 136 Nathan Road, Tsimshatsui. Comments and views should be sent to the Home Affairs Bureau by 18 May 2004.\n\nNew Members\n\nI would like to welcome the following new members of the Volunteers :-\n\nName/Interests\n\nDebbie Levin/Local history and culture\n\nJonathan Luk/Cemetery surveys\n\nThomas Foo/Cemetery surveys\n\nWe look forward to meeting our new friends at our next get-together.\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216358, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "66\n\nfor unmarried Englishmen resident in China to keep a Chinese girl and I did as others did. Ayaon lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. Later in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom, though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. Between 1858 and 1864 she gave birth to three children. In 1866 I went home on leave and on that occasion the connection between Ayaon and myself was finally dissolved. I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars and she married a Chinaman. As all the children were born while Ayaon was being kept by me I decided to provide for them respectably and accordingly I made it part of the arrangement for separation that she should surrender her children to my Agent and she did so. I had the children sent to England to be educated and launched in the world and I settled a sum of six thousand pounds for their benefit which sum has long since been divided and distributed between them. Their names were Anna, Herbert and Arthur. To the best of my recollection and belief I have seen Anna twice or thrice only and Herbert once only. This was in China. I have never seen Arthur. Anna died some seventeen years ago and about the same time Arthur went to Canada, Herbert married and in or about the year 1905 went to Canada to join Arthur.\n\nHart's main purpose for producing the documents\n\nBetween 1904 and 1905, Hart was troubled by two of his children by Ayaou, Herbert and Arthur. The Court and Personal Column of the Morning Post for June 30, 1905, reported (ibid: 1480): \"Mr. Herbert Hart, eldest son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., of Hong Kong, together with Mrs Hart and their only son left Liverpool by the steamer Bavarian yesterday for Ontario, Canada”. Hart's wife, Lady Hart visited the Morning Post soon after she learnt the news and the next day the newspaper made the following correction (ibid): \"We find that the paragraph in our issue of yesterday announcing the departure of Mr Herbert Hart for Canada does not relate to the only son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., Inspector General of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, Peking.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216377, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "85\n\nGraveson, R. H. and Crane. F. R., A Century of Family Law. 1957.\n\nLondon: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd.\n\nKing, Paul. 1980. In the Chinese Customs Service - A personal record of forty-seven years.\n\nNew York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.\n\nLittle, Lester K. 1975. Introduction in Fairbank, John K, Bruner, Katherine F, Matheson, Elizabeth M. 1975. eds. The I.G. in Peking - Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs 1868-1907. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.\n\nMcCusker, John J. 2003. “Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in the United States (or Colonies) from 1665 to 2002.” Economic History Services, 2003, URL: http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/.\n\nSmith, Richard J, Fairbank, John K, Bruner, Katherine F. 1991. eds. Robert Hart and China's Early Modernisation - His Journals, 1863-1866. Cambridge and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.\n\nWang, Hongbin. 2000. He De Jue Shi Zhuan - Da Qing Hai Guan Yang Zong Guan. (The Biography of Sir Robert Hart - The Foreign I.G. of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs) Beijing: Culture and Arts Press.\n\nWright, Stanley F. 1950. Hart and The Chinese Customs. Belfast: WM. Mullan & Son (Publishers) Ltd.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 18 September 2003\n\n2 Transcribed by Lan Li and Deirdre Wildy, 15 August 2003\n\n3 It is supposed that Hart had made Declaration 1 as a legal document, as in his letter to Campbell dated 11 August 1905 he added a post script dated 19 August - the same date that Declaration I was written: \"Yours 7th July received: herewith cover with statement for Murray Hutchins.\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matherson 1975: 25, 1479) Murray, Hutchins & Co. was Hart's private solicitor, in Declaration I he mentioned: \"The children were sent to England and it was arranged that W. Hutchins my lawyer should take charge of them...\" Transcribed by Deirdre Wildy, 18 September 2003\n\n* In Declaration 1 Hart wrote: \"Anna died some seventeen years ago\". In his letter to Campbell on 8 July 1906, he wrote: \"The enclosed from Mr. Anderson, announcing the death of a former ward, Herbert Hart, has just reached me here through the Legation.\" (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 1513) \"Gertrude Bell in her diary on 5 May 1903 recorded that she went to Sir Robert", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216423, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "132\n\nof the war with intense fascination as Russia's ultimate victory, they believed, would lead to Russia riding roughshod all over northern China and not just over Manchuria.\n\nWhen, four days after the start of the war, China proclaimed her neutrality, England, France, Germany and Italy, all neutral powers, joined in suggesting to Russia and Japan that they avoid sending troops into Chih-li (Zhili - the Chinese metropolitan province), lest the Chinese Imperial Government should flee Peking. Both Russia and Japan agreed. The fact that at the outbreak of the war there were some five hundred Japanese instructors in the Chinese Army, having displaced many of the European instructors, might have complicated matters had not the belligerents and China appear to have disregarded the fact.\n\nWesterners, too, were unable to predict the outcome and in the event made a number of contingency plans. An Imperial Maritime Customs memorandum produced in Shanghai in 1904, produced by the Statistical Department of the Imperial Maritime Customs (IMC) concerned plans to rearrange Chinese land tax as more than half of China's revenue was mortgaged for payment of foreign loans, leaving insufficient funds in the event of the Russo-Japanese conflict spreading further into China.\n\nContraband of war\n\nForeign ships' captains made a fortune running the blockade from Chinese ports into Port Arthur and other Russian ports along the coast of Manchuria. One German merchant realised a profit of £10,000 in three months on contraband cargoes carried to Port Arthur by a steamer of only 180 tons burden.\n\nChina, not fully comprehending the implications of trading with both belligerents found herself accused by both belligerents of contravening the concept of contraband of war. After considerable discussion Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector General of the IMC promulgated regulations to the effect that:\n\nContraband of war consists of purely military requisites, that is, arms and ammunition,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]