[ { "id": 206256, "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-1971", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n67\n\nthat associations have come to play an important role, as they do in the overseas Chinese communities. It seems that wherever there are Chinese people, there are typical Chinese social institutions, serving what we may call \"traditional\" social functions.\n\nIn Hong Kong, there is a network of social institutions very similar to that which obtains among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. There are chambers of commerce or merchants' associations, district and clan organizations, trade unions, religious and recreational associations, secret societies, etc. They provide roughly the same kinds of services as their counterparts overseas. In this part of the paper, I shall discuss a particular kind of local institution called the Kaifong Associations. Their roles in local community life are very similar to those performed by the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities. By comparing the Kaifongs and these overseas associations, we have a very good illustration of how traditional associations adjust to modern urban conditions, how they are carried along the currents of social change, and how they take part in the promotion of social change itself.\n\nThe word \"kaifong\" means a \"street neighbourhood\", and a Kaifong Association means the voluntary organization of the residents of a certain district. As local residents' associations, the Kaifongs have existed in Hong Kong since the mid 19th century. But strictly speaking, the modern Kaifongs are a post-war creation, adapted to the social situation in Hong Kong in the early 1950s. After the Japanese Occupation, there followed an intense period of reconstruction. The government's attention was claimed in many different directions. Thus it had to rely heavily on voluntary agencies for the organization of welfare. Under the direct encouragement of the Social Welfare Officer, the first modern Kaifong came into being in 1949.12 The number of Kaifongs grew rapidly to over 30 by the mid-1950s, and after a period of stability, jumped to over 50 after the mid-60s. Today, every urban district is served by a Kaifong association, and many of the new resettlement estates also have their own Kaifongs. The Kaifongs are voluntary organizations. The government does not directly supervise their affairs, although it keeps in close contact\n\n12 Hong Kong Annual Departmental Report by the Social Welfare Officer for the Period 1948-54.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 228, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 213\n\nto create local contacts; and some of the politicians are certainly not unwilling to be drawn into this, for them, new organisational version of kinship. In the spring rites in the main ancestral hall of one big clan there was represented this year a Hong Kong association based on the surname of the clan but largely recruited from among townspeople with no original New Territories connexions. One of the politicians of this same clan is the sponsor of an occult religious group which is a branch of a widespread esoteric religion in Hong Kong, the members of which are chiefly immigrants. At the only meeting of this group that I was able to attend the great majority of the people present, including all the specialists, were immigrant business men from the urban areas. It is not easy to disentangle the politician's motives in agreeing to sponsor the group, but it is at least clear that his own economic interests, on some of which I am informed, are likely to be served by the ties he has in this way created or strengthened. Indeed, the penetration of New Territories leadership by urban interests and residents, and the orienting of New Territories leaders to the city are a significant index of the way in which in recent times the once partly isolated back garden of the Colony has become a part of the city's organisational life. Many aspects of this increasing loss of autonomy by the New Territories need to be looked into, for, apart from anything else, it suggests that in the planning of research we can no longer assume that town and country can be treated separately.\n\n38. Between the abandonment during the first decade of the century of the idea that there was a regular and readymade system of leaders and tribunals for the Administration to make use of and the development after the Second World War of the institution of the Village Representative (based, it seems, on innovations made by the occupying Japanese), the elders and leaders appear to have been anybody whom administrators might from time to time place trust in and care to consult. The accessibility of the administrators was so high and their prestige so great that they came to assume a chief role in the field of social control. It was not simply that they were magistrates and land officers; their courts were informal and they were prepared to help settle disputes on an even less formal basis. (Present-day administrators lament the disappearance during the war of the New Territories Administration papers, for they look back on them as a lost guide to Chinese custom and its application. The social historian and the anthropologist should join in the mourning...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209779, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "The area is bounded to the east by King's Road, to the west by Leighton Road, to the north by Tung Lo Wan Road, and to the south by Caroline Hill Road and Cotton Path.\n\nA prospectus for the new company was issued in August 1897, with J. J. Bell-Irving of Jardines as Chairman of the Board and a capital of $1,200,000. The mill began operation on 1 June 1899 with 12,000 spindles, with an anticipated full capacity of about 50,000 spindles. The company, however, was plagued by set-backs. It closed at the end of 1910. After a time, it was revived only to be forced to close again permanently in 1914, when its machinery was removed to Shanghai and the land and buildings sold for $400,000. The purchasers were the French Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres.\n\nThe Order had come to Hong Kong in 1848 and located in Wanchai, where they opened the \"Asile de Sainte Enfance\" to receive abandoned children. As the years passed, the Wanchai location became increasingly undesirable. In 1908 the Sisters opened a Hospital in Wong Nei Chung valley. In 1914, when they bought the cotton mill premises, they converted some of the mill buildings for their own purposes and later built new and more adequate accommodation for a convent, St. Paul's Convent School, an orphanage, a hospital, and a church.\n\nThe same year that Keswick transferred IL 1018 to the cotton mill, he conveyed the remaining part of the valley to Sir Robert Jardine. In time, the land came into the possession of the Government, which used it as sites for the Hong Kong Stadium, the South China Stadium, and a recreation ground.\n\nOn the Caroline Hill side of the valley was a large Chinese cemetery. Gravestones and other reminders of the cemetery can still be found among the trees and underbrush.\n\nFive trustees for the Japanese Community acquired a site in So Kon Po Valley in 1911 (Inland Lot 1879). The trustees transferred the site to the Japanese Benevolent Society in 1918. In 1920, the Benevolent Society was merged with the Japanese Education Society to form the Japanese Residents Association. A plot plan of the lot shows buildings that appear to be a temple. The lot is probably the same as that now occupied by the Hong Kong Buddhist Association School.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212224, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "143\n\nto retire, as if no war were in progress and no shortage of manpower in prospect.\n\nThe price of rice had risen from 15 dollars per picul in 1939 to 110 dollars per picul, increasing the terrible hardship of the thousands of refugees, and requiring constant adjustment to the pay of Chinese employees. It also affected the finances of the Municipal Council, which found it would again have to advance rates and taxes to cover increased expenses. At the same time the continued pressure of the Japanese, who wished to seize control of the huge Municipal administrative machine, became more urgent. The Council worked out a compromise arrangement, under which it was hoped that the bulk of the foreign interests could be maintained pending conclusion of the Japanese war with China.\n\nA special meeting of the landrenters, to be held at the Race Club, was called for January 26th, 1941. The Norwegian Consul, in the Chair, the members of the Council, and the municipal secretaries, took their seats on a covered platform, erected opposite the racing stands, on which the landrenters were disposed. I had a seat facing the platform, and noticed that the Japanese landrenters were sitting in a crowd, several hundreds strong, at the far right. The British Chairman of the Council put forward the motion for the increased taxes; he was opposed by Mr. Hayashi, the Chairman of the Japanese Residents Association. The other foreign landrenters, by virtue of their much larger holdings of property, of course greatly outvoted the Japanese. When the motion was put to the vote, by a show of hands, the Norwegian Consul declared the motion carried. There was an immediate outcry from the Japanese and Mr. Hayashi approached the platform, as everyone thought to make another speech; but instead of moving to the rostrum on one side, he walked round behind the long table at which the Councillors sat, and suddenly pulled out a pistol. Mr. Okamoto, one of the Japanese Councillors noticed this, realised what was up, and very pluckily tried to grab the gun. He was in time to deflect the aim, but two shots were fired from which the Chairman of the Council received flesh wounds in the arm and side, while one of the bullets passed through Mr. Okamoto's hand. Pandemonium then broke out amongst the Japanese ratepayers; howling like a pack of wolves, they tried to rush the platform, to rescue Mr. Hayashi, who was being led away by the police. When the group on the platform moved beyond the screens to the rear,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212388, "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": 330, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "307\n\nrecovering them and their stubborness in this belief undoubtedly saved the lives of 21 British seamen.\n\nH.J.W. CHETWYND-CHATWIN\n\nREPORT ON VISIT TO TAI HANG FIRE DRAGON DANCE, MID AUTUMN FESTIVAL 1992\n\nOn the 11th September, 1992, a party of Society members, family and children visited the Tai Hang Tsuen Fire Dragon Dance at the invitation of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association.*\n\nThe Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance started in 1880 when Tai Hang was a small Hakka village of farmers and fishermen on the waterfront of Causeway Bay.\n\nAccording to local legend, on a stormy night that year, just prior to the Mid-Autumn Festival, some villagers killed a serpent at a stone house in Sun Chun Street. They placed the body of the serpent in a bamboo cage, intending to hand it over to the local police station the next morning. However, by then the body had disappeared. A few days later a plague broke out in Tai Hang and over ten persons died.\n\nOne night a village elder in his sleep was told by Buddha (one version says that the message came through Kwun Yum, the Goddess of Mercy) to make a grass dragon and burn firecrackers and incense sticks during the Mid-Autumn Festival. This advice was followed and the sulphur in the firecrackers drove away the disease and the villagers were saved.\n\nIt then became customary to hold a fire dragon dance every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival in order to drive away infectious diseases and to bring good fortune. This custom has been followed every year since 1880, with the exception of the Japanese Occupation and during the 1967 disturbances. The arrangements are in the hands of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association, and the event is very much a community function which continues a long-standing village tradition in the heart of modern, urban Hong Kong.\n\n* See Plates 14-15.\n\nPage 330\n\nPage 331", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214307, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "129\n\na few wavered in the face of student rioting they all stood firm and Sowerby's tense moment passed.\n\nIn 1935 he was elected president of the North China Branch of the RAS until illness forced him to resign in late 1940. He was also elected honorary director of the Shanghai Museum, one of the major activities of the RAS, an office he held until 1946. The RAS had a new building in the early 1930s and the China Society of Science and Art of which he was president was incorporated into the RAS with all its funds and interests passing to the RAS.\n\nLife in Shanghai was quite busy what with his business company directorships and his membership of several councils including the Foreign Residents' Association and the British Residents' Association of Shanghai.\n\nHe and Clarice lived in comfort in Shanghai with their collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain and all their books on China until her death in May 1944. These were all donated to the Heude Museum in Shanghai before he left China in 1946 and placed into a large room named \"The Sowerby Hall.\" During the first part of the Japanese occupation he and Clarice were granted exemption from internment and were allowed to remain at home categorised as sick and elderly. However, after Clarice's death he was taken into an internment camp where he became so ill that he spent the last eight months of the war in hospital. He was fortunate in that his belongings were safely stored with friends.\n\nHe remained on in Shanghai for a further year, enjoying his garden and studying animals, insects and flowers. Then, in the autumn of 1946 he brought Alice Cowens, the nurse who had cared for his brother in France, out to Shanghai where they were married and left for England. They stayed in London for some months, through the bad winter of 1946-7 and after a short trip around parts of England they decided to retire to Washington DC, partly because so much of the material he had collected during his expeditions in China was kept there but mainly because he thought that it would be better for his health.\n\nThen a problem arose. Though his wife as a British citizen could stay, he had been born in China and the quota for that category to settle in the States was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]