[ { "id": 204481, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204537, "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO\n\nexplore trade possibilities outside the Americas.\n\n13\n\nThe New England states especially took the lead in this expansion of maritime trade, and towns like Salem and Boston soon became busy ship-building and overseas ports. Boston ships sailed east to the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope, while those from Salem sailed west round the Horn; when, as was inevitable on a globe, east met west in the Far East, they agreed to an east-west boundary line which ran south of Canton and the Philippines; the area of South China was thus in the Salem sphere, and hence most of the early American traders in this area belonged to early Salem, Beverly, and Danvers families.\n\nThe procedure that had to be followed by foreign ships trading with Canton was briefly this. They made their first China landfall amongst the Ladrone Islands; here they took on a pilot from a junk, and he brought them to Macao; anchoring in the roads off Taipa, they made contact with the Chinese officials who were at that time established on the Praya Grande at Macao; on being cleared by them for Canton, the ships were allowed to proceed to Bocca Tigris at the river mouth, where, after a further delay, they were eventually given a Grand Chop, which was the permit to sail up river. The ships anchored at Whampoa, and the almost endless negotiations for discharging their cargoes and reloading with their purchases began. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the foreign floating population of Whampoa ran into thousands, and the sickness, accident, and mortality rates were very high.\n\nUp river, disposal of the dead was one of the easiest of all local business transactions; the Chinese had no such things as enclosed cemeteries, and neither had the foreigners; burials involved no legal or civil procedures; one merely negotiated with a Chinese landowner for a hillside plot and hired a few labourers. On Danes Island, French Island, at Whampoa, Lintin, Capsingmoon, and Cumsingmoon, there lie buried thus hundreds of foreigners whose frail memorials, if they ever existed, have long since disappeared.* In westernized Macao, however, the situation was different. There were enclosed cemeteries there, but they were consecrated by the Roman Catholic Church and therefore were not available to the other Europeans who were\n\n*For a map of the Pearl River estuary see p. 93.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204621, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n89\n\nIn the course of a tour of duty in the New Territories I became interested in the island community and, when opportunities offered, made enquiries locally for information which would shed light on its history in the period before 1898, when it was still part of the San On district. I was particularly interested in local source material which would provide a picture of island life and society in the fifty years (1850-98) before the lease of the New Territories to Britain, and this article is based upon information obtained from three commemorative tablets which date from these years, and on other information available locally relating to several district associations of long standing, besides supplementary material from a variety of different sources.\n\nThese tablets consist of slabs of slate-like stone, usually two feet by three feet in size, on which are cut characters a quarter of an inch high set out in two parts: an account of the origin and successful accomplishment of the scheme, followed by the names of all subscribers. Their object was to record the event; and to recognise the efforts of local persons, by recording the names of the donors for posterity. Tablets in this old form were quite common—they are found all over the New Territories—and could record any undertaking, such as the construction of a road or bridge, the repair of a temple, and so on. They were set up, no doubt, with the appropriate commemorative ceremony which is still current practice for such occasions. We have the well-developed Chinese sense of the historical element in everyday life to thank for the existence of such interesting records, which, by their nature, are immune from the ravages of white ants and the damp summer weather. They are not, however, free from the attentions of the man in the street as the present state of these three tablets show: in that the first was hidden by a double bunk, the second is exposed to the elements at a street corner and is often hidden by wood from an adjacent timber yard, and the third was serving as the back of a stove, part of which had to be demolished and the tablet cleared of a heavy deposit of soot.\n\nThe first of the Cheung Chau tablets is in the office building of the Tung Kwun association and records the repair of the Po On study or school in the 5th year of T'ung-chih (1866-7); the second, dated 4th and 32nd years of Kuang-hsü", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206110, "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-1970", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n185 \n\nNot far from the main Tin Hau Temple, on rocks formerly in the sea but now built around and beyond by boat squatters' huts, is another smaller temple to the same goddess. This is known locally as the Hoi Shum Temple, or 'Temple in the Midst of the Sea'. It has interestingly decorated pillars and altar slabs, and a half-obliterated inscription shows that it was constructed in 1845, four years after the British occupation of Hong Kong Island. However, the tablet states that, like the Tam Kung Temple, (see below) there was an open air altar to Tin Hau for some time before local people subscribed for the temple building. Nowadays this temple seems neglected and little used, perhaps because it may have been patronised mostly by smaller sampan fishermen who have now been forced into land employment by economic factors. \n\nFurther along the street, is Ah Kung Ngam-Grandfather's (or Ancestor's) Rocky Hill. This used to be a lonely place by the shore. In the 1901 census it had a population of 213 of whom 159 were males-probably mostly quarrymen and land-based fishermen. Here is situated the large temple to Tam Kung. This was built in 1905. At first sight this late date is rather curious, because old residents of Ah Kung Ngam state that Shau Kei Wan people venerate this god above Tin Hau and his festival is the event of the year for local residents, land and sea alike, celebrated both in Shau Kei Wan proper and round the corner in Ah Kung Ngam.* However, this is partly explained by the tablet commemorating the construction of the temple. This states that for an unstated number of years there had been an image of Tam Kung (brought over from Kowloon) but no structure. This temple contains major shrines to two other gods, Wong Tai Sin and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother. There are models of a sailing junk and a dragon boat inside the building, the former apparently dating back to 1905, and the latter to 1961. \n\nAt the far end of Ah Kung Ngam, having passed timber and boat yards on the sea front and squatter and ordinary factories of all kinds on the other side of the road we come eventually to \n\n* This is equally so at the present day. A night visit to the area at this year's festival showed opera performances on land and sea and many dinner parties in progress, whilst the amount of debris at the temple after the day's worshipping had to be seen to be believed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206272, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\nxenophobia and inbred loyalty to China as the motherland.\n\n83\n\nDescriptions of the type of Chinese settler are found in numerous reports Government officials submitted to London. In 1844 the Colonial Treasurer writes,\n\nIt is literally true that after three years and a half's uninterrupted settlement there is not one respectable Chinese inhabitant on the island.... The policy of the mandarins on the adjacent coast being to prevent all respectable Chinese from settling at Hong Kong; and in consequence of the hold they possess on their families and relatives this can be done most effectually. At the same time, I believe that they encourage and promote the deportation of every thief, pirate and idle or worthless vagabond from the mainland to Hong Kong.... No Chinese of humbler class will ever bring their wives and children to the colony. The shopkeepers do not remain more than a few months on the island, when another set take their place; there is, in fact, a continual shifting of a Bedouin sort of population, whose migratory, predatory, gambling, and dissolute habits utterly unfit them for continuous industry, and render them not only useless, but highly injurious subjects, in the attempt to form a colony.11\n\nIn establishing British government at Hong Kong, it was hoped that Hong Kong could lure away from Macao and Canton the larger part of the junk trade and thus make Hong Kong a centre of trade for the whole coast of Kwang Tung Province. Though a small beginning was made, this trade soon languished. Remarking on the absence of a substantial local trade with Canton, Gutzlaff states that this is because\n\nthere are no Chinese large firms at Victoria to receive goods in charge, and sell them as soon as there is a demand. Attempts to found such establishments have also been made, but have not succeeded from want of encouragement or on account of considerable individual loss. At the present moment (April, 1845) there remains unfortunately not one single large merchant from Canton in the settlement who is able to promote by his capital and influence such a desirable state. The whole business is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206424, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n215\n\nThe opium trade of Shanghai may have taken place \"on the busy Bund\", but not until after 1858. The authors apparently never have heard of Woosung and its hulks.\n\nThe authors, intent on opium, assert an oil painting of an island with a British flag on a pole on the shore is \"Lintin”. In the background, with top masts housed, are ships. It is painted and signed \"C. Cramer 1803\", obviously an European artist. Evidently the authors do not realize that opium trading in 1803 was conducted at Whampoa and only reached Lintin in 1821. They also err when they state Jardine Matheson & Co. “diverted their ships to Lintin Island and other independents followed suit”. In 1803 Jardine Matheson & Co. was not in existence. They maintain the ships in the background are \"Scandinavian flag-ships”. Of course there is no such thing as a Scandinavian flag, and a look at the poor photograph shows a white field and a dark cross on a flag, more indicative of the St. George ensign than either a Danish or Swedish flag with its dark field and light cross. You will find this Scandinavian error repeated 5 other times. To cap it all, one finds a British sailor rolling a barrel along the shore, surely an impossibility in 19th century China. Can the scene be somewhere in the Mediterranean where there are islands and mountains and British warships in 1803?\n\nThe authors manage to insert a most extraordinary amount of misinformation into their nautical writings. In plate 37, correct to a French \"bark”, not a “schooner\". The liner Empress of Japan is identified correctly in plate 44, but why date the picture \"circa 1880\" when the steamer begins service in 1891? The painting is on the \"stern\" of the Chinese Merchant Junk, plate 63, not the \"prow\", as the rudder shows clearly just below. For the English \"clipper\" dated 1866, substitute \"bark\". Evidently they know nothing of monsoons or they would revise \"the cumbersome East Indiamen which could only make two round sailings each season between India and China”. Of course the answer is one sailing per season. The numerous islands between Macao and the China Sea \"make a landfall at Macao\" almost prohibitively difficult.\n\nSome of the identifications of Port Scenes are ludicrous. Any person who locates \"the Praya Grande bordering the bay of the inner harbor” at Macao or \"the Governor's Palace at the northern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206479, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON\n\n21\n\nXIV Mahometan pagoda & Belfry from W. gate Canton March 12 58\n\nView over roof-tops from a terrace. Tree-capped pagoda in distance.\n\nXVII Macao April 58\n\nView of sea-front, with sampans in foreground.\n\nXX Peiho River July 3rd 58\n\nSmall British gun-boat, no. 83, in the river with military figures on the banks.\n\nXXV North of Formosa Id. July 30th 1858\n\nJunk in rough seas off mountainous coast.\n\nXXVI Pagoda Chimmo Bay N. of Amoy Augst 3rd 58\n\nFigures in small boat with mountains and pagoda in the background.\n\nXXVII Victoria Hong Kong Augt 14 58\n\nHong Kong harbour, town and peak from Stonecutters Island.\n\nXXVIII In Tartar Yamun August 58\n\nRed-coated soldier in front of a hall, with a pagoda in background.\n\nXXXI Canton Septr 58\n\nMagazine Hill 5 storied pagoda N. Gate\n\nChinese carrying a load outside gate of Canton, with walls and features of the town visible in the background.\n\nXXXIII Honan Temple Octr 5th 58 GAS\n\nMain hall of temple with Chinese walking about.\n\nXXXV Canton Octr 58 E. Wall\n\nWalls, with a pagoda in the distance.\n\nXLIII Novr 18, 58. Gates of Confucius Temple\n\nThe College From S, Wall Canton\n\nEntrance gates in foreground, with temple buildings behind.\n\nXLV Howqua's Garden Dec 21 58 GAS\n\nPavillion in lake, with trees and other buildings around.\n\nUnnumbered Faint pencil inscription: Tombs in Canton(?)\n\nTombs and coffins in front of a Chinese temple, with a view of water in the background.\n\nThe sketches show a certain amateur artistic ability. Some of them are of views which were very popular among book illustrators", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "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-1974", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207483, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n243\n\nRed Cross X-ray films but by then we had no developer. We were very glad to receive from the Japanese some bars of coarse washing soap which we badly needed. We were also given 200 envelopes of tooth powder, some material for sewing and for boot repairs and some drugs including T.A.B. for inoculations.\n\nIn January 1945 we had to render yet another list of patients suffering from serious visual defects, arranged by nationalities, and this list recorded a total of 65. No mail had come in for some time but some did arrive on 18 and 19 January, my latest letter from home being dated August 1944. Christmas and New Year messages were delivered to us from Red Cross Societies in many of the allied countries.\n\nThe month however was dominated by American air attacks on Hong Kong. By 8 January we had had 17 air alerts without a raid and on 15 January we had a two-hour raid. On 16 January occurred the most spectacular and effective of all our raids. It began about 8 a.m., went on till noon, was resumed during the afternoon and continued until dark. The all-clear was sounded at 9:30 p.m. During raids, all movement in the hospital was prohibited but we had to go out of doors to reach our kitchen and as the morning went on, I went out myself, as of course there was no interpreter about and by signs got the agreement of the guard to draw breakfast, which we eventually got about 11 a.m. It was 2 p.m. before we got dinner and not till after 6 o'clock was it possible to draw tea. All bearers of food had to hasten to get under cover with the greatest possible despatch.\n\nIn the hospital, Japanese standing orders were to keep all shutters closed during raids or run the risk of being shot at. My little bunk in a converted lavatory overlooked the harbour and it was not difficult to open a shutter far enough to get glimpses of what was going on. Three large Japanese cargo ships were anchored in the harbour and the American air attack was pressed by dive-bombing through very heavy fire in the most courageous fashion. At times the whole atmosphere seemed full of the sound of sustained gunfire and bomb explosions and the amount of ammunition used in the defence must have made a serious inroad on Japanese stocks. I did not see any aircraft brought down though there must have been casualties, but at the end of the day three cargo ships were badly listing and clearly unseaworthy for a long time to come. Fires were left burning in oil storage tanks on Stonecutters Island and elsewhere, and this day was to us a most impressive...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207616, "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "164\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nHong Kong Island that had connections with Hang Hau and the Sai Kung islands. The city also needed fuel and building materials, and villagers in Sai Kung were soon carrying firewood into Kowloon City, sometimes selling it to the shops, but often to passers-by. Charcoal burning was also practised in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the practice died out in the early 1900's. Moreover, along the Sai Kung coastline and in several places in Junk Bay, lime kilns sprang up, producing lime from coral. The lime was used as plastering in city as well as village houses. A considerable brick-making industry also grew up in Pak Tam Chung, which at first produced red bricks for use in the city. Later, when this proved to be unprofitable the area concentrated on producing green bricks for building village houses. Even farming was affected. Towards the early 1900's, pig raising became an important source of cash income for the village household. The pigs were sold to butchers in Sai Kung and Hang Hau. Much of the meat was consumed locally, but a substantial amount must also have found its way into the city.8\n\nAs in other parts of the New Territories, some villagers in Sai Kung were recruited as seamen by foreign shipping companies. Foreign remittance came to be a regular source of income, and not a few returned with savings. There were those that did not go as far, who accepted work in Kowloon or Hong Kong.10 The extreme example of wealth derived from the city must be the business operations of Chan Ue Kwong of Ho Chung, Chan Wai T'ong of Tseung Kwan O, and Cheng Chiu Tsoh of Pak Kong. These three opened the I Hing General Store in Kowloon City, and became the richest men in their own villages. Some of this income was spent on land purchase and buildings, but Chan Ue Kwong became even wealthier as a money-lender in the village. Quite a few Sai Kung villagers who later entered business began as assistants in their shop. Chan Ue Kwong was well connected through his uncle with the officials in Kowloon City, and this must have helped his business.11\n\nSo far as we can tell, from the middle of the nineteenth century, economic development in Sai Kung proceeded unimpeded. After the New Territories was leased, land registration instituted by the Hong Kong Government further benefited the villagers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208114, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW - \n\nLONG ISLAND\n\n137\n\nthe top sawyer in the neighbouring sawpit, and we pass towards that smithy beneath a banyan tree. The sinuous roots of the tree clutch the rock and strain like the arms of some vegetable octopus, and there just below the hanging threads of aerial roots is a tilt, and a furnace. The anvil is curious enough. There is one of the orthodox Chinese pattern but the other is a shell from some field-gun, goodness knows where it was found.\n\nNow we are in the main street at its more irregular Eastern end, interrupted here and there by sharp right-angled turns, and small shops begin to line the way. On our right a coffin maker plies his trade, and his workshop has a most attractive \"line\" of coffins on exhibition which seem to tempt that Chinese grandfather getting on in life, and thinking of providing for the future. Europeans unconsciously avert our eyes from the varnished glory of huge specimens that look like four tree trunks grown into one, but grand-father regards it with quiet pleasure. Some more blacksmith's shops, and a flight of irregular steps, and we are on the terrace of the temple of the Heavenly Queen, already referred to. This terrace overlooks the bay, and is put to practical use, not only as a point of vantage, but also to dry fish and sweet potatoes, and some strange ambiguous stuff. We can see a junk hauled up on the slip-way which was screened by the houses-hitherto. For all the clumsy upperworks her lines are clean and smooth below water, and her big lifting rudder and centre board appeal to the yachts-men. Those cannon in the bows are not for ornament only, for these seas swarm with pirate junks.\n\nJust now we will not stop to examine the dusty interior of this temple. Instead we descend into the street once more and continue our westward way. Near this place is a small hospital, a series of clean and pleasant courts and pavilions supported by the Kai Fong. This body is the real ruler of the town, elected by street committees and containing representatives of each of the four tribes. In the street a good-natured crowd drifts along. There is a brown-faced fisherman ashore for a stroll, and to buy cordage or food. He loiters before the chandlers shops, and discusses all topics before coming to the real question of the price of that double block and sheave hanging in the dim place under the ceiling. There are villagers carrying loads of vegetables to the pier, shuffling along with two great loads, one at each end of a bamboo resting on a great callous patch on their shoulders. Women are carrying water", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208118, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND\n\n141\n\nslowly in the widening bay, pushing a dark ripple before her. A sampan with three powdered and giggling girls drifts by, and as it passes, one sings in high quavering falsetto the first verse of a love song; then the second is sung by her companions. A young man sitting in his boat in the deep shadow of a junk's high stern answers the call, singing the third verse of the song, and the two boats glide together, and disappear towards the shore. \"Another silly fish caught and ready to be landed!\" But here is our little yacht with the cabin lit up and the wrinkled mahogany face of our boat boy gravely smiling a welcome. We tumble aboard and form our own animated group about the rice bowl while he withdraws to the bow, and sits there silent, still, waiting for the night wind and the tide.\n\nThe Mooncake Festival\n\nThe historian of Long Island has not yet appeared. He must be a Chinese, for no European can be sure of understanding the real meaning of the institutions and customs of a Chinese community. But until that historian appears, and perhaps to induce him to come forth and correct the presumptuous foreigner, here is an eye witness's account of a spring feast at Cheung Chow written from memory and the notes of a careful observer, Mr. A. C. Franklin.* It must be understood that the latter is not to blame for any inaccuracies in the following account.\n\n+\n\nOn a day in May, looking from Hongkong towards the Island, through a good pair of glasses we see a new building towering above the houses and temples, and we decide to visit the island and investigate. The ferry starts from the immediate and unsavoury neighbourhood of a loading shoot for the town garbage. The ferries are crowded and frequent to-day, gaily flagged and decorated. Everyone on board is in holiday mood, laughing, eating, talking, and behaving rather like a good-tempered Bank Holiday crowd at home. There seem to be parties of visitors, teams of some kind, and there is an image in a chair on the lower deck. It is not being treated with any particular awe and reverence, indeed it seems more like a mascot than a holy thing.\n\nOnce out of the harbour we encounter nothing of special interest until we turn into Cheung Chow Bay. Here is a cheerful sight. The whole fleet is in and the bay is full. The heavy brown mat\n\nMr. Franklin followed the author as Registrar, University of Hong Kong, 1913-18. — Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208123, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "146\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nsupplementary votes. Some D.O.s seemed to pride themselves on saving as much as possible of this vote, but I always thought it a D.O.'s duty not only to see as much of his district as he could, but to let its inhabitants see him.\n\nOne of the first questions I had to deal with was a request from the Sheung Tong villagers to make a grant from the small public works fund of $400 at my disposal to enable a footbridge to be built over the deep ravine dividing one side of their valley from the other. This was to be of granite beams, quarried in the Shap Pat Heung, and carried up over 1000 feet to Sheung Tong. I was anxious to get the village to contribute to the cost, as my vote for small public works was only $400 a year, and the cost of the three granite beams, and their transport by coolie up the mountain, would have come to about $160; and a good slice of the vote was usually granted to the Cheung Chau Residents' Association for upkeep and extension of paths there. The villagers could raise no money; they could not furnish coolies for transport; and they would not consider laying anything so ill-omened as an even number of stone beams: so to my regret I felt I could do nothing for people who could or would do nothing to help themselves.\n\nIn those days the Cheung Chau ferry was a large one-deck launch and passengers paid 3 cents each for a passage, but for 5 cents the Kaifong committee who ran it, largely in the interests of the fish industry, would give you a bamboo chair on the foredeck to sit on and this ferry was what drew missionaries to settle on the island from about 1907 onwards and build themselves bungalows for summer holidays, so saving the high cost of a Hong Kong apartment. Its timetable rarely suited my official arrangements, as by it I could never spend more than an hour ashore unless I got a night's lodging on the island; so I generally used my hired launch. In the thirties a guest house was opened for visitors in a large bungalow not far up the hill from the police station, and after 1934 I went there two or three times with friends while working on archaeological sites on Cheung Chau and the nearby coast of Lantau. This police station was not built till 1913 or 1914: before then the police had used a large house near the Kaifong pier, about 150 yards south of the later concrete pier, as their station. In 1912 a junk came to the pier by night, the crew and passengers landed, and carried the station by a sudden rush, as they were an armed pirate gang. The sergeant in charge and some police escaped and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208125, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "148 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD \n\nto nearness to the market in Hong Kong, partly to the presence of coral in the shallow and then comparatively clean waters of the western approaches: in fact the sea near Ping Chau was officially divided into two Marine Lots, Nos. 1 and 2. Not long after, with constant raking of the sea bed for raw material, growing pollution of water from rubbish dumping by the Sanitary Department and increasing sewerage from Hong Kong by increase of the water carriage system, the industry declined for lack of coral to burn: complaints were made about this to me at one time. In Ping Chau this industry employed numbers of Hoklo lime burners and in 1925 they staged a clan fight which cost several men their lives. There was no police station on the island, so investigations were delayed and no evidence of murder could be got: so after taking a lot of evidence in my 'court' in the Hong Kong office, I simply bound everybody over, which at any rate gave a period of peace to Ping Chau. It must not be thought that the decline of lime burning ruined Ping Chau, for the islanders had thoughtfully provided themselves with a lucrative light industry in the shape of six or seven flourishing gambling houses, which naturally emptied whenever a D.O.'s or Water Police launch appeared. \n\nCommunications with the outside world were then pretty elementary. A junk left Ping Chau about 8 a.m. for Hong Kong and returned to the island in the evening; no more encouraging to anyone wishing to 'Come to sunny Ping Chau' than the clouds of smoke and lime dust that rose perpetually from the kilns. Another industry for which Ping Chau and the other western islands were well adapted was distilling, as their inaccessibility was a great assistance to undertakings wishing to short-circuit the revenue regulations. \n\nYet another industry flourished at one time in this group of islands. The small islet of Kau Yi Tsai, between Ping Chau and Kau Yi Chau, has a cleft in its granite cliffs which opens inwards into a cave of some size. About 1922 this was the scene of the greatest opium seizure in the Colony's history up till then: 8 tons of Persian opium came from the cave, and the crew of the sampan guarding it were put up for banishment. Only the banishees appeared before me, as I was then in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, but what became of them I cannot remember. \n\nThe increasing population and prosperity of the Colony caused similar developments at Cheung Chau: building land was greatly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208127, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "150 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nmorning visiting Nei Kwu Chau to discuss the problem of their fifteen children. They had been taught by a private teacher in the ancestral temple: but he had left, and the Education Department were asked to find someone to replace him. They had replied that the children would have to go to Cheung Chau, thus raising in an acute form the problem common in villages all over England to-day. Few if any teachers would volunteer to teach fifteen children in so poor an island as Nei Kwu Chau in those days. The problem of providing one was then found insoluble, and as the only means of transport to Cheung Chau was by junk or sampan, I fear the rate of literacy on Nei Kwu Chau must have declined badly.\n\nAnother event which affected life in Cheung Chau in 1925-6 was the change of Governor in November 1925, during the great Communist-inspired but mainly Nationalist strike which started in June that year. Sir C. Clementi increased the D. O. South's public works vote from the absurdly small figure of $400 to $1000 or more. This made it possible to repave some of the chief streets of the village with granite blocks set in concrete, which cost about $800. He also paid a State visit to the island in the summer of 1926. Flags and decorations were put up, and practically all the proceedings were in Chinese, including a lengthy prepared speech by H.E., written out in characters by (I believe) Mr. Sung Hok Pang. He walked through the main streets, keeping up conversation with the Kaifongs, and showing that despite a long absence in British Guiana and elsewhere his Chinese scholarship had undergone no observable decline. The chief impression of the day that remained with me was the heat!\n\nWhile I was District Officer South I attended two other functions of importance, both in the Northern district. In 1925 the Government had had the imagination and sympathy to restore to the Tang clan the village gates of Kam Tin, removed in 1899 because of the clan's opposition to the original leasing of the New Territory and taken, as I heard, to Sir Henry Blake's estate in Ireland. The ceremony of reopening the restored gates took place in May, just before the big Strike began: its central point was to be the opening of the gates to admit H.E. Sir R. Stubbs. As he rose up from his seat the local band struck up, and this so startled a small pig rooting in the moat that he fled for shelter over the causeway to his sty in the village, just getting ahead of H.E. and bursting through the gates! The reward for the Government's attitude was seen in the autumn", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "187\n\nto Mr. Chan T'aai of Tseung Kwan O, they demanded protection money from the villagers. Eight to ten people would come in a gang, armed with guns. The village elders had to collect money from every one to pay them. Mr. Lei Yun Shau remembered that about twenty days after the Japanese had passed through, bandits attacked his native village of Man Yee Wan. At the time, he operated a ferry boat between his village and Sai Kung Market, and the bandits spared his house. Just outside Sai Kung, in Wong Chuk Long, Mr. Wan Yau was robbed of over ten piculs of grain the first time the bandits came. Thereafter he hid most of his food reserve on the hillside, and his pigs in a damaged kiln. Even then, the bandits found the pigs. Mr. Chan Shing of Tai Long remembered that the bandits came every several days, demanding food and money. All their grain was taken, and the villagers survived on roots and leaves. Fortunately, in 1942, there was a brushfire over Chinese New Year, and afterwards the hillside was overgrown with wild lilies. The villagers gathered them for food. The lilies were bitter, but some of this bitterness could be leached out by covering them with ash and salt before they were cooked. These lilies were the villagers' principal diet that winter. In spring, when they were ready to farm, the only seeds they could find were the small amounts that some people had managed to hide on the hillside. By mid-1942, they were so starved that they harvested the rice before it ripened, ground the grain to flour and used it for cakes. In April, when the bandits came again, there was literally nothing that they found worth taking away.71\n\nSome bandits were local people, but most had come over from Sha Yue Ch'ung and Wai Chau. Mr. Chan T'aai of Tseung Kwan O believed that the gangs that looted his village had their hideout on Junk Island. Mr. Lei Yun Shau was once captured by the bandits, while he was transporting rice between Sai Kung and Man Yee Wan, and was taken to Leung Shuen Wan.\n\nHe was finally released on the intervention of another bandit, who knew Mr. Lei, and who considered that the local ferries should not be disturbed. Mr. Lei's mother was extremely upset to learn that he had been captured, and might have helped also to arrange his release. Finally, the sum of eight hundred dollars was paid to the bandits.72", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209700, "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": 357, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n335\n\nthing rarely if ever seen in books on landscape architecture, a guide to the plants used.\n\nSince every kind of climate and ecological environment is included in this book covering all of China, it would be of great interest to know how botanical variety is adopted in different kinds of gardens.\n\nH. Y. SHIH\n\nOver Hong Kong Lew Roberts, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1982, 97 Colour Plates.\n\nOver the last few years the South China Morning Post has published a number of volumes of photographs of the highest quality, both having regard to the photography and to the printing. This volume is almost certainly the best of these, since it is simply by far the best photographic record of Hong Kong yet published.\n\nThe 97 plates of this volume are all aerial photographs, and give a very wide ranging view of Hong Kong, with 28 plates of Hong Kong Island, 17 of Kowloon, and 49 of the New Territories, and of subjects ranging from Government House to squatter areas, duck farms, and junk heaps.\n\nObviously, any volume of aerial photographs is bound to be short on reflections of the human element: a particular problem in a city such as Hong Kong where the vitality, colour, and bustle of the street-level community is so important in the creation of the spirit of the city. By photographing from the air, even though from a low flying aircraft and with razor sharp reproduction, almost all of this street-level vigour is lost. It is very much to Mr. Roberts' credit that, despite this huge disadvantage, he manages to suggest a substantial amount of the human element in his pictures, and in many of them actually manages to provide a new perspective on human activity. Thus, his photographs of the Aberdeen Junk Yards (No. 36) conveys the chaotic, busy nature of those yards perhaps better than any other type of photograph could. His photographs of Ocean Park (No. 39), the Shaw Brothers Studio (Nos. 88 and 89) and a Mai Po marshes village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209751, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "of the charitable work done by the Kadoorie family in this field. A cheque for $500 was sent in appreciation to Mr. Horace Kadoorie on behalf of the Society.\n\nK\n\n26th November 1983 about 35 members took part in a visit to the Soo Kon Poo district of Hong Kong Island where we visited the Buddhist Memorial to victims of the Race Course fire in 1918, the Tung Wah Eastern Hospital and the Confucian Middle School.\n\nDecember 1983 and March 1984 - two separate groups of members visited the Narcotics Museum of the Narcotics Bureau, RHKP, in Police Headquarters, Arsenal Street, under the kind arrangements of Mr. K. W. J. Lloyd, Chief Inspector of Police.\n\n28th January 1984 about 70 members went by boat to the Ch'ing Dynasty fort on Tung Lung Island, and passed by the Tin Hau Temple at Fat Tong Mun and the former Chinese customs station at Junk Island on the return journey.\n\nLectures\n\n29th March 1983 Mr. Nigel Cameron, the author and art critic, gave an interesting illustrated talk on \"Hong Kong Art: the Quiet Revolution\".\n\n14th April 1983 — Ms Elizabeth Sinn of the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong spoke about \"The Strike and Riot, Hong Kong 1884\", an interesting local side effect of the Sino-French war over Vietnam.\n\n25th April 1983 Professor Daffyd Evans, Head of the Department of Law, University of Hong Kong, spoke about the wills made by some Chinese in early British Hong Kong in an interesting talk entitled \"Fearing Verbal Words, or Chinese Testaments in British Hong Kong\".\n\n25th May 1983 Professor Daniel Kwok, professor of History at the University of Hawaii and visiting professor, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, gave a stimulating talk entitled \"Confucianism and Modernization: Reflections of Antipathies and Sympathies\". This dealt with\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209859, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "96\n\nIn the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung.\n\nA very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down.\n\nTour of the Islands\n\nTo get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour.\n\nStonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau (\"High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think.\n\nTsingyi: (literally \"Green Clothes\": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka.\n\nIn 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch:\n\nIn proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209871, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "108\n\nand more than half of them still live within two miles of these ancient sites, which speak of hundreds of years of settlement and progress, before the Han emperors conquered the coast with a fleet and army.\n\nLeaving aside the islands close to Hong Kong, which have little of interest, we next pass the Potoi group off Cape d'Aguilar (named after a Major-General who commanded the troops in Hong Kong in its early years). All are of granitic rocks seamed with dykes of dark green stone which decay more rapidly than the granite and so often form valleys, caves and hollows. All but Potoi itself are barren and deserted, except for the light on Waglan (Wang Lan \"Barrier Fence\"). About nine years ago, the Chinese second officer of a ship distinguished himself by steering straight on to the island, where the ship not unnaturally stopped. There was no discoverable reason for this exploit; it was not bad weather, though dark it was about 2 a.m. and the light showed clearly. A similar but more excusable disaster occurred in 1916 on the east end of the Lema's eight miles to the south on Tam Kon Shan (“Carrying Pole Mountain\"), when the Chiyo Maru, which was a big trans-Pacific liner, ran aground. I believe few or no lives were lost.\n\nnets.\n\nPotoi has a small but good harbour, very popular with boat people, and with a handsome temple. There are a few shops, and its economic centre is Stanley. The beach is used for drying. Once in 1930 an ingenious fellow tried to monopolize the beach by applying for a matshed site right in the middle of it. I saw the place, saw through his game, and turned him down. Up in the hills are three tiny hamlets, living on the scanty crops their fields produce, and probably selling to the boat people as well; their names mean \"Long Stone Ridge\", \"Cow Lake\", and \"Mountain Hut\" 27.\n\nTo the north, at the entrance to Junk Bay, known in Chinese as \"General's Haven\" (Tseung Kwan O), is an island called Fat or Fu Tau Chau (“Buddha's or Tiger's Head Island\"). It was the site of one of the \"Blockade of Hong Kong\" customs stations; the station is in ruins, although the island has a few inhabitants.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209873, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "110\n\nThe very latest is that some enterprising folk of these parts have committed a piracy on a junk there, and five or six of them are up before the District Officer, South, on a committal charge.\n\nAt the northern end of High Island is the interesting feature called the Dry Channel or Kon Mun. It is a fiord formed by the sunken mouth of the valley running northwest by Lan Nai Wan, which is connected on the west with the other channels. Into it has poured the whole of the silt from the upper valley: and as this point is precisely where the two tidal waves sweeping round High Island meet, the silt is heaped up there without any chance of it getting carried away. Nothing bigger than a small sampan can traverse it, and then only at high water.3\n\nLeaving this fascinating island group by the often stormy route past Conic Island and Fung Head, we reach the mouth of Taipo Harbour, with Kang Chau (a little rock built up of volcanic ash beds), Grass Island, with the fishing village of Tap Mun on it, and Port Island. This last island is uninhabited.\n\nThe islands in Taipo Harbour are mostly of sandstone and shale, but are otherwise of little interest. They are Harbour Island, Centre Island, and lastly, the island near Taipo station where the District Officer, North, lives, though since the causeway carrying the road was built, this is no longer an island.\n\nGoing out again round Bluff Head, we come to another island-studded stretch of sea. Three large and sixteen small islands occupy it, and it is a most beautiful piece of water. Double Island, the first you come to, is in two halves joined by a low, narrow neck: the Crescent Island, beside it, is uninhabited, but Kat (\"Lucky Harbour\") Island, not being very lofty, has a good deal of its surface under cultivation.\n\nThere is yet one more island, and this is in some ways the most curious of all. It lies away across Mirs Bay, two miles from the Chinese coast, from which it draws a good deal of its drinking water by means of waterboats. It is called, very appropriately, Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). When I was there, I did not see any paddy whatever; all cultivation was dry, and often the fields were unterraced and sloping, quite different from other parts of the New Territory, yet the island is populous, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209875, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "112\n\nHaven\".\n\nPui O at present often uses for its name characters meaning \"Shell Harbour\".\n\n1* Yi Long Wan (\"Second Wave Bay\").\n\n1 These villages used to stand just south of Discovery Bay but have since given way to the major housing project of that name.\n\n\" Tai Pak Island is now called Tai Lei (\"Great Profit\").\n\n19 Shau Chau is now called Sha Chau (\"Sand Isle\").\n\n\"Tongkwu is now called Lung Kwu Chau (\"Dragon Drum Island”). \"The Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts (SARDA) has had a treatment centre here since about 1960.\n\n31\n\n* Capital of San On District.\n\n** No villages now survive on Hei Ling Chau, which, after the closure of the leprosarium, is now occupied solely by the Correctional Services Department. The remaining villagers were resited to various places on Lantau in 1952-53.\n\n** Chau Kong is now called Sunshine Island (Chau Kung To), after an agricultural rehabilitation programme for refugee families launched there in the 1950s by Mr. Gus Borgeest (of Hong Kong) and others.\n\n\"Kau Yi Tsai is now called Siu Kau Yi Chau, with the same meaning.\n\n**A prewar periodical magazine containing many items of great interest, including Father D.J. Finn's contributions on local archaeology, 1933-36. These were reprinted, edited by Rev. T.F. Ryan S.J., by Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958, entitled Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island (M) near Hong Kong.\n\n** Waglan at present uses for its name characters meaning \"Barrier to the Waves\".\n\n#T\n\nRespectively Cheung Shek Pai, Ngan Wu, and Shan Liu.\n\n\" Also known in English as Junk Island. At present the island is known in Chinese only as Fat Tau Chau (\"Buddha's Head Island\").\n\nNam Tong Island is now known as Tung Lung Chau (\"Eastern Dragon Island”).\n\n* This is the Tin Hau Temple (Tai Miu) on Joss House Bay.\n\nAfter partial excavation, it is now listed as an ancient monument under the care of the Urban Services Department.\n\n** Respectively Pak A, Leung Shuen Wan, and Pak Lap.\n\n** These inlets were drowned in the mid 1970s to form the High Island Reservoir.\n\n*Tolo Harbour.\n\nYuen Chau Tsai, see note 2 above.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209968, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "205\n\nLanka, and then to Malacca where he converted a Japanese resident. The two set out to convert Japan and they landed at Kagoshima in 1549. Such was their success that 400,000 converts are said to have been made.\n\nWhen he understood that the Japanese had long considered China the source of wisdom and knowledge, Xavier made up his mind to bring the Christian message to that vast country. After failing to persuade the Governor General of Goa to send an embassy to China so that he might accompany it and thus evade the laws against foreigners entering the Imperial Empire, the missionary decided to proceed privately.\n\nHe joined a group of merchants and in 1552 reached the small Portuguese settlement on Sanchuang Island, south of what was later to become Macau. However, he was stricken with fever and the merchants, fearing official reprisals, refused to take him to Canton. Undaunted, Xavier intended to carry on by junk; but his fever worsened and, in a miserable hut on the shore, on December 3, 1552, he died.\n\nA colleague recorded:\n\n\"I went at once to the ship to obtain vestments and all else necessary for the burial ... some of those on the ship returned with me and we made a wooden coffin in which we placed the body clothed in priestly vestments. It was very cold; so most of them stayed aboard, and there were only four of us at the burial, a Portuguese, two slaves and a Chinese.\"\n\nToday relics of the saint can be seen in three places. His body lies in an ornate shrine in Goa and it is exhibited to pilgrims at intervals of several years. The saint's right arm up to the elbow was removed in 1614 and was sent to Rome where it has been venerated in the Jesuit Church of Gesu for more than 300 years.\n\nThe sole remaining relic is the fragment of bone in the tiny Macau church.\n\nIn 1619 three bones from the elbow to the shoulder of the right arm were extracted at Goa. One was sent to Cochin, now Southern Vietnam, another went to Malacca and the third went to Macau. By this time the Portuguese empire was faltering and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210167, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "117\n\nmight, then, depend on the existence of a local junk trade. Such a trade existed east and west of the island, before and after British rule, and though it cannot be proved that they did act in this way, there were certainly fearful attacks outside the Lyemun Passage in the 1840s and after, with piratical craft from or operating out of Shau Kei Wan blamed among others.11 At the least, the town's shopkeepers probably victualled pirates and helped to sell or dispose of stolen goods.\n\n41\n\nAn experienced official wrote at a later time:\n\n\"Previous to 1866, Piracy in Colonial and neighbouring waters was of common occurrence, and Shau Kei Wan bore a very bad name as the centre where Junks fitted out for piratical purposes. Its close proximity to the Lyemun Pass enabled Masters of heavily manned and armed Junks to follow vessels that had been ascertained to have opium, or other valuable cargo, on board. These were too frequently come up with and attacked at night, stinkpots and arms of all descriptions being freely used.\" Governor MacDonell's \"notice was [then] attracted to the unenviable character Hong Kong bore as a Pirate resort.1,42\n\nThe demands of agriculture and shopkeeping, and the pleasures of occasional or indirect piracy apart, the main pursuits of Hong Kong at the time of its cession were the production and export of granite building slabs and the trade in fish, landed by fishing vessels at the coastal market villages, and there dried and salted, and then graded, warehoused and subsequently shipped out to major centres of population in the surrounding and adjacent parts of China. Quotations from contemporary sources confirm the position. Charles Gutzlaff, Prussian missionary and civil servant, holding at the time the appointment of Chinese Secretary to the Government of Hong Kong, wrote in 1846:\n\n\"The only produce of Hong Kong, for exportation, is granite, and, though a very contemptible article, still it employs many hands, a great number of boats, each about 70 to 100 tons, and some capital. There are seldom less than a hundred of the above craft which monthly leave this with a full cargo for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210176, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "126 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nbeen characterized as being a group apart. They were conceived, born, lived, married and died upon their craft, often no more than the cockleshell sampans which used to be so common a feature of our coastal waters. They were not allowed to live on shore, did not attend the village schools and were excluded from the official examinations and hardly ever intermarried with the landsmen, though some of their girls became the secondary wives of wealthier villagers. Generally, they lived a life apart, under separate official regulation, and were despised and often oppressed by the land population as the popular and long received legend has it.\n\n67 \n\n66 \n\nThe Tanka people manned the larger fishing craft that were usually based on the fishing ports of the Hong Kong region in places like Cheung Chau and Tai O. They also congregated in small groups that frequented sheltered bays and inlets for generations at a time. I have encountered this in various parts of the New Territories, and found it also at Tai Tam Tuk on Hong Kong island when I enquired into the land and boat populations there in the early 1960s. I learned that the elder fishermen and their fathers had been born at Tai Tam Tuk which had been used as a permanent anchorage by a group of Tanka boat people for at least the previous eighty years, one old lady having been born there in 1884. They were always at Tai Tam Tuk during the main typhoon season from the fifth to the eighth lunar month of every year, fishing the surrounding waters for the rest of the year. From what they said, there were about twenty families living in boats there when the village was removed in 1913 for the reservoir. About half these families were surnamed Cheng, while the remainder came from four or five other surnames. It was very likely a man from one of these boat families who, under the recorded name Chun-Fat-Che, gave evidence against a mandarin junk charged with piracy in May 1874 during the Chinese so-called “blockade” of Hong Kong. 'I am a fisherman and have a small fishing boat about 18 feet long. It has one sail and carries myself and wife, my four sons and their two children. My fishing place is at Stanley, Tai Tam and Cape D'Aguilar. I have fished there ever since I was a child and I am 62 years of age, and my father before me. My son generally accompanies me in another boat.68 \n\nWhilst this information comes from the 1870s, its reference to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210319, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 290, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "269\n\nMy notebook says “We had tea at all these villages all locally grown\". The list includes Tai Hang Hau, Sheung Sze Wan and Ha Yeung, but I visited others in the group without making special mention of tea. At Ha Yeung I was told that they had 100 trees of what they called shan cha (山茶) (“hill tea”), not wild but planted by themselves. Tai Po Tsai, one of the larger villages of the area, claimed to have 50 trees, but the largest village settlement, Mang Kung Uk, reported \"only a few tea bushes not many.\" However, the little island settlement of Fu Tau Chau in Junk Bay gave me hill tea to drink, from its own trees.\n\nFurther towards Sai Kung Market, I was given hill tea to drink at Nam Wai, and also at Pak Kong Au, though the village reported \"only 8 to 10 trees\". East of Sai Kung, people in the hamlet of Shan Liu said that “tea was formerly grown (i.e. cultivated) but only wild bushes are now harvested”. But it was at Nam A, east of Sha Kok Mei, that I learned most. \"A really nice, almost English village\", I wrote enthusiastically. \"We drank hill tea (excellent) from trees planted twenty years ago in the hills behind the village, but not many. It is best brewed in porcelain, they said. Their supply lasts six months in all, but is harvested four times a year - once in the winter months, once at Easter and twice in the summer. The best is the Easter crop.” Nothing was said, or asked, about preparation but each crop was kept in a drawer for two months. My note ends \"The cows like to eat it!”.\n\nOn Lantau, the villagers of Pa Mei, otherwise known as Shan Ha, said they collected hill tea from Tai Tung Shan Keuk (大東山腳), that is the north western slopes of Sunset Peak. On South Lantau the people of the Pui villages also went up to Tai Tung Shan to collect leaves from wild bushes there in the second to fourth moons. Previously there had been many trees, but hill fires had reduced their number. It was used as leung cha (涼茶) for cooling the system. At Tong Fuk my notes state, \"they gather tea leaves from bushes on the hill and use it a lot. The tea comes from the Fung Wong Shan peak behind the village, and the leaves used are plucked in the second and third moons.” Rather surprisingly, the villagers of Upper and Lower Keung Shan, though located on the mountain slopes of a sheltered valley with good tree cover, had never cultivated tea bushes, or at least not within living memory.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 313, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "292\n\nRODERICK O'BRIEN S.J.\n\nsteamed amongst many barren-looking granite islands, about the fifth day from Singapore. At last one island with a very high peak upon it, loomed out from the clouds at no great distance, soon near enough to discern the forests of masts and crowds of steam-funnels, junks, sampans, and small steam launches which told unmistakably of a large seaport. As we neared it in the dull light of that cold foggy day, it looked as picturesque as any place I have ever seen. It may be defined as thick rows of masts; then handsome terraces of houses rising tier above tier upon such a steep incline that they looked as if each higher range were founded on the chimney-pots of the other. About half-way up the houses ceased, and then diagonal and zig-zag roadways, with scattered villas rapidly ascended into the clouds. A piercing cold Siberian wind was blowing keenly upon the animated scene of great rafts of steamers loading and unloading, a goodly fleet of men-of-war, and, as we neared the wharf, excited, surging, shouting crowds at the waterside. Hong Kong has often been described, but its wonderful population must be seen to be understood. Enormous crowds of boat-women, junk sailors, and coolies, which make a living stream on the quay, have no parallel in Europe or Asia.\n\nCertainly Hong Kong is not a Chinese town, but a town for Chinese, but yet not of European architecture, nor like the Straits Settlements. Its crowded by-streets and lanes, the absence of horse-carriages, the presence of chairs and jinrickshas make it very peculiar. There are plenty of soldiers in red coats and plenty of sailors in naval uniform, and all sorts of picturesque Chinese costumes, a few Hindoos and Malays, besides Parsees of portly presence and European dress surmounted with a hat like a stove-pipe.\n\nI am not going to describe any more of Hong Kong. I believe it is the most hospitable town in the East, almost surpassing the Straits Settlements and Shanghai. The merchant princes live in real splendour, extravagant if you will, but really comfortable. In winter sporting, hunting and other such amusements are out of the question; but for cricket, lawn-tennis, foot-ball and such like, and for balls, parties, private theatricals, & c., it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "62\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nvisited the village only at long intervals. Travelling to and fro they usually hitched a lift to Sai Kung from one of the fishermen, and then went by bus. Their wives, on the other hand, hardly ever left the village, except perhaps to see an opera performance at one of the neighbouring festivals listed above. The 'headman' and his brother normally followed a slightly different pattern. Their shop, a new departure opened shortly before the time of my arrival, required the permanent presence of one of them. The 'headman' had his fingers in a number of enterprises on the mainland, but returned frequently to Kau Sai to deal in pigs (his own and others') and to keep an eye on the illicit still which was his main source of income. He owned a small transport junk. (The other, and larger, shop was owned by an ex-fisherman, at that time permanently resident on shore but sharing fully in the fishermen's ritual and recreational movements). Hakka men being seldom present were not often included in fishermen's sociable gatherings; their social life was elsewhere. The ‘headman', and more especially his shopkeeper brother who was popular, who were present, were exceptions.\n\nAn overview of the various patterns of movement yields two obvious inferences which are as significant as they are self-evident. First, although mobile the fishermen were far from footloose. Not only did many of them (particularly the purse-seiners) return constantly to one particular base, namely Kau Sai, but their movements away from there also took place within a definitely circumscribed area. This comprised, in effect, the waters of Port Shelter and Rocky Harbour as far as Basalt Island, Bluff Island and the Ninepins, with an outlying channel to Shaukiwan or Hong Kong island (from which it was only a 10¢ or 20¢ tram or bus ride to all the bright lights of the city). Only occasionally and for limited purposes did Kau Sai-based boats go beyond the boundaries of this area. It included two market towns, Sai Kung and Shaukiwan, and a number of fishing villages the main ones being at Yim Tin Tsai, Lung Shuen Wan, Kiu Tsui, Pak Sha Wan, Pu To Au).\n\nWith the obvious difference that it contained more than one market and was within fairly easy reach of a great international centre of commerce and industry, this area was closely similar to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210488, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "76\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nBesides, Shing Chui's father was an expert in sails and rigging. No one living in Kau Sai when I first went there in 1952 had ever made a sail without his advice, and he prided himself, in a deprecating way, upon his undoubted skill. Sail making, and the provision and stepping of the mast were done by the owners, not by the junk builders. For as long as any of my Kau Sai informants could remember, masts had been bought ready shaped from a timber merchant in Sai Kung or Shaukiwan, but sails were made by hand on the open terrace in front of the temple by the boat owner and his crew under the direction of Lo Kwai Faat. Canvas cloth, bamboo, and sewing yarn were acquired some time before, and the canvas dyed in the vats on the other island ready for making up. The actual making gave between eight and a dozen people about five hours' solid hard work. Mast and sails were then taken off to the junk yard where the new boat was being built, to be stepped and rigged immediately after the launch.\n\nEngines were (and are) a very different matter. Not only was the initial price out of all proportion to the cheapness of homemade sails, but the expenses of professional installation, tuning, and efficiency trials had also to be borne. It is doubtful, also, whether or not a junk constantly subject to engine vibration can last as long as a sailing vessel. Moreover, once an engine was installed, an owner was usually unwilling to sell the junk second-hand and might well decide to hang on to it even beyond the limit of safety. The economics of mechanisation will be discussed in detail in chapter 7.42 Here I am concerned primarily with the practical effects upon living conditions.\n\nIt has to be understood that the only engines legally permitted on fishing junks in Hong Kong are marine diesel engines. Because the fishermen's families live on board and do their cooking there, and because the anchorages are all close-packed and many of them densely crowded, petrol fuel was forbidden from the outset. Outboard motors were therefore out of the question even for the smallest fishing boats; they would in any case have been entirely inappropriate for the larger junks. Mechanisation of the small- and medium-sized inshore fishing craft thus had to wait upon the development and availability of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210526, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "114\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\n22 All but one of Kau Sai's long-liners fall into the category Small long-liner. A small long-liner shoots his lines direct from his junk, which is on average about 30-35 feet in overall length. Bigger long-liners (classed as Medium or Large Long-liners) carry sampans for the shooting and hauling of lines. Baiting-up is always done on the mother ship. In 1950 the Large Long-liners based mainly on Shaukiwan were the aristocrats of the Hong Kong fishing fleets, wealthy men, employing large crews. Informants claimed that before the Japanese occupation two or three of these large boats had been based on Kau Sai anchorage. By 1970 shortages of labour had driven nearly all of them out of business. Kau Sai then boasted one Medium Long-liner.\n\nThe nylon line, which everywhere replaced the old ramie during the early 'sixties, was greatly appreciated for lightness, strength and quick drying, but it tangled easily and so made baiting-up an even more finicking job than before. 23 Note on this and role of F.M.O. (N.B.) and on numbers of pupils etc: 84 in 1970. [Note not written; for related information, see T.A. Acton, \"Education as a by-product of fish marketing,” JHKBRAS vol, 21 (1981) pp 120-143.]\n\n24 In 1969 a special typhoon shelter, with concrete break-waters, was constructed at Government expense at Yim Tin Tsai a well sheltered cove to the north of Kau Sai island.\n\n25 The Fish Marketing Organisation, a non-government trading organisation controlled by a Government Servant, the Director of Marketing, was established in 1945. The Director is empowered to control the landing, movement and wholesaling of all marine fish (except shellfish and marine fish 'alive and in water'). For further detail see Chapter V below. In 1950 controlled wholesale markets existed at Shaukiwan and Kennedy Town on Hong Kong Island, in Kowloon, and at Tai Po in the New Territories. The Kennedy Town market was transferred to Aberdeen in 1952 and the Kowloon market to Cheung Sha Wan in 1966. A fifth market was opened at Castle Peak in 1969. The Organisation also maintains collecting depots and/or other offices at Cheung Chau, Castle Peak, Tsun Wan, Sha Tau Kok and Sai Kung.\n\n26 A male recreation; women in 1950 always wore long hair, shampooing their own or each other's with... [note incomplete]\n\n27 On this and the whole question 'What is a real Kau Sai person? see below Chapters 5 and [p. 75]. [The following indicates how this question might have been answered: \"The non-kin groups to which he sees himself belonging are also few. First there is the village as a whole: Kau Sai. He may describe himself as a Kau Sai man, or refer, as he does very frequently, to 'our bay' as a membership unit. This includes all people for which Kau Sai bay is a permanent anchorage, or who have houses ashore there.\" \"Sociological self-awareness: some uses of the conscious models”, Man (1966), vol. 1, p. 203.]\n\n28 [G. William Skinner, \"Marketing and social structure in rural China, Part 1,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 63 (1964), pp. 21-50.]\n\n29 See also Ward 1967 and 1968. [Probably reference to articles cited in note 4.]\n\n30 One most important aspect of the territoriality of all the fishermen was their inescapable need for credit. See below pp.\n\n31 boon wan ge yan this expression which was used synonymously with \"Kau Sai\" was the more usual in colloquial speech.\n\n32 [The next paragraph in the manuscript summarizes the argument here: \"These", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "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": 211245, "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": 306, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "281\n\nIt might often have been the case that they predated the land people of the neighbouring villages. Theirs was not a symbiotic relationship. Even when they lived together in the same locality, they kept apart; the villagers in their houses and the boat people on their little family boats just offshore in the same or an adjoining bay. Despite some interaction, the two communities were separate and individual, contributing nothing vital to the other nor sharing anything important.\n\nIt was in such circumstances that my friend's family had probably lived at Causeway Bay for generations before the establishment of British Hong Kong, fishing the local waters and living in some proximity to the land people of the two nearest local villages of So Kon Po and Wong Nai Chung.\n\nThe number of indigenous boat people in the Causeway Bay anchorage was apparently not large. In her own words, \"When I was young, not very many of the boats in the anchorage were native to the area.\" These families gained their livelihood, then as in 1970, by fishing not far from home going most frequently over to Junk Bay and by ferrying people to and from the cargo boats and cutters using the anchorage. Some took out guests for a quiet dinner on the water, an entertainment for which this area became quite famous. Taking people out in this way was described as sung-yan t'au-long. Others used their boats for marine hawking, going among the other craft with daily necessities in those days before refrigeration made their services largely redundant.\n\nIn the last years of the nineteenth century, as in 1970, their local marketing area was the Tang Lung Chau market. This was the name of that locality, and not of the little island off shore which the British named Kellett Island. It later became the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, joined by a causeway to the shore at Tang Lung Chau. To the boat people, the old lady said, Kellett Island was simply known as “Chau Chai\" or \"the little island”.\n\nThe local boat people's main market village was Shau Kei Wan, with which she seemed very familiar. She particularly mentioned the songs of the boat people there, of the kind known as haam-shui.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212186, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "105\n\ntimed with their fuses set to burst just a few feet above water level. But the gunners evidently found the moving targets difficult to follow, because the aim grew wilder and eventually the shelling ceased. As the sun set in the west, the British ships came to anchor off the Three Hills, where I had my last pheasant shoot, while the American ships anchored in a group a few miles lower down.\n\nNext morning broke clear and sunny, one of those late autumn days in China, when there is not a ripple on the river, and the smoke hangs low in a thin pall over the country villages. Gun fire could be heard in the distance, both above and below the concentration of neutral vessels; and by-and-by the three American ships, escorted by the U.S.S. \"Panay\", got under way and steamed upriver. As she went by, the \"Panay\" stopped to pass back one of our wounded men, who had been kindly accommodated in her sick bay, and the Commander explained that he was taking his ships further up towards **Pidgeon Island** as the Japanese had been dropping some \"bricks\" in the river just below them. Not for the first, or the last, time in China, the Americans elected to play a lone hand.\n\nMeanwhile the refugees on the British vessels whiled away the time counting up the splinter holes in their ships, attending to the wounded, and in mutual visits for gossip over the events of the previous day. Every one thought it was all a mistake, although some concern was caused at about 10 o'clock, when a number of Japanese military landing craft were seen upriver pulling in to the north bank, on to which they ran a small gun which was openly trained at the ships. But the feeling of security was confirmed when the Japanese craft, one after the other, steamed out towards the British gunboats, circled round them, waved a salute or two, and then went on their way down river. There appeared to be no Chinese troops in the neighbourhood, and the Japanese sailed down the Yangtze unmolested, stopping to burn an occasional junk.\n\nIt was without an after-thought that we all sat down to lunch on that lovely Sunday morning on the Yangtze. We were anchored off the reed beds which grow round Rosina Beacon, and through the porthole I could see across the river the clumps out of which not so many months before we had driven our last pheasant. Imagine our astonishment and indignation when suddenly we heard the approaching noise of planes, the roar of power dives, and bombs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212347, "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "266\n\nabout a mile below the Sha Wan River, and finally the Ching Shui River which drains the northern part of the valley from Po Kat (Buji) down, and which enters about half-a-mile below the Sheung Yue River. The main river is navigable for small skiffs as far as Kim Hau, but for junks only as far as the confluence of the main river and the Ching Shui River. However, the river at the mouth of the Ching Shui River is not navigable for junks at low tide. Furthermore, the navigable part of the river is not wide enough for a junk to turn around in easily when under sail. The Ching Shui River, at the junction with the main river, splits into two branches, with a low, marshy island between them and the main river.* Junks could come up the main river, enter the Ching Shui River, pass behind the marshy island, and back into the main river via the second branch of the stream, thus turning round without cutting across the channel, using a \"one-way\" system. The landing place used by the cargo junks and ferry boats, therefore, was the channel of the Ching Shui River behind the island. Junks would come up the river with the tide, and would load and unload while at rest on the mud at low tide, and would cast off and go down the river with the next high tide. Three significant roads pass through the valley, crossing at Sham Chun: the Yuen Long to Wai Chow (Huichou), Nam Tau (Nantou) to Sha Tau Kok, and Po Kat to Kowloon roads.\n\nIn the Ming, this valley had a number of markets, of which Sham Chun was only one. There was another at Kim Hau, and others to the west, including one at Lung Tsun Hui (Longjinxu), which was part of the Fuk Tin (Futian) village cluster. By the nineteenth century, however, all these other markets had either become extinct, or else survived only in a very small way as satellites of Sham Chun. Sham Chun had developed until it had become a very large market, with probably 500 and more shops. The market was ringed by large villages of rich clans—the Cheungs at Wong Pui Ling (Huangbeiling) about a mile to the east, the Tsois at Tsoi Uk Wai (Caiwuwei) about half a mile to the south-west, the Wongs at Fuk Tin about a mile to the south-west, the Yuens at Lo Wu (Lohu) about half a mile to the south and the Hos at Sun Kong (Sungang) about half a mile to the north. These rich and ancient clans were almost perennially in dispute, as they jostled for power and position in the district.\n\n* See Map.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212470, "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-1991", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages.\n\nFollowing the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia.\n\nThe Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212916, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "210\n\nthe day we would be off to the beach annex of the Chefoo Club where there were rowing boats and canoes. From nine in the morning till lunch time and all afternoon a crowd of us were in and out of the water, rowing out to the raft which was a converted junk with diving boards. I got so brown that summer that the mark of the swimming trunks was still visible at Christmas time!\n\nHolidays at Home\n\nA great part of school life was the holidays at home. Home at this time was in Tung Shan Terrace off Stubbs Road, when my father was building the Chinese Methodist Church in Wanchai—the triangular red brick building at the junction of Hennessy Road and Johnston Road.* This was home not in a flat but a three-story house, with a garden overlooking Happy Valley. At the back we had access to Bowen Road which was a safe place to play as there were no motor vehicles. Those holidays I remember chiefly for rambles up to Sir Cecil's Ride and a major hike over to Tytam from Wong Nei Chong Gap. And we went to a school pantomime at the Central British School (now King George V School) where the bad guy called himself “ZBW my middle name is trouble you\" ZBW being the embryo Radio Television Hong Kong. We had our first family car here, an Austin Seven with a folding roof and went for picnics to the beaches at Repulse Bay and Big Wave Bay, and at Stanley where a new prison was being built. Although it was winter in Hong Kong the climate was comfortable for us from the north and we had no hesitation in swimming.\n\n—\n\nOur journeys home in the winter holidays were considerable undertakings. Of course there was no air travel nor was rail travel possible. Instead we went by sea on the B. & S. ships of the China Navigation Line. These were coasters of about 7,000 tons which made their way up and down the China coast carrying cargoes of all sorts, a small number of passengers in cabins and a much larger number of deck passengers. Sometimes we were able to get a ship that went all the way from Chefoo to Hong Kong but often we had to get off in Shanghai and wait in the China Inland Mission hostel for a suitable connection. Some luckless schoolmaster had to accompany some twenty or so children more as far as Shanghai on these journeys. They were carefree days and I have wondered how we all survived. We would sit up on the taffrail undeterred by the possibility of toppling over into the sea. I remember getting into frightful trouble from practising throwing a penknife into the cabin bulkhead. In the ports we watched\n\n*Since demolished [Editor]\n\n—\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214060, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "95\n\nwith impounded water being conveyed through a 2.2km-long 2.5m-diameter tunnel, mainly in granite, and by a 5km-long conduit winding along the northern shore of the Island beneath Bowen Road to the first two slow sand filter beds above the city, and thence into the service reservoir located at a lower level. The distribution system involved laying, between 1890 and 1892, some 30 kilometres of 75-350mm-diameter cast-iron mains together with the installation of a system of fire hydrants. Major fung shui problems were encountered during the tunnelling works, rumour being that children were to be selected for burial alive to ensure success; fortunately no ritual sacrifice was needed!\n\nOn an uncontoured 1895 version of Collinson's plan (1845), there is an interesting feature clearly marked “overhead tram\" extending 2.3 kilometres between Quarry Bay and Quarry Gap. It seems likely that it would have been used to transport materials and, perhaps, workmen associated with the early Tai Tam reservoir works. As part of the Tai Tam scheme a further small high-level reservoir at Wong Nei Chong was completed in 1899. Around this time the Braemar reservoir (now Choi Sai Woo Park) and further smaller reservoirs near Quarry Bay were built, primarily to meet the needs of the large commercial Tai Koo sugar refinery and dockyard complex.\n\nWith the population already rising to about half a million, three further concrete dams within the Tai Tam valley, the largest Tai Tam Tuk being 50m high, and associated reservoirs were completed between 1904 and 1917. The upper (42m high) and reconstructed lower (20m high) concrete dams, the latter being previously a privately-owned dam built in 1890 for a paper works, impounding the Aberdeen reservoirs were later finished in 1931 and 1932 respectively, thus completing the last economical water storage development on the Island.\n\nAfter the turn of the century engineers were already looking to the New Territories to increase the supply of water for Kowloon, which had hitherto been dependent on two wells located to the north of Yau Mai Tei. As a result, the 35m-high concrete dam for the Kowloon reservoir was completed in 1910 and three further reservoirs in the vicinity were completed during the period 1925-1931 by which time the population was already approaching a million. A commercial reservoir was also built early this century to the south of Lung Wo Tsuen to provide water for Rennie's cotton factory at Junk Bay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215136, "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-2000", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "189\n\nspeed test over a set distance. This is done, for example, for ships built on the Firth of Clyde, in Scotland (Sinclair, 2000). The late James A W Deacon, Superintendent of Lights in the Hong Kong Government Marine Department, told me they tried unsuccessfully to find a place for timing ships over a measured sea mile on the south side of Hong Kong Island. Eventually such a \"course\" was, it is understood, set up at Tseung Kwan O (Junk Bay), in the eastern New Territories. It seems unlikely that the two Obelisks at Tai Tam were ever used for timing ships because of their rather 'tucked away' positions. There is also no evidence of there ever having been a second pair of beacons in the vicinity.\n\nAre there other possible uses for the two Tai Tam Obelisks? I was informed firstly in the late 1970s by a master mariner and senior civil servant in the Government Marine Department, that a Royal Navy Officer, who had served in Hong Kong before World War Two, had told him that the two Obelisks had been used when submarines submerged during tests. This practice came into being (so it was said) because of the loss of HM Submarine Thetis, on 1 June 1939, on its maiden dive with the loss of 99 sailors and civilians. A diver who went down to try to effect a rescue was also lost. Only four occupants managed to escape from the submarine using the Davis Escape Apparatus. The Royal Navy Officer told the senior Marine Department Officer that submarines were sent to Tai Tam Bay, after repairs or refits in the old Royal Naval Dockyard. At Tai Tam they could dive to periscope depth, in line between the two Obelisks. Then, if anything were to go wrong, the submarine could be traced and the crew rescued hopefully relatively quickly. The now retired Marine Department member of staff acknowledges that he never had material in writing to support this statement but he believes the information was given to him in good faith.\n\nWhen this information was put to Guy Clarabutt, who served in Royal Navy submarines in Hong Kong before World War Two, he said he had never heard of such a practice (Sinclair, 2000). Neither could he remember the two Obelisks at Tai Tam (Waters, 2000). I spoke to a young British naval officer stationed at HMS Tamar, on Hong Kong Island, in 1995. He felt that such a practice was highly unlikely. In 1997, however, I raised the same question with Commodore PJ Melson CBE, Chief of Staff and Deputy to Commander British Forces. He, as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]