[ { "id": 204628, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "96 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\npopularity with businessmen and others, and of the degree of wealth and general prosperity there in the middle of the last century: since district associations, like present day Kaifong in the urban area, can only operate effectively (and, indeed, come into existence) inside a community which possesses prosperous elements. The district associations must also have been a useful counterpoise to the political dominance of the WONG Wai Chak Tong. \n\nThe association for natives of Tung Kwun is the largest, richest and probably the oldest of the Cheung Chau societies. It seems to have been established in the fifth year of Chia-ch'ing (1800-01) and in 1898 owned five shops, office premises and an ancestral hall which had been in existence for at least forty years, judging by an incense holder dated the ninth year of Hsien-feng (1859-60). Members and destitute persons of Tung Kwun origin could receive relief assistance from its funds and contributions, with which the Po On study, the ancestral temple, and later three large communal urn graves were also managed. Practically all the way from the cradle to the grave the member and his children could benefit from the operation of his association.26 \n\nThe association laid emphasis on social cohesion and the observance by its members of the customary proprieties. There was the traditional feast for all members every year at the lantern festival on the fifteenth day of the first moon, on which day the managers for the new year were elected, and the yearly worship of Kwan Tai, the god of war and patron god of the association, on his birthday on the thirteenth day of the fifth moon, when each subscribing member received a share of roast pork. Confucius' birthday and the two grave sweeping festivals were also celebrated by members gathering together. \n\nOther commemorative tablets existed until only a few years ago which would have provided useful information about two other similar associations of long standing; those of people from Wai Chau and Chiu Chau (combined) and from 惠州及潮州 Sei Yap. One in the Wai Chiu clansmen's office was turned out 27 during repairs after Typhoon Mary in 1960 and not replaced; and what was probably the foundation stone of the Yik Sin Tong, an association for Sei Yap natives, was taken down and \n\nT \n\nJ \n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204630, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nrested with the senior members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong, as it does today. It controls the old defence bureau which is rented out and the proceeds added to the association's funds. Very little information is at present available concerning its history beyond the fact that it existed in the Ch'ing period*1 and that it had a close connection with the members of the Tong, who were its principal patrons and sponsors.\n\nTwo other instances of communal enterprise remain to be mentioned. There was, before the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, an organisation of local leaders known as the Kaifong##, which is now represented in most things by the Cheung Chau Rural Committee. The Kaifong had an informal constitution and its leaders were generally those persons who were already playing a leading part in the affairs of the four old district associations. The Kaifong had a general concern in Cheung Chau affairs whereas the district associations may be said, in the best sense, to have had a sectional interest.\n\nThe history of the Kaifong is less easy to trace than that of the associations, very likely because it was a less tangible body. However, it seems to have existed before 1898 because the land registers list a club house or kung soA which was described as public property. This must have been built and administered by somebody and the Kaifong is the most likely candidate. In the early part of this century the building probably housed a school and is known to have served as a headquarters for the town's watchmen.* These were both likely activities for a Kaifong, and it is probable that it ran these and other central services before the British lease. Presumably, too, it administered CHOI Leung's Fong Pin hospital, which the registers describe as an asylum* and as public property. But whilst I am satisfied that there was a Kaifong on the island before 1898 which organised various functions on behalf of the whole community, there is, as yet, no information as to the date of its origin, though there is one clue which takes its history back another twenty years at least.*2\n\nThis was the provision of what are still known, to-day, as kaifong junks or kai to*. These are cargo vessels which are managed by prominent persons for a group of financially interested", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204631, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n99\n\nlocal parties who support the venture which is designed to assist the public by providing a safe, regular and reliable means of conveying cargo and passengers between the island and, in this case, Hong Kong. An agreed percentage of the profits is supposed to be contributed towards charitable and welfare purposes at need. Four junks appear on the list of donors to the Fong Pin hospital, and one of these, together with a fifth, appears on the list for the repair of the Tin Hau Temple a year later, in 1879. They have business names such as Tung On “universal peace”, Kung Cheong “public prosperity”, Yee Tai On “righteous peace”, Kung Yik “public welfare” and On Shun “peaceful tranquility”, all propitious names for sea and river travel. It is likely that the two which made donations to the repair of the temple were kaifong junks since their generous contributions placed their names almost at the head of the list.\n\nScrutiny of the tablets and other sources of information mentioned in this brief account of Cheung Chau just before the British lease therefore leaves a vivid impression of a lively, bustling community, largely dependent upon its own leaders and local resources for initiating works of communal benefit, but making use of its links with the outside world, both by business and kinship, to help achieve its ends. So far as I know, there are no studies of the internal structure of a community of similar size and location in the same period available in any western language and it is therefore difficult for me to say whether Cheung Chau is similar or dissimilar to the general pattern of small coastal towns in South China. It does, however, present a basic pattern of association and an enforced reliance on self-help which is typically Chinese, in which respects the community has altered little to this day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204638, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "106\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n30 The Tung Kwun association note book says that there was a Po On Wui Sor ★ ★ ƒ in the Ch'ing dynasty, but since this had always led to confusion their association (the Po On Shuc Shat) was renamed the Tung Kwun Wui Sor in the 12th year of the Chinese Republic (1923).\n\n31 A tablet (1953) in the Free School says that this institution dates back to 1921 and local leaders say that the kung sor was rebuilt at this time. The old kung sor was also known as the hon kaam lau ★ ★# or watchmen's building.\n\n** On the other hand it is unlikely that it predates the defence bureau (1863-70) as this would have been a suitable subject for the Kaifong to organise (there is no mention of it on the tablet).\n\n33 Mr. LEUNG Yau recalls that there were two Kaifong junks operating a daily service between Cheung Chau and Hong Kong before the lease (1898). One left Hong Kong (Sai Ying Pun) at 11 a.m., whilst the other left Cheung Chau at the same time. Both were sailing junks and took three hours to make the journey under good conditions and the whole day if otherwise. They were subscribed and run by a number of local gentlemen for public use. A steam Kaifong vessel was bought with public subscriptions in 1910. Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories, 1910.\n\n&\n\n34 There are now eight district associations on the island for natives of the districts of Po On; Tung Kwun; Wai-Chiu combined ✰✰ *#; Sei Yap (\"The Four Towns') i.e. Toi Shan 4, Sun Wui. Hoi Ping, Yan Ping; Ng Yap ♣ (“The Five Towns\") i.e. Hok Shan plus the towns of Sei Yap, Shun Tak: Chung Shan ✈ and Chiu Chau (separate), the four last named formed since 1945, all offering a variety of social, educational and charitable services to members.\n\n35 HSIAO, in his interesting and lengthy study of rural China in the 19th Century, does not deal specifically with the internal organisation of the market towns. The market town of Tai O at the south west end of Lantau island (land population 2248 in 1911) would provide an interesting local comparison, though material is not so readily available as for Cheung Chau. I hope to write a similar outline account at a later date.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204796, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "FENG CHAU\n\n87\n\nChinese New Year, were accustomed to visit their parent villages, which were in any case not far away. However, there seem in mid-century to have been close links with the Tung Kwun association of Cheung Chau. Fifteen Peng Chau shops47 subscribed to the repair of the association's premises in 1866, and Peng Chau residents may have been members of the association, as is the case with several of the Cheung Chau district and other organisations today.\n\ntoday. The extent of the help given on that occasion may be attributed either to this, or else to some very energetic canvassing by the Cheung Chau organisers.48\n\nHowever, the gradual expansion of the local community did bring with it various manifestations of communal endeavour. There was an interesting building, now in ruins, known as the Yee Chee, which was a poor house rather on the lines of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau. It was a substantial structure constructed from the dark grey-blue bricks of the region, and rather like a temple in appearance. There were three rooms: one for sick persons, one for the dying and one for the caretaker. There were idols inside, the principal one being that of the God of Ghosts. The Yee Chee is said to have been constructed by the island Kaifong from funds specially raised for the\n\n# purpose and was maintained by them as occasion required. It was intended for use by destitute persons in poor health and as a place where they could die in peace. No one with relatives able to support him would ever let himself be taken there. Free coffins were provided by the Kaifong. It was available to all, land and sea dwellers alike. The caretaker was supported by collections and was allowed to cultivate land under the control of the Kaifong. The building was not in particularly good repair when Mr. CHUNG was a boy, and its origin can therefore be dated with confidence to 1850 or before.\n\nThe Peng Chau Kaifong mentioned in the previous paragraph had premises on each side of the Tin Hau temple. They were renovated in 1876-77 about the same time as the temple. Present elders clearly recall a tablet in the office building to one side of the temple which said it was enlarged. The annexe on the other side served as a school or guest house as the need arose. It is not certain when the Kaifong began,50 but it appears to have existed before this office was repaired and it has been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "88 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\ncredited with the construction of the Yee Chee about 1850. What does appear fairly certain is that the Kaifong originated among the Cantonese shopkeepers and house-owners of Wing On Street, the main, and for long the only, street on the island. The street had a corporate identity which was quite separate from the rest of the island, and this is clearly shown on the 1878 tablet which is at pains to differentiate donors as belonging to either \"this street\" or \"this island\". There were one or two of them, rather than one. By the turn of the century, however, Hakka shopkeepers in the main street, the CHUNG clan, who in origin was a leading member of the Kaifong, but this was apparently a recent development. The Kaifong's interests thus became those of the island community at large. It was not necessarily in regular session with meetings once a week or once a month, but is more likely to have been rather sporadic in its activities, active only when it was asked to advise, arbitrate or organise, as the need arose.\n\nThere was also an association for religious purposes known as the Hung Man Wui. It is mentioned in the 1878 tablet in the Tin Hau temple, when it was among the principal subscribers. One assumes, therefore, that it had many members. It was responsible for the organisation of the various festivals, including the staging of processions and the customary opera or puppet shows, and its directors were chosen by \"shaking the sticks\" at the temple once a year. Apparently anyone could join and, in theory at least, anyone could be chosen by the gods for the chief posts. I am told that it still exists today, for similar objects.\n\nLest this article should leave the impression of a well-organised and orderly community which lived a peaceful existence year by year in ever growing prosperity, it is as well to call attention to the more uncertain side of daily life at the time under review. The period was characterised by the gradual break-down of imperial control which was reflected in unsettled conditions. The tablets of 1835 recording the fishermen's petition to the Viceroy recalls the presence of pirates, and cargo junks and ferries in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205178, "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-1966", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n129\n\nYau Ma Ti is not mentioned by name in the Commissioners' Report of 1862, and its earlier origin is therefore in question. However, at the latest estimate, its principal temple, dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven, was located there soon after the Kowloon peninsula changed hands: two stone lions standing outside the present building are dated 1864. Some years later the Registrar General included a brief mention of Yau Ma Ti in his Census Returns for 1876 in which he wrote: 39\n\nYau Ma Ti in Kowloon has become a new Town within the last few months, and it will continue to increase if facilities are afforded to the boat builders and to the junk people who repair thither to careen and repair their vessels, for on these the trade of the place chiefly depends\".\n\nIn 1882 Osbert Chadwick wrote of the formation of \"irregular groups of houses\" and the \"lack of proper streets\" in growing villages like Yau Ma Ti. He went on to describe the environs of the town as follows: 40\n\nTo the north of Yau Ma Ti the shore is lined with establishments for boat people or other trades connected with shipping... Just to the south of Yau Ma Ti is a sort of mud-dock which dries at half ebb or little later. This is occupied by many boats some of which are too old and leaky to go out, and lie here permanently, being used as dwellings. This causes a serious nuisance\".\n\nIn Yau Ma Ti there was a community organisation known as a kaifong (†). This type of association is commonly found in small towns whose main activities are trades and crafts rather than agriculture. Its leaders are usually local shop-keepers and businessmen. In Old Kowloon the several regional kaifongs' activities took on the nature of charitable deeds such as the provision of primary education, herbal treatment for illness, a funeral expenses scheme (#), free coffins for paupers, etc. These services were meant to benefit the poorer residents of the town. A kaifong's work also verged on what would now be considered the proper sphere of the central government, in such matters as building and repairing footpaths, lanes, bridges, public wells, and so on. 41 As in the villages its leaders were also responsible for the organisation of local religious ceremonies and their accompanying entertainment. 42 Like the village organisations of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205180, "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-1966", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n131\n\nexample of a local boy making good, whilst his public activities demonstrate the sustained zeal to perform charitable works that continues to typify leading members of the Chinese community of Hong Kong to this day. Farming was not for him. When in his twenties he set up a general store in Yau Ma Ti where his elder brother was already running a wholesale vegetable business. Very soon he turned his energies in other directions and established two cross-harbour ferry services with steam launches running from Yau Ma Ti and Mong Kok. At the same time he also went into the confectionery and soft-drink business in Hong Kong. These activities prospered to such an extent that whilst still in his thirties they enabled him to undertake public affairs. He served on the Yau Ma Ti Kaifong for many years and, up to the time of its removal, he was also the leading manager of the Tai Shek Kwu Temple which, as you will recall, was a particular concern of his own village of Mong Kok and the adjoining rural settlements. In 1917 he became founder President of the Kowloon branch of the Hong Kong Confucian Society and two years later he was appointed a director of one of Hong Kong's oldest charitable institutions, the Po Leung Kuk. These appointments mark the summit of his career. He responded to the traditional Chinese concern for his family ties and background by founding the Wong Clansmen's Association of Hong Kong in 1925, and when the universal flood disasters of 1924 affected his family's home district of Wai Yeung he had become founder President of the Wai Yeung Relief Association and was responsible for raising the then considerable sum of $9,000 to help flood victims there. He was also president of the Chinese Steamboat Association for some time.45\n\nWith its varied activities his career is a useful reminder that a person can be involved in various public capacities at one and the same time. The various community and welfare groups which characterised Hong Kong society at this time and later were operated on a complementary basis and not one of exclusion. As in his case the strands of village, town, business, family and district are all interwoven to form the traditional pattern of Chinese charitable activities.\n\nFinally, I wish to touch on another aspect of village and town life in Old Kowloon. Because of its proximity to Hong Kong, where a variety of religious bodies from the West established", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205337, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "92\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\ndistrict city it was not under the district magistrate's direct rule but was under the charge of one of his deputies. This officer's yamen was in the walled city of Kowloon and he was responsible for many other villages besides those on Lantau Island. There was no civil officer actually resident on the island before 1898 though one imagines that runners would visit it from time to time to chase in taxes and, perhaps less frequently, to make an arrest. The military authorities were more in evidence. A captain commanded a detachment in the fort at Tung Chung, a large valley in the north-central part of the island, and a junior officer was in charge of another body of troops in the market town, Their presence was perhaps due more to European activities in the local seaways, and to pirates, than to any disturbances likely to take place on the island, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century when there is no remembrance of internal disturbances.4\n\nThe people of Lantau were left mainly to their own devices by the government, military and civil alike. From evidence collected locally it appears that as elsewhere in China the clan and village elders kept the peace in the villages, and the Kaifong (#) or Street Association did the same in the market town and paid for watchmen to bar and walk round the principal streets at night. Anything more serious than minor disturbance and petty crime, e.g. piracies or armed robberies, was reported to the military, though by that time it was usually too late for anything effective to be done. Disputes were settled locally as far as possible. Besides these, the elders handled a variety of duties which, irrespective of the size of the community, were sometimes arduous and complex since much depended on handling individuals so as to produce a fruitful result. They organised small public works of benefit to their communities, such as the digging of a well or the construction of an irrigation dam or a small pier: they managed the local temples and arranged the details and financing of all festivals: they were responsible for finding suitable premises for village schools and engaging teachers; and so on. These persons came forward by a combination of such factors as age, experience, ability, ambition, leisure, wealth, lack of anyone else willing to do the job and so on. However, it is also true to say that they had also to be acceptable in their communities, since without local support and goodwill they could hardly operate.5", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205404, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n159 \n\nThe clan possesses a small ancestral hall in the second row of houses, and here are housed the ancestral tablets of the most important ancestors. \n\nThese tablets usually have a sliding wooden slot at the back on which is given a short biography of the person commemorated, usually his birth and death, and sometimes a geomantic description of his grave site. From these records and the recollections of the present generation, information was obtained about two of the more distinguished clansmen of recent times. \n\nCHAN Jit-meng (M) alias Tak-hang (7) of the 20th generation, was born on the 2nd day of the 10th month in the year of the Tao Kwang (†) (i.e. 1828) and died on the 3rd day of the 12th month in the year of Kwang Hsü (**) (i.e. 1891). \n\nHe was a successful businessman who had a shop at Fat Shan (#) near Canton and a large cargo junk with which he traded to and from the Kowloon area. With the trading junk he brought a large amount of stone and building materials to the Tseung Kwan O area and is said to have been responsible for many public works: the village school, the pier at Hang Hau market (},□) nearby and the stone paved paths up the valley to Tseng Lan Shue and along the line of the present Clear Water Bay Road. \n\nHe also owned a shop called Yi Hing (M) just outside Kowloon City. He was a member of the Kowloon City Kaifong and one of the founder members of the Lok Sing Tong (#44) in 1879. This was an association of local gentry and leading villagers from the surrounding areas. \n\nIn later life, he bought the degree of Kwok Hok Shang (M *) in Canton, \n\nAccording to his ancestral tablet he had a wife NG (A) and a concubine WONG (£). \n\nCHAN Kwok-yan (RQ) alias Wai Tong (†) son of the above. This man's ancestral tablet does not show his dates of birth and death, but these are thought to be 1872-1933. As his father CHAN Jit-meng was a fairly rich man, he had a middle school education in Canton or Fat Shan. At some time in his career he met Sir Cecil Clementi (✯✯) the future Governor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206256, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n67\n\nthat associations have come to play an important role, as they do in the overseas Chinese communities. It seems that wherever there are Chinese people, there are typical Chinese social institutions, serving what we may call \"traditional\" social functions.\n\nIn Hong Kong, there is a network of social institutions very similar to that which obtains among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. There are chambers of commerce or merchants' associations, district and clan organizations, trade unions, religious and recreational associations, secret societies, etc. They provide roughly the same kinds of services as their counterparts overseas. In this part of the paper, I shall discuss a particular kind of local institution called the Kaifong Associations. Their roles in local community life are very similar to those performed by the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities. By comparing the Kaifongs and these overseas associations, we have a very good illustration of how traditional associations adjust to modern urban conditions, how they are carried along the currents of social change, and how they take part in the promotion of social change itself.\n\nThe word \"kaifong\" means a \"street neighbourhood\", and a Kaifong Association means the voluntary organization of the residents of a certain district. As local residents' associations, the Kaifongs have existed in Hong Kong since the mid 19th century. But strictly speaking, the modern Kaifongs are a post-war creation, adapted to the social situation in Hong Kong in the early 1950s. After the Japanese Occupation, there followed an intense period of reconstruction. The government's attention was claimed in many different directions. Thus it had to rely heavily on voluntary agencies for the organization of welfare. Under the direct encouragement of the Social Welfare Officer, the first modern Kaifong came into being in 1949.12 The number of Kaifongs grew rapidly to over 30 by the mid-1950s, and after a period of stability, jumped to over 50 after the mid-60s. Today, every urban district is served by a Kaifong association, and many of the new resettlement estates also have their own Kaifongs. The Kaifongs are voluntary organizations. The government does not directly supervise their affairs, although it keeps in close contact\n\n12 Hong Kong Annual Departmental Report by the Social Welfare Officer for the Period 1948-54.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206258, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS\n\n69\n\nalmost invariably status-seekers, as contrasted with the ordinary, passive members whose chief aim in joining the associations is in many cases to obtain assistance in time of need. In Hong Kong, the avenues to political power are closed to the ordinary citizen, since there is no democratic government. Thus, participation in traditional social institutions has come to be the most effective means of gaining social status. When an individual has achieved sufficient prestige as a benefactor in his association, most likely he would be invited to become an office-holder in its management committees. And the more offices a person holds, through multiple holding of offices in different associations, the more likely he is to be recognized as a community leader. In fact, the number of offices held by an individual is often the index of his importance in community life. The Kaifongs are one of the many social institutions in which the traditional status-seeker desires office and prominence. They enjoy a prestige comparable to the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities.\n\nUnlike the chambers of commerce, or the district and dialect associations in overseas Chinese communities, the Kaifongs in Hong Kong do not embrace any particular economic interests, although the Kaifong members come from a wide range of commercial activities and may reap business benefits from their increasing social contacts within the associations.\n\nUnlike the community leaders among the overseas Chinese, the Kaifong leaders are in no sense \"marginal\" to the Chinese society or the European society in Hong Kong. On the contrary, the Kaifong leaders are almost completely traditional Chinese people, both in their family background, their education, their outlook and even in their personal business alliances. Unlike their overseas counterparts, few Kaifong leaders speak the official English language or are conversant with Western culture. Their leadership status is purely within the Chinese community per se, and their influence with the Hong Kong government must be traced back to the official policy of recognition and encouragement of the Kaifong movement.\n\nTo sum up, the significance of the Kaifong associations to local community life lies in their threefold functioning as welfare, political, and status agencies. However, the emphasis in Kaifong functions has been shifting in the past twenty years in response to\n\nPage 70\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206306, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A\n\n# THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n117\n\nquarrymen a lawless and potentially dangerous class of people. But Chinese on Hong Kong Island, like their fellow countrymen in Hsin-an hsien (a county which then comprised the future British Kowloon Peninsula and New Territories) formed a socially well-organised community, knit together by ties of family and kinship and involved, apart from the boat people, in wider forms of social organisation such as the clan and the lineage3. They were constrained by the type of in-built social controls found typically in any rural Chinese community. On the other hand, immigrant Chinese arriving after 1842, who came mostly from Canton and the delta counties, formed a purely urban population, lacking roots and sentiments of belonging: they had necessarily few attachments at first to their new area of residence. Congregated in the mushrooming city of Victoria and soon outnumbering the old, established Chinese population of the island, they were not subject to any in-built system of social control. The new population of urban Chinese from Kwangtung Province, like newly arrived Europeans, were faced with the problem of maintaining public order and protecting their families and properties. The better-off Chinese merchants and traders were soon compelled to employ their own guards and some householders and shopkeepers engaged their own street watchmen, either paid for by the individual householder or collectively by subscription.\n\nBy the 1850s Hong Kong Chinese had developed not only their own associations, such as Kaifong, but even a rudimentary system of self-government, if the evidence is to be believed. A note in the China Review claims, for example, that in 1851 the shopkeepers of Sheung Wan (i.e., the area of the Chinese 'Bazaar', west of the European central district) 'repaired the Man-mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein afterwards decided all cases of any public interest5'. The same writer also claims that in 1857 'the U-lan-shing-ui (a sworn mutual aid association) united Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan under one public committee, and these four districts were called the Sz-wan or four circuits'. Eitel states (but cites no authority) that around 1851 the Committee of the Man Mo Temple 'now rose into eminence as a sort of unrecognised and unofficial local-government board (principally made up by Nampak-hong or export merchants). This Committee secretly controlled native affairs, acted as commercial arbitrators, arranged for the due", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207142, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n207 \n\nAnother temple, that of Yuk Hui Kung, is on Lung On Street. It was probably built in the early 1860s. It is not listed in the 1860 Rates, but is on the next extant list, that of 1865. The 1882 Rates mention that the temple was managed by the Wanchai Kaifong.* The surrounding lots from Stone Nullah Lane to Kennedy Street were bought at government land sale in 1862 by the Pang and Chan families, who developed them for Chinese family houses. Lung On Street was originally called Fourth Street, being that number south of Queen's Road East. On First Street, now King Sing Street, a hospital was opened. It was built on a lot purchased by Leung King Ham, a government school teacher, under the name Tong Tuck Tong, in 1867. With the organisation of Tung Wah Hospital, Leung King Him (sic) and Leung Shun Ng petitioned in 1872 that the hospital be merged with the new Tung Wah.* A controversy arose, and the Leungs published a pamphlet charging Wong Fung Wan and Wong Yow Ho, members of the managing committee, with embezzling funds granted by Government to the Wanchai Hospital. This resulted in a libel case. The 1872 Rate names it as the Wah Tong Hospital with Leung Shan Ng and Leung Yung Choi as the resident doctors.\n\nTo the south of Queen's Road East between Monmouth Path and Wing Fung Street, the land was used as timber yards. To the east, on land now covered by Sun, Moon and Star Streets, was the first Protestant Cemetery in Hong Kong. As there was increasingly more building along Queen's Road, the situation was considered unsatisfactory and after 1845 burials were made in the newly opened Colonial Cemetery in Happy Valley.\n\nJust a bit to the east, near St. Francis Street was the Roman Catholic Cemetery. Here the Catholic Church built a hospital, a chapel, a Mission House, and day schools. Later the Canossian Sisters built a convent where they ministered to the sick, the poor, and the aged. These institutions attracted a number of poor Portuguese families and created a Chinese Roman Catholic population surrounding it. A piece of vacant land between the two cemeteries\n\nAn association of local residents, usually shopkeepers, commonly found in the commercial centres and market towns of the Hong Kong area.\n\n* The Tung Wah Hospital, established in 1870, for over 100 years the leading Chinese charitable institution in Hong Kong and now more flourishing than ever. See H. J. Lethbridge ‘A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: the Tung Wah' in Contributions to Asian Studies (Leiden) Vol. I (1971): 144-158.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207965, "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "173\n\nthe kaifong, which was fixed by auction, the keeper of the scale could keep the charges paid for the use of the scale by merchants. The fee was used for the management of the temple and the annual celebration of the birthday of T'in Hau, usually held towards the middle of the Fourth Lunar Month. To prepare for this festival, the committee had to arrange for donations from Sai Kung residents to make the necessary purchases and to contract with a troupe for the opera. Besides the birthday of T'in Hau, the kaifong also had to arrange for a puppet show at the Great King Earthgod's shrine, and the offering of a pig at the temple at the beginning of the year, on the day of the T'in Hau Festival, at the Kwan Tai Festival, and at the end of the year.35\n\nThe activities of the kaifong committee became routine. Some time in the 1930's, a younger generation of merchants in Sai Kung formed themselves into the Chamber of Commerce. The leader of this new body was Lei Shiu Yam, of Lan Nei Wan. When World War II broke out, it was this group that was the more active in Sai Kung Market.\n\nDAILY LIFE C. 1920\n\nPopulation\n\nThe census of 1911 counted 9,243 people in Sai Kung District, which at the time also included Shap Sz Heung and villages near Sham Chung and Pak Sha O. The same census reported that there were 2,633 Punti-speaking, 6,599 Hakka-speaking, and 11 Hoklo-speaking villagers in the district. It probably neglected the boat population, the size of which must now remain unknown. As recorded, the Sai Kung population amounted to 13.4 percent of the total population of the New Territories.\n\nVillage, lineage, and voluntary association\n\nThe reported population was distributed through 126 villages. The great majority of these had a smaller population than 100, and many could not have been more than isolated houses. By no means the smallest, Tin Ha Wan had 37 people, Mok Tse Che 51, Tai Nam Wu 33, Ma Lam Wat 43, and Tso Wo Hang 24. Only 21 villages in what is recognized now as Sai Kung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208112, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW - LONG ISLAND\n\n135\n\nburned or sunbaked. There are many mean huts of wood and wattle, and except in the main street where the Public Works Department of Hong Kong has insisted on drainage and paving, the streets are full of wallows, and the wallows full of pigs. As often as not the sleeping pig is being carefully searched by a fowl or so.\n\nOf the foreign buildings the most conspicuous are the Meeting Hall of the European residents situated in the midst of their rather scattered bungalows, and in the village, the red brick Police Station and the new School. All through Hong Kong the territory the Police Stations occupy the strategic positions, looking like a strange modern variant of the frowning castle which overhangs so many ancient settlements in Europe. And the analogy is not far-fetched, for there are raiding kidnappers and pirates to be repulsed, and Cheung Chow Police Station has itself been besieged, and successfully too, by pirates. The present building is surrounded by barbed wire, and garrisoned by Sikh police, and could stand siege long enough to enable it to summon a swift and powerful police launch by wireless from Hong Kong. The new school was opened only last year, and while the Police Station holds itself aloof on the ridge just outside the village, the school nestles more intimately among the good people, some of whose children pursue learning within those cheerful walls.\n\nThe Europeans are the Highlanders of Cheung Chow. Like the Hebrews in Canaan, they leave the plains to the original inhabitants and occupy patches of the bare hills. The Chinese use these little hills only to pasture a few tiny cattle, to supply fuel, and to afford a last resting place for their dead. Among the grass and the graves the missionaries have built small stone huts in the strangest of styles. Some are reminiscent of little Bethels and Bethesdas which drew their original inspiration from the stone barns where sectaries used to meet. Others are refuges among the great clusters of rocks, to which and between which they cling and clamber like the nests of some strange and gigantic insect. Amongst these there are some half-dozen more comfortable bungalows of permanent residents. All these Europeans live in amity with one another. There are British, Americans, and now and then some Germans. They elect a little committee and officers for their Association to deal with the Colonial Government, and with the Kaifong which governs the village. A tiny fund is expended with admirable results.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208113, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "136 \n\nW. J. HINTON \n\non sanitation and the care of a little system of hill tracks which might serve as a model to the New Territories. Their King is the District Officer South, the \"Lord of the Isles,\" but Kaifong and Residents Association alike show a praiseworthy spirit of independence, and a capacity for governing themselves; moreover, the injunction “Agree with thine adversary quickly\" is well understood and followed in China, even under British rule. \n\nBut we have drifted from geography into politics, like better men before us, and it would be well to pass back to the native community, through the terraced fields dotted with blue-clad figures bowed over the hoe, or shuffling along the narrow paths with a yoke of watering buckets, or cutting and pulling the beetroots, carrots, and cabbages. We will go back to the Eastern end of the village and then traverse its length, completing our brief survey by passing out to our waiting boat over the harbour, and so back to Hongkong. On the stage thus set, it may be that we or someone more competent may stage scenes from the life of the island folk from time to time. There is a strange and interesting feast in the Spring, well worth describing, and at the New Year when the whole fishing fleet lies at anchor in the bay, the little town is all alive. A sitting in the Court of the District Magistrate would be worth describing too, and a meeting of the City Fathers, the Kaifong. We must write, for lack of better witnesses, yet how true it is that those who know do not say, and those who say do not know! \n\nBut to our walk. There lies our little yacht that brought us from Hongkong, white and strange among the high-sterned junks with their brown mat sails. We have all the afternoon to wander, and half the night to lie in the Harbour before the tide turns and we must up anchor and away. \n\nStrolling through the Town \n\nWe have landed on the beach near the Temple of Kwan Yin and find ourselves among the Hakka people who inhabit this end of the town. Their small, sturdy figures are to be seen clustered about the well where the women are drawing water, or bending over the boats in the boat-building yard that slopes to the water's edge. There is material for a whole study in the types of boat and the methods of building alone, but we cannot stop to watch for more than a few minutes while the skilful ship's carpenters fix the ribs and planking of a brand new sampan. A word of greeting to", "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": 208788, "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-1979", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "218 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nged the Association's affairs for over a decade prior to his death, rendering most valuable services to the Association. The ground floor of the Association building then housed a \"water-vehicle\" which was one of the three \"fire engines\" then available in Hong Kong under the command of the Hong Kong Government Fire Brigade, then located at the site of the present Ho Tung Building. The fire fighting services rendered by our Association's \"water-vehicle\" were especially notable.\n\nThe ground floor of the Association building also housed a \"Patrol and Watchmen's Centre\" (later renamed \"Bonham Strand West Watchmen's Centre\", under the control of a Kaifong Committee). To man the Centre, several able-bodied men were recruited. They wore uniforms comprising hollowed caps, long stockings and straw sandals. Armed with loaded rifles, they patrolled the Strand day and night on shift duties to guard against robbery and disturbance and to maintain safety and security for the kaifong community there.\n\n'Nam Pak Hong' and ‘Kau Pat Hong'\n\nThe business of a 'Nam Pak Hong' (literally meaning 'south and north firm') as its name implies was at first confined to the transportation of native products from regions south of the Yangtze River and from North China, but later its scope was extended to cover Europe, America and countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. During the reigns of Hsien Feng and Tung Ch’ih, only a few of the firms in this Strand dealing in native products from North and South China were officially called 'Nam Pak Hong'. Later, many firms selling goods for their customers on a commission basis (2%) were established. These firms were called 'Kau Pat Hong' (literally meaning '98% firms') attached also to the Nam Pak Hong Association. In the course of time, the former and latter firms were mixed together without distinction, Hence, ‘Nam Pak Hong' is sometimes called 'Kau Pat Hong'. Afterwards, the San Yuen Tong (Association) of Shanghai firms was established in Gilman's Street, Hong Kong. These firms were of a similar nature to those of the Kau Pat Hong but of a smaller scale.\n\nA + \n\nThe advancement of the Association's functions and increase of membership after 1941\n\nAfter reforming in 1941, the functions of the Association pro-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208922, "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-1980", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "52\n\nJIANN HSIEH\n\nHsieh, J.\n\n1977 Internal Structure and Socio-cultural Change: A Chinese Case in the Multi-Ethnic Society of Singapore. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.\n\n1978 \"The Chinese Community in Singapore: The Internal Structure and Its Basic Constituents.\" In Peter S. J. Chen and Hans-Dieter Evers (eds.), Studies in Asian Sociology. Singapore: Chopmen,\n\nKerri, J. N.\n\n1976 \"Studying Voluntary Associations as Adaptive Mechanisms: A Review of Anthropological Perspective.\" Current Anthropology, 17(1):23-49,\n\nLittle, K.\n\n1965 West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Social Change. Cambridge: The University Press.\n\n1974 Urbanization as a Social Process. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.\n\nSkinner, G. W.\n\n1960 \"Change and Persistence in Chinese Culture Overseas: A Comparison of Thailand and Java.” Journal of the South Seas Society, 16(1-2):82-100.\n\nSuyama, T.\n\n1962 \"Pang Society: The Economy of Chinese Immigration.\" In K. C. Tregonning (ed.), Papers on Malayan History. Singapore: Journal of Southeast Asian History.\n\nWard, B. E.\n\n1965 \"Varieties of the Conscious Model: The Fishermen of South China.\" In M. Banton (ed.), The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock.\n\nWillmott, W. E.\n\n1967 The Chinese in Cambodia. Vancouver: Publications Center of UBC.\n\nWong, A. K.\n\n1968 \"A Preliminary Report on the Kaifong Study.\" United College Journal, 7:27-48.\n\n1971 \"Chinese Voluntary Associations in Southeast Asian Cities and the Kaifongs in Hong Kong.\" Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 5(2):62-73.\n\n1972a \"Chinese Community Leadership in a Colonial Setting: The Hong Kong Neighbouring Associations.\" Asian Survey 17(1): 587-601.\n\n1972b The Kaifong Associations and the Society of Hong Kong. Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service.\n\nCCCHS\n\n1950 Ch'ung chêng tsung-hui san-shih ch'ou-nien chi-nien t'e-kan (Thirty Years of the Tsung Tsin Association).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209849, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "86\n\nLoan Word\n\nChinese Characters\n\nMeaning\n\nGung ho\n\nI A\n\n*Gweilo\n\n鬼\n\nLiterally 'ghost' or 'devil man', used to refer to Westerners. Widely current in Hong Kong.\n\nHan\n\n漢\n\nOf, relating to, or having the characteristic of, the period of the Han dynasty; of, relating to, or being a nationality group of Chinese descended from the original Chinese constituting an overwhelming majority of the population and the dominant cultural group: belonging to the Chinese proper as distinguished from other nationality groups.\n\nHakka\n\n客家\n\nOne of a tribe or race of Chinese dwelling in parts of southern China, particularly in the province of Canton, descendants of immigrants from northern China in the middle ages; also their dialect,\n\nHoey (wui)\n\n會\n\nA society of Chinese; especially a secret society. In Hong Kong a savings club.\n\nHong\n\n行\n\nA foreign trading establishment in China or Japan.\n\nHyson\n\n熙春\n\nA species of green tea from China.\n\nI-ching\n\n易經\n\nAn ancient Chinese book of divination and a source of Confucian and Taoist philosophy.\n\n*Kaito\n\n街渡\n\nLiterally 'street ferry', used to refer to boats plying between various points in Hong Kong.\n\n*Kaifong\n\n街力(坊)\n\nLiterally 'street square', used to refer to a neighbourhood, especially to community organizations.\n\nKaolin\n\n高嶺\n\nA fine white clay produced by the decomposition of feldspar, used in the manufacture of porcelain; first employed by the Chinese, but subsequently found in many places.\n\nKetchup\n\n茄汁\n\nA sauce made from the juice of mushrooms, walnuts, tomatoes, etc.\n\nKowtow\n\n叩頭\n\nThe Chinese custom of touching the ground with the forehead, as an expression of respect, submission, or worship.\n\n*Kuk\n\n局\n\nLiterally 'association', 'society', 'committee'.\n\n*Kung hei fat choy\n\n恭喜發財\n\nLiterally 'wish you grow prosperous'. A Chinese New Year greeting.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209878, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "115\n\nBesides showing the diversity of the constituent communities of the city diversities of population, settlement, shrine and temple under leaders arising from the community\n\nthis paper seeks to indicate the variety of leadership practices adopted therein. Although my information comes from recent times and it is practically impossible to obtain earlier documentary proof, it is clear from the accounts given for only five small bodies that a number of different techniques had long been employed. Even within the boundaries of a small place like Shau Kei Wan the methods used in the selection process differed from one end of the township to the other. This divergence is explained by the fact that the two organizations studied operated quite independently of each other in different sections of the community. Even in the 1960s I had to make separate arrangements to consult each body, and to assemble its elders. I had at first tried to do this through one that was much better known to me than the other, but this was a failure, despite the close association of their senior members in the Shau Kei Wan Kaifong Association, a very active and well-knit body. This, to my mind, underlines the strong separatism so characteristic of this type of local organization. It was probably even more marked in the 19th century, when communities were much more cut off from each other than they are today.\n\nThe various studies are based on material collected mainly by visits and interviews to the local leaders concerned in the communities described above in the late 1960s. At this period the worshipping arrangements connected with annually recurring local festivals were still proceeding, as, indeed, they still are in some of the cases discussed. The communities themselves had changed since they had first become established in the middle nineteenth century with more expansion and less continuity in these areas than in the long-settled traditional villages of the type to be found elsewhere in the region but it was still possible to obtain from groups of community leaders information that provided a reliable guide to past organization and practice. This was sufficient to establish modes which dated back well into the nineteenth century, to most probably at, or near, the foundation dates of the communities served by the shrines studied.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209886, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "123\n\nwhenever there is an outbreak of plague or other serious epidemic; but within the fifty years' collective memory of the mid 1960s managers this had only happened once, about 1915. The committee of managers does not run money loan or funeral benefit schemes, nor does it undertake general welfare or community work. It is, and was, it seems, concerned only with ensuring the continued protection of the area through the faithful and regular performance of religious rites and their accompanying entertainment. The god's image was always brought to the place where the puppets were being shown, and to the restaurant where the annual dinner was held at which the leaders were selected.\n\nIt will be seen from this account of their duties that these managers did not have the wider general functions performed by the leaders of the three Fong on Ap Lei Chau. They were kaifongs, but they were not the Kaifong, a role played by the predecessors of the postwar Western Kaifong Association, Ltd., whose premises are located at Possession Point.\n\nThe method of selecting the managers has differed little over the period 1910-1965, although it was apparently more protracted and complicated in pre-war years. This was because there were more interested parties than there have been since the war, when redevelopment of old properties has gradually taken large numbers of former residents away from the area, and so beyond the immediate area of the god's protection.\n\nIn pre-war times there might be up to 100 interested parties who wished to become chik lei, but as stated, only 40-50 were required. The selection was left to the god. It was the practice for all persons wishing to serve on the committee to go to the shrine at an appointed time on the god's birthday. Lots were drawn in front of the altar. The number of tickets matched the number of aspirants. Only, say, 40 of the papers were marked chik lei, the rest being marked with the characters tai kat (1/2) or 'great fortune'. Only those securing the first went forward to the second stage in the selection of managers. This was the filling of the three senior posts of chung (#4), fu (§]) and hip chik lei (£), or principal, deputy and assistant (senior) manager, This event was conducted in a restaurant at the annual dinner held in the first moon. Again, the selection was made in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209897, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "134\n\nBoard (in manuscript), p. 121 kept in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong as Hong Kong Record Series 206. Pages 120-141 of the Proceedings relate to a hearing held on 6th June 1893, \"Claim to a Temple at Apleichau\".\n\n10 The same man also said that Ap Lei Chau 'was built about 1850' (ibid, p. 122). However, as stated in my text, the Hung Shing temple on the island appears to date from the 18th century and another local resident (b. 1825) who gave evidence to the Squatter Board (ibid, p. 132) said that it was enlarged in 1847. The temple originally stood on its own little island, later joined by reclamation to Ap Lei Chau. See JHKBRAS 7 (1967) p. 170, footnote.\n\n11 W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King - The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (London, Trubner & Co., 1867) p. 49. 'Boat building and general trade' are listed as the principal concerns. The \"Ap-le-chow\" and \"Shek pai wan\" (Aberdeen) entries in this work are bracketed. The latter had 160 houses and 205 boats and the total recorded population for the two places, together with the boat people, was 1,664. See also information given in the printed proceedings of a court case over ownership of land on Ap Lei Chau given in Sessional Papers August 1886 - September 1887\" (Appendix to Report from the Land Commission of 1886-87) pp. 33-35.\n\n1* See the Hong Kong Government's printed Sessional Papers for 1897 and 1911, pp. 484 and 103 (23) respectively.\n\n1 Sessional Papers 1901, No. 39 of 1901. pp. (6), (18) and (20). Of the 947 vessels, 787 were fishing boats. At that time, there were 2,799 land persons living in and round Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau.\n\n11 Sessional Papers 1897 and 1911 at pp. quoted at note 12 above. For similar organizations of M. Freedman's article \"Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-century Singapore\", Comparative Studies in Society and History, III (1960-61), 25-48; and for other coastal market centres in the Hong Kong region, Hayes 1977, chapters 2 and 3 dealing with Cheung Chau and Tai O respectively.\n\n10 See the account given in the printed Ap Lei Chau Hung Shing Festival brochure for year (1983) now in Hong Kong Collection, University of Hong Kong Library,\n\n10 Squatter Board proceedings, p. 138. The word \"Kaifong\" (#) or street association was commonly used in South China to describe (a) all the inhabitants of an area (b) the voluntary organization of leading residents which managed the affairs of that community, e.g. the Kaifeng looked after the interests of all kaifongs. On Ap Lei Chau, the Kaifong and the Fongs' leaders seem to have been one and the same. For Kaifongs in the Hong Kong region see Hayes 1977, pp. 64-69, 81-84, 96-98, 171-172 and 218 note 27. Also, Hayes 1983, pp. 45-46 and 56-59.\n\n18 For divining blocks, see J.J.M. De Groot, The Religious System of China (Ch'ing Wen reprint, Taipei 1976) Vol. VI, pp. 1285-1287.\n\n1o See Hayes 1977, p. 219, note 41, for similar honours paid to leading office bearers reported from Canton (1902).\n\n* The shopkeeper petitioners who came to see the Registrar General in 1893, as recorded in the Squatter Board proceedings, stated that \"The temple is the property of the inhabitants of Ap Lei Chau and the boatpeople who subscribe”.\n\nThe Ap Lei Chau section of this article is based mainly on the oral statements of Messrs. CHENG Kam-kwu ($##) b. 12.10.1887, CHENG Lim () b. 17.12.1891 and LUN Shing-fun () b. ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210040, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "reviewed the condition of Hong Kong Island in 1841 in order to show that it was a long-settled place with thriving coastal ports. Then, Dr. Kerrie MacPherson, Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong, who has researched into the medical history of the international settlements in Shanghai, addressed us on 12th March about prostitution there, under the title “Caveat Emptor: an Attempt at the Control of Venereal Disease in Nineteenth Century Shanghai\". Finally, on 19 April Dr. Julian Pas, Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan and a frequent contributor to our Journal, gave an illustrated slide lecture on “Religion in China Today\" based on his observations during a four-month visit to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengtu.\n\nThere were three local tour visits during the year. On 21 July 1984, Revd Carl Smith took us to the Tao Feng Shan Ecumenical Centre. This occupies the very attractive Chinese monastic premises built on a hill above Sha Tin for the Christian Mission to Buddhists in the 1930s, and besides touring these buildings, members were able to visit the grave of Revd Carl Reichelt, its founder.\n\nTwo other visits were organized by myself. On 8 December, 33 members took part in a memorable visit to Maryknoll Fathers' House, Stanley, where one of our founder members, Father Michael McKeirnan M.M., spoke to us in his own inimitable way on his experiences during the brief defence of Hong Kong in December 1941, when he had been in the house as a language student. His talk will be published in the Journal. On this visit, members also walked part of the road constructed by the incoming British in the 1840s, and benefited from Mr. Ian Diamond's work on Lieutenant (later Major-General) T.B. Collinson, R.E. who surveyed and made military sketches of Hong Kong Island at that time.\n\nOn 9 March, there was another well-attended visit to Stanley; this time to the four temples of the area, the two villages of Tai Tam and Wong Ma Kok, and the Kaifong Association's premises where we had tea. The latter are of particular interest, being undoubtedly the oldest occupied local management office on Hong Kong Island, having been repaired in 1847 according to the inscription above the doorway. On this visit, Mr. Clive Oxley, Dep-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210934, "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-1986", "page_number": 284, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "LANTERN FESTIVAL, CHEUNG CHAU, 10TH FEBRUARY 1971\n\n1\n\n267\n\nI had received invitations from several of the island's fellow countrymen, that is “district”, associations (鄉親會) to join them on Cheung Chau for the Lantern Festival, and went over for the evening. The Rural Committee Chairman, Mr. Chau Li-ping (周立平先生), met me at the pier and took me to the Sei Yap Yick Sin Tong Association (四邑益善堂) dinner in the Ho Tai Sun Restaurant (好泰新酒家). The leading kaifong members were there and I was able to join them on their usual tour of all district association celebrations taking place at the same time on that evening.\n\nThere were twenty tables at the Sei Yap Association dinner, and entertainment was provided by a Sei Yap group from Hong Kong singing modern songs. There was a stage in the street outside the restaurant on which they would perform later, and this was a popular attraction when we passed later in the evening. They changed four years ago from old-style entertainment. The cost of hiring the singers for two nights was $1,400.\n\nWe then went to the Tung Koon Association (東莞同鄉會) dinner in the restaurant beside the playground at Tung Wan (東灣). There were twenty-eight tables and many Tung Koon association leaders from Hong Kong and other parts of the New Territories were seated on the stage. Speeches went on all the time we were there (we only had a drink at this celebration). There was no sign of entertainment inside, and the stage was apparently provided on street.\n\nWe next visited the Shun Tak Association (順德同鄉會) dinner in the Rural Committee Country Club premises. I forgot to ask the number of tables, but it must have been about twenty. An auction for association funds was in progress, with the emphasis on selling decorative lanterns. I did not see any sign of an entertainment group and there was apparently no stage on the streets provided by this body.\n\nWe went from there to the Po On District Association's (寶安縣同鄉會) celebration at a restaurant on the waterfront beside...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210996, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "33\n\nsave it from defilement, they often built incinerators to burn paper with words written on it. In 1859, the Commodore, Chang Yu-tang ski, erected a fine pavilion over an incinerator and old men were hired to gather abandoned paper for burning. On the plaque over the entrance were engraved the characters “Ching-hsi tzu-chih-ch'u”**(A pavilion for revering word-bearing paper) in Chang's calligraphy. Though a military man, Chang had pretensions to being a scholar and calligrapher, and his inscriptions found in the pavilion were reportedly much copied in the region.'\n\n16\n\nUp to 1898 there were no shops of any kind within the City.1 In fact, the word \"ch’eng” is rather arbitrarily translated as \"city\", which to a modern person, immediately conjures up visions of shops and other commercial facilities. This is misleading since traditionally, a Chinese ch'eng was simply an area enclosed for defence, and where officials resided. However, a cluster of shops lined the street Kowloon Street — which stretched for about a quarter of a mile from the East Gate to the water front. This became an increasingly prosperous market town, serving not only the Walled City but more distant areas such as Saikung and Shatin. From a fairly early date, a kaifong (chieh-fang i.e. neighbourhood) association, which organized such public functions as health, safety and good order, had existed.ii By 1880, the Lok Sin Tong (Luo-shan-t'ang; lit. Hall of Willing Charity) was founded. Like many Chinese \"charitable societies”, it exercised great social and economic influence, and its contribution was most strongly manifested in providing free education and free medicine in the area.\n\n18\n\nAs trade grew in the area, a Kwangtung Provincial Customs station was set up in 1871 to prevent smuggling, especially opium from Hong Kong. In 1886, it was replaced by a Chinese Maritime Customs station.iii A pier, the Lung-chin jetty, completed in 1875 after two years of construction, extended some 700 ft. into the sea. As the beach silted up and the jetty became worse for wear, it was repaired in 1892 and extended for another 260 ft. with a subscription of $1,700 raised by more than a hundred shops and individuals,\n\n20", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211250, "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": 311, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "286\n\nset in front of the shrine. I was invited to cut the first, and the 90 year old father of the Mount Davis Kaifong Welfare Association chairman was asked to cut the second. There were the usual speeches of welcome and appreciation for help given. Northern and Southern lions were brought to life by the chairman and vice-chairman of the Western District Kaifong Association, and the dancing displays followed.\n\nThe Southern lion began by taking down a lettuce, a roll of paper with money inside and a red paper with a name written on it from the upper part of the pailau. The red paper carried the name of the donor of the lucky money, who happened to be the manager of the local branch of Tao Hang Bank. The three items were suspended from the top of the pailau by a piece of string.\n\nThe front man of the two-man team used a 25 feet long stout bamboo pole, with foot rests towards one end, to reach them. The pole was hoisted, and kept in position, by about ten youths, members of the lion dance group. The front man, still in his mask, proceeded to dance at the top of the pole, in time with the drumming which accompanied the whole dance. In ten minutes he had secured the lucky money and “consumed” the lettuce (choi, synonymous for good fortune, for the community, understood). The drummer was as important as the lion dancer. He looked at the dancer with intense concentration, intensifying and diminishing the speed and volume of the drumming during the time the dancer was at the top of the pole. The effort was very taxing, and the drummer was relieved twice. He was accompanied by six persons playing gongs and cymbals. Meantime, the lion's tail was kept in place by the second man in the dance team, who held it up with a thin bamboo pole.\n\nThe vice-chairman of the Western Kaifong told me that before lion dancers were prohibited by the police from going in procession round the neighbouring streets this had been stopped about 1962 — it had been the traditional practice for the local shopkeepers to hang out the lucky packets and lettuce from the first floor of their premises, for the dancers to obtain by skill and in competition. The excitement was intense, and squabbles between the lion dance teams quite frequent.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211524, "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-1988", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "217\n\nthat one of the later owners found it worthwhile to set the coin in a bracelet shows that it was a significant symbol of some sort.\n\nO. William Borrell FMS\n\nTHE TAI SHEUNG LO KWAN TEMPLE, CHAI WAN\n\nJames Hayes led members of the Society on a visit to the Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Temple on 28th July, 1988 during a tour of Chai Wan, and supplied the following information from notes compiled by the Eastern District Office.\n\n\"The Hong Kong Chiu Chau Overseas Public Welfare Advancement Association (ABE) was first incorporated in 1970 under the Companies Ordinance as a limited company. The main objectives of the Association are to promote welfare and foster friendly relationship and affection among the clansmen of the 'Chiu Chau'. In 1972, the Association erected the Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Temple (大上羅關) at the hill knoll opposite Block 4 of Chai Wan Estate under Crown Land Licence. Henceforth, the temple acts as their premises for recreational activities and other religious ceremonies.\n\nAll Chiu Chau Clansmen and their blood relatives who are residing in Chai Wan and have attained the age of 21 are eligible to become members of the Association. At present membership of the association is below 1,000.\n\n\"Most of the worshippers of Tai Sheung Lo Kwan are Chiu Chau living in the Chai Wan Area. Nowadays, there are two main religious celebrations each year, namely, the Yu Lan Festival (盂蘭勝會) Celebration in August and the Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Festival Celebration (大上羅關寶誕) in December. Both of the celebrations are organized by the above-mentioned association with the aid of Chiu Chow \"Kaifong\" living in the area. Rice packets and other daily necessities are usually distributed to the aged and needy during the Yu Lan Festival Celebration.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213334, "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-1994", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "138\n\nredevelopment, and spoke to each group in turn on their history and background. The first time around, a small donation had turned away the indignation of an old female resident, who had noisily enquired what we were up to. Also, we were entertained on each occasion by the Kowloon City Kaifong Association in its office inside the City, and given its side of the story.\n\nThe opportunity would not recur. At the time of writing (June 1994), all the buildings within the Walled City boundary (less those of historic interest) have been demolished and their residents compensated and rehoused, and a four-week long archaeological investigation has been completed, uncovering the inscribed granite slab over the old South Gate.25\n\nOther Aspects of the Society\n\nTwo Letters\n\nThe RAS has seldom been politically motivated. On the rare occasions that we have made representations to the authorities, this was done to support some worthy public cause, like the need for a proper Museum of History.26 The only occasion on which the Society has campaigned vigorously on a local issue has been in the past few years, against the government's intended removal of the Public Records of Hong Kong to Tuen Mun New Town, and to press in lieu for a more suitable premises in a convenient location.27\n\nHowever, on two other occasions, in the exceptional circumstances of the time, special representations were made on behalf of the Society, because in both cases Hong Kong's future was seen to be involved. Following the Tiananmen Square incident in mid-1989, which threw Hong Kong into an emotional turmoil the like of which had never been seen, the RAS Council met to discuss the position. It was decided to send a letter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, urging it to stand firm in its dealings with Beijing, in the interests of Hong Kong and its people. **Sad to say, there was no response; and despite sending a follow-up copy some weeks after, not even so much as an acknowledgment. In the second instance, again in 1989 and just before the period allowed for public comment on the draft Basic Law had elapsed, in my capacity as President of the Society, I sent a personal letter to the Chairman of the Consultative Committee for the Basic Law, Later reproduced in the RAS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214402, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "226\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nUndated Minute made available by Mrs Margaret Leeds, formerly Research Officer with the Royal Hong Kong Police.\n\n2 Henry J. Lethbridge, \"The District Watch Committee: The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong?\", in Hong Kong: Stability and Change, (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1978).\n\n3 This paper is based on a chapter of the author's PhD thesis, Private Security and Government: A Hong Kong Perspective, 1841-1941, awarded by the University of Hong Kong in 1999. In the interests of space, most of the end notes contained in the thesis have been omitted from this paper.\n\n4\n\n5 Kaifongs were local Chinese welfare associations. As early as 1857 a sworn mutual aid association known as the U-lan-shing is claimed to have united the four smaller kaifongs of the Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan districts. Henry J. Lethbridge, op. cit., pp. 105-106.\n\n6 China Mail, 8 February 1866; China Mail, 22 February 1866; J.W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, Vetch and Lee Ltd., 1971, first published 1898), 2, p. 86.\n\n7 Annual Report of the Registrar General for 1867, Blue Book 1867, p. 248, §20 - §21.\n\n8 The Baojia or Native Chinese Peace Officers scheme, which was introduced in 1844, was discontinued by 1861.\n\n9 Trevor Bennett and Richard Wright, Burglars on burglary: prevention and the offender, (Aldershot, Gower, 1984), pp. 50-53.\n\n10 Minute by Cecil C. Smith, 22 December 1871: CO129/156, pp. 117-118.\n\n11 Hongkong Government Gazette, 6 January 1872, p. 2. Henceforth HKGG.\n\n12 Report of the Police Commission, 27 June 1872: CO129/164, p. 290 (20, §60).\n\n13 Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore, (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 117; Under the heading 'Asian Counter-strategies against Municipal Sanitary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215835, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "HONG KONG'S CHINESE ASSOCIATIONS: THEIR CEREMONIAL OCCASIONS AND THEIR HELPERS\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n67\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe close involvement of the District Offices of the New Territories Administration in the pre-1997 Hong Kong Government in the celebration of festivals and major religious rituals by local communities throughout the lunar year was described in Chapter Seven of my Friends and Teachers, Hong Kong and its People 1953-87, published by Hong Kong University Press in 1996. This particular feature of the Administration's work had seemed worthy of special notice, since its personnel's interaction with their leaders, their many helpers, and less directly with the audiences and participants, had always helped to build up and sustain the \"government and people\" relationship.\n\nSuch occasions provided the connecting links of community life across the decades. Some were regular annual events, like the main festivals of the lunar calendar and the birthdays of the gods in the local temples, often with accompanying opera or puppet shows. Less frequent, but equally regular were the important, quasi-religious Ta Chiu or periodic protective rituals, still held nowadays by large villages or linked groups of villages in the longer settled districts of the New Territories, but held practically everywhere a century ago.\n\nThe officials' participation extended to many other community events, especially those held or organized by Hong Kong's Chinese associations in town and country, individually or jointly. They attended at ceremonies marking a special occasion, such as the completion of a new school building provided by a kaifong association or religious body, or the finalization of a local public works project by a village or rural committee. They might help to inaugurate or close the district summer youth programmes held from the late 1960s onward, or the local community's evening of entertainment for the elderly. Other major events attracting their presence might include associations' dinners connected with fund-raising drives for a special project or a charitable purpose, usually with a singing or even opera performance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215837, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "69\n\nmaster (more often than not a mistress) of ceremonies. There was, too, a high cultural content to their framework and its component parts, as will become evident in the course of this paper.\n\nHardly surprisingly, what may be styled this framework of formality with cultural overtones had to be underpinned by a support mechanism. The organizers needed to, and fortunately were able to, draw upon the calligraphic, literary, and other skills needed to supply the time-honoured invitation cards, scrolls, banners, and presentation items customarily in use on their ceremonial occasions. By listing the main features of this formality, its content, and back-up, this article aims to bring a rather neglected subject to wider notice, and to encourage more detailed study before it is too late.\n\nMy initial intention was also to examine in detail the literary content of the invitation cards and presentation items, and to include them in this paper. Phraseology and meaning, together with origins, must be traced back in guides to protocol and forms of address. These are intriguing topics, grounded in Chinese culture, and are well worth study for their own sake. However, this hope has not been realized. It is a considerable undertaking in itself, and will have to be the subject of a second paper, from my own or another's pen.\n\nThe need for experts\n\nAssociations which had frequent contact with government, like the rural committees and the kaifong welfare associations, all engaged paid secretaries. These were usually middle-aged or elderly men who had received an old-style Chinese education. Most of them were without an English language capability, for which reason they were precluded from entering government service, or from taking employment with the larger firms in Hong Kong's export-led commercial sector. However, such persons were very suitable for the secretaries' posts in the associations, where besides the skills needed for coping with ceremonial occasions, their knowledge of the correct epistolary forms of written Chinese enabled them to conduct their employers' correspondence with government offices and other agencies in a manner commensurate with the dignity of the association and its leaders - since, in this particular, the latter's prestige, too, was at stake.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "74\n\nThe coloured and inscribed cloth banners presented in recognition of services rendered were the least expensive of presentation items. They were needed in considerable quantities at some major events, and could be seen stacked in piles on the table at which the principal guests sat. This was just as well, since they had all to be presented by one or other of their number. They were made up by firms specializing in the production of flags and banners of all shapes and sizes. They usually bore four Chinese characters, aphorisms betokening diligent or whole-hearted service to the people, and the like, together with the name of the individual or body for whom it was intended. (Plate 15) As often as not the aphorisms came from the Chinese (Confucian) classics and have become proverbs in everyday usage.\n\nChrome or silver-plated items like dishes or figurines obtained from specialist firms were presented to deserving helpers or supporting organizations. Again, these were inscribed as appropriate to the occasion - especially the dishes, which often carried the four-character phrases - and named the event and date, together with the name of the individual or organization concerned (Plate 16)\n\nMore substantial items were prepared for the presiding officials, who might be presented with scrolls, couplets or paintings. As often as not, the scrolls and paintings would already have been framed. It mattered not that the official or guest whom the association wished to honour was Chinese or foreign. The same token of appreciation was applied to all, facilitated by the practice of equipping foreigners with Chinese names. In China up to 1949, missionary doctors and educators were frequent recipients of such tokens of gratitude for services rendered, and there must still be many examples of the kind to be found in their homes across the globe and on the antique market. So, too, it was in Hong Kong. Like many other officials, I was the recipient of such traditional literary tokens when serving in the district administration in town and country.\n\nSometimes a Committee would have invited an artist friend of their acquaintance to attend the occasion, and would prevail upon him to paint something for the principal guests. Our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, and I still have the pictures of tigers painted for us by Mr. Ng Shan at a gathering of the Ap Lei Chau Kaifong Association around 1974, when we were serving together in the Urban Services Department.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "77\n\nprovided an account of one failed scholar in the Appendix.\n\nTeachers as helpers\n\nLike the scholars, local schoolmasters had long performed a vital role in the literary segment of the popular culture, including assistance with mounting local events and ceremonies. Even after the depopulation or abandonment of many old settlements, and the amalgamation or replacement of schools in places altered by development, had changed their situation, their successors in today's modern and much larger schools in the new town areas of the New Territories are still valued by the rural committees and a wide range of social and cultural associations. Some are calligraphers and scholars in their own right, and assist the associations' leaders and their secretaries in various ways. I used to meet many principals in the course of attending district functions and association dinners, and can bear witness to their major contributions to community life. In the old Southern District (present day Sai Kung and Islands), they were well to the fore, particularly on Cheung Chau, a large and always vibrant though outlying community, with a number of regional associations, some of which provided schools.\n\nWho paid?\n\nThe secretaries of kaifong and other urban associations were usually hired and paid for by their chairmen. For this reason, salaries and running expenses were generally kept low, and when a wealthy man was prepared to underwrite the cost, there were in general few changes of chairmen. In the New Territories, a small monthly subvention was paid to rural committees from 1961 on, to assist with running expenses, reflecting official recognition of the work they were performing in the public interest, assisting government and people alike in a period of ever-accelerating development and the disruptions it created for ordinary folk. Later on, similar small monthly sums were made available to federations of societies and to mutual aid committees across Hong Kong. (See Friends and Teachers, p.308, and my Tsuen Wan, Growth of a New Town and its People (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1993), Pp.212, 231 and 243 for these several payments).\n\nThe cost of the ceremonies and anything that went with them, and in the case of religious festivals of hiring the priests, the opera troupes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215849, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "民政主任許超援照玉士紳平太士女媛超黄訴任主政民區東特刊筲箕湾坊銀紀\n\nPlate 1. An exhortatory apothegm for the special silver jubilee bulletin of the Shaukeiwan Kaifong Welfare Association, Ltd., prepared for Mabel Wong, City District Officer, Eastern, 1975.\n\n81", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]