[ { "id": 204238, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 6, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n3\n\nTHE NORTH CHINA BRANCH started in Shanghai in 1857 under the name of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society. Its first President was the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D.D., the first American missionary in China and the founder and manager of the Chinese Repository. Its first Journal appeared in 1858 in the name of the Literary and Scientific Society, but in that year the Society became affiliated to the Royal Asiatic Society as its North China Branch. Except for a brief period between 1861, when Dr. Bridgman died, and 1864 when the Society was reanimated through the unremitting efforts of Sir Harry Parkes as President, the Society maintained for nearly 85 years—until the outbreak of the second world war in December 1941—almost an unbroken vigour and a high reputation as the principal centre of Oriental culture among the foreign and Chinese communities in Central China. It also kept up a high standard of scholarship and of cultural appeal in its Journal, which appeared unfailingly every year. After the war it continued its work until, after 1948, it was forced through political troubles to cease its activities. The last issues of the Journal had been published with the co-operation of the International Institute of China.\n\nThe Society in Shanghai was from its early days fortunate in the support of a generous public and of the British Government, which in 1868 provided it with a site at a nominal rent for its own building, completed in 1871. Later the property was conveyed to the Society in perpetuity or for so long as it was used for the Society's purpose. Thus, in 1931 the Society was able, with the aid of public subscriptions and generous municipal grants, to build in Museum Road close to the British Consulate a commodious building of its own; it contained a lecture hall named after the late Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a floor to accommodate its Oriental Library of 12,000 volumes and adjacent reading rooms, as well as space for an excellent natural history museum and for the exhibition of Chinese paintings and other works of art.\n\nIn 1941 the Society had nearly 800 members, including most of the leading Oriental scholars, explorers and travellers. Amongst the outstanding personalities who had been associated with the North China Branch a few may be mentioned—Dr. Joseph Edkins, Thomas W. Kingsmill, Dr. Emil Breitschneider, Henri Cordier (at one time the Society's Librarian), P. G. van Mollendorf, Sir Robert Hart, Sir Harry Parkes, Sir Byron Brennan, W. H. Medhurst, Sir Edmund Hornby (the first British Judge in China), Sir Rutherford Alcock, H. A. Giles, G. H. Parker, H. B. Morse, A. P. Parker, Alexander Hosie, Samuel Couling, Sir Sidney Barton and Dr. J. C. Ferguson, an American, former President of Nanking University and a man of profound learning and wisdom who, in the course of half a century, served the Society as President, Secretary and Editor of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "75\n\nTHE PATTERN OF LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1898\n\nJ. W. HAYES, M.A.*\n\nIn 1898 Great Britain signed the Peking Convention which gave her the lease of the New Territories for 99 years. The world has made such material progress since that time and urban Hong Kong has itself seen so many changes that it is difficult for us to-day to imagine the rural part of the Colony as it then was, without roads or wheeled transport other than the wheel-barrow, with inhabitants who knew nothing of cars, aeroplanes, or weapons of mass destruction. But having made this effort, we must think back further still if we wish to obtain a proper appreciation of the situation, as James Stewart Lockhart told the Hong Kong Government in 1898. At the end of his report on the New Territory, as he styled it, he said \"Under Chinese rule enterprise has been at a discount, and progress has been at a standstill for centuries. The San On district of to-day must be much the same as it was four or five hundred years ago\".\n\nThe report is a valuable first-hand account of the area as it was in the year of its acquisition and covers the points in which Government would be most interested such as topography, communications, trade and natural products, population, industries and the existing civil government. It also gave its author's recommendations as to how the New Territory should be governed and looked after in future. This article, whilst making use of Lockhart's report, tries to give the background which he, of course, would take for granted. It does not pretend to deal with every part of the backcloth but only touches on those parts which seem worth mentioning for their share in fixing life in its accustomed mould: the village, the people themselves and their history, the clan system, ancestral worship, education, the district government, the background of affairs elsewhere in the province, the prevalence of disturbance and epidemic, popular religion: all factors which made for integration or disruption in a life that could never have been easy.\n\n* Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer with the Hong Kong Government since 1956.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204459, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "80 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nan honest livelihood without difficulty. Few signs of anything approaching destitution were seen, and only a few beggars were met \".\" \n\nThe reason for this general standard of well-being was undoubtedly the universal ownership of land. Whether Punti or Hakka, most families in every village owned some fields of their own, some more as a matter of course and some less, and because of the joint succession to ancestral property by all male descendants in the direct line, nearly everyone had a joint and undivided share, a stake, in the land. There was also clan land, which could be farmed out to poorer members. In land matters, the clan had priority over the individual. This was reflected in Chinese deeds of sale or mortgage which, if the New Territory is anything to go by, appear to follow the same form in Kwangtung as in far Shantung.11 Where a sale was contemplated, a reason had always to be specified, and the land had always to be offered in the first place to all relatives, which in fact meant practically anyone inside the clan, before being offered to an outsider. Mortgages were more common than sales and were redeemable at any period after the original mortgage, so that land need not pass outside the clan forever. There is no doubt that this tight rein on sales assisted the general preservation of the clan and the village and was a powerful factor in the continuance of a static and integrated life. These matters were regulated by the clan elders in conformity with immemorial custom. \n\nTo meet clan needs, amongst which was the proper worship of ancestors as well as the needs of the living, such as education of the young and the care of the old, certain fields and houses were set aside in trust, and the trust so created was known as a tong or tso. These are commonly found in the New Territory, and many were registered at the land settlement which followed the grant of the lease to Great Britain. The tso is the more closely connected with the clan. Anyone can form a tong, but a tso is definitely a clan affair, and of the nature of a serious ancestral trust.12 It is set up to ensure that property is not divided or disposed of without due thought and is designed to circumvent the acts of foolish or spendthrift descendants, in the interests of all that the Confucian system holds most dear: the rearing of sons, giving them a proper education, seeing that forebears are duly respected in a fitting manner, assisting with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204471, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nwrote a prayer for divine help to the city god of Nam Tau after a dark mist resembling the shadow of a black dog haunted womenfolk in the third moon of the third year of Ch'ung-cheng (1630): and the magistrate LI Ho Shing wrote the \"Lamentations\" or odes and addresses burnt in sacrifice, when a severe typhoon hit the district city in the fifth moon of the twelfth year of K'ang-hsi (1673); this was preserved among the literary works recorded in another chapter of the history. There is no mention of later imitations.\n\nBesides this preoccupation with spirits of all kinds and a general disposition to ensure against all possible acts of ill will on their part which was, one almost thinks, a by-product of the bad times and the uncertainties which usually surrounded the Chinese peasant and his city counterpart, there was a regular and intense devotion to the ancestors of the clans which was carried on through the centuries. This, of course, was Confucianist, as opposed to the Taoist and animist forms of religion to be seen inside temples and on the fields and hillsides. There is no doubt that the clans were kept together by the regular attention that was paid to the ancestral duties and the particular reverence accorded to the first ancestor who had settled in the village. I have already explained how, on the material side, management of land by the clan for the clan assisted in keeping both land and people together. On the spiritual plane the ancestral duties had the same effect.\n\nAt the heart of the clan was the ancestral hall.52 Here the soul tablets of past generations were ranged in rows on an altar: these can still be seen in a few ancestral halls to-day, notably at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen, two villages of the TANG clan, whose green and gold tablets date back to the Sung dynasty. Most villages in the New Territory, large or small, appear to have had ancestral halls at the time of the lease. Many of them are standing to-day and I have traced the presence of others which have mouldered away since 1898. Each clan had its own hall and here its members gathered to perpetuate its corporate identity on occasions like births, weddings and funerals, and regularly each year at the New Year festival.\n\n53\n\nAs an adjunct to the tablets in the ancestral hall, the graves of ancestors were also the subject of regular attention by the villagers, particularly the grave of the first ancestor and his wife.54", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204475, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "96\n\n5\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nSee a tablet in the Chow-Wong School at Kam Tin.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n'Lockhart's figures, given in Appendixes 3 and 5 to his Report are not exact, and he has emphasised his sketchy estimate of the land population \"in default of any reliable statistics possessed by the Chinese Government\" and said he had been unable to obtain even an estimate of the boat people Papers 1899 pp. 187,189. Taking areas within my own detailed knowledge I have found that villages established long before 1898 have not been included in the returns or else have been linked with other villages without special mention, The population figures for the Islands, in particular, are not above suspicion and are probably greater than shown in Appendix 5.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 189.\n\nPapers 1899 p. 189.\n\n10 Universal ownership was clearly shown by the land survey which followed the lease of 1898. This was carried out by surveyors and staff on loan from the Government of India, and was followed by a registration of titles which was enlivened by land courts which sat to determine possession in disputed cases. The survey sheets and the Crown Rent Rolls which form the schedules to them can be found in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration and they are a valuable record of land ownership and land classification at the time of the lease.\n\nAt Shek Pik and Fan Pui in 1958 out of sixty-six families four owned between 3-4 acres, nine between 2-3 acres, nineteen between 1-2 acres, fourteen owned between a half to one acre, twelve owned between a quarter to a half, and eight between 10 to 25 acres. Except a few late arrivals, therefore, every family owned land of its own. The position was much the same as in 1898.\n\nThe same was true of Wei Hai Wei, of which Johnston wrote Lion & Dragon, p. 148, \"Whatever the faults of the Chinese social system may be there is no doubt that in Wei Hai Wei it very largely accounts for the complete absence of pauperism (though no one is rich) for the orderliness of the people (nearly everyone has a stake in the land and has nothing to gain and everything to lose from disorder), for the uninterrupted succession of father and son in the homesteads, and for the long pedigrees attested by family graveyards and ancestral tablets\".\n\n11 See Johnston Lion and Dragon pp. 134-54. I have compared customary deeds of sale and mortgage from the New Territory between the years 1898 and 1958 with those cited by him and find that they invariably follow the same form (see especially Johnston pp. 144-145). These deeds are known as white deeds (as in Ching times) and had not been put through the formal process of registration in the District Office which would turn them into legal documents; or, as formerly in Ching days, in the Magistrate's yamen when they became red deeds (RI #). They were common until the Pacific war and even now are occasionally known to be drawn up in addition to the Memorial registering the conveyance in the Land Office. To select an example at random here is one from Shek Pik on Lantau Island dated the second year of the Republic (1913) which reads", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204502, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "BRITAIN AND CHINA\n\n119\n\nBut only once, in September 1950, has Britain voted for a resolution in the General Assembly calling for the admission of Communist China. From June 1951 the British representative has continued to vote in favour of postponement of discussion of the question, even when, on conclusion of the Korean war, the argument that China was participating in aggression against United Nations forces no longer held good. Mr. Luard well brings out, though unfortunately he does not try to explain, the expediency which guided western policies; how one argument was produced after another when the old ones went out of date; how the British government allowed itself to be swayed in this matter by the wishes of the Americans. He does not go into the intricacies of American internal politics, which are at the root of this matter—obviously he could not in a book about Britain and China—but without some understanding of them, Britain's behaviour, somewhat unfairly, seems feeble and misguided. Britain could have done more than she has to influence American public opinion, but to have brought China into the UN against the wishes of numerous Americans would only have devalued the institution in their eyes, and might even have resulted in earlier days in an American withdrawal of funds (upon which the U.N. is very dependent) or even, disastrously, of membership.\n\nSuch a criticism does not affect the discussion of Hong Kong, which is a matter purely for the British and the Chinese. As in the rest of the book, the historical background is only sketched in; the interest is all concentrated on wartime and post-war developments. Hong Kong is unique among British colonies in that since the war it has made no progress towards independence; having narrowly escaped being \"liberated\" by Kuomintang armies at the end of the war, the prospect of a more democratic constitution was shelved when the Communists overran neighbouring Kwangtung. As Mr. Luard points out, the constitution of the Colony remains, in all essentials, exactly what it was in 1843.\n\nAnd this is where the British government's devotion to commercial interests in its relations with China again becomes apparent. Now that Hong Kong has found a new lease of economic life in manufacturing, neither the British nor the Hong Kong government are prepared to do anything which may upset the present favourable climate for investors. It is generally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204621, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n89\n\nIn the course of a tour of duty in the New Territories I became interested in the island community and, when opportunities offered, made enquiries locally for information which would shed light on its history in the period before 1898, when it was still part of the San On district. I was particularly interested in local source material which would provide a picture of island life and society in the fifty years (1850-98) before the lease of the New Territories to Britain, and this article is based upon information obtained from three commemorative tablets which date from these years, and on other information available locally relating to several district associations of long standing, besides supplementary material from a variety of different sources.\n\nThese tablets consist of slabs of slate-like stone, usually two feet by three feet in size, on which are cut characters a quarter of an inch high set out in two parts: an account of the origin and successful accomplishment of the scheme, followed by the names of all subscribers. Their object was to record the event; and to recognise the efforts of local persons, by recording the names of the donors for posterity. Tablets in this old form were quite common—they are found all over the New Territories—and could record any undertaking, such as the construction of a road or bridge, the repair of a temple, and so on. They were set up, no doubt, with the appropriate commemorative ceremony which is still current practice for such occasions. We have the well-developed Chinese sense of the historical element in everyday life to thank for the existence of such interesting records, which, by their nature, are immune from the ravages of white ants and the damp summer weather. They are not, however, free from the attentions of the man in the street as the present state of these three tablets show: in that the first was hidden by a double bunk, the second is exposed to the elements at a street corner and is often hidden by wood from an adjacent timber yard, and the third was serving as the back of a stove, part of which had to be demolished and the tablet cleared of a heavy deposit of soot.\n\nThe first of the Cheung Chau tablets is in the office building of the Tung Kwun association and records the repair of the Po On study or school in the 5th year of T'ung-chih (1866-7); the second, dated 4th and 32nd years of Kuang-hsü", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204629, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\nnot put back when the house next door, wall, was renovated about ten years ago. of these tablets.\n\n97\n\nwhich shared a party There is now no trace\n\nHowever, two inscriptions still remain from these institutions. One, removed to the Wai Chiu section of the Kwok Man School in 1952, is dated the wu-shen year of Kuang-hsü (1908-9) and is an ornamental granite head-slab with two side pieces, all with carved and painted characters upon them, the gift of wealthy members or else a sign of general prosperity in the Wai Chiu community. The present leaders of the association say that the date refers only to the handsome inscriptions and not to the establishment of their school, which is believed to have been in operation for many years before. This is likely as the office building is an old one and was already registered at the time of the lease of the New Territories as the Wai Chau and Chiu Chau Club, and the association has a reputed existence of over two hundred years.\n\n24\n\nSimilarly a head stone is still in position inside an old building on the Praya belonging to the Sei Yap Yik Sin Tong, which records its repair in the 23rd year of Kuang-hsü (1897-8), the inscription being the work of WONG Wai Sum ✯✯✯, said to be a teacher in the Tong's school. This Tong has an interesting origin, if the tale told by its present managers is reliable, in that it arose from a shipwreck which washed up a body carrying money on one of the Cheung Chau beaches. The ship was supposed to have been carrying emigrants back to China from San Francisco. The body was given decent burial by some Sei Yap persons who hit upon the idea of forming a Tong for the unity and betterment of their fellow countrymen on the island, and with additional subscriptions the initial windfall was used to build or purchase the present building, which was the only property owned by the Tong in 1898. A feature of the building was the establishment of an altar on the ground floor on which were placed the tablets of the original organisers and principal subscribers, but these have now all gone, though a shrine remains.29\n\nThe fourth of these district associations of long-standing is the Po On which has no connection with the old Po On study run by the Tung Kwun association. Its leadership in 1898\n\n!\n\n1+L\n\nF", "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": 204635, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n103\n\n20 See T'ung-tsu CH'U Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press 1962) chapter 9, especially pp. 161-164.\n\nI am indebted to Mr. W. Schofield, a former District Officer, and Cudet Officer, Hong Kong Government, for a reference to an inscription, now lost, relating to the foundation of the Lung Chun Yee Hok *** in 1847. The school, which is still standing inside the former Kowloon walled city, was opened by the district magistrate WONG Ming Ting after the sub-district deputy magistrate HUI Man Sham had reported that it was being built.\n\nOrme in his \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63, Appendix G, gives a school census for April 1912, by which time there had apparently been little change since 1898. There were 10 schools on Cheung Chau, average attendance 20, average monthly fee 38 cents.\n\n21 See HSIAO op. cit. pp. 235-240 and CH'U, op. cit., pp. 161-162. Occasionally government-sponsored schools were granted land for their maintenance. In the 28th year of Kuang-hsü (1902-3) four years after the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, land inside the boundary, previously used for the purpose of aiding a school still in Chinese territory, was sold by order of the Commissioner of Education for San On district. Part of the proceeds had also been used for offerings at the Confucian temple (in Nam Tau).\n\n22 The group of titles on the defence bureau tablet is another demonstration of the widespread sale of degree titles and positions in the late Ch'ing period already remarked in several places. (see HSIAO Kung-Chuan Rural China p. 415 and chapter 10 of CH'U's Local Government in China under the Ch'ing op. cit., pp. 168-173 and notes and, in more detail, Chung-li CHANG, The Chinese Gentry. Studies on their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1955) pp. 102-111. For contemporary notices see Rev. Krone \"A Notice of the Sanon District\" in Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong), Part VI (1859) p. 84 and Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier c. 1900 p. 121, amongst others.)\n\nNo fewer than twenty-one persons have titles prefixed to their names, many of them minor ones, of which three-quarters were probably purchased.\n\nthe first\n\nOf the purchased titles and posts five were chien-sheng degree by purchase, which was the prerequisite to purchasing any superior post, such as that of district magistrate or prefect. It was the most commonly purchased degree. Two others were styled chih-chien and chih-sheng. There were four chin-kung and four chih-yüan 職員。", "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": 204681, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "146\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA NOTE ON THE NAMES SAN ON AND PO ON\n\nBefore Hong Kong island and Kowloon were ceded, and the New Territories leased, to the British Crown, the region which is now the Colony of Hong Kong, along with the present-day Po On District on the Chinese Mainland across Deep Bay, formed a separate district of Kwangchou Prefecture. This district was called San On, a name by which it had been known since 1573, when it first acquired district status. Before this, from A.D. 716 to 1573, the region had been administered as part of Tung Kun District. Still earlier, from A.D. 331 to 716, it had been part of a larger division called Po On District 寶安縣.\n\nThis ancient name was revived in 1912 when San On District (or rather the small area that was left of it after the lease of the New Territories) was renamed Po On District. It is not unusual, even to-day, for the people of the New Territories to refer to themselves as natives of Po On District.\n\nPETER Y. L. NG.\n\nWHAT'S YOUR LINGO?\n\nMost of the etymological dictionaries of English published in this century derive the former cant-word lingo, now a contemptuous term in the standard language, for speech, language, from Provençal and ultimately, of course, from Latin lingua.\n\nSkeat's gloss, in his Etymological Dictionary, includes the following: \"Prov. lengo, lingo, speech (Mistral); lingo is the precise form used at Marseilles and lengo is Gascon (Moncaut.)”\n\nIf the dictionaries are right, lingo may have come into the thieves' jargon of English sea ports from the mouths of sailors who had picked it up from Sabir, the old maritime lingua franca of the Mediterranean which is said to have contained many elements from the Provençal dialect of Marseilles.\n\nHowever, while most of the modern dictionaries give us a Provençal etymology and merely ask us to bear in mind the Portuguese form lingoa, earlier works such as Dr. Johnson's,\n\n \n \n !\n \n \n i\n !", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204716, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER \n\nengaged in the lucrative trade drew out of the country large amounts of silver. Lin Tse-hsu, Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan wholeheartedly threw his support to those who memorialized the throne requesting stringent measures to prevent the use of opium within the country, and to cure addicts. Moreover, Lin took direct action and seized caches of opium, 12,000 ounces and 5,000 pipes. As a result of his success in combating opium addiction and forceful condemnation of the sale of the drug he was called to Peking by Emperor Tao-kuang and appointed Imperial Commissioner to examine the opium traffic at Canton. He arrived at the provincial capital in early March, 1839. For several years prior to 1839 nearly 30,000 chests had been imported annually there.\n\nFateful events immediately took form. Lin warned the western merchants of dire results if the iniquitous trade did not cease. His threat was followed by the demand that within three days they offer a bond that no opium would be imported. A counter proposal was made to turn over to Commissioner Lin about 1000 chests of the drug which he summarily rejected. On March 22, he demanded that Lancelot Dent, one of the principal importers be given to Chinese officials as a hostage until all opium was given up. The western merchants insisted that Dent could be surrendered only on condition that his personal safety was guaranteed. The Chinese merchants doing business with foreigners were frightened by the action of their own government. Some of them were deprived of their buttons of rank and two appeared in public with chains around their necks. Under these circumstances the Hong (the association of Chinese merchants trading with the western merchants at Canton) pressed the foreign community to comply with the ultimatum of Lin and deliver up Dent.\n\nIn the midst of this seething situation, on March 24, Captain Charles Elliot, British naval officer and Chief Superintendent and Plenipotentiary of the China Commission arrived from Macao. He entered the foreign compound with great difficulty inasmuch as the river had been blockaded and the streets leading to the foreign section had been barricaded. The predicament of approximately 300 western people seemed most serious since food and water were in short supply and a large encampment of Chinese troops was close at hand. Canton was cut off from formal communications from Macao which was nearly sixty miles distant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204745, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n37\n\nNOTES ON HUNTER'S JOURNAL\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG and Sir LINDSAY T. RIDE\n\n1 Snow. Peter Wanten Snow, Consul for the United States in Canton. He surrendered the opium in American possession as demanded by Commissioner Lin, and was ready to promise that Americans would cease importing opium, but refused to have anything to do with the bond as the penalties were too severe. (See also note 43, bond.) (L.T.R.)\n\n2 Mr. Forbes. Joined the American firm of Russell & Co. in Canton in October 1838, became a partner 1 January 1839 and eventually was made chief of the house. Robert Bennett Forbes (1804-1889), first arrived in China in 1817. After some years back in the States he returned to China in October 1838 and was admitted a partner of Russell & Co., China on 1 January 1839. He retired in 1844 but had an interest in the firm till 1857. (L.T.R.)\n\n3 Mr. Green. John C. Green of Trenton, New Jersey, first went to China as an agent of N.L. & G. Griswold. In 1834 he was admitted a partner of Russell & Co., China, and retired to New York on 31st December 1839. At the time of the disturbances he was Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at Canton. He died in 1875. (L.T.R.)\n\n4 Mr. Delano. Warren Delano, Jr. of Fairhaven, Mass., came to China 1834 to join the house of Russell, Sturgis & Co., of Canton and Manila. He was a partner of Russell & Co., China for two terms, 1 January 1840 to 31 December 1846, and January 1861 to 31 December 1866. He was a great-uncle of ex-President F. D. Roosevelt. (L.T.R.)\n\n5 Mr. King.\n\nThis is most likely to be Edward King of Newport, R.I., who was taken into the firm of Russell & Co., as a clerk on his arrival at Canton in 1834 in the Silas Richards. On 1 July 1834 he became a partner and retired in 1842 to Newport where he died in 1876.\n\nThere was a Charles W. King of Olyphant & Co. in Canton at the time, but as this firm had nothing to do whatsoever with opium, he may not have been confined to the Factory. (L.T.R.)\n\n6 Mr. Low. Abiel Abbott Low (1811-1893) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and became a leading figure in both the New York and China shipping world. He first worked as a clerk in shipping firms in Salem and in New York and then went to China in 1833 as a clerk in Russell & Co. of which house his uncle, Wm. Henry Low, had been head for some years. He was made a partner in 1837, retired to New York where he founded the firm of A.A. Low & Brothers, famous for its clipper fleet. In 1863 he was President of the New York Chamber of Commerce. (L.T.R.)\n\n7 Spooner. Daniel Nicholson Spooner of Plymouth, Mass. was at this time a clerk in Russell & Co., Canton. He became a partner in January 1843 and retired to Boston on 31 December 1845. He returned to China again as a partner in January 1852, finally retiring in 1857. (L.T.R.)\n\n8 Gilman. Joseph Taylor Gilman of Exeter, New Hampshire, joined Russell & Co., Canton as a Clerk about the same time as Spooner. His dates of partnership and retirement were the same, too, as Spooner's. (L.T.R.)\n\n9 Mouqua. Also spelt Mowqua in pidgin English. His official name as Hong merchant was Lu Ch'i-kuang Lu Wen-wei✰✰ The suffix \"qua\" signifies \"an official\". (J.L.C.-B.) and his family name was (kuan in mandarin)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204780, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "72 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nbe shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss.\n\nFortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern \"Domesday\" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside.\n\nThere are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204781, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "# PENG CHAU\n\n73\n\nin this region in the late CHING. Their time is obviously short, and as much use should be made of their evidence as is still possible.\n\nIn this article I have attempted an outline study of an island community which, despite its small size and population at the time of the British lease, included groups of the various sea and land peoples who are common to this region. It is, for this reason, of particular interest, though by no means unique.\n\n## II\n\nPeng Chau *** is a small island lying off the south-east coast of Lantau, about four miles from the west end of Hong Kong harbour. Its land area is 213 acres (0.328 square mile), of which 23.13 acres were cultivated and 4.35 built over when, together with the rest of the New Territories, the island passed under British rule in 1899.6 At the 1911 census of the Colony of Hong Kong, the first accurate count of the population of the New Territories, the land population of Peng Chau totalled 642 persons.7\n\nThis article attempts to tell something of its history before 1899, for which purpose it is material to its theme to state that it was one of many islands, large and small, inhabited or deserted, which lay off the coast of the Kwangtung province, in this case within the boundaries of the San On district of which the island of Hong Kong itself was formerly an insignificant part.\n\nPeng Chau's past is shrouded in mystery. It is likely that its first, and for most of its history, its only users were the fishermen whose boats sheltered in its bays whilst their owners dried and mended their nets on shore or beached their boats at the water's edge with grass cut from the hillsides. Pirates and other lawless men may have visited it from time to time because of its remoteness. Eventually its regular use by the sea people must have attracted land dwellers, mainly Cantonese in the first instance it would seem, who set up shops to deal with the fishermen by supplying them with stores and provisions on credit and acting as middlemen for the disposal of their catch.\n\nWhen this first occurred is not certain. The first dated information now available comes from the local temple dedicated to Tin Hau the Queen of Heaven, a popular goddess with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204790, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n81\n\nThe first ancestor came from Po Kat in Po On, then San On, district. He settled not far from the anchorage and the shops nearby, and the family flourished there for several generations, farming most of the cultivable land and planting an extensive forestry lot.29 But the position had changed for the worse by 1899. At the land settlement which followed the British lease, though the LUIs were credited with owning house land, four and a half acres of paddy fields, and nine and a half acres of dry cultivation and vegetable land on Peng Chau, all except their houses were mortgaged to different persons without hope of return.30 When my informant was a boy, the LUI houses were in a broken-down condition. They also owned a lot of land on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau, but much of this too was mortgaged by the end of the century.31\n\nThe CHUNG family are said to have been the next arrivals. According to old Mr. CHUNG, his great-grandfather, who was the family's first ancestor to live on the island, came together with his son, a boy of ten. Consultation of the grave tablet, which is dated 1834,32 shows that he probably arrived in Peng Chau in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, not long after the LUIs. He came from his parent village of Tin Liu Ha in the Lam Tsuen Valley near Tai Po in the present New Territories. In 1899, the family still owned very little land of its own on Peng Chau, having, besides houses, only one-third of an acre of dry cultivation, but they held the mortgages of nearly nine acres of the LUI land, including most of their paddy fields.33 The family farmed their own and the mortgaged land, but, as I have said above, fishing was their chief concern about ten years before the British lease, another seeming \"irregularity\" which warns against the assumption that our local communities have separate characteristics and perform distinct functions which do not overlap. It was very likely Mr. CHUNG's grandfather's success at sea which enabled him to loan money to the LUI family and so gradually obtain their land; and the lack of land which made this family concentrate on the sea in the first place.\n\nAnother family of Hakka settlers are the LAM ✯ clan who came in the mid-nineteenth century. According to family tradition, three brothers who were operating a pawn-shop in Shum Chun Market were \"squeezed\" by yamen runners when a murder...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204793, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "84 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nprobably building materials and general goods, including clothing, luxury items and foodstuffs, since Peng Chau produced little more than sufficed for the Hakka farmers who had settled there. In the other direction the boats may have taken salt fish and shrimp paste, and lime for the building trade from Peng Chau's kilns. \n\nPeng Chau's development in the nineteenth century and before was assisted by its proximity to the south-east coast of Lantau. The waters in this area, except in the south-west monsoon, are generally calm and are easily crossed by rowing sampans or wind-driven craft. In 1898 there were some half a dozen small villages and hamlets situated along this coast37 which, together with a large settlement on Nei Kwu Chau, used Peng Chau as a market centre, selling their produce and livestock there and purchasing goods of all kinds from the island's shopkeepers. The area east of Tai Pak appears to have been well settled in 1899 by Hakka farmers whose descendants still live there today, but from Tai Pak west to Man Kok the land must at one time have supported a larger population than it did in 1899. The land registers show that many fields were abandoned, and no owners came forward to claim them at the Land Settlement after the lease of the New Territories. Even the claimed land, which in this area was in the minority, was in the course of changing hands, largely by way of mortgage to persons from Peng Chau. A WONG Keng of Peng Chau had recently become the registered owner of sixteen acres situated there and east to Yee Pak and was giving mortgages to other owners. The LAMs of Peng Chau were in possession of many fields at Man Kok and Kau Sat Wan, of which they were the mortgagees. They also held the mortgages of other fields there which belonged to the unfortunate LUI clan of Peng Chau. The large amount of empty fields, unclaimed at the lease, is interesting and the conclusion must therefore be that there were more settlers in this part of Lantau fifty or a hundred years before, and that these persons helped in a small but steady way to increase Peng Chau's prosperity,38 These families had either died or gone away by 1899. \n\nIn an island community like Peng Chau where different groups found themselves in the course of time committed to joint settlement, and hence to the need to establish a modus vivendi, one of the more interesting relationships is that which subsisted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204799, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "90\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nIt is hoped that this account of Peng Chau will demonstrate the diversity of settlers and enterprises which appears to characterise even the smaller settlements of this part of the Kwangtung coastline. Peng Chau is a Cheung Chau in miniature, and because of its smaller size a wider treatment than was possible for Cheung Chau can be given, in an article of this length. Again, my intention is to provide no more than an outline, and an indication that, despite their size, such communities could be complex settlements in which traditional lines of division were blurred by proximity and a common environment.\n\nNOTES\n\nAny statements in respect of Peng Chau and its people which appear to be unsubstantiated are based on information supplied by various elders. I am most grateful for the assistance given by the Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, Mr. LAM Shue-chun#, and Mr. LO Chi-chung# of the District Office, South,\n\n1 See \"The pattern of life in the New Territories in 1898\" pp. 75-102 of this Journal, vol. 2 (1962) and \"Cheung Chau 1850-1898\" in vol. 3 (1963) pp. 88-106.\n\n2 See Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong—hereafter styled Sessional Papers (Hong Kong Noronha & Company, at yearly intervals, in this case 1905) p. 144 in the Report on the work of the Land Court for the New Territories for 1900-1905.\n\n3 See G. N. Orme, “Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, pp. 56-57, for significant changes in wages and the cost of living.\n\n4 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer 1960) p. 83. In this article characters have not been given for any place names which appear in the Gazetteer,\n\n5 Schedules to the Block Crown Lease for Peng Chau, District Office, South, New Territories Administration. Hereafter styled BCL.\n\n6 Under the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June 1898,\n\n7 Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103(22) and (26). This figure is broken down into 434 males and 208 females, children included. The preponderance of males is noteworthy and may be due, in part, to the number of single men employed in the limekilns. The boat population are not specified separately in the Census returns and cannot be separated from the 4,442 contained in the Cheung Chau district figure. Cheung Chau with Peng Chau and Nei Kwu Chau formed a census district in 1911, but whilst the land population for each place is given separately, the boat populations are not so specified.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204800, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n91\n\nThere are said to be over 230 islands within the Crown Colony of Hong Kong. See Hong Kong Annual Report for 1962 (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1963) p. 319.\n\n? I am not well acquainted with the Chinese records, but there seems to be little information on Peng Chau available in the San On Gazetteer, or Gazetteer of the San On District, last edition 1819, but reprinted by Kwangtung Printers, Canton, 1933.\n\n10 A lucky day of a winter month of the third year of Chia Ching.\n\n11 A lucky day of the third winter month of the 57th year of Chien Lung.\n\n12 It is customary to do so: in fact the 1878 tablet states whether subscribers are local or from various other places. I base this statement on experience of many such tablets, but there are always exceptions to disprove the general rule. Tablets may be considered generally to be reliable, but are subject to occasional errors and omissions.\n\n13 A lucky day of the third winter month of the year, third year of Kuang Hsü (January/February 1878).\n\n14 The nineteenth day of the seventh Moon of the fifteenth year of Tao Kwang. There is nothing on the tablet to indicate that it was the only one erected. If it was, it confirms the island's importance as a fishing centre,\n\n15 This date and the number of boats stated cannot be confirmed. It is given in a short manuscript account of Peng Chau in Chinese, available locally, compiled anonymously a few years ago,\n\n16 On Cheung Chau a Peng On Tong existed in 1898 when, together with two other Tongs, it held a lease of land for a boatshed. These appear to have been organisations of Tanka fishermen. The Peng On Tong and its boatshed still exist, though its affairs have been managed by several generations of a prominent Punti family since at least 1910 (BCL and Land Registers).\n\n17 For some information on the origins of the Tanka see K. M. A. Barnett \"The Peoples of the New Territories\" in Hong Kong Business Symposium (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 1957) p. 261 and his Introduction, pp. 2-3 to T. R. Tregear's Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong University Press, 1958).\n\n18 The local name for trawlers is ... The smaller types of Tanka fishing craft using the anchorage in 1898 are described as * and *. Then there are Hoklo boats of a similar type: one usually equipped with cars and styled #, and a variant called, literally \"chicken hair claw\", which was the type of boat used by Mr. CHUNG and his fellow Hakka fishermen. I am told that the first are principally shrimp boats and the latter mainly used for catching fish. There is a good description of such craft on p. 53 of Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912 quoted above, which is also useful for a contemporary account of the boat people. A list of the various types of local fishing craft (modern) is given in Table I, pp. 45-51 of Stanley S. S. Yuan's paper on Fishing Junks, which was read to the Engineering Society of Hong Kong in the 1955-56 session and published in January 1956 in volume IX no. 2 of their Proceedings. A diagram showing six local types is on p. 55. For an interesting account of the Hong Kong fishing fleet before the Japanese War, see Reports on the Fisheries Industries of Hong Kong by S. Y. Lin, apparently written between 1938-48, of which there is a typescript copy in the Library, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204804, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "FENG CHAU\n\n95\n\nfrom his own or adjoining villages worked with him. The Shek Pik people were therefore closely connected with the sea despite the fact that their fields were extensive and well-watered. Elsewhere on Lantau, an old account book of the Hakka CHEUNG Kung Tak Tong at Pui O, which is dated 1897-99 (Kuang Hsu 23rd-24th years), shows that the Tong had a regular income from a fishing sampan.\n\n41 It has been shown that the Peng Chau shopkeepers always contributed to the temple repairs. A more illuminating instance of merchants' concern for the safety of local waters is to be found in the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau on the south-west tip of Lantau, facing Macau and the mouth of the Delta, a remote area two hours' walk from Tai O Market. Here tablets survive from the Chia Ching and Hsien Feng periods (1796-1820 and 1851-61) and contain the names of many Tai O shops. One imagines that few of the donors would ever visit the temple, but they were obviously intent to ensure Tin Hau's benevolent care.\n\n42 Information received from CHEUNG Kai Chun of Ham Tin, Pui O, Lantau (born 1886). But this was not true everywhere. At Shek Pik several families of Tanka used the anchorage for at least fifty years. There was no remembered animosity during this time and these fishermen were allowed to cut grass and firewood without charge. However, they rarely strayed far from the beach and the two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with each other, except in casual contact at the main festivals and when villagers bought fish from them at the jetty, which was over a mile from the village. The fishermen would not go to the village to sell their catch.\n\n43 Information received from the present leaders of the WONG Wai Chak Tong ✯ of Cheung Chau.\n\n44 This statement is based on close knowledge of the Southern District of the New Territories and of the District land registers.\n\n45 Barbara E. Ward \"A Hong Kong Fishing Village”, Journal of Oriental Studies (University of Hong Kong) volume 1, no. 1 (January 1954) pp. 195-214, especially p. 211. See also note 42.\n\n46 See my Cheung Chau article for the Cheung Chau district associations before the British lease. At Tai O in the same period there appear to have been associations of Tung Kwun and San On origin, each with a club-house.\n\n47 The number is wrongly given as 28 in note 14 to the Cheung Chau article.\n\n48 A tablet in the Pak Tai temple at Cheung Chau dated January, February 1906 (a lucky day of the first month of spring of the thirty-second year of Kuang Hsü) shows that Peng Chau people also contributed to its repair.\n\n49 See the Cheung Chau article for this institution.\n\n50 The Kaifong of the Hong Kong region, and their like, are local institutions with a fairly long history. The Peng Chau Kaifong is quite likely to have an early date in relation to the age of the present settlement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n119\n\nIn 1897, two years before the lease of the New Territories by China to Britain, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs set up a small customs house on Ma Wan in order to supervise trade between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. The building used still stands. See photograph on p. 28 Ma Wan and a very small hamlet called Tin Liu. The total population of Ma Wan island at the 1911 census was 473. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (H.K. Government Printer, 1911) p. 103 (36).\n\n29 Morse, op. cit., I, 178. The name Kapsingmun appears to have been used by foreigners as an alternative for Kapsuimun which should be preferred.\n\n30 Joseph Thomson, Review of Considerations Respecting the Trade with China (London, 1835). At this period both Lord Napier and after him Captain Charles Elliot spoke of obtaining an island and raising the flag somewhere.\n\n31 The Chinese Repository, IV (1835-6), 548.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204869, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n147\n\nBranch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The following additional notes, which are not meant to be comprehensive or definitive, are added for interest.\n\nAccording to YUEN Yuen's revised edition of the History of Kwangtung, the present structure dates from 1817 and has therefore been in existence for nearly 150 years. Its construction followed a period of recommendations, which probably accounts for the curious fact that it was built after the provincial government had finally managed to deal successfully with the large pirate fleets which had terrorized the Kwangtung coastal and riverine regions for the past twenty years. It seems certainly to have been a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted; though it may also have resulted from increasing concern with European activity in the delta. The official documents of the time would establish which it was.\n\nThe fort contains buildings within a large enclosure whose walls measure 225 feet long x 265 feet deep. The front ramparts, through which the entrance gateway passes, are between 15-20 feet thick. The layout at the time of the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, in 1898, is clearly shown on the survey sheets for Tung Chung, which were prepared soon after the lease. If my memory serves me right, the walls are still in good condition. A village primary school has ample space inside the compound and some of the old buildings, which may have housed the garrison in 1898, are used as offices by the school and by the Tung Chung Rural Committee.\n\nThe walls have stone foundations to a height of perhaps 8-10 feet and a superstructure built of the common bluish-dark grey bricks of the region. Geologists would be able to say whether, as is likely, the stone and the granite slabs used in its construction were brought from the quarries on nearby Chik Lap Kok, the island which juts north from Tung Chung Bay. In this respect it is similar to the other remaining fort on Lantau. This is at Fan Lau at the south-west tip of the island and has been attributed, probably wrongly, to the Dutch. It is considerably older than the Tung Chung fort and the San On district history states that it was built in 1684. However, it has been long...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204986, "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-1965", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n85\n\ncase had serious political repercussions. China considered L4's actions as flagrant aggression, and disregard for international law. Two years later they brought a suit against the commander of the L4 which was unsuccessful. This was one of the few cases in which the Navy came into actual contact with pirates, and it had several unsavoury features,\n\nPiracy was on the decline in South China at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. As for the previous few years, the Kuomintang Government had been gaining more effective control of the southern coastal provinces. Isolated cases, however, still continued right down to the fall of Canton to the Japanese in October 1938. After that Japanese control over the coast of Mainland China curtailed the deck passenger and emigrant trade, as well as the coast trade in general. The pirates turned to smuggling arms through the Japanese blockade, assuming the guise of patriots as they had done so often in the past. When they resumed their normal profession after the war, their activities had a very short lease on life.\n\nThe last piracy involving a foreign ship on the China coast was in 1952. The victim, appropriately enough, was the Hupeh of the China Navigation Company, the company which had suffered so much from piracy in the past. The piracy followed the traditional pattern, with the Hupeh being taken to Bias Bay, where the pirates went ashore with their ill-gotten gains and some wealthy Chinese passengers to be held for ransom. Soon after this, the Communists secured complete control over the coast of Mainland China, and for the first time for centuries it became free of pirates. Unfortunately, there are now no British ships trading on the coast to enjoy this unusual immunity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205022, "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-1965", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n121\n\n(v) Loans were often outstanding for a long time, e.g., two separate cases appear in the papers where loans were not concluded until thirty-eight months had passed. Where such delays occurred, fields were taken during the course of the loan as additional security for it, or on settlement in lieu of repayment in cash.\n\n(vi) Money loans were also made under different initial arrangements, i.e., on the security of a deed of mortgage of land to the Tong. This alternative procedure was presumably adopted in cases where repayment in cash was doubtful. Where it occurred, a debtor lost the use of his fields, which were placed at the complete disposal of his creditor. On the other hand, he paid no interest for his loan.\n\n(vii) Sometimes a time limit was placed on repayment of the loan. This was done in one case relating to a man from an adjoining village. His fields were to become the property of the Tong if repayment was not made within a period of two years.\n\nA Tong such as this would only come into being and flourish where a member of the clan was literate, i.e., could keep written accounts, and possessed business acumen. This particular Tong appears not to have survived the death of its architect. It was not known of by the present Chi elder (b. 1900), nor did it appear in the schedules of ownership completed by the Hong Kong Government after the land settlement which followed the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898.\n\nOther Points\n\n1. The papers give no indication of the objects for which villagers sought to raise money by joining a money association or getting a loan on repayment of interest. But where land was given as security by way of mortgage, or where land was sold, reasons were usually given in the deed of transfer, and some of these were specific, e.g., debts incurred by a younger brother; the need to pay government taxes; money to pay for a father's funeral; capital for business, etc.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205173, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "124\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nquite frequent. Other families are said to have spoken Hoklo at home as well as Hakka which presupposes previous settlement in Hoklo areas and some intermarriage with Hoklo people. Ho Man Tin village also had settlers who were described to me as 'Wai Chow Punti'*, that is Puntis who, living in what had become the predominantly Hakka area of Wai Chow, had been accepted by the Hakkas as their own people (§ CA). In short there was quite an intermixture of dialect groups in these Kowloon villages. This bears out what the missionary James Johnston writes of the Swatow area of Kwangtung in his China and Formosa (1897):18\n\n44\n\nWhilst these three divisions (Punti, Hakka, Hoklo) of the population are distinctly marked, and kept up from generation to generation, there are frequent intermarriages between them and intermixture of the people in their different localities\".\n\nThough settling down in the same villages these Hakka settlers did not all come from the same areas. Some of them came to Kowloon from inland districts of the East River, others from Hoklo-speaking districts further up the coast. Thus Hakkas of different geographical origin settled down together in the Kowloon villages; and not all at the same time, but by degrees. Mong Kok was already an established village by 1862: the available evidence points to an 18th century or early 19th century origin. Ho Man Tin, on the other hand, was not mentioned as a village in the Commissioners' Report in 1862, although family backgrounds indicate that it was probably already a hamlet by then.19\n\nHakkas have always had a reputation for industry, and perseverance.20 These settlers would have needed those qualities to settle in the Kowloon peninsula, where the majority of good agricultural land had already been taken up by the time most of them came to the Hong Kong region and only areas fit for marginal farming were left for them to develop. In consequence, only a few of the families in these two villages owned rice fields and most of them had to be content with vegetable land in the less well-watered upper slopes of the many small valleys which threaded the peninsula. Farming land was scarce. When the father of one of my informants lost his own vegetable land as the result of a confidence trick he had to cease farming and turned", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205215, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n165\n\nMalay title dato. As for Mo-lo-cha, an abusive expression for an Indian, I see the Portuguese element mouro, 'a Moor'. The slang term for Indian in Macanese is still moro- the area round Belilios Terrace in Hong Kong was once known as mato moros, 'hill of the Moors' because of the large number of Indians living in the district. This name was transformed by folk-etymology to the good old Christian matamoros ‘kill the Moors'. Santiago (or St. James) is nicknamed 'matamoros' in Spain to this day.\n\nMoreover the Indians in Malaysia are referred to by the Portuguese of Malacca as moros, whether they be Muslims or not. The Muslim Malays are never so named. In the Philippines the non-Christian inhabitants of Mindinao and other southern islands are also known as moros, a name given them by the Spaniards.\n\nThe old pidgin records collected by Leland in the nineteenth century also give moloman as the pidgin English word for Indian, so that there is no more reason to derive mo-lo-cha from Maharajah than to imagine that Hong Kong ever was a fragrant harbour.\n\nUniversity of the West Indies. St. Augustine, Trinidad.\n\nROBERT WALLACE THOMPSON\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Itcheong-U-Lam and Ian-Kuong-lam, Ou-Mun Kei-Leok (Monografia de Macau), Macao, 1950.\n\n2 Chang lu Lin and Yin Kuang Jen, Ao Men Chi Lüeh (Gazetteer of Macao), Canton, c. 1751.\n\nSee also Bawden C. R. \"An eighteenth century Chinese source for the Portuguese dialect of Macao\" in Silver Jubilee Volume of the Sinbun-Kagaku-Kenkyusyo, Kyoto, 1954, and Thompson, Robert Wallace, \"Two synchronic cross-sections in the Portuguese dialect of Macao\", Orbis, tome VIII, No. 1, Louvain, 1959,\n\nA NOTE ON LAND MEASUREMENT AND TENANT RENTALS IN HONG KONG.\n\nLand Measurement\n\nUnder the laws of the Colony of Hong Kong all land is Crown Land, albeit some of it is under lease. The right to resumption of leased lands for a public purpose is retained in all leases. The following notes on local Chinese custom have mostly been acquired during investigations for the purpose of presenting the Crown's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205221, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n171\n\nMany acres of old rice lands have been converted into vegetable land and we now have a super grade type of land producing vegetables which pay higher prices than padi, and hence result in higher rentals being charged for the land.\n\nRecent trends show that agricultural rents are now more often paid in cash. This probably stems from the fact that vegetables are rapidly replacing rice as the main agricultural production in the New Territories. As vegetables are sold on a daily basis through the Government wholesale markets, which pay cash on the day of sale, the farmer finds it easier to offer rent on a fixed cash basis rather than arranging for an indeterminate amount of rent to be paid based on two crops of kuk per year at differing rentals for each crop.\n\nNotes\n\n1 In S. Wells Williams, Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, North China Union College edition, Tung Chou, near Peking, China, 1909, good descriptions of the Chinese measurements mau and tau, showing how they vary from place to place, are given on pp. 583 and 804. For tam see p. 751. (In the Wade romanisation used in this dictionary they are spelled mou, tou and tan). Tam shui is not a term to be found in dictionaries as denoting a means of measuring land.\n\n2 This division of land into three classes is taken from the old classification used by the Chinese authorities before the lease of the New Territories. See J. H. Stewart Lockhart's \"Memorandum on Land\" in Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers 1900, pp. 266-269.\n\n3 This method of calculating the area of vegetable fields is also common to other areas and was in use in the Kowloon peninsula from at least the late nineteenth century onwards. Again, it would appear that, like the fau, the measurement is variable, even within the Colony.\n\n4 See C. J. Grant, Soils and Agriculture of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960, pp. 53-81.\n\nMr. W. A. Taylor, the author of this Note, is Senior Land Assistant in the New Territories Administration, Hong Kong, and has long experience of land work there. In Mr. Taylor's temporary absence this note was prepared for publication by Mr. J. W. Hayes who also added the footnotes. It is an abbreviated version of a longer technical paper, with maps and tables.\n\nAddendum\n\nIt has since been established that rice was grown in four locations on Cheung Chau before the Pacific War 1941-45, but not after.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205295, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205312, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n67\n\nHe is seldom in the village. Opposition is prominent among the men from the first minor lineage who feel dissatisfaction, seeing that power is concentrated in the hands of three old men from the third minor lineage and the single-household second minor lineage, and that their own old man is completely excluded. People from the first minor lineage feel oppressed by the almighty third minor lineage which is strong in numbers, while the first and second were heavily reduced during the war. They are reluctant to cooperate with their remote kinsmen, a fact which is illustrated by the following example.\n\nDrinking-water was earlier a problem in Big Stream Village. The women had to walk up in the valley to the main stream, above the point where the tidal waves cease to have any effect, to collect water every night. A man from the first fang (M) or minor lineage, working in England but on an occasional visit to his home, got the idea that a water tank should be constructed and tap water installed in the houses. The suggestion was approved by the villagers, but the project was, in fact, achieved on a minor lineage basis. This man wrote a letter to the males of the first fang in Britain outlining the plan and asking for financial support. They approved of it and collected a sum which was sent back to the village for this purpose. No financial aid was asked for from the New Territories Administration or any other fund; apparently in order to exclude the Village Representative from this affair, and also in order to expedite the construction work. The originator himself has a good knowledge of this kind of work, and taking the lead he employed two skilled workers and with the assistance of the women of this minor lineage they started on the project. Three months were required, and the costs are estimated to have amounted to nearly HK$1,200.\n\nPeople in the third minor lineage now began to think of having their own water tank, and in a similar way they contacted their overseas members who provided funds for the project. The single-household second fang joined in and the man responsible for the first improvement scheme was once more appointed to lead the construction work. This time, however, he was paid for his participation as the matter was no concern of his primary solidarity group—the first minor lineage. The costs for the new tank were estimated at some HK$3,500, the difference in...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205336, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "91\n\nLAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE HONG KONG REGION OF KWANGTUNG IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY*\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis article concerns a fringe area of the Kwangtung Province of South China and deals with land and leadership on the island of Lantau. Lantau or in its Chinese form (L) is the largest offshore island of what, since 1898, has been styled the New Territories of British Hong Kong.\n\nLantau is roughly fifteen miles long by five-and-a-half miles broad. The island takes the form of a mountain range which runs, with breaks, along its whole length on a N.E.S.W. axis. The main peaks of this range are around 3,000 feet high. Most of the cultivated land is situated around the coast and at the time of the British lease amounted to a little less than 2,660 acres; that is, only a few square miles. The main crop was and still is rice, harvested twice in July and November. In 1898 the island possessed one market town (population 2,000) situated at its north-west extremity. This place was a salt-producing centre and a considerable fishing port. There were also about fifty small villages on the island. At a carefully-conducted census taken some years after the lease, four of these villages had populations in excess of 200 persons (the largest 363), another seven had more than 100 inhabitants, whilst the remainder were under that figure. The total land population was then over 6,700 persons, mainly Cantonese. Most of the villages were inhabited entirely by Cantonese or Hakka clans, though some of them were of mixed settlement. There was also a boat population of around 5,500 persons whose craft were based on the market town and other anchorages along the coastline.\n\nBefore 1898 Lantau was part of the San On (**) district of the Kwangtung province. Though it was not far by sea from the\n\nThis paper is a slightly amended version of that presented at the XVIIth International Congress of Chinese Studies held at the University of Leeds in 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205339, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "94\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npersons exercising a similar authority in the course of the century, but I have not yet learned who they were.\n\nCHAN FU-SHING (c.1800-60)\n\nChan Fu-shing (c.1800-60) was a Cantonese from the village of Sha Lo Wan on North Lantau. He was the eldest of three sons who were brought there by their mother at the beginning of the nineteenth century from Sai Heung not far from the District City of Nam Tau (about eighteen miles away by sea). The mother was presumably a widow. Why she came to Sha Lo Wan is not known -- perhaps a married aunt or sister lived there but when they did arrive it is more than likely that the family had no land of their own because of the circumstances of their coming and the fact that the oldest village clans claim a depth of settlement that indicates arrival in the 17th century.\n\nFamily tradition has it that the boy was put to work in a grocery store in the market town of Tai O six miles away. Being able and diligent he made himself indispensable to his employer and eventually became a partner in the business. By this means he obtained the small capital that was essential for speculation. He appears to have used this money to make loans to village people either at the customary high rates of interest -- documents show that 50% per annum was common -- or in return for mortgages of land. He was also able to buy land when the opportunity offered and gradually built up an estate for himself and his descendants. It was not a large one. By the time of the British lease the Chan family, all descended from himself or his brothers, owned 19 acres in and around Sha Lo Wan. Most, if not all of this property, must have come from Chan Fu-shing. It is interesting that almost half these fields were placed in common ownership in two ancestral trusts with one or more managers. This ensured that the land would not be divided into small segments every succeeding generation, and would not be at the mercy of a spendthrift or gambler. By way of an aside, it is, in my experience, unusual -- on Lantau -- for so high a proportion of land to be preserved in this way and this prescience must have been exercised by Chan Fu-shing. The Chans' ancestral hall, used as a village school for almost a century, was also due to Fu-shing and his money.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205342, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 97\n\nLantau for a long time. He had a better start in life than either Chan or Cheung. His father was a schoolmaster with a business turn of mind who, besides owning land in his own village, had built up a small estate in a neighbouring settlement of Shek Pik where he had taught for many years.1 After being educated by his father at home he was sent to the District City to continue his studies in the academy there. However, despite this favourable beginning he does not seem to have obtained the first degree by examination after all, and had to purchase the title of chien sang later on.\n\nBeing literate and neither a shopkeeper nor a farmer he probably possessed more of the external attributes of a gentry member than the other two. He was well known in the area as a scholar and calligrapher, and his services were in demand for writing presentation scrolls and for composing suitable inscriptions for temples, monasteries, and private houses. He was also a geomancer or expert on “fêng shui” and was often called in by local people when they wished to site a new grave. All these were gentlemanly occupations. Kung was also a teacher and taught for some years at Shek Pik like his father before him. Later on, he also taught in the school run by one of the district associations in Tai O Market. However, he did not forget the business side of his life, on which his superior position depended, and continued to act as a money-lender and land-broker. At the time of the lease of the New Territories, he owned or managed eight acres of land in the Shek Pik valley and was recorded as holding mortgages on 30 plots of farm land there. It was left to his nephew, who succeeded him in the property, to dissipate the estate which had been built up by Kung and his father. This man was known locally as a gambler but when I saw him in 1962, aged seventy-two, three weeks before his sudden death, I was impressed with his appearance and manner, and could well imagine that his uncle and great-uncle had been public figures in the area.\n\nCommentary\n\nWhat points of general interest can be made from what is known of the origins and careers of these three men?\n\nIn the first place, it is interesting that two of them were Hakka at a time when Cantonese must have formed the great majority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205383, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "138\n\nSALT MANUFACTURE IN HONG KONG\n\nS. Y. LIN\n\nEditor's Note. This article, which is of considerable ethnographic and nearly thirty years after-historical interest, first appeared in the pre-war publication The Hong Kong Naturalist (1930-41), Volume X, No. 1, January 1940. The editor of this interesting series, Dr. G. A. C. Herklots, Reader in Biology at the University of Hong Kong 1928-45 and Principal and Director of Research at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad 1953-60, has kindly given permission to reproduce it here. It is hoped that the article will be of interest to present-day residents of Hong Kong as well as providing for scholars a record of salt-production on the South China coast by both the leaching (percolation) and solar (evaporation) processes, now practically defunct in Tai O where the salt pans have been almost deserted for several years past. The author, Dr. Shu-yen Lin, who is now with the Fisheries Division, Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction Taipei, Taiwan (Formosa) has also expressed his agreement to the article being reproduced. I have added a few notes which, it is hoped, will be of some interest and may encourage others to take up this interesting subject in more detail.\n\nIn three places only is salt prepared from sea-water in the Colony namely at Tai O, a fishing village on Lantau island, Sha-taukok on the frontier in Starling Inlet and San Hui in Castle Peak Bay. Of these the first is the most important.\n\nThe salt marsh at Tai O, which occupies an area of about 70 acres and is enclosed by high dykes to prevent flooding at high tide or by storms, is owned by three companies, two of which are slightly bigger than the third. The annual production in 1938 amounted to about 25,000 piculs (1,488 tons) valued at about $27,500. A small portion is consumed locally, chiefly by the fishermen in the salting of fish, and all the rest is exported.\n\nThe companies lease the salines from Government and sub-let to individual salt-makers or hire them on a piece-wage basis in the form of shares in the profits. In the former case each salt-farmer leases a small saline of about 1/10 acre from the company, paying a rental of $2.00 per month, and endeavours to produce as much salt as possible from this limited area of land. The salt produced, however, must be sold to the company from which the saline has been leased. The company should be able to pay the farmer at a fixed price (50 cents per picul for 1938-1939), immediately on receiving the salt. On the average,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205393, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "148\n\nLIN SHU-YEN\n\n1939 “A slight (unspecified) fall in the output compared with 1938\" A very successful year as a result of a large increase in price.\n\nSome general figures for the New Territories salt-industry before 1912, not specifically related to Tai O, are given in G. N. Orme's \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" (para. 71) to be found in the H.K. Government's printed Sessional Papers for 1912. They are as follows:\n\n1900 30 cents a picul.\n\n1908 $1.20 a picul: \"salt makers came in for large profits\".\n\n1912 70 cents a picul: decrease \"chiefly owing to imports from the Northern Coasts\".\n\nOrme lists 37 acres of salt pans at Tai O, 32 at Castle Peak, 12 at Shun Wan near Tai Po and less than one acre at Sha Tau Kok. However, at Tai O at least, the area under production at that time was not the total acreage laid out for the purpose. At the survey and land settlement conducted a few years after 1899 a total of 107.07 acres was recorded as salt-pans. These were then (1903-04) five pans, the largest 37.39 acres and the smallest 5.66 acres. The area under production was, it appears, usually less than the total and would vary according to the demand for salt, and the market price. These details are taken from the Block Crown Lease and Survey Sheets in the District Office South.\n\nThere is an interesting passage on the manufacture of salt in the New Territories and the uses to which both it and imported salt was put at that time in Colonial Reports Annual, No. 314 Hong Kong, Report for 1899 (London, HMSO, 1901);\n\n\"Salt is manufactured at four places in the New Territory, the yearly output being about 4,466 tons, worth some $16,000, which in part supplies the local demands of the population, the fishing junks which keep the fish they catch while at sea in brine, and the various fishing stations where fish is salted and dried. A much larger quantity is, however, imported at certain places for the use of the fleets of fishing junks. The imported salt is also largely used for the salting and drying of fish, for which purpose it seems to be preferred to the locally manufactured salt. The manufacture of salt is an industry which is likely to increase and develop in the New Territory, and which is worthy of being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205408, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n163 \n\nter. \"The inhabitants, from our knowledge of their character”, wrote another, \"appeared to be industrious and obliging.. They seemed in general to have been very peaceably disposed, nor did they exhibit any marked approbation, or disapprobation, on their transfer to the British sway\".8 \n\nThe Villages To-day. There are two villages, Kau Wai and San Wai—the Old Walled Village and the New Walled Village (though only the first has traces of an enclosing wall). Both have seen better days. The inhabitants no longer own the fields (they were resumed in connection with anti-malarial schemes in 1934–36) and the villages are now places where people live and go out to work. Most of the present vegetable growers live in huts beside their plots and not in the old settlements. In the Old Village most of the old houses have gone and many of to-day's dwellings are temporary structures put up on the site of old houses that have fallen into a ruinous state and thereafter have been cleared away. There used to be a temple to Pak Tai, the God of the North, but this became ruined and fell down about 50 years ago.10 The New Village, on the other hand, still retains some of its old houses which, in their present form and decoration are upwards of 60 years old. Their tiled roofs, ornamented ends, moulded plaster friezes, decorated eave-boards and granite lintels are worth a glance, as being some of the few surviving examples of this type of village architecture left on Hong Kong Island. They are typical of the better class of village dwellings of South China, many other examples of which can be found in the New Territories. Also in the New Village is the former house of Sir Shou-son CHOW's family (see below), but this was rebuilt about 1930 and it is of interest only for the photographs and paintings it contains of the CHOW family. \n\nThe Villages Yesterday. The date of settlement is not certain, though Lobscheid, the German missionary who was also an Inspector of Schools for the Colonial Government, was told by the village head in the 1850s that the first ancestor had taken a lease from \"Tang the acknowledged owner of the soil\" in 1668.1 \n\nIn 1893 a group of villagers had to appear before the Squatter Board to help determine and register legitimate holdings. From the information then recorded, and happily preserved, the following facts emerge:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205552, "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-1968", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n$9\n\ni.e. great island, by the Chinese; the town Toongchung on the north shore opposite Chulocock I. is the largest on the island\"\n\nOn the other hand, it seems by this date that the fort was already abandoned since one of the British officers who came out to China for the hostilities of 1841-42, has this to say of it in an account of his experiences:\n\n14\n\nAt the S.W. part of Lantou (sic) we saw, on a height, the remains of an old walled fort, supposed to have been one of the haunts of the famous Coxinga, the pirate However, the fort could not have been abandoned for very long since a repair tablet inside the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau dated the 2nd summer month of the 25th year of Chia Ch'ing (11th June -9th July, 1820) records contributions by officers of the\n\n21\n\nas it is described thereon. Both these records can only apply to the Fan Lau fort.'5\n\nWhen the Hong Kong Government surveyors arrived at Fan Lau in 1904 after the New Territories were ceded to Britain, they found the fort still abandoned. In the Block Crown Lease Survey, it is described as \"old fort, ruins, waste\".16 It had probably not been re-occupied since the early part of the 19th century.\n\nIt can now be argued that the Kai Yik Kok fort is a Ming dynasty fort built sometime before 1573, possibly abandoned, but rebuilt again in 1730, captured by pirates and re-taken by govern-ment forces sometime between 1810 and 1815, and then refurbished, refortified, and garrisoned until some time before 1841-42, by which time it was already again abandoned.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Also known to the villagers as Yuen To Shan (#ll) or \"the hill from which to watch the arrival of distant boats\". There is a level spot high above the village, which, according to tradition, was used by observers to watch for incoming vessels proceeding up the Chu Kong or Pearl River estuary.\n\n2 The locations of these various strongpoints can be plotted from the text and maps in the Coastal Defence sections of the 1864 edition (map circa A.D. 1822) of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi\n\nthe 1819 edition of the San On Yuen Chi M £ M ; the 1827 edition of the Heung Shan Yuen Chi ₺ 4B #; and the 1800 edition of the O Mun Kei Leuk * 1938 #. The last three works contain maps of varying dates from earlier editions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205554, "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-1968", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n91\n\n11 A lorcha is a specialized fighting craft from Macau that combined a Western-style hull (for speed and maneuverability) with Chinese batten sails and rigging (for easier sail-handling and disguise).\n\n12 Charles F. Neumann, History of the Pirates (š), who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray, 1831) P. 58.\n\n13 J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide (Canton, Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848) pp. 70-71.\n\n14 The Last Year in China to the Peace of Nanking as sketched in Letters to his Friends by a Field Officer actively employed in that Country (2nd edition, revised, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1843) pp. 51-52.\n\n15 There is, in addition, the possibility that the fort had a temporary garrison in 1834 see the imperial directive given respecting defence and patrolling at Lantau and Macao quoted by J. L. Cranmer-Byng in his brief note \"An old fort at Tung Chung on Lantao Island” in J.H.K.B.R.A.S. Vol 3 (1963) pp. 144-145.\n\n16 Hong Kong Government. New Territories Administration. Block Crown Lease Demarcation Districts 322 and 327, Shek Sun village, Lantau Island.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY CITED\n\nJ. J. L. Duyvendak, \"Sailing directions of Chinese voyages\", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 230-237,\n\n\"The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century\", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412.\n\nLuis B. Gomes, Monografia de Macau, Macau, 1951.\n\nHongkong Government. A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hongkong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, Hongkong, 1960.\n\nLo Hsing-lin, Hongkong and its External Communications before 1842. Hongkong, 1963.\n\nJ. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide, Canton, 1848.\n\nCharles F. Neumann, The History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, translated from the Chinese original, London, 1831.\n\nCh'ing dynasty work:\n\nChinese Sources\n\nMo Pei Chi (AA) A.D. 1621\n\nThe provincial Gazetteer of Kwangtung:\n\nKwong Tung Tung Chi (♬✯ ih sk) 1864 edition\n\nThe District Gazetteers for the following:\n\nSan On Yuen Chi (%) 1819 edition\n\nTung Kwun Yuen Chi ✯✯✯) 1797 edition\n\nHeung Shan Yuen Chi (3) 1827 edition\n\nO Mun Kei Leuk (39 1932) 1800 edition", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205587, "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-1968", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "124\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\ntional Chinese rules of inheritance ensured the rapid redistribution of any accumulation of property. Estates could be created only by the injection of external capital derived from bureaucratic or commercial activity; and they were maintained by this device of incorporating them as collective holdings. Naturally enough, the ancestor in whose name an estate was incorporated was rarely, if ever, more remote than the father of the man who actually accumulated the land, so that no-one but his own and his brothers' sons and their descendants ever enjoyed the benefits of the property.\n\nEven if estates were concentrated in the hands of local, and not absentee landlords, the capital which created them was derived from external sources: and it may well be that the Treaty Ports stimulated this form of land-concentration by providing opportunities for the accumulation of capital on a greater scale than had ever been known before. There is evidence that this has happened in the New Territories: local men who prospered in business activities in Hong Kong city returned to their homes and invested the proceeds in land. It would have been instructive if Potter had told us exactly how Tang Jui-t'ai, ancestor G in the diagram, was able to accumulate his property. (It is not clear from the book whether he used the schedules of holdings drawn up in respect of private property by the Hong Kong Government a few years after the lease of the N.T. in 1898 which provide a unique source of socio-economic information about its many villages and form a base for later enquiries).*\n\nIt is worth commenting, in passing, on another feature of the lineage's collective land-holdings, in which it is possible to see an exacerbation of the pre-existing situation. From Potter's description of the private benefits accruing to members of the corporation who are in a position to exploit their control of the land, it is quite clear that by far the majority of the benefits go to a small group of powerful men - political leaders and racketeers: and the poorer villagers, even if they know of this manipulation of property in which they, rightfully, have as good a share, can do little about it. Potter himself points out that this was probably always so, but that it is only recently that economic conditions — i.e. the enormous increase in land values and rents — have allowed such great profits to be made.\n\n* These have been utilised by Göran Aijmer in his article between pp.74-81. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205738, "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-1969", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "38\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nMany of the points mentioned above can be further developed. What interaction was there between gentry leadership, she-hsüeh, and kinship? How were the 'catchment areas' of she-hsüeh established? Is there a relationship between these elements and marketing communities? What was the pattern of consultation which preceded the mobilization of militia? What sorts of relationships were invoked and in what order? How effective were militia as fighting units? How was logistic support provided? Such questions are relevant, not only to moments of opposition to the British, but also to a more complete understanding of social structure and organization in rural Kwangtung at this time. The resistance to the occupation of the New Territories constitutes a 'case-study' which, in conjunction with Wakeman's analysis, provides a further opportunity to attempt at least partial answers to these questions.\n\nDescription of the New Territory.\n\nThe New Territory, it was originally styled in the singular, though currently used in the plural, is an irregularly shaped peninsula jutting down from the coast of Kwangtung toward Hong Kong Island.37 The extremity of the peninsula had been ceded to Britain by the Convention of Peking, 1860. In 1898 an additional 356 square miles were added to the Colony's land (see map at rear of volume).* The territory is surrounded by water on all but its northern boundary and 33 islands account for about one-quarter of its area. Rugged hills and mountains range across the peninsula from northeast to southwest. The eastern section is, therefore, an area of hills and small valleys, while the western and northern sections comprise a large and fertile plain which extends across the Sham Chun river to the mountains in the north of the district.38\n\nJ. H. Stewart Lockhart, Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong at the time of the lease, estimated the population of the territory to be 100,000, living in 423 villages.39 This population was not evenly distributed. For instance, the western plain supported 23,020 people, living in 59 villages. The much larger eastern section of the territory is said to have had a population of only 20,870 living in 182 villages.40\n\n* Plate 21.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205814, "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-1969", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "114\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\n(in an attempt to use the physical structures as a basis for a random sampling frame), and reached the conclusion that in the conditions of New Territories villages, it is strictly undefinable. The local \"village houses\" are built in terraced rows: each \"house\" consists of a single \"room\", which, although generally divided by a partition into living and sleeping quarters, is regarded as the living accommodation proper to one married couple and their unmarried children. It is very rare for an old and widowed mother to share the same \"house\" as her son and daughter-in-law: I have not come across a single instance of more than one married couple, however closely related, sharing the same \"house\". The correspondence between room, house, and household is by no means exact: not only may one household (defined as a group of kin sharing a common budget and a single stove) be spread over a number of \"houses\", but where one household is occupying two adjacent \"houses\", an interconnecting door may be opened between them, turning them, to all intents and purposes, into a single \"house\" of two \"rooms\". It might almost indeed be more logical to regard each unit in a terrace as a \"room\", and define \"house\" as that combination of \"rooms\" which is occupied by a single household, even when the \"rooms\" are located in more than one terrace; but Chinese usage does not support this — each unit is called uk, never fong.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government surveyors who numbered all agricultural and building lots in the early years of this century evidently came up against a similar problem of definition; and there are inconsistencies in the system of numbering they adopted. Where two adjacent units were owned (and occupied?) by one man, they are numbered together as one (double-sized) house-lot. There is one row in Sheung Tsuen, however, where the living quarters of each house are separated from their kitchens by the narrow lane that gives access to them: it is clear from the pattern of ownership in 1905 (when the Block Crown Lease was drawn up), and from the way these structures have been passed down the generations since then, that each kitchen is linked with a single\n\n* I use the Meyer-Wempe Romanisation of Cantonese terms throughout.\n\n† Sheung Tsuen (1) in the Pak Heung (^#) where Mr. Nelson carried out his research. See p. 171 of A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, n.d, but 1960), Ed.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205815, "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-1969", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n115\n\nliving unit; and yet the surveyors gave each structure a separate number.\n\nChinese village houses are not strongly built: once left unoccupied and untended, they rapidly succumb to the ravages of typhoons without, white ants and weeds within. They may be used for a while for storage, but without care they soon lose even this function. How is one to decide at what stage of decrepitude a structure ceases to qualify as a house and becomes an insignificant ruin? More importantly, what criterion did the 1905 surveyors use? There seems little doubt that they failed to number structures that were ruined then (gaps in the sequence of numbers in a row have since been filled with \"New Grant Lots\"), and gave numbers to structures that were destined to crumble away altogether by 1968 (many lot numbers correspond to nothing discernible on the ground at present). Therefore, just as it would be wrong to suppose that the habitable structures now visible represent the sum of houses listed in Government Land Records, so it would be a mistake to regard the entries in the Block Crown Lease as an exact reflection of the number of habitable structures on the ground in 1905.6\n\nA further problem is raised by the fact that the use to which village structures are put changes over time: relatively few are built as cowsheds, but a great many do service as such (or as pigsties) at some stage, and are restored for human habitation when necessary. They may even serve a dual purpose. My own attempt at defining \"house\" ran aground when I discovered two households which had insufficient space to accommodate each husband's aged mother: one mother slept in one of the separate kitchens mentioned above, while the other shared a house with the family's pigs.\n\nFor the purposes of this article, it is not necessary to make a hard and fast definition of “village house”, but simply to point out that the present-day observer cannot be certain that his understanding of the term coincides with that of the 1905 surveyors: so that the apparent total of \"houses\" recorded in the Block Crown Lease may include a good many structures that were unfit for human habitation, or used for other purposes, at that time. What follows is an attempt to explain why at any one time many of the houses that are fit for human habitation are likely not to be in use.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205821, "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-1969", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n121\n\nof the two should in fact have proportionately more empty houses than its poorer neighbour22; it is not impossible that the sort of inefficiencies in the descent system that I have described whereby the swelling of a descent line in one generation may leave the next with more house-property than it needs or can redistribute — may account for this anomaly.*\n\nH. G. H. NELSON.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. Göran Aijmer, \"Being Caught by a Fishnet: On Fengshui in South-eastern China\", J.H.K.B.R.A.S., Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 74-81.\n\n2. Field data drawn on in this paper are derived from a period of work in Sheung Tsuen, Pat Heung, from June 1967 to October 1968. I was employed as a Research Officer of the London School of Economics, on a project financed by a grant made to Professor Maurice Freedman by the Social Science Research Council. Much of the information from the Hong Kong Government's land records was collected by my wife, whose fare to Hong Kong was provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies, financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation. I am very glad to acknowledge their generosity.\n\n3. See for example J. E. Spenser, \"The Houses of the Chinese\", Geographical Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1947, pp. 254-273.\n\n4. Cf. J. W. Hayes, ‘A Chinese Village on Hong Kong Island Fifty Years Ago Tai Tam Tuk, Village Under the Water', in I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 33.\n\n5. Block Crown Lease, Demarcation Districts Nos. 112 and 114, 1905; various Memorials in Yuen Long District Office; and ‘A-Roll' volume X.14. I am most grateful to the New Territories Administration for their courtesy in allowing me access to the invaluable information contained in their Land Records.\n\n6. The current records conceal the difference between inhabited structures and \"house-lots' (Crown Rent being assessed on the site rather than the structure) - a difference of which the villagers are aware. Many of them, when asked how many houses they own, will say, \"so many houses and so many lots \"(uk-tel_£)\". It seems to me possible that some villagers may, in 1905, have been far-sighted ---or fortunate enough to register both their houses and their ruined lots, thereby avoiding the expense and complication of obtaining a New Grant Lot when they wanted to rebuild on an old site.\n\n* Groups of houses, bigger and more durable than usual, have also been built as a form of long-term investment (and prestige expenditure) by particularly wealthy men; but their hopes of producing enough sons and grandsons to justify this deliberate over-production of houses are often sadly unfulfilled.\n\n* On the subject of this article see also Mr. Hayes' note at pp. 158-160.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205850, "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-1969", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "150 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\n“Bethesda\" was forced to close down due to the unfortunate consequences of the First World War, and as yet, I have not been able to locate the old \"Bethesda\". Where was its exact location? Are early Hong Kong Government records regarding the lease or sale of land still available for the period concerned (1860/61) and maps showing the land distribution and property rights? \n\nBeing concurrently pastor of the present German-speaking Evangelical-Lutheran Congregation in Hong Kong and chairman of the Ebenezer School and Home for the Blind, which branched off from \"Bethesda\" in 1897 specializing in the care of blind girls, I have a double interest in the question of locating the former \"Bethesda\", an institution connected with the history both of Ebenezer and our German-speaking Evangelical-Lutheran Congregation in Hong Kong. \n\nHong Kong, 1968. \n\nALBRECHT PLAG \n\nTHE COMET OF 1532 \n\nRecently, while working on the biography of Feng En (1491 - 1571) I encountered an interesting problem about a comet. But first let me make a few remarks about the man. \n\nHe came from a family settled in Hua-t'ing, southwest of Shanghai, which had originally belonged to the military category. Somehow he managed to get a sound education and achieve the advanced degree, or chin-shih, in 1526, and receive the appointment of censor in Nanking. While serving in that capacity a comet appeared on September 2, 1532, and continued to illuminate the sky for 115 days, disappearing (according to the section on astronomy of the Ming shih 27/11a) on December 26. This was no ordinary phenomenon. The comet later known in Europe as Halley's, had appeared just the year before (August 5 to September 7, 1531) and lasted only 34 days. The young emperor, Chu Hou-ts'ung (born 1507), and his entire court took it seriously. According to the theology of the day, which went back at least to the second century before our era, and probably many hundreds of years earlier, someone in high office must be to blame. Chang Fu-ching \n\n(1475 - 1539), senior grand secretary, probably following a nudge from the throne, resigned. Feng En, along with a number of other officials, did not consider his resignation enough.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205856, "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-1969", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "156\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nor gingall. That on the right is badly placed; its view is obstructed by a great rock, which possibly was not there when the wall was built.\n\nOther loopholes are set at intervals of 12 feet in the wall all along, and are very roughly and crudely made and badly placed. Only one or two command the path in fact.\n\nImmediately beside the stair leading to the gate platform once stood a small guard house, fragments of the red tiles of which can still be seen. The lines of its east and north walls (of ‘chunam') can still be traced. A fragment of an earthenware bowl embedded in decomposed granite was seen, and other fragments of pottery were seen on the ground. The East wall is about 12 feet long; the other say 6 feet. The South wall foundation of the guard house, of stone, is in place.\n\nWALTER SCHOFIELD\n\nREMOVAL OF VILLAGES FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS: ANOTHER EXAMPLE FROM LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG\n\nThe 1963 Journal included notices of village removals for which Fung Shui reasons were given by those concerned.* These instances were all taken from South Lantau Island in the Hong Kong region of South Kwangtung. Yet another example from this area has recently come to my notice. It was unsuspected by me until a planned walk over the old coastal track led me to make enquiries locally about some ruined houses that lay beside it.\n\nAfter centuries of use this footpath was replaced in 1956 by a motor road on a different route. The removal of the village took place about sixteen years before the new road made the old track redundant. The two events were therefore not connected in any way.\n\nThe village was the Hakka settlement of Shan Shek Wan (*) which had 19 houses at the time the Hong Kong Government surveyed the settlement shortly after the lease of the New\n\n*JHKBRAS, Vol.3(1963) pp.143-144.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205873, "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-1969", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n173 \n\nand their connection with the militia movement rather confusing. (See pp. 39-40 and 62-64 and Appendix II.) It seems that they could be long-established schools with pupils and teachers whose buildings were from time to time used by the local gentry for meeting purposes when such matters as local defence might be considered; or could be restored or newly set up schools which, at the time, were intended as meeting houses, drill halls and armouries first and as academic institutions after, because this was a convenient 'cover'. It also appears that they could be local schools (she-hsüeh) or charity schools (i-hsüeh) the two being apparently of much the same academic level at this period. It would have been useful to have had more detailed information on some of these establishments.\n\nWriting in Hong Kong, there is one example of a large charity school in Kowloon which may serve to illuminate the position a little. This was the Lung Chun Yee Hok (**龍津義學**) in Kowloon City (九龍城), one of the sub-administrative centres of the San On District. This building was erected in 1847 and fortunately the text of the wall tablet commemorating its establishment has been preserved, though the stone itself is now buried under concrete laid after a fire. This indicates that the school project originated with local officials who each contributed money to assist its progress and (reading between the lines) encouraged local gentry to participate. At this time its stated object was 'to stimulate the morale of local inhabitants and set a good example for the foreigners to follow'. Whether this school served as a headquarters for local militia in the 1840s and 1850s is not known; but it is reported that at the end of the 19th century just before the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898, this school, in addition to being a reputable academic institution, was also the meeting place of officials and local gentry when there were matters to discuss. Why and how often these meetings took place can, at this distance of time, hardly now be determined but it is likely that the two-fold use of the premises, and the interest of officials and gentry in both sides of its activities, paralleled those of the she-hsüeh.\n\nIn an earlier review of this book (Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1967, p. 728) Dr. Hugh Baker asks \"But of what area of organisation was the local school a manifestation? Was it based on a marketing area or on an administra-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206278, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n89\n\nFukienese merchants to settle in Hong Kong. Several other merchants appear on the earliest of the élite lists indicating their presence in the first decade of the Colony's history.\n\nIn 1852 \"Cun-wo A Kwi, merchant\" contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. This is Chow Aki* of the firm Cong-wo, which had been established in the Lower Bazaar in 1842, having a branch at Canton. In 1849 he bought the lease of the Central Market, holding it until 1857. He became a large investor in real estate, but sold out most of his property in 1866 and retired to Macao.\n\nA merchant who survived the pitfalls of commerce in early Hong Kong was Wong Ping1. He is named as a silk merchant on the land-owners' petition of 1848, but he was one of Hong Kong's first industrialists in that he owned a rope walk beyond the western end of the Lower Bazaar. He was one of three trustees to hold Inland Lot 361 in Taipingshan on behalf of the Chinese community. The lot was granted in 1851 and upon it was built a temple \"for the reception of Tablets to the memory of... deceased countrymen\".22 The building was used, however, not only for memorial tablets but also as a depository for those who were about to die, following established Chinese custom. When this use came to the notice of the European community it was shocked. The reaction and public discussion which followed resulted in Government allocating a grant from the revenues of the gambling monopoly to the Chinese community for the erection of a suitable hospital to be known as Tung Wah. Wong Ping was not a member of the Organizing Committee of the Hospital, though he was on the Kai Fong Committee for 1872. He died in 1887. Wong Yue Yee alias Wong Yick Bun, of the Chun Cheong Wing Nam Pak Hong, a Director of the Tung Wah in 1872, may have been a relative as Wong Ping is mentioned in 1881 as a managing partner of the Chun Cheung Hong for some twenty years. He also was associated with the Tsui Shing firm and the Tuck Mee Hong.\n\nIn the 1850s the Taiping Rebellion upset the social and economic structures of China. The changes in China were reflected in changes in Hong Kong. The Taiping threat upon Canton created a refugee group which sought in Hong Kong more stable conditions. Some were wealthy and brought their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206283, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nChinese society, were eager customers. Purchased degrees was an easy way to acquire a social status which had previously been reserved for the scholars, government officials and gentry. The account of the Governor's visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878 published in The Hongkong Government Gazette states that \"there were present nearly three hundred influential Chinese residents from all classes of the community. Of those present some fifty or sixty were in their mandarin costumes.\"\n\n**\n\nWhen the second Sino-British War broke out in the late 1850s, the foreign firms at Canton moved down to Hong Kong bringing with them their compradores. This influx was an impetus to the already significant role compradores were assuming as leaders in the Chinese community. The compradores of the old-established Hong Kong firms formed the core of this leadership.\n\nIn the early days of the Colony the two leading foreign firms were Jardine, Matheson and Company and Dent and Company. One would expect, of course, that their compradores would be among the elite of the Chinese community. The earliest compradore of Jardine's that I can definitely identify is Ng Chook alias Ng Choong Foong alias Sooi Tong. At the time of the opening of the Tung Wah Hospital the newspaper account states that he was the oldest man on the committee, although his name does not appear on the official list of committee members. He died some months after the opening. His estate was administered by his son Ng Seng Kee (A), who was living in Shanghai. The first date I find for Ng Chook in Hong Kong is his purchase of the lease of the Central Market in 1848. I do not know if he is connected with Ng Sow and Ng Lok, both compradores originating from Macao, who bought and sold a great deal of real estate from 1842 to 1847. Nor if Ng Wei alias Ng Wing Fui (**) alias Ng Ping Un (e), who was a compradore for Jardines at Foochow in the 1860s and subsequently at Hong Kong, was a near relative of Ng Chook. Ng Wei was a member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee in 1883 and died in 1897 at Canton.\n\nIn 1861, two of the compradores of Dent and Company, the rival of Jardines, provided capital for a significant real estate development in Hong Kong. The large property where Dent and Company had their stables and residences for their Taipans was bought up by Chiu Wing Chuen and Yeong Lan Ko along with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206296, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n107\n\nHowever with the financial assistance of his wife's share in the estate of Ho Fuk Tong, he was able to study law in England. He returned to Hong Kong to practice law and in time was appointed a Magistrate. In 1880, Governor Hennessy appointed him as the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council. He served for two years, but then resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung Chung at Tientsin. In 1897 he was appointed the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and continued serving his country in other posts of responsibility until his death in 1922.\n\nA classmate and good friend of Wu Ting Fang, named Chan Ayin (陳海亭) alias Chan Oi Ting was one of thirty representatives of the Chinese community to call on Governor Sir Arthur Kennedy to welcome him to Hong Kong in 1872. He is also named among fourteen who, dressed in their official robes as mandarins, welcomed the Governor on his visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878. He was baptized while a student at St. Paul's College and, like most of the others whose career we are considering in this section, after completing his education he entered Government service. He was connected with the Magistrate's Court, but in 1871 he left to become a reporter for the China Mail. When the Mail began publishing the Wah Tsz Yat Po in 1872, he was head of this department. In 1877 he surrendered his lease of the paper but continued with The China Mail for a short period after. He then gave up his career in journalism to join the staff of the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the United States. As a member of the staff, he was appointed Consul-General in Havana, Cuba. He continued to serve in the Chinese diplomatic service for ten years, but then returned to China where he became director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company and of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Administration. He died at Shanghai in 1905.44\n\nWhile editor of the Wah Tsz Yat Po, Chan Oi Ting was also instrumental in organizing and managing the Chinese Printing and Publishing Company which bought the press and type of the London Mission Press in 1872. This company began publishing the Tsun Wan Yat Po (Universal Circulating Herald) in February 1874. It advertised itself as the \"first daily newspaper ever issued under purely native auspices\". The paper was registered under the name of Wong Tao (£), a scholar of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206355, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "156\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nthe regular army and militia during the South African War 1899-1902 and was reorganised as the Territorial Force (TA) in the Army Reforms of 1908. This movement influenced events in many colonies, and in the future Dominions of Canada and Australia. Hong Kong was thus no exception to the rule, particularly as, in her case, there were recurrent times of insecurity and uncertainty in the years to come.\n\n—\n\nAnother factor in the emergence of Hong Kong Volunteers at various times, and especially in its continuous manifestation from 1893 onwards, was the concern shown for Imperial Defence. Besides being an important port for the trade of and with China, Hong Kong was a naval base for coaling and refitting warships and was considered to be a vital link in the defence and maintenance of communications with the eastern parts of Britain's far-flung empire. In the 1880s there was much talk of its security which led first to the construction and arming of new batteries for coast defence at much cost—the Lei Yue Mun Fort dates from this time—and in the late 1890s the demand for the lease of the New Territories was made partly on defence grounds. This concern is reflected in the 1893 Volunteer Ordinance which made provision for two different bodies, the ordinary Volunteers—already well known to Hong Kong—and the Coast Defence Volunteers, who are here mentioned for the first time. (This Act also made the Hong Kong Volunteers subject to the Army Act whilst on active service in the same way as the Volunteers in England, and placed the Corps under the supervision of the Military Authorities).12 Imperial Defence was also later responsible, in 1902, for the conversion of the Corps, then comprising a field battery, machine gun and infantry companies, into garrison artillery which led to dissatisfaction among members and some resignations.13\n\nThe final stimulus at the end of the century was the enthusiasm and inspiration derived from being part of the British Empire which reached its emotional and material zenith in the decade between Queen Victoria's Silver and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897. An echo of this time remains in the Great Queen's\n\n11 S.P., 1884-85, p. 83.\n\n12 Section 18 of No. 6 of 1893 and Han., 1893, p. 70,\n\n13 Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 277.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206405, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "196\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge, old temples in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. it is not under the management of the Chinese Temples Committee but is exempted from the provisions of the Chinese Temples Ordinance No. 7 of 1928. At that time it was allowed to remain in the hands of the private family to eight of whose members a Crown Lease had been issued on 14th May, 1897. This was the Tai (...) clan formerly of Po Kong Village, Kowloon which was demolished during the Japanese occupation to make way for an extension to the Kai Tak airfield. The temple remains in the hands of their descendants to this day.\n\nJust when the Tai clan began the connection and whether they were responsible for the foundation and successive reconstruction cannot now be established for certain, as no written records remain. A document that might have helped, their clan record, (...) was lost during the Japanese occupation, and we are left with oral tradition. Conversations with the present manager and with an old village woman, a Tai, born in 1887 at Po Kong, gives information that the family are Hakkas from Tam Shui district, not far from Hong Kong. When they came to Po Kong to settle is not now known, but it was certainly before the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. The story goes that members of the family used to come over to Hong Kong Island to cut grass. They found an image of Tin Hau among rocks on the sea-shore where the temple now stands—the coast-line has since been altered by reclamation—and built a modest shelter for it. By degrees it became a popular shrine with boat people and others, especially at the goddess' birthday on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. A proper temple building was erected later by the Tai family who are said to have collected subscriptions for the purpose, leading in time to the major reconstruction of 1868.\n\n―\n\nThere is some doubt in my mind whether the bell now in the temple was cast specially for it. The Chinese characters on it do not mention that it was for the Tin Hau Temple. Alternatively, though the bell may have been made for this temple, the Tais may not have been the founders, despite their traditions, as not one of the five persons who presented it, and whose names appear on it, was a Tai.\n\nThe Crown Lease of 1897 was issued to eight persons, and from what the old lady has said it appears that this followed a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206509, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "# THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TSUNGLI YAMEN\n\n51\n\nand the proficient ones should receive official rank. When the Banner students are thoroughly able to understand the written and spoken languages the practice should cease. We request that instructions be issued to the Russian school to draw up appropriate regulations for the study of the spoken and written Russian language and zealously to supervise their lessons. Whenever anyone studying a foreign language succeeds in mastering it we will memorialize requesting that he be given ample reward so that there will be no slackening with the passage of time.\n\n6.\n\nWe request that instructions be issued that monthly reports be sent to the Tsungli Yamen concerning native and foreign trade as well as foreign newspapers so that we may have information on which to act. We note that the main concern of the newly concluded treaties with foreign countries is with trade; therefore whether trade conditions are peaceful or not is of vital importance to each locality. In the future, lest any information on whether or not Chinese and foreign trade is flowing smoothly in the old and new ports should escape the notice of the imperial commissioner, instructions should be sent to the Manchu garrison commanders, the prefect of Peking, governors-general and governors that they should memorialize monthly according to the facts, and at the same time notify the imperial commissioner and the superintendent of trade. This should not be regarded as a mere formality and the information should not in the slightest border on the fictitious. In handling foreign affairs it is all the more necessary to have full knowledge of the true situation, and only then can one succeed in vital matters.\n\nIn recent years, at times of crisis, spies (ch'en-t'an) have been used, but what was obtained was often nothing more than rumours and we failed to get detailed and accurate information. In managing matters in this manner it was impossible to act effectively. Although foreign countries' newspapers are not necessarily entirely trustworthy nevertheless by sifting the information one can obtain a general idea of what is happening. These have been published under various names in Canton, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. It is expected that they will also publish newspapers in the newly opened ports. We wish to request that instructions be sent to the imperial commissioner and the superintendent of trade and also to the Manchu garrison commanders, the prefect of Peking, governors-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206526, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "68\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nLondon. His official rank corresponded with that of a Lieutenant-Governor, so that he received a salute of only fifteen guns compared with the seventeen of first-class Crown-Colony Governors, such as that of Hong Kong. But, as R.F. Johnston pointed out: 'his actual powers, though exercised in a more limited sphere, are greater than those of most Crown-Colony Governors, for he is not controlled by a (Legislative) Council.'33 Lockhart's official duties, which of course kept him extremely busy, were nevertheless limited in nature, and the tempo of life in the Territory did not change dramatically during his tenure of office, for after the lease was signed, little was done with the Territory. At first, it was thought that the port could be transformed into a fortified naval base like Hong Kong, but to do so would have been extremely costly and would have involved the construction of a long breakwater and extensive dredging work in the harbour. In fact, the port was never utilised as a strategic naval base; it became merely a naval rest centre and a place where the British China Squadron lay at anchor when it paid its annual summer visit to North China. A few visitors also arrived from time to time and stayed at its European-style hotel, and an English school34 attracted boys from China, Japan, and Hong Kong.\n\nLockhart was administering a mainly agricultural region, equivalent in area to a small-sized Chinese district magistracy (hsien). The leased Territory, with its population composed principally of fairly well-to-do peasant farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and artisans, was in composition like that of the New Territories which he had left. Lockhart did not feel called upon to alter drastically the life of this old, settled community, nor indeed was it the intention of the Colonial Office that he should. The Order-in-Council under which British rule in Weihaiwei was inaugurated stated: 'In civil cases between natives, the Court should be guided by Chinese or other native law and custom, so far as any such law or custom is not repugnant to justice and morality.'\n\nLockhart attempted, then, to preserve as much of the fabric of Chinese society as was possible. In his report for 1902, he wrote: \"With the policing of the territory at Hong Kong as a guide, it might have been thought that this question (the maintenance of peace and good order) was one easy of solution; but it required no long residence here to reveal that the conditions existing in the new territory of Hong Kong and those of Wei-Hai-Wei are widely different. In the former case, the natives had lived for about half a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206609, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n151\n\nthe level of the commercial interests of Chinese merchants of the time but also because of the extent to which it figured in a scandal over bribery by Government officials and the victimisation of a Government servant who later became the embittered editor of one of the Colony's newspapers, the Friend of China.\n\nThough, from an historical point of view, the former matters are far more important, the two are not wholly distinct for the Government servant in question acquired property interests in the market.\n\nAfter Sir John Davis let the market franchise go to the highest bidder, he granted the franchise holder a short lease on the premises, thereby effectively changing the relationship of the market operator to the Government. Accordingly, the lot on which the market stood, an area of 37,800 square feet, was leased on 1 July 1845 to Hwei Aqui at a rent of $4,800 per annum (about £1,000). This area, comprising the whole of the land between the shore-line and the Queen's Road, was larger than that of the original market and allowed for the houses and shops which had been built between the market buildings and the road.\n\nIt is at this point that the scene becomes confused for Hwei decided to develop the property further and had to borrow money to do so. Between the date of the lease and mid-1847 when Hwei died, he executed several transactions, some of which are recorded in the records of the Government Land Office as Mortgages, some of which are not. The earliest was on 6 August 1845 when he borrowed $1,500 for one month from the estate of a Chinese, Tong Kim-sing who had been in business as a ‘contractor' until his death in 1844, at the staggering rate of interest of 10% per month. The satisfaction of this mortgage is not recorded in the Land Office but it is known that the administrator of the deceased's estate left the colony about this time and the defect might have been one of form only. About two months later, on 12 October 1845, Hwei borrowed from Ying Wing-kee, described as a ‘compradore' and one of the only two Chinese to have bought land at the sale of Crown Land on 22 January 1844, $2,800 for a period of 18 months and at a rate of repayment which worked out at an interest rate of almost 6% per month. Hwei was, therefore, deeply in debt before the year was out. Before his death in 1847, there follows one further transaction which was imperfectly recorded at the time. On 13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206610, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "152\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nNovember 1846, he assigned the lot to Foong Achi (otherwise Attai) for an unspecified amount. The transaction was recorded as an absolute assignment and this led Tarrant, then Clerk of Deeds in the Land Office and to whom we shall shortly return, to add a note on the lease register to the effect that the leaseholder's name could not be altered in the Lease Register until the mortgage encumbrances were cleared. Though Foong later claimed that the transaction was an absolute assignment, with $1,000 as the consideration, Tarrant rejected this on the ground that the document of assignment was a forgery.10 But in 1848 Foong re-assigned the property to Hwei's administrator, stating that all sums owing were satisfied. This is sufficient to show that, when the market passed to Hwei's brother Afoon on his death in 1847, the picture was already complicated. It was to become more so.\n\nHwei Afoon seems to have felt the need for more cash for reasons which will soon become apparent and he entered into a transaction which is very difficult to understand, though he may have done so under duress. On 28 June 1847, he assigned his interest (as administrator) to two others on trust for various purposes. These two named persons were, first, Chow Aoan who, at the time was compradore to the Government Treasury and, as such, a powerful man. He already had extensive property interests in the Chinese parts of the town and was to extend them in the years to come. The other person was Le Quong-cheong about whom less is known. He described himself on one occasion as a 'bookseller' but certainly also lent money.\n\nThe purpose of the transaction must have been to secure the repayment of monies borrowed by Hwei Afoon. Ying Wing-kee had transferred to Le on 19 June 1847 his interest in the property, the transaction being memorialised as a mortgage to secure the repayment of $2,400 owing to Le by Ying, but it may have in fact been a transfer to Le of Ying's interest under the mortgage of 12 October 1845. As shall be seen, however, Ying retained some interest in the market. The deed of assignment of 28 June 1847 required the trustees (Chow and Le) to pay the Crown Rent twice a month. Then they were to permit Ying Wing-kee to receive the rents of the nine shops fronting on the Queen's Road, showing that Ying retained some interest though precisely what it was is not clear. Hwei Afoon himself was to be paid $100 per month and the trustees were to pay", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206611, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n153\n\nto themselves, in the case of Le, interest at 4% on the principal sum of $2,400 (the figure given in the deal between Ying and Le) and, in the case of Chow, at 4% on the sum of $1,000. All disbursements were to be met by them and any balance after all these purposes had been satisfied was to be put to reducing the principal outstanding to them. Once the capital sums were repaid, then the property was to be reconveyed to Hwei Afoon for a nominal $5.\n\nThus, by mid-1847, four different people had different interests in the market. There remains one other who so far has not yet appeared on the scene.\n\nHwei Afoon was a builder and contracted with the Government for some work on Government property at Stanley (Chek Chu). He completed the work and received an order for payment drawn on the Treasury. When he went to the Treasury to collect his money, the Treasury Compradore (Chow Aoan) told him that he would deduct $750 which was owing to Colonel Caine's Compradore (named Lo Een-teen) in respect of the Market. Afoon knew that his brother, Hwei Aqui, had agreed, in consideration of influence being exerted on his behalf to secure the lease of the Market, to make a payment of $150 per month to Lo Een-teen and also to allow him to select meat and produce in the Market without payment. The point was that Lo represented that he could persuade his master, Caine, then the Colonial Secretary, to give the lease to Hwei; apparently made these payments and after his death Afoon paid $400 to have the lease transferred to him but demurred at the payment of $150 per month, considering no doubt that there was little that Lo could do about it if he did not pay. But he was reckoning without Chow Aoan who attempted to dock the arrears of 'squeeze' unpaid by Afoon.\n\nThe arrangement of 28 June 1847 may have been an attempt by the parties to reach an 'honourable' solution. But matters did not stop there for Afoon unadvisedly went to the Surveyor General's Office to complain that he was not receiving all the money due to him under his Government contract and, no doubt, explained why. He told his story to William Tarrant, the Clerk of Deeds and general factotum in the office of the Surveyor General.\n\nTarrant had had a mixed career since arriving in China a few years previously. He had first come as a steward on board ship and, on the establishment of the colony, was able to secure the position of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206615, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n157\n\npay during his suspension to the date at which his post was abolished, but he could do no more. The injustice was acknowledged but, as the Friend of China put it, it was \"but miserable redress in a pecuniary light.\"32\n\nTarrant's connection with the Central Market ceased on 28 December 1849 when he assigned his quarter share of the profits to Chow Aqui, one of Hong Kong's biggest Chinese businessmen at that time.33 Chow had extensive property interests in the Lower Bazaar area, had run Hong Kong's first theatre and had had the opium monopoly for a few years. Curiously enough, allegations had been made a few years previously that he was able to use Government police officers to protect his monopoly and Caine was inevitably linked with the allegation. The lease of the Market came to an end in 1850, the term being expired but Chow was given a renewal for two years from 10 March 1851 at the same rent and the lease was further renewed on two subsequent occasions.35\n\n16\n\nThis account illustrates two quite diverse matters. First, it shows the extent to which Chinese in Hong Kong adapted themselves to the institutional demands of a British colony. Although the whole system of law was alien to them, the transactions memorialised in the Land Office show the extent to which the possibilities of English Law were utilised to their commercial advantage, even though on some occasions it is difficult to follow at this remove the complexity of their dealings. If they did sometimes find themselves on the losing side in the Supreme Court, there were a significant number of Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong itself whose names recur over the years and who were, presumably, successful. Several have been named in this article but there were perhaps about a dozen or so in this category.* They, in addition to the Europeans, learnt to take advantage of the British system.\n\n37\n\nThis account also touches on the problem of the integrity of the colonial Government of the time. While it is true that the Chinese who came to the island may not have expected what the European would have regarded as an incorrupt government, it is also true that the circumstances of the colony in its early days gave opportunities for corruption which some were not slow to use. Though there was little at this time or later that could definitely be proved against\n\n* On this subject see Rev. Carl T. Smith's article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" at pp. 74-115 of the 1971 Journal. (Ed).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206617, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n159\n\nforces during hostilities against China to settle and allotted them small lots on the waterfront. The Upper Bazaar which lay in the area of Graham and Stanley Streets consisted also of relatively small areas granted to Chinese who were presumptively useful to the nascent colony as tradesmen. The Lower Bazaar was almost totally destroyed in the great fire at the end of 1851 and the Upper Bazaar was removed in 1844 and its inhabitants resettled in Taipingshan.\n\n3 See Gordon to Pottinger, 10 February 1844 [CO129/V/f.141].\n\n+ Evidence given by Colonel Malcolm to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China, answer to question 4633.\n\n5 Davis sought to let as many monopolies go as possible to private individuals for what they were prepared to give. Thus, in addition to the markets, he let out also opium, salt, and quarrying monopolies.\n\n6 Lease Register Volume C, f.94. The lot was leased as Marine Lot 38. The lease registers referred to are the Registers of the Land Office in which all dealings in crown land were recorded. The actual transactions themselves are also recorded separately as 'Memorials' and reference is made to them by number. The numbering was done according to the order in which they were registered. I am indebted to the Registrar General of the Government of Hong Kong for allowing me access to the records of the Land Office and for permission to publish material derived from that source.\n\n7 Memorial 122.\n\n8 Memorial 143.\n\n9 Memorial 258.\n\n10 Friend of China, 7 July 1847.\n\n11 Memorial 383.\n\n12 In this article, the romanisations found in the Land Office records are used even where they do not correspond to those either in the Wade-Giles system or current usage.\n\n13 Memorial 304.\n\n14 Ibid.\n\n15 Memorial 345.\n\n16 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n17 Friend of China, 14 July 1847.\n\n18 And in so doing, incidentally, infringing the provision of the Treaty of Nanking, 1842, which allowed British subjects to proceed only to the \"Treaty Ports\" and to nowhere else in China.\n\n19 Friend of China, 14 July 1847. Tam Achoy's market was known as the Kwang Yuen and in the disastrous fire in December 1851, the fifty-one houses which comprised the market were destroyed: see Hong Kong Register, January 1852. Tam was referred to a few years later as the \"most respectable Chinaman\" who made a practice of going into the witness box to speak for the character of accused persons. He remained in Hong Kong until his death in the 1870's and was one of the founders of the Tung Wah organisation, a charitable body still functioning in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n21 Hong Kong Register, 19 October 1847; Friend of China, 23 October 1847 and 18 December 1847.\n\n22 The Editor of the Friend (John Carr) claimed to have seen Hwei's accounts and that they revealed the \"squeeze\" payment.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206618, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "160\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\n23 A writ of fieri facias (abbreviated to fi. fa.) is the means whereby a judgment is executed against the property of a person found liable to another in damages in a civil suit. It enables his property to be sold to meet the sums awarded against him. The writ was frequently employed at this time in suits for arrears of Crown Rent.\n\n24 Memorial 359.\n\n25 When property is mortgaged to secure sums advanced by the mortgagee to the mortgagor, the latter is said to have an 'equity of redemption'. The purpose of this is to make certain that his interest in relation to that of the lender is kept in balance, so that the lender can always be forced to release the security when the reasons for giving it are no longer present, i.e., when the sums advanced are repaid. The equity of redemption is treated as an item of property which the mortgagor is free to dispose of—it is the right to reconveyance when the security is discharged or repayment of the loan.\n\n26 Under the Ordinance No. 3 of 1844, all transactions in and concerning land, as well as judgments, wills and so on which involve land, must be registered in the Land Office. A transaction is quite effective even if the Ordinance is not complied with but subsequent purchasers or persons having dealings with property automatically have notice of any registered transaction which will therefore take precedence even over prior unregistered transactions.\n\n27 Ong Chok may in fact have been Ong Lok. The latter frequently dealt in property and is described in Memorials as a 'compradore'. He had extensive property interests in the Taipingshan district.\n\n28 Memorial 384.\n\n29 Memorial 385.\n\n30 Memorial 418.\n\n31 The Chinese used then and still do use to a certain limited extent a lunar calendar.\n\n32 Friend of China, 23 June 1849.\n\n33 Memorial 541.\n\n34 Lease Register Vol. C, f. 219.\n\n35 Lease Register Vol. F, ff. 38 and 47.\n\n36 It was suggested that Chinese merchants were not averse to bribery because they were accustomed to bribing Chinese Government officials.\n\n37 But it should be noted that there are a good many lots in the Taipingshan area in which there were no recorded dealings for a good many years. It is unlikely that there were no dealings at all. It is more likely that the dealings were simply not recorded.\n\n38 Towards the end of the 1840's and in the early 1850's the number of non-residents investing in property in the colony rose markedly, most of them coming from those districts of Kwantung Province adjoining Hong Kong and Macao. The Taiping rebellion may have caused some part of the flow of capital.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206665, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n“LETTING GO THE WOODEN GOOSE”\n\n207\n\nLI Mau-ying (*), posthumous name Man-kan (††), an official of the Sung dynasty who graduated chin-shih in 1226, was given an estate on Lantau, one of the larger islands of the Hong Kong region.* His rights continued through succeeding dynasties but were mostly extinguished at the land settlement that accompanied the lease of the New Territories to Britain at the end of the 19th century. A curious story is linked with the Li's ownership of their Lantau estates, indicating that this grant of land may have been given in a novel fashion. According to a villager of Sha Lo Wan, Lantau Island (1913-1962) who had an interest in local tales, the emperor was so pleased with Li that he told him to put a wooden duck on the sea and that he could have whichever land it touched.\n\nThere is an echo of this in Cecil Clementi's minute to the Colonial Secretary of 16th June 1904 in a file about the Tang clan's claim to Tsing Yi Island (CSO1903/8551).† Without there being any apparent reason or preparation for making such a statement—probably because a whole section was omitted by the copier—one paragraph suddenly states 'For the method of \"letting go the wooden goose\" see minute of this date in N.T. 7466/03'. This file is unfortunately no longer in existence.\n\nCan any reader explain this 'system' of deciding upon which land to include in a grant?\n\nHong Kong, 1972.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nPROGRAMME NOTES FOR THE VISIT TO POKFULAM, HONG KONG ISLAND, 29TH JULY, 1972‡\n\nToday's visit is to a part of Hong Kong island that has not been subject to the same amount of change as other districts. Even today\n\n* For the Li family see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963 (this is a part-translation of the Chinese version published in 1959), p. 73 and plate 20 and his article \"This Sung Wang T'ai and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Sea Shore in the Last Days of the Sung\" in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. III, No. 2 (1958) at p. 212 (English text) and note 29 (Chinese text), with Plate XI.\n\n† Located in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong.\n\n‡ Printed here for the convenience of members who were unable to join the party on this occasion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206770, "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-1973", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "The Kam Tin Gates\n\nPeter Wesley-Smith*\n\nBehind the parked tourist buses at Kam Tin, behind the blue-rinsed American ladies and the orderly rows of Japanese camera-clickers and the outstretched palms of Hakka crones, the adventurous visitor will find a plaque on the Kat Hing Wai wall telling the story of the famous pair of gates which adorn the entrance. It is the purpose of this brief article to amplify the few facts engraved on the plaque.1\n\nKam Tin is the principal settlement of the New Territories Tangs and consists of several separate villages. Kat Hing Wai is the oldest: built in the 15th century it has been reasonably well preserved and is now a major tourist attraction.2 The road from Shek Wu Hui to Yuen Long separates it from Tai Hong Wai, a sister village whose walls have been partly demolished and which boasts no gates.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government knew little about neighbouring San On in June 1898, when a large slice of the Chinese county was transferred on lease to Great Britain. J. H. Stewart Lockhart was therefore temporarily relieved of his duties as Colonial Secretary and Registrar General and sent on a fact-finding tour as Special Commissioner. During August 1898 he visited various parts of the area and in general was given an \"excellent reception\" by the inhabitants; but the villagers at Kam Tin were less polite. Unimpressed by the sight of the first steamer ever to navigate their river, they drove away the Commission's chairs and carriers and refused to provide replacements. The elders did not deign to present themselves. A journalist of the time reported that 1,000 villagers, \"preceded by vigorously beaten gongs\", gave a rousing welcome, \"but in place of chin-chins and flowers they came with cries of 'ta' and 'foreign devils.'\" Nothing is said here of the rotten eggs that emphasized these cries, but the gates of the village were closed and the Commission could not enter. According to a journal kept of the trip the gates were opened after \"a clear explanation\" by Stewart\n\nMr. Wesley-Smith is LL.B., B.A., (Adelaide) and Lecturer in Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently Editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206772, "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-1973", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "The Kam Tin Gates\n\n43\n\ncomposite whole, was put forward so convincingly that it carried the vote. And so the work was completed just in time for the ceremony of re-opening.\n\nThus, on May 26, 1925, Governor Sir Reginald E. Stubbs and his entourage arrived at Kam Tin for the ceremonial return of the revered gates. They were greeted by a Chinese salute of small guns and firecrackers and were presented with an Address which stated: \"We shall always now remember, how when your royal chair did pass, children and women left all the lanes deserted to come to bid you welcome, and when your car of state did stop, the neighbourhood was filled with joy\"16 There were \"expressions of goodwill and loyalty heard on all hands\"17, and the Government congratulated itself on a fine public relations exercise.\n\nIs there anything in this episode which gives it more than a mere antiquarian interest? Perhaps it illustrates the increasing readiness of the Hong Kong Government to accommodate the wishes of the local population; certainly, Governor Stubbs intended to impress upon the Kam Tin villagers his Government's munificence. He had gone to a good deal of trouble to ensure the gates' return, and the whole operation was paid for out of public funds. The Hong Kong Telegraph commented that \"there has perhaps been no incident in the whole history of Hongkong and of the New Territories which has more eloquently and genuinely revealed the Government's friendly feeling and sympathy towards the Chinese of the New Territories\"18. Yet within a month the anti-British strike and boycott of 1925-26 had commenced, and relations with the local Chinese thence rapidly deteriorated. One can also detect in Stewart Lockhart's Papers the Special Commissioner's disapproval of Blake's appropriation of the gates. The Governor and his deputy were at odds on several matters relating to the early administration of the New Territories, and there is evidence that differences of opinion regarding policy occasioned some personal animosity. Perhaps the episode of the gates from Kam Tin was a contributing factor.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 And to correct them. According to a translation deposited in the Colonial Secretariat Library, Hong Kong, the Kam Tin villagers offered resistance to the British in 1899 because the Ch'ing Government had not previously proclaimed the fact of the New Territories lease. This is false, for a proclamation had been issued by the San On Magistrate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206864, "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-1973", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n135 \n\n(1847, or 26th year of To Kwang), Sz-man-king and one Tam-tsoi, built the Man Mo Miu, and here they \"judged the people\" in public assembly. In 30th year of To Kwang (1851) the shop keepers of Sheung Wan or Upper Bay ... repaired the Man Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest. \n\nBiographical notices of the two community leaders who built the temple are given in an article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong” in this Journal, vol. 11 (1971), pp. 80-82, 87-88. \n\nPrevious to the opening of the Man Mo Temple the Shing Wong Temple may have been used as a Chinese \"Town Hall\", for as we have noted only one such building is listed in 1845 and 1846, but two are listed in 1847, the date given for the erection of the Man Mo Temple. The two temples were quite close to each other. The Shing Wong Temple was on the western edge of the European part of Victoria and the Man Mo Temple on the eastern edge of the Chinese settlement. A steep and rocky hillside divided the two sections. \n\nConfirmation of the 1847 date given in the quoted Chinese account is supported both by the date, Tao Kuang 27th year, inscribed on the bell at the Man Mo Temple and the date of the Crown Lease for Inland Lot 338 upon which the Temple is built, which is 24 June, 1847. A letter dated 29 May 1847, from the Colonial Secretary authorized its issuance with the stipulation that the premises be used as a school. After the building was finished, however, it was used as a temple. In consequence, the Government in March 1848, began charging Crown Rent for the lot. It was then decided that the temple should be rebuilt on a larger scale reflecting the increasing affluence of the Chinese community. An account of the opening of the new building is reported in The Friend of China, 24 May, 1851: \n\nThe Chinese Community are now enjoying themselves in a way we have never seen before in this Colony, on the occasion of the opening of a spacious Heathen Temple in the Hollywood Road, a few hundred yards from the London Missionary Society's College and Chapel. The Temple is dedicated to a body of the civil and military Gods, and has cost nearly a thousand pounds sterling in erection,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206865, "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-1973", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "136\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA few months after the festive opening of the temple, \"The Joss House Committee\" received from Government the grant of a lot adjoining the temple for the erection of a school.\n\nSometime between 1860 and 1865 a small building was built on the rocky hillside just below the Man Mo Temple. It was near Circular Pathway and Ladder Street. In the Hong Kong Rate lists its name is given at one time as \"Sam Young” Miu and at another time as \"Sam Sing\" Miu. The 1878 Rate has the notation \"removed\". This is clearly another temple.\n\nEitel states that the Tai Wong Temple in Spring Gardens was in existence at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong. If so, title to the Queen's Road East property on which it is built was not obtained until 1847. Lee Fun-wei, a compradore, then obtained a Crown Lease for Inland Lot 257. In 1852, Lee Muy, \"carer of Joss House\", was witness to the transfer of a nearby house. He may be the same as Lee Amoy, \"formerly a butcher, but now of no occupation”, who obtained a court order in 1864 prohibiting Lee Fun-wei from selling or further mortgaging the temple property. In the following year the two parties exchanged properties. Lee Amoy conveyed to Lee Fun Wei a lot with five houses and in return received Inland Lot 257 with \"Joss House, dwelling house and building erected thereon\". Lee Amoy immediately mortgaged the temple property to Delfino Noronha, a Portuguese printer, for $1,500. The mortgage remained unpaid, and in 1869 Noronha sold the temple to a committee composed of Tam Achoy, Ho Asik, and Lee Yuk Hang. It thus passed out of the private ownership of the Lee family to the representatives of the Chinese community.\n\nIf Eitel's statement is correct, that the temple on Queen's Road East at Spring Gardens was in existence before the British occupation of the Island, its proprietors the Lee family may have been settled in the Spring Gardens area, now better known as Wanchai, before the occupation. When Crown Leases were issued for land in this area in 1847, several members of the Lee family secured lots.\n\nA notice of the Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau written by Mr. James Hayes appears in Vol. 7 of this Journal. The date of the bell in the temple is given as 1773. As we have noticed Eitel states the temple was built about 1770. Information on when and by whom it was built is given in a court case reported in The China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206867, "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-1973", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "138 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nThe question then arose as to what party had legal title to the land. Had the Government acquired title to the land by terms of the Cession of the Island of Hong Kong, or was the Government bound to recognize the title of the original Chinese owners? The island of Hong Kong had belonged to the Tang family, but the small island belonged to the Wong clan who gave it to the Chan clan and allowed them to erect the temple. Unfortunately all the ancient records and title deeds held by the Chan clan had been destroyed in the typhoon of 1874. \n\nApparently the temple had been repaired in 1877, for in that year the Public Works Department had given the caretaker permission to erect a temporary structure near the present temple to store images while repairs were going on. The Land Office had granted a squatter's license to the Worship Committee to occupy the site. \n\nOwing to the dispute which arose in 1893 between the Chan clan and the residents of Ap Lei Chau, the Worship Committee and the Kai Fong of Ap Lei Chau petitioned the Government for a grant of a Crown Lease for the site of the temple. The petition states, \n\nThat the Temple was established almost a hundred years ago and has conferred many benefits on the surrounding inhabitants... \n\nThat after restoration, the Temple was entrusted to the care of Chan Kwai [Chan A-kwai] by general consent. \n\nThat unwittingly this man turned out to be of a bad heart, unboundedly avaricious. \n\nThat he frequently exhorted [sic] the people who went to Worship, and for this he was expelled by consensus of the people at a Public Meeting. \n\nThat first before he was expelled he being aware of the attitude of the populace towards him, purloined goods belonging to the Temple, and took with him all the Squatter Licenses and went to live on Chinese soil. \n\nThat as the Temple was erected by the populace, Your Honour's humble petitioners venture to think that it should be managed by the voice of the populace..", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206868, "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-1973", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n139\n\nA translation of the original Chinese petition is in the Hong Kong Public Records Office, Colonial Secretary's Office File for 1893, No. 849. The petition naturally presented the views of the local population—or at any rate those of its leaders—and omitted any reference to the traditional relation of the Chan clan to the temple.\n\nThe matter was referred by the Magistrate to the Squatter's Commission. Its hearings are recorded in a Summary of Reports of Squatters' Commission, a manuscript volume in the Library of the Colonial Secretariat. The Commission effected a compromise. It recommended that Government grant a lease of the temple site to five persons, two to be nominated by the Chan clan, two by the Public Worship Committee of Ap Lei Chau and one by the Registrar General. The Ap Lei Chau Committee was permitted to retain the caretaker they had placed in charge after their expulsion of the caretaker employed by the Chan clan, but he had to share the income of the temple with the clan.\n\nThe former caretaker felt the decision was unjust. It kept preying on his mind until he became unbalanced. One day in November 1893, he left Ap Lei Chau in a small boat intending to visit the Land Office in Hong Kong to get satisfaction. Some of the villagers pursued him hoping to prevent him from reopening the case. As they neared his boat he jumped overboard and was not seen again. However, later, his body was washed up opposite the temple. As the account published in The China Mail, 10 November 1893, comments, it was \"a circumstance which is regarded as not a little strange\".\n\nHong Kong, October 1973.\n\nCARL T. SMITH", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207017, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "82\n\nROBIN MCLACHLAN\n\nthen a junior officer in Orlando's regiment but later to become the British Minister at Peking and Sir Thomas, was to teach Orlando to play the flute.17 But as Wade was busy with his Chinese language studies the flute lessons had to be postponed indefinitely. About the same time the music lessons were being considered, Orlando met Elijah Coleman Bridgman.18 This Bridgman was the first American missionary in China, arriving in Canton in 1829, and is probably best remembered for his part in the founding and editing of the Chinese Repository. Although the American spelt his name without an \"e\", Orlando still considered it a rare event to meet someone of the same name who was not a relation. It is unlikely though that he would have been anxious to claim a relationship with a man he described in his letter as a \"beast\".\n\nWhen writing of his commander in the war, General Hugh Gough, and the naval commander, Admiral William Parker, Bridgeman was equally caustic in his remarks. Writing in October from Chusan, where the British force had collected before proceeding on to Hong Kong, he commented:\n\nThe whole force is collected here now, with the exception of the Genl. and Admiral who are delaying as long as they can because they are each putting £30 a day into their pocket and as soon as they get to Hong Kong they will cease to receive this.19\n\nUnfortunately, there are very few comments, either favourable or unfavourable, on the Chinese people and their way of life. In his first letter home from China, he complained that he didn't get to see anything of Nanking and the Chinese people he had seen were only the \"lowest of the low.\"20 Later he confessed that what \"pity\" he had for the Chinese, on account of their heavy losses in battle (\"The slaughter was frightful ... .”), was lost \"since they proved so dreadfully treacherous\" with their kidnapping on Chusan.21\n\nDuring his time at Hong Kong, Bridgeman continued this lack of interest in things Chinese and only occasionally commented on Chinese customs and ways. For example, his interest in Chinese tea led him to describe to his sister the Chinese tea stands that dotted the colony and how, according to his observations, no Chinese could pass one without having several tiny cupfuls of tea.22 But such sketches of Chinese life in the colony are rare in his letters; the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong seemed scarcely to exist for Bridgeman.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207044, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n109\n\nplexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article.\n\nIntroduction*\n\nFor present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map).\n\nAt the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4.\n\nIn time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th\n\n1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations.\n\n2 See Groves, pp. 52-55.\n\n3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46.\n\n4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196.\n\n* For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207046, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n111\n\nOctober 1860, and again by the lease of the New Territories by the Convention of Peking in June 18981.\n\nThe population of the region was probably around 100,000 in 1898, including boat people. These persons inhabited — in round figures — a thousand villages and a number of market centres. Seven hundred of these settlements were located within the present New Territories of Hong Kong, with many others around Sham Chun and in Hong Kong island and Kowloon. The Punti or Cantonese-speaking element accounted for rather more than half the land population, with Hakka speakers comprising most of the remainder. The boat population, mainly Tanka, lived afloat in the main.2\n\nDescriptions of the geography and climate of the present British Crown Colony are generally applicable to the Hong Kong region. They have long been given in the Hong Kong annual reports. The most recent is supplied in the opening sections of chapter 18 of the report for 1974.3\n\n1. The Hong Kong Region in the wider scene: some historical and geographical considerations\n\nIn Ch'ing times Hsin-an was one of the 14 hsien of the Kuang-chou prefecture. The designation fu or 'prefecture' was adopted only at the start of the Ming dynasty but the area of Canton and the Delta had long been administered under various designations that changed through the centuries and with dynastic change. The oldest of its hsien, Nan-hai, was established in the Sui dynasty in the year 590-591; the next, P'an-yu in 703-704 during the Tang; with the rest becoming separate districts at various times until the first year of Wan Li of the Ming (1573-1574) when, finally, Hsin-an was created from one of the former commanderies of Tung-kuan district (a hsien of 973-974) established in the 27th year of the first Ming ruler (1394-1395).\n\n1 The relevant documents are given in Alabaster, III, pp. 2-4 and 6-8. 2 See Baker 1968: 3-4. Also the Colony Census for 1911 in SP1911: 103(27-36) and (37-38), though it does not list all the villages of the Southern District of the New Territories or of New Kowloon.\n\n3 CR1974, pp. 176-178.\n\n4 See e.g. TCITC 41/1 and KCFC 6/10.\n\n5 KCFC 6/1-10 and YCKC 4/1-9.\n\n6 KTTC 2/93 and KTKKCY 1/1. The administrative areas to which the Hsin-an district belonged from the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B.C.) onwards are shown in KCFC 6/24 and in HNHC 1/1. The date of the establishment of the commandery is given as Hung Wu 27 in HNHC 1/3, KTKKCY 1/1, TCITC 41/3 and KTTC 2/93, but as Hung Wu 14 in KCFC 6/24.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207132, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe purpose of the visit is to see\n\n197\n\n(a) the quiet residential terraces of this part of Kennedy Town, namely Tai Pak Terrace, Hee Wong Terrace, Ching Lin Terrace, To Li Terrace, and Hok Si Terrace;\n\n(b) the Lo Pan Temple which stands at the western end of\n\nChing Lin Terrace.\n\nKennedy Town was named after an early Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Arthur Kennedy in whose term of office, April 1872 - March 1877, the district was first developed. Kennedy ‘was genial, and possessed a great sense of humour, much common sense, and a strong Irish accent'. For a short but interesting and lively account of the events of his governorship see Endacott's History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 160-169),\n\nEndacott gives the following reason for the development of Kennedy Town, then located on the western fringe of the city of Victoria\n\nThe telegraph and the Suez Canal had brought changes in commercial practice; large stocks used to be kept by the European firms to meet any advantageous price changes; but now shipments could be arranged far more quickly. The result was that large godowns in the eastern district were no longer necessary, and coolies moved to the western part of the city in search of employment. To meet this change a new Chinese area was laid out on partly reclaimed land, and named Kennedy Town after the Governor.\n\nThe Five Terraces\n\nCarl Smith has very kindly provided the following information about the development of the particular section of Kennedy Town in which we are interested:\n\nThe area we are visiting today, lying between Pokfulam Road and the sea shore and from Holland Street to Sands Street, was the earliest development in what is now Kennedy Town. George Underhill Sands was granted a Crown Lease in 1873 for 330,634 square feet at Belcher's Bay. The lot was numbered Marine Lot 239. It not only had a sea frontage suitable for docks and a ship slipway, but it extended up the hillside toward Pokfulam Road. Sands died in 1877 and his executors sold the lot with its patent slips and shipways to the Hong Kong and Whampoa", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207133, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDock Company for $150,000. In turn, the Company sold the property in 1883 to a Chinese consortium composed of three members of the Li Family and Chan Kun, with the proviso that the premises were not to be used as a dock or slip except for Chinese style ships. This was to prevent Chinese competition to their Dockyards at Hung Hom and Aberdeen. In time other industries were developed on the site: a soy factory, and a lard manufactury, and godowns were built along the Praya.\n\nThe Li family of Tsat Po Heung, San Wui District, had established its interests in Hong Kong as early as 1854, and under the astute leadership of Li Sing it had become probably the wealthiest family in Hong Kong by the turn of century. Shortly before the death of Li Sing in 1900, he divided his extensive real estate holdings among his eight sons. Marine Lot 239 was included in the share of Li Po Lung (***), also known as Li Wai Tong (*). He sold out most of his interests in the property in 1921.\n\n**\n\nIn 1918 new Crown Leases were granted to Li Po Lung in lieu of the original lease of 1873. The upper part of the original lot was then set off as an Inland Lot numbered 1355. The top left-hand corner of the Lot (as seen when standing on the seafront facing the hillside) had some years previous been given to the Contractor's Guild to build the 'Lo Pan' Temple, and a path led up to it bearing the name of Li Po Lung. The hillside was terraced for building sites. The first row was known as Li Po Lung Terrace, situated between Belcher Street and the present Tai Pak Terrace. Ching Lin Terrace upon which the Temple is located was formerly known as Li Sing Kui Road and To Li Terrace was formerly Tam Woon Tong Road.\n\n44\n\nLi Sing Kiu, Tam Woon Tong, Look Poong Shan, Li Tsz Chung and Chung Sek Fan had purchased the site of the Temple along with other land from Li Po Lung in 1921. They, in turn, in 1923, sold the Temple site as Section E of Inland Lot 1355 for a sum of $4,222.40 to Lam Lau, Lam Sheung, Yu Cheuk, Ng Wah and Ng Tsz Mei, representatives of the Temple, though the conveyance stated they were tenants in common in equal shares rather than Trustees.\n\n44\n\nDue to difficulties over payment of the Crown Rent for Inland Lot 1355, the Government re-entered the lot in 1926 in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207134, "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n199 \n\norder to re-grant the area to the individual section holders. The Governor in Council cancelled the re-entry respecting the Temple site in 1928, and a new lease as Inland Lot 2705 was obtained by the parties who had purchased it in 1923. This time they were designated as trustees for the Kwong Yut Tong (...). Of these trustees, Ng Tsz Mei about 1930 is listed as head of a construction company; and Ng Wah, head of the Sang Tai firm, died in 1950.” \n\nThe Lo Pan Temple \n\nThis is, to my knowledge, the only temple erected to Lo Pan, the God of Carpenters, in Hong Kong. It is, suitably, a fine temple, and still in the ownership of the Kwong Yut Tong or 'Hall (Association) of Extended Gratification'. This clearly takes a close interest in its upkeep and is responsible for the annual ceremonies on the birthday of the saint which falls on the 13th day of the 6th moon each year. \n\nThe Kwong Yut Tong of Hong Kong was incorporated under the Companies Ordinance on 14th September 1962. Among the objects listed in its Memorandum of Association are the following— \n\n(a) To take over the management, assets and liabilities of the unincorporated association known as the Kwong Yut Tong of Hong Kong. \n\n(b) To commemorate our great teacher Lo Pan and to bring \n\nto light his teachings and to improve building business. \n\n[In one breath!] \n\n(c) A clause to the effect that the company will deal with all the property of the association, including sale, except Nos. 15-16 Ching Lin Terrace, named the \"Lo Pan Sin Shih Memorial Hall and Public Office\" which shall not be sold or mortgaged. \n\n(d) To explain and expand the Building Ordinance and Regulations of the Colony for the information of the members of the Association. \n\nAll the office bearers at the time of the incorporation and since have been building contractors or persons connected with the trade. \n\nFortunately for historians and other interested parties, the temple is full of tablets commemorating its origins and later repairs. Among these, the earliest dated the year of Kuang Hsu (1884-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207169, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "234\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nhouses were built later at the back when they had more descendants. That is the entire village even to this day.\n\nThere are 42 dwelling houses within the village, divided by 5 lanes and ten gates; measuring 162'-3\" in width and 125'9” in depth. The idea of this layout would seem to have been to protect themselves from pirates, when the whole family stayed inside. The Chi Tong is located in the centre with three roofs and two light wells (#). There is a village school 150 feet from the southern corner for primary education of their children, and a Tin Hau Temple within 500 feet to the northeast for worship.\n\nLand Registration took place in 1906 in Tsuen Wan after the Lease of the New Territories. The village was recorded from Lot No. 1528 to 1559 (Lot No. 1546 excluded) in Demarcation District No. 449 in the Block Crown Lease, totalling 0.43 acre of house land and 0.03 acre of waste land, all belonging to the Chan family. It is a pity that 0.135 acre of house land were sold to outsiders since 1937 otherwise the village would still remain solely in the hands of the descendants of the founder.\n\nChan Kin Sheung, the founder of Sam Tung Uk, was awarded a portrait by Chien Lung of Ch'ing Dynasty, worded \"Heung Yam Tai Bun” (means Honourable Guest in Village Parties). To everyone's sorrow and great loss it disappeared during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong.\n\nThere have been very many big changes in the area surround-ing the village since re-development of Tsuen Wan. Fung shui trees at the back were felled, village type houses were built around, roads were constructed in front, multi-storeyed buildings were erected with obstruction of the front view. Ngau Kwu Tun, the small hill by the left, was removed to make way for a school building, and the hill at the back was partly cut off for construction of the Rapid Gravity Filter. Even the grave of the village founder was affected as it was in the same line and over-looking the village. The name in fung shui was called \"Lion over-looking the village platform\" (獅子瑩樓台)\n\nIt is to be hoped that the Walled Village can be retained as a historical relic in Tsuen Wan, even if the whole area is to be re-developed. God has blessed it for over two centuries and it is hoped will continue to do so.\n\nText and visits are organized and prepared by Mak Kai Yim, A. H. Mackreth, Brian Liu and Helga Werle.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207200, "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": 271, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LIST OF MEMBERS\n\nORDINARY OVERSEAS MEMBERS:\n\nJOHNSON, Mr. & Mrs. Paul K. +\n\nJOHNSTON, James J.\n\nJUNKER, Mrs. Sibylle\n\nKRAMERS, Dr. R. P. -\n\nKIDD, S. T.\n\nLEAKE, Mrs. Sima B.\n\nLECKIE, J. B. H. - + -\n\nLYNCH, Rev. P. Francis, M.M.\n\nMACK, A. M.\n\nMcCOY, J. -\n\nORR, Iain C.\n\nPENNELL, W. V. -\n\nRAINBIRD, S. W. O.B.E.\n\nRASSIM, Mrs. E.\n\nSCOTT, J. M. P +\n\nSMITH, Dr. Ralph B. -\n\nSMITHIES, Michael\n\nSOO, Dr. Hoy Mun\n\nSTOKES, John -\n\n265\n\nc/o Nan Shan Life Ins. Co. Ltd., 15, Nan King E. Road, Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan.\n\nP.O. Box 65, Marshall, Arkansas 72650, U.S.A.\n\nc/o Federal Foreign Office, Referat 412, Bonn (Germany-West), Adenauerallee 101.\n\nc/o Ostasiatisches Seminar, Der Universetat Zurich, Muhlegasse 21, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland.\n\nc/o Hong Kong Govt. Office, 54, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1, England.\n\nc/o American Consulate, Calcutta, India.\n\nc/o H.K. Trade Development Office, Britannia House, 30, Rue Joseph 2nd, Brussels 4, Belgium.\n\nMaryknoll Centre House, 120 San Min Rd., 1st Section, Taichung City 400, Taiwan.\n\n34, Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1, England.\n\nDept. of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14850, U.S.A.\n\nPearce Institute, Govan Cross, Glasgow, S.W.1, U.K.\n\nCan Boyet Mear Puerto Pollensa, Majorca, Spain.\n\nc/o Hong Kong Govt. Office, 54, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1, England.\n\n101, Holland Road, Hove 2, Sussex, England.\n\nc/o The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., 9, Gracechurch Street, London, E.C.3, England.\n\nSchool of Oriental & African Studies, Malet Street, London, W.C.1, England.\n\nEng. Language Training Unit, University of Jadjahmada, Jogjakarta, Indonesia.\n\n249, Jalan Pekeliling, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.\n\nc/o Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., Bandar Seri Begawan, State of Brunei.\n\nSTRICKLAND, Mrs. P. G. Jaishan, Apartada 56, Marbella, Provincia de Malaga, Spain.\n\nSTURM, Dr. F. G. + c/o Dept. of Philosophy, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, U.S.A.\n\nUHALLEY, Dr. Stephen, Jr. 7103, Kukii Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96821, U.S.A.\n\nWATSON, Dr. James L. - + c/o School of Oriental & African Studies, Malet Street, London, W.C.1, E7 HP, England.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207347, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n107\n\nof the underdog Portuguese or Eurasian communities. The one social event that united—for one evening—all classes of European was that great Scots tribal festival, the St. Andrew's Day Ball. Celebrated on November 30, it ushered in the Hong Kong season, a season that closed with the Volunteer Ball.* The St. Andrew's Day Ball was open to any Scot or his friends who could afford the price of a ticket. Held in St. George's Hall, a spacious ball-room within the City Hall edifice, it was attended normally by over a thousand adults. Although an Army chaplain inquired plaintively: \"Why should pig-iron turn up its nose at ten-penny nails (in Hong Kong)?\" for one evening at least status distinctions between retailers and wholesalers were partially ignored, although the proceedings were always dominated by the chieftains of Jardine, Matheson and Co., the patriarchal Scottish hong,\n\nThe European lower orders were excluded not only from the more amusing social life of the colony, they also had little say in its government. In 1885, for example, the total number of ratepayers was eighty-two: from this small group the unofficial members of the Legislative Council normally were elected or chosen. The pong-paân were thus totally unrepresented in this, a British colony. Their names, moreover, are not found on the lists of Justices of the Peace, Special Jurors, and those of members of official and other important committees. They were of course sworn in on occasion as common jurors.\n\nWhy did the European lower orders experience such treatment from the well-to-do and influential? Partly, it was a consequence of social attitudes formed in the homeland: Victorian notions about the ordering of social classes and occupational groups, such as are analysed in Thackeray's The Book of Snobs. However, in early Hong Kong another notion was also prevalent: the view that there were 'dangerous classes', a term that connoted the lumpenproletariat, a class of persons spawned in the new industrial cities of Europe, 'those who had so miserable a share in the accumulating wealth of the industrial revolution that they might at any time break out in political revolt as in France'.32 Predictably enough, working-class Europeans were often viewed with some suspicion; there was fear that middle-class control over them would cease to prevail in certain\n\nFor the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force see James Hayes' article in this Journal Vol 11, 1971: 151-171.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207564, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 332, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n323 \n\nto the government for a lot on which to build a school. In granting the lot for charitable and educational purposes, it was stipulated that \"the school should be built on that portion of the ground furthest away from the front of the native temple which is opposite. The villagers have asked that no houses be erected immediately fronting the temple, but they could not object to a playground. The latter should be fenced around.” (C.S.O. No. 700 of 1885) In 1898, the Roman Catholic Church bought a large piece of land behind the village for a church and a school. The Canossian Sisters, however, already had two lots on Bulkely Street in 1894 where they conducted a school (No. 59 & 60).\n\n(c) The Kwun Yam (††) and Pak Tai (†) temples.\n\nAn old memorial board in the Kwun Yam Temple dated 1873-74 lists eleven individuals or shops who may tentatively be identified as the management committee.* I can only identify one, Li Shing Fat, listed as a rate-payer in 1875 and possibly as Lee A Fat on the 1867 squatter licence list. A Hop Shing shop is listed, and it is possible that the owner was Chan Hop Shing who appears on the 1873 rates list or Chang Hop Shing of the 1867 squatter list. Another possible identification might be the Kwong Lung shop with the Kwong \"Leong\" grocer in the 1884 Rate.\n\nIn 1896 the Temple Committee applied for the grant of a Crown Lease for the lot on which the building stood. It was noted that \"This Temple is a public temple, owned by the committee of Hung Hom. A notice was posted at Hung Hom on the 23rd (March, 1886) saying that anyone who objected to the issue of the proposed lease should report to the Registrar General within ten days. No communication has been made on the subject.... therefore recommend the issue of the lease.\" (C.S.O. No. 704 of 1896). In consequence, a lease was granted to Chung Kam Fuk, Chan Ying Cheung, and Ching Ki, Trustees. Of these, Chan Ying Cheung was a large property owner at Hung Hom who was also a wealthy contractor in Hong Kong. Upon his death, his will left his Hung Hom property to his sons.\n\nThe two named temples date from this early period and have survived: one of them in its original location and another on a new \n\n*The names are listed as follows:\n\n福隆號,兴有容,新順扣,勝扣廠,廣隆號,李富利,陳日新,怡興行,廣勝同,合勝號,李勝發。The board carries the large characters 法雨同沾and is dated 同治甲戌年仲春吉旦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207713, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "86\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\na chopstick through the warp threads where they have been held in her left hand, and tucks the chopstick into a piece of cord or cloth which she has tied around her waist, so that the warp is held taut but her hands left free.\n\nA shed is then formed by taking a tubular piece of bamboo about 10 CM long as shed stick, and winding the warp threads around it alternatively above and below. They are wound in the order in which they will appear in the band, first forming the edge stripes, then the centre with the red above and the white below, and then the stripes at the other edge. The centre warp threads are wound in pairs, while the edge threads are wound singly. It is only in the centre warp threads that the pattern will be woven.\n\nA bar heddle is then made. For this a beater is used, a flat, dagger-shaped piece of wood with bevelled edges, polished smooth, about 30 CM long. Tsuen Wan women made these themselves from pieces of broken carrying poles. The purpose of the bar heddle is to raise the lower (white) warp threads when weaving patterns. To form the bar heddle, the beater is used to raise the lower threads and to hold them, while a loop of strong thread about 10 CM long is made between each pair of threads and the weaver's hand. When all the loops have been made they are knotted together with a piece of strong grass. This then forms a handle by means of which the bar heddle can be manipulated to raise or release the lower warp threads.\n\nThe weaver begins by weaving four short lengths of strong grass (lease rods) through the end of the warp nearest her body, to prevent the warp from being tangled. She then forms one or more tassels from a number of equal lengths of thread, knotted together at the centre. These are passed through the warp so that they hang out at either side, with several rows of weaving between each. After the tassels have been incorporated, the body of the band is woven, the weft thread being passed through the warp either with the fingers or wrapped around the beater. The edges are done in plain weaving, and the patterns are woven in the centre of the band. Sheds are alternated through use of the bar heddle, and the patterns picked and the weft packed with the beater. The band is finished with the insertion of another set of tassels. About one-quarter of the total length is left unwoven and cut in the middle, forming additional bulk for the tassels, the threads being cut to the same length as the inserted tassels.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207850, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 223\n\nscientists or technicians. From this view of fung shui there follow two consequences. One is that geomancers are held in an esteem not shared by other practitioners of Chinese religion. They are gentlemen, unlike priests (naam moh lo), spirit mediums, and Buddhists who perform ordinary rites for laymen, for these, whatever the need for their services, are looked down upon as being, in a sense, unclean. Some geomancers are in fact gentlemen in a very specific sense: they do not make their living by their craft, but practice it as a learned hobby (albeit a rewarded one on occasion). The Colony is the home of many weekend geomancers. It is highly respectable to be a fung shui sin shaang and it is a matter for pride to be known to seek their company and profit by their learning. The second consequence is that a Chinese may cease to believe in and practise his traditional religion without abandoning his faith in geomancy. Be he Christian or atheist, fung shui retains for him its meaning and its appeal. (I am not asserting, of course, that geomancy is in fact compatible with Christianity or atheism; my point is that many Chinese Christians think that their religion does not bar faith in fung shui; and I daresay, although I have not discussed the matter with one of them, that Chinese atheists would deny that geomancy is anything with which their lack of religion could conflict). Geomancy is 'science' for those who would have it so. The Administration, to my knowledge, has had to contend with fung shui objections by Christians and presumably also by atheists.\n\n55. Fung shui is primarily concerned with siting graves and houses. But not all graves and houses are geomantically placed. Fung shui is a preoccupation with success, and since an appetite for success must be stimulated by a taste of it, those who lack hope are not involved in geomantic striving. Fung shui is not for the very poor. It is when a man begins to think of the possibility of increased success for himself and his issue, a measure of prosperity already having been achieved, that he takes to a concern with geomancy. And those who are fully successful cannot afford to ignore the need to ensure their continuing prosperity by taking geomantic precautions. Underlying fung shui is a fundamental assumption of Chinese society: all men (that is, all Chinese who are fully accepted within society) are in principle equal and may legitimately strive to improve their station in life. The peasant in his cottage has as much right to hope for advancement as the mandarin in his yamen or, to take a more contemporary example.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207978, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1977\n\n(Covering the period April 1, 1976 — March 31, 1977)\n\nDuring the past year your Council has endeavoured to arrange a full and varied programme of events and we hope that everybody has found something to interest and enjoy. Altogether there have been 14 lectures, three local excursions and two foreign tours, all events being well attended, although not always by the same people. Let me briefly summarise these events.\n\nIn May 1976 Professor John Fairbank, a leading authority on modern Chinese history and Asia's relations with the West, visiting from Harvard, came to talk to us about contemporary China studies. He also asked us about studies of Hong Kong and China being conducted from here at that time, and was pleased to find many of our own members active in this field. In June, Dr. James McGough, an anthropologist, at that time with the University of Hong Kong, talked about his own research on Chinese marriage carried out in Taiwan, and in July Professor Robert Bruce, an old friend and former member of the Council, discussed relations between the United States and East Asia. In August Mr. Brian Peacock, Curator of Hong Kong's Museum of History and also a Council member, talked on Hindu-Buddhist Settlement and Trade in Ancient Kedah, Malaya; and in October members visited the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals' museum, under the able guidance of Carl Smith and James Hayes. Carl Smith also provided very comprehensive notes on the Hospital which will be published in a later issue of the Journal. Also in October Dr. Peter Wesley-Smith gave a very thought-provoking talk on the convention for the lease of the New Territories. This stimulated much discussion. In November, in preparation for the Sri Lanka tour, Ms. Minette de Silva gave an introductory talk, illustrated with slides, of the various places tour members would be visiting and things they would be seeing on the tour. Also in November Professor Cheng Te-k'un returned to us again to lecture, this time on Chinese Nature Painting, and in December Dr. Leigh Wright, a member of your Council, gave a lecture in preparation for the other foreign tour, to Borneo, which he led in February.\n\nA visit to the Tang family graves was organised by David Liu and James Hayes in December. The Tang lineage is the oldest and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208032, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH’ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN, KWANGTUNG\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm*\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was carved, in three successive steps, from the Chinese county of Hsin-An (新安). These essays represent attempts to reconstruct modes of economic activity which prevailed in this remote county during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction will eventually serve as the groundwork on which an analysis of mercantile capitalism, in terms of its impact on local Chinese social structure, will be built.\n\nIn the first year of Wan-Li (1573), Hsin-An Hsien was formed from the division of Tung-Kuan Hsien (東莞縣) into two jurisdictions. Except for a brief period during the reign of the Kang-Hsi Emperor, the county remained one of the fourteen counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture throughout Ch'ing. As with most other magistracies in rural imperial China, Hsin-An was characterized by a high degree of self-government. The magistrate seldom intervened in local affairs, and relied heavily on the indigenous social order for the day-to-day administration of the countryside.\n\nThe dominant stratum of the local hierarchical order consisted principally of landlord-gentry patrilineal descent groups, commonly referred to as great clans (大族). Of these clans, the Tangs (鄧) and especially that branch of the clan which resided in Kam Tin (錦田) -- were probably best representative. Much of the data presented was collected during field work into the social history and oral tradition of this Punti \"power brokerage.\"\n\n*\n\nMr. Kamm states, The essays were written in fulfillment of seminar requirements for an A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies-East Asia program. The work is based largely on research undertaken in the New Territories (including a brief stint as coordinator of an NTA-Yuen Long \"oral history\" project in Kam Tin) and in the archives of the Public Records Office, Hong Kong. Writing and editing was supervised by Professor Yang Lien-Sheng of Harvard during late 1974.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong Island was ratified by the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Kowloon peninsula was added in 1860. Britain obtained the New Territories (on a 99-year lease) in 1898.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208035, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "58 \n\nJ. T. KAMM \n\nTABLE II: Tax as a Percentage of Rent Value Un Long, Hsin-An Hsien; Ch'ing \n\n \n Piculs\n Memorial No.\n Rent\n Rent (Government)\n Tax\n Tax/rent\n \n \n \n 28603\n 15.70\n 14.66\n .26\n 1.8%\n \n \n measure\n 28610\n \n 13.33\n 4.40\n \n \n \n \n 28621\n \n 4.00\n 5.97\n .11\n \n \n \n 28623\n \n 5.40\n 17.62\n \n \n \n \n 28625\n \n 16.02\n 7.15\n .13\n \n \n ཧྲྰི ཌཤཱ\n \n \n \n .08\n 1.8%\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 1.9%\n \n \n \n \n \n .32\n \n 1.8%\n \n \n \n 28626\n \n 6.20\n 6.82\n .12\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 1.8%\n \n \n \n 28627\n \n 15.70\n 17.27\n .31\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 1.8%\n \n\nPopulation growth: Evidence suggests a steady influx of Hakka settlers into the county during the middle years of the eighteenth century. These immigrants populated the whole of Hong Kong, Lantao, and Tsing Yi islands, as well as substantial parts of the Kowloon and Sai Kung peninsulas.10 The migration of Hakkas into the coastal region was part of a larger demographic movement initiated \"under the joint patronage of the state and local men of substance.\" These immigrants formed a substantial portion of the tenant population; before the migration tapered off in the early years of the nineteenth century, as many as 50,000 Hakkas may have settled in the county.12 \n\nThe major determinant underlying the relative prosperity of late-Ch'ing Hsin-An was the presence of perpetual tenancy as the dominant mode of land tenure in the agricultural sector.* The remainder of this essay will be devoted to an analysis of the specific characteristics of perpetual tenancy in Hsin-An. This analysis will be elaborated within the general framework which treats perpetual tenancy as a system of relations based on the division of land into distinct values, each governed by separate modes of production (extraction) and circulation. \n\n*This is not to suggest that perpetual lease was the only determinant of relative prosperity. Population growth and market increases were clearly inter-related and mutually casual. Perpetual lease is primary in the sense that it \"creates\" the conditions for both.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208036, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n59\n\nThe study of perpetual tenancy systems has long constituted an important, if overlooked, avenue of research into the diversity of economic life which characterized pre-revolutionary rural China.13 Though the institution of perpetual lease was widespread, the degree to which it dominated the agricultural sector—as well as the particular form it took—varied considerably over short distances. In a communication to the Colonial Secretary's Office in January 1904, an officer of the Land Court complained of difficulties facing administrators attempting to codify the land tenure system:\n\nChinese law does not, so far as I can ascertain, contain any mention of perpetual lease and I am informed that the custom of leasing land perpetually is local in the New Territories and does not prevail a short distance from our borders.14\n\nThe variant of perpetual tenancy found in 19th-century Hsin-An closely corresponded to the ti-ku (地骨)/ti-p'i (地皮) system found in Ch'ung-An Hsien (崇安縣) of Northern Fukien. Hsu Tien-t’ai, in his \"Study of the Tenancy Systems of Fukien” (福建租佃制之研究), groups this system with the t'ien-ku (田骨)/t'ien p'i (田皮) category of perpetual tenancy (永佃制). His description follows:\n\nConcerning t'ien k'u (lit: \"field's bones\") and t'ien p'i (lit: \"field's skin\"), or k'u t'ien (骨田) and p'i tien (皮田), this system is found in several counties throughout the province, the names changing slightly from place to place. The value of the \"bones\" belongs to the landlord, and the value of the \"skin\" belongs to the tenant; both sides can freely sell their respective rights. While the landlord (\"bones-master\") can freely sell his title, he can, in no way, affect the rights of the tenant to the \"skin-value.\" Moreover, the responsibility of paying the land-tax resides, as usual, with the landlord. When the tenant sells his title, even if disputes arise, there is no way for the landlord to interfere. Indeed, even the government finds it difficult to intervene.15\n\nOne of the earliest British accounts of perpetual lease in Hsin-An is to be found in Lockhart's \"Memorandum on Land\" appended to his Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong (1900):\n\nThe relation between landlord and tenant is often a complicated one, chiefly owing to the system of perpetual lease. Under such leases the landlords have practically renounced all rights to the\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208037, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "60\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nexercise of ownership, and are contented to do nothing further than to receive a yearly rent. They can sell this right of receiving rent, but the land is otherwise under the absolute control of the cultivators, who often sell their perpetual leases.\n\nThe landlord is called the owner of the \"T'i Kwat\" (note: Cantonese equivalent for t’i k’u), which may be termed the right of receiving rent. The tenant is said to possess the T'i P'i, or right of cultivation. Constant lawsuits result from this double ownership and the contending interests which it necessarily involves16\n\nTo summarize, perpetual lease in Hsin-An was characterized by the division of land into two values, surface-value, which corresponded to cultivation-value, and subsurface-value, which corresponded to rent-value. Landlords held rights over the rent-value, conceptualized locally as t'ien-ku-chuan (†), while tenants held title to the cultivation-value, or t'ien-p’i-ch’üan (✯✯). The process by which rent-value became separated from cultivation-value, i.e. the process of its primary accumulation, becomes manifest in an examination of the social and economic evolution of the county following the resettlement during the early 18th-century.\n\nOf the several kin groups displaced by the Kang-Hsi evacuation, the Tangs were among the least adversely affected. This was so for two reasons: 1) the proximity of the Hsin-An Tangs to several Tang settlements in Tung-Kuan,17 and 2) close relationships between Tang gentry and local officialdom.18 Not only were the Tangs able to keep abreast of developments while residing in a secure base not far from the evacuated county, moreover, the evacuation had the unintended result of increasing clan solidarity. In this regard, the establishment of the Tu-Ch'ing Tang (**)- the largest order ancestral trust uniting the clan, was most significant:\n\nTang Pao-sheng (£), a chin-shih of the Ch'ing Dynasty, had the intention of constructing an ancestral temple, but his plans were not realized. An official, Tang Hsu-chou (✯✯✯), seeing that the five branches of his clan resided in different places far from one another, decided to fulfill Pao-sheng's wishes. After choosing a beautiful site at Chiu-Ch'iao (**), Tung-Kuan, the clan gathered together to construct a great temple. At each winter sacrifice (), the male descendents of the various branches would assemble and encourage each other to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208044, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n67\n\n12 Lockhart lists 255 villages occupied by Hakkas, with a total population of 36,070 in the Tung Lo in 1898. Assuming a population of 250,000 for the total district in 1900, Hsin-An probably had a Hakka population of around 90,000.\n\n13 Rawski's bibliography in Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China offers the most complete listing of works bearing on perpetual tenancy.\n\np. 64.\n\n14 CSO280/04 Extension. See note 4, Essay 2.\n\n15 Hsu T'ien-tai, Fu Chien Wen Hua (福建文化), Vol. 1, No. 1, (1941),\n\n16 Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China, March 1898-September 1900. \"Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong,\" (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November 1900) p. 19.\n\n17 The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u (世鑑堂家譜), a collection of genealogies from Kam Tin, gives the following settlements of lineal descendants in Tung Kuan: Chuh Yuan (竹園), Yen Tien (燕田), Fu Lung (福龍), Huai Te (懷德), Shih Ching (石井), Tu Kao (土高), and Ping Hu (平湖).\n\n18 \"These clans gain their local influence, not through numbers alone, but owing to the fact that certain of their numbers have official rank, gained through competitive examinations, or obtained by purchase, which keeps them in touch with the Magistrate and even higher officials.\" Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China ibid., p. 20. The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u records that, from Cheng Hua (Ming Dynasty) to Tao Kwang (Ch'ing Dynasty)—that is, from roughly 1470-1820—fourteen Kam Tin Tangs passed the state examination. Several of these became office holders. Another indicator of gentry connections with officialdom was the construction, in Kam Tin, of a temple (祠堂) dedicated to the two officials (Chou Yu-te (周有德) and Wang Lai-jen (王來任)) who petitioned the Emperor, on behalf of the inhabitants of the coastal areas, to allow resettlement.\n\n19 Introduction to the Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u (南陽堂世族譜), compiled by the Ping Shan Tangs.\n\n20 Sung Hok-P'ang, in his articles on the Kam Tin Tangs in the Hong Kong Naturalist, claims to have seen references to Tang lands on Hong Kong in the Land Register (土地冊) of Tung Kuan. \"One may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the first year of Maan Lik, AD 1525, (sic) as after that the San On District was formed” (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 and 4).\n\n21 HKTCSMTC, \"Details of Cultivated Land” (耕地詳情).\n\n22 ibid.\n\n23 The landlord clans were often referred to by the British as \"first cultivators.\" See, for instance, CSO3172/1915 cited in the essay on tax-lordism.\n\n24 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p. 16.\n\n25 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8.\n\n26 In this regard, note the high degree of correlation among the different \"tax-burdens\" in Table II. One is tempted to speculate that a native formula for the conversion of rent rates from tax-rates existed.\n\n27 In the 1934 edition of the Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-chi Nien-chien (中國經濟年鑑), chapter 7 (Chinese Tenancy Systems), contains the following description of the Fen Chih Chih (分種制) system, a form of perpetual lease found in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture: \"This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208053, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "76\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nTaxlordism first came to the attention of the British in an intelligent report filed with the Colonial Secretary nearly eight months prior to the occupation of the leased area. The document, essentially an analysis of potential unrest in the neighborhood of Kam Tin and Sham Chun, sheds light on the politics of the lease at the local level. Addressing himself to the question of possible resistance in Un Long Tung (*), the author remarks:\n\n+ + +\n\nenquiries proved that the people of the markets and towns were glad to see England get the place. But the villagers were very much displeased, especially those of Kam Tin village, owing to the fact that, though the owners in the neighborhood of Kam Tin hold deeds, they have to pay tax to the said village. If England got the place, it is feared that the benefit will be deprived of (sic).... It is like the way the (Chinese) Government charges taxes.23\n\nThe report proved to be prophetic, for it was the gentry of Un Long Tung, specifically those of the Tang villages and their dependencies, which mounted the most effective and prolonged resistance to the occupation. The same reasons were invariably set forth in petitions from captured “ringleaders:” Among the wealthy villages, there was considerable apprehension over substantial and drastic changes in the tax structure, while among the smaller villages, leaders cited the coercion and bullying of the larger gentry villages.24\n\nTaxlordism was so widespread that an enterprising land officer suggested, in 1902, that the Colonial Government utilize the taxlords \"to get the taxes for us as they did for the Chinese Government.”25 When existing tensions ruled this out, a plan was formulated to eliminate the institution by granting unclaimed tracts of crown land to those who could establish “taxlord claims.” Initial optimism over a rapid settlement evaporated, however, as taxlords attempted to establish rights over huge tracts of land. The largest claims were unquestionably in Un Long Tung, where the Kam Tin Tangs laid claim to taxlord status over the whole of Pat Heung (A) and Shap Pat Heung (+A+),26\n\nThe \"taxlord claims\" proved to be the thorniest problem faced by British colonial administrators charged with the rationalization of revenue collection. The plan by which taxlords were to be compensated for rights \"not compatible with the principles of British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208090, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)”\n\n113\n\nlocal communities. \"Ethnic neighborhood\" can potentially refer to either or both concepts. If this were not so, if we could not separate neighborhood from sub-neighborhood or neighborhood from community, how else could we explain the appellation of North Point, a neighborhood over 2/3 Guangdongese,2 not only as \"Little Fujian\" but as \"Little Shanghai\" as well?\n\nFrom \"Little Shanghai\"\n\nAlthough it is hard to imagine now, North Point 50 years ago was a semi-rural area. Extensive landfill projects, however, soon led to North Point's emergence by the end of the 1930s as a center of light industry and commerce as well as of entertainment. The population remained small, however, and prior to the Second World War North Point was the least crowded spot on the northern side of Hong Kong Island (Wai 1957: 2-5).\n\nMuch of the area was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Post-war reconstruction coincided with the late 1940s arrival of the first wave of Central Chinese to North Point: those who had the means to flee the Civil War raging in the north of China and had chosen to come to Hong Kong for a \"temporary\" stay while they waited for the fighting to cease. As a newly developing, uncrowded and semi-exclusive area, North Point appealed to these relatively affluent immigrants.\n\nWhen Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of Zhejiang (Chekiang) and Jiangsu (Kiangsu) were overrun by Chinese Communist forces in 1949, a new wave of \"Shanghaiese\" descended upon Hong Kong although even at this early date North Point was not the destination of all Shanghaiese; the wealthiest went to the most exclusive areas of the colony while the bulk of the predominantly middle-class Shanghaiese proceeded to North Point and lent a decidedly bourgeois flavor to the area.\n\nBy 1950 \"Little Shanghai\" was well established. Restaurants, tailor shops, beauty parlors and other businesses were all set up by Shanghaiese to serve the area's essentially Shanghaiese population. Even today on a walk around North Point one can spot many old and fading signboards of a \"Shanghai Tailor,\" a \"Shanghai Beautiful Woman\" Beauty Parlor, a \"Shanghai Peacock Laundry Service\" as well as a couple of well-known and well-frequented Shanghai restaurants. The Shanghai population clustered within a block or so of King's Road, North Point's main thoroughfare, both Fort Street", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208572, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "2\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nThe American sense of guilt was largely attributable to three factors: United States' military defeats in Southeast Asia, the American commitment to the policy of defeating Germany first before concentrating on Japan, and the American failure in delivering the bulk of lend-lease and other war materials promised to China. On the first point, according to Stanley K. Hornbeck who was political adviser to the Department of State, reports from American sources from or through Chungking indicated that the American defeat in the Philippines, together with the rapid collapse of the British position in Southeast Asia, had bred \"a sense of frustration and defeatism” among the Chinese.4 To be fair, however, one must add that China had been vastly more appalled and disillusioned by, and consequently more contemptuous of, the British performance.\n\nOn the second point, it was only natural that China was disappointed and embittered by the American policy of “Germany First”. Support for this order of priority was by no means unanimous within American government circles. Admirals Ernest J. King and William D. Leahy, General Douglas MacArthur (at his new headquarters in Australia), and Stanley Hornbeck, to give some examples, all expressed doubt about it and urged that a greater military effort should be directed against Japan. While President Roosevelt was firm on his decision to stand by the agreement reached at the 'Arcadia” Conference it did not mean that he was entirely free from embarrassment when faced with his Far Eastern ally, Chiang Kai-shek.\n\nM4\n\nOn the third point, immediately after Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt had been generous in promising China war materials, including planes, mainly through lend-lease channels. However, the Americans soon realized that it was easier to make the promise than to implement it. Two difficulties were involved. The first was the problem of transport. After the fall of Burma and the seizure of the southern part of the Burma Road by the Japanese early in 1942, air transport became the only feasible means of getting supplies into China. Until the opening of the well-known Ledo Road (later on re-named Stilwell Road) early in 1945, the bulk of the supplies flown from India to China was transported by the Tenth United States Air Force between April and December 1942, and thereafter by the United States Air Transport Command in what Joseph W. Ballantine, who became director of the Office of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208573, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\nFar Eastern Affairs in the Department of State in 1944, terms “the most difficult supply operation of the entire war\" over the towering hump of the Himalayas. The second difficulty was connected with the priority given to the European theatre. The result was that much of the promised materials to China was often diverted, much to the distress of Hornbeck and others, from its original destination for the European fronts.? Speaking in more specific terms, by late September 1942, US$3.1 billion worth of lend-lease materials were sent to the British Empire, $750 million to Russia, and only $112 million to China. The disparity became even more remarkable by early June: $7,030,000,000 to the British Empire, $1,899,000,000 to Russia, and only $133,000,000 to China.8\n\nUnder the circumstances, it is understandable that the United States should entertain grave anxiety regarding China, especially over a possible collapse of Chinese resistance against Japan. This concern, which the Chinese did everything to keep alive, was universally shared by senior men in the Washington government, including the president himself, H. L. Stimson, then secretary of war, Henry Morgenthau, secretary of the Treasury, Leahy, and many involved in Far Eastern affairs in the Department of State, principally Hornbeck.9 While some doubt was expressed as to how much China could and was willing to contribute to the war effort in the east, the consensus was that her collapse would be a fatal blow to the United Nations, especially the United States, in the Pacific theatre. This event, therefore, must be prevented at all cost.\n\nIt was only natural that the United States, torn by anxiety, should be obsessed with the desire to compensate China as best she could. Consequently, the American government announced at the beginning of 1942 a loan of 500 million dollars to China, with next to no strings attached.10 Meanwhile, the move to push for the allies' recognition of China as one of the great powers, of which Hornbeck claimed himself to be the originator, became increasingly prominent in the American government.11 The outcome was the American insistence that China be included as a signatory, together with Britain, the U.S.S.R., and the United States, of the Declaration of Four Nations on General Security, signed in Moscow on 30 December 1943, and that Chiang Kai-shek, together with Roosevelt and Churchill, be a party to the Cairo Declaration, issued on 1 December 1943.12 The American eagerness to compensate naturally did not allow Madame Chiang Kai-shek's visit to the United States,\n\nPage 30\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208577, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n7\n\ncould not refuse point blank either because, significantly, no American support could be expected in taking this stand, and the Chinese were likely to refuse to sign the treaty under the circumstances. The only alternative left was to endeavour to obtain postponement of the question by using the formula laid down by, surprisingly, the Colonial Office for the future status of Hong Kong earlier in August: \"should the post-war reconstruction of the Far East to be undertaken jointly by all the United Nations require special contributions from Hong Kong, the British government would not 'regard the maintenance of British sovereignty over the Colony [here applied only to the New Territories] as a matter beyond the scope of... discussion.\" Such, plus the argument that the New Territories were leased territories and therefore unrelated to the question of extraterritoriality, was the British reply to the Chinese at the beginning of December,28\n\nBy mid-December, all outstanding obstacles in the American-Chinese negotiations had been removed, but the problem over the New Territories persisted in the Anglo-Chinese talks. The Chinese would not accept a settlement which did not include the cancellation of the Kowloon lease. The United States indicated that she would sign her treaty with China on New Year's Day 1943. Obsessed with the desire to sign the Anglo-Chinese treaty simultaneously, Britain informed the Chinese government through her ambassador at Chungking that \"the future of the New Territories was outside the scope of the extraterritoriality treaty, but if the Chinese government desired [my italics] that 'terms of the lease of these territories should be reconsidered'\", this should be done when war was over.29 Thus the British had clearly conceded to China the initiative to raise the question in future.\n\nThe Chinese, however, remained adamant. On 28 December the Foreign Office decided to omit the words \"terms of\" before \"lease\" in her statement to China, having learned earlier of the suspicion of T.V. Soong, the Chinese foreign minister, of the words in question. But it was to be Britain's very last concession, even at the risk of sacrificing the treaty as a whole.30\n\nAt the war cabinet meeting that day Eden obtained permission to ask for the support of the United States, in deference to whose opinion Britain had conceded a number of important points in her negotiations with China, as a last attempt to save the situation.31 The State Department, however, did not comply with the Foreign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208581, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n11\n\nBritain of Hong Kong, and the development by Great Britain of a great port which he felt had benefited the whole world. He said that it was British territory and he saw no good reason why it should cease to be such. He went on to say that perhaps some arrangement could be made with the Chinese whereby the question of sovereignty could be adjusted but the political control and administrative responsibility remain with Great Britain. He referred to public utterances of his own to the effect that he was not Prime Minister for the purpose of being a party to a liquidation of the British Empire. He said that he had convictions on that subject and that he was perfectly willing to say so frankly to anybody.\"45\n\nIt might well have been his own weak performance in London, among other things, which prompted Hornbeck early in January 1944 to urge the Secretary of State not to repeat Woodrow Wilson's mistake in being too much of a \"gentleman\". The American government must obtain from Britain agreement and cooperation in any reasonable course of action upon which the United States might choose to insist, especially in relation to colonial matters, before the defeat of Germany when Britain still depended on the Americans for their preservation.46\n\nThe Secretary's reaction to the advice is not known. But it appears from his memoirs that he was not in favour of coercion in dealing with the Anglo-American differences, and specifically with the question of Hong Kong.47 In any case, the Department of State had become less and less consulted by the President with regard to general war and foreign policies. The War and Navy Departments and the Treasury were far more important in the President's mind. On the personal level, moreover, Hull was certainly not one of Roosevelt's trusted few. Hull himself was conscious and sensitive of the truth: that FDR was his own Secretary of State.\"48 In fact, many of Roosevelt's utterances at the major Allied conferences, beginning with the Cairo Conference late in 1943, were made without prior reference to and consultation with the Department of State. Hull resigned late in 1944, frustrated and in poor health.\n\nDespite Roosevelt's well-known anti-imperialist and anti-colonial stand and his interest in Hong Kong, his behaviour regarding the future of the British colony was generally characterized by weakness and the lack of persistent and direct pressure on Britain. At the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208616, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "46\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nCrawford's, began to cease and we turned over to a diet of rice, soya beans, green vegetables and hard-tack from the Army stores. We managed also to buy a little pork and vegetables in the village below us for a while, but the supply quickly ran out. We likewise had a limited supply of canned goods in our pantry.\n\nWhen the Engineers took over our recreation room we fixed up the lower chapel to serve that purpose and placed a number of portable altars in our Main Chapel upstairs. Here Mass was said daily as usual, but well after daylight as it was very difficult to black out the whole chapel. And finally there was no electricity and some old vigil lights and candles were required as illuminants. It made us think of mediaeval times, and we retired early and rose late.\n\nFather Maurice Feeney wrote a very detailed account of his experiences, and we shall now give some of his impressions of the conflict.\n\nOn the fatal day, the 8th, Father Maurice Feeney went to visit Father George Bauer who was ill at St. Paul's Hospital, suffering from a severe attack of dysentery. In the course of his visit Japanese planes began flying overhead, and he, together with some of the nurses, witnessed the attack. Hearing that the Hospital was to be emptied of its patients to prepare for casualties, he and Father Bauer returned to Stanley.\n\nThough Father Feeney had volunteered to serve at the Hospital, upon his return to Stanley he was sent to Kowloon in response to a request from the Maryknoll Sisters there for a priest chaplain, and protector. His trip the next morning was a rather hectic one with planes flying overhead and consternation in the streets below. On his arrival at the Convent he learned that the British were already using the Sisters' school as a first aid station. Immediately behind the school was a six-inch gun which kept up a steady fire at the invading forces. It was not long before a shell did hit the Convent, making a two-foot hole in the wall and causing much damage to the classrooms.\n\nThough hostilities had begun only on the 8th it did not take the Japanese very long to infiltrate into the Colony, and on the 11th they were seen outside the Sisters Convent, patrolling the streets. It was not long either before a Japanese officer appeared and politely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208786, "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "216\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn the event, it was decided to wait until after the villagers were able to move to the new houses being constructed as a replacement of the existing village. These were due for completion in March 1979. Accordingly the de-vegetation and site formation works have been scheduled to begin thereafter.\n\nMarch 1979\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nTHE NAM PAK HONG (南北行) COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATION OF HONG KONG\n\nThis history of the Nam Pak Hong Association, which appears to have been prepared by one of its leaders in the 1960s, is included with the consent of the Association. The translation was made available by the courtesy of the Director of Home Affairs.\n\nForeword\n\nThe Association was established in 1868 (i.e. the 7th year of the reign of Tung Ch'ih in the Ch'ing dynasty). In its early years, it was well managed by capable office-bearers, thus safeguarding the interests of our trade and members. Later, owing to change of circumstances, the senility and death of many able office-bearers without suitable successors, the Association's affairs got into a mess. By 1920, there remained only seven members, who were divided in action; nor did they maintain close contact. The situation further deteriorated by 1940.\n\nOn 6.10.41 Mr. Tong Ping-tat, Manager of the member firm, the Nam Tai Hong Co. Ltd., convened a meeting of over a score of members, including the Wah On Hong, the Yuen Lee Hong, the San Fung Hong, the Kin Tye Lung, the Wah Fung Hong, the Hau Tak Hong, the Yue Wo Loong, the Wing Hing Hong and the Kwong Sun Hong Ltd., to discuss the promotion of the Association's functions and the enlistment of more members. It was not until several such meetings were held and sub-committees formed, that the Association's functions were gradually restored.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation which began on 25 December 1941 the Association did not cease functioning; its membership was then increased to 21 firms.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208804, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "234\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIn providing this detailed and thoughtful account, the writer has done an immense service to the present governments of Malaya and Singapore — indeed of the region — as well as to students of Chinese society old and new. It is of greater value because of his own personal involvement in the business of government and in the fact that, as stated in his preface (p. xiii), he had the enthusiastic support of police officers of all ranks and officers of the Chinese Affairs Department throughout Malaya and Singapore who conducted enquiries, collected information and translated documents. It is doubtful whether this work could be done again — it is mentioned that many of the police documents of the last colonial period have been destroyed and we should be deeply thankful that Blythe was available to undertake it at the time he did.\n\nT\n\nThe book is well produced, on good quality paper with solid binding and clear large type. The 18 illustrations are as notable as the contents.\n\nHong Kong, May, 1980.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n'Friendly Societies are very good,' said Mr. Van Dyke. “But I am referring to secret and dangerous Societies.\"\n\n'These qualifying names are purely arbitrary,' said Tek Chiu. “All Chinese Societies are professedly good, and they, all of them, are just what members choose to make them. There is no fixed principle according to which you can draw a distinction between those that are exclusively benevolent and friendly, and those that you call secret and dangerous societies.'\n\n'Is the Broken Coffin Society entitled to be called friendly, or is it justly designated secret and dangerous?'\n\n'It is justly designated secret and dangerous. It is the fault of our Triad Society, certainly, that such a dangerous and criminal clique is not exterminated at once. Such bad sets of men are like bad teeth that ought to be pulled out. But because a man has a bad tooth in his head, he should not be prohibited from eating.\"\n\nLamont continues: A Chinaman is a social being—a tool rather than a member of his community. If he were to cease living a social life, he would cease to be a Chinaman. The Chinaman abroad lives a large part of his being in the 'hoey. The hoey unites men more closely even than the sons of one father in a family. So powerful is the bond of this Freemasonry of China, that if two brothers in a family belong to different hoeys their relationship in such a set of circumstances is more distant than is that which subsists between those members of one hoey who are not relatives in the ordinary sense at all.\n\nTek Chiu's view, that Chinese societies are what members choose to make them, can also be found in Leong Gor Yun's Chinatown Inside Out (New York: Barrows Mussey, 1936), especially Chapter Two.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208844, "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": 6, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "205\n\n12 On this particular type of tenancy, see John Kamm, \"Two essays on the Ch'ing economy of Hsin-an, Kwangtung Province”, JHKBRÁS 1977, pp. 55-84, and James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911, Folkestone, Kent, England, 1977, pp. 50-53.\n\n13 Ints. Mr. Wong 22.6.81, Mr. Lam Kaap Shau 8.6.81, Mr. Cheung Kau 26.6.81, Mr. Cheung 26.6.81, Mr. Cheng Yung 10.7.81, and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81; Hugh D.R. Baker, Sheung Shui, A Chinese Lineage Village, Guildford and London, 1968, p. 172.\n\n14 Father Sergio Ticozzi, 12.5.81, quoting from Giovanni B. Tragella, Le Mission Estere di Milano, Nel Quadro Degli Avvenimenti Contemporanli, Milan 1950-1963, vol. 1, pp. 274-275, vol. 2, pp. 85, 89, and 314. Int. Father George Carusso, 20.5.81.\n\n15 Ints. Mr. Lok Tak K'ei 17.7.81, Mr. Leung Yung Hei 16.6.81, Mrs. Lau 14.6.81, and Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80.\n\n10 Int. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81. Mr. Yau's term for \"moorage inlet\" was \"siu wan t'au\". Cf. also the type of market James Hayes refers to as \"coastal market centres\" in his Hong Kong Region, p. 37.\n\n17\n\nDocuments on this case are included in Kuan T'ien-p'ei, Ch'ou-hai ch'u-chi (1836, n.p., Taipei reprint, 1968) 2/26a-33a, 56a-74a, 80a-99b. Kuan was Naval Commander-in-Chief for Kwangtung from 1834 to 1841. C. Fred Blake, in Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town, Hawaii, 1981, p. 46 note 8, states \"Lung Shuen Wan was a traditional outpost for the Chinese imperial navy's regulation of eastern approaches to the Pearl River. I wonder if perhaps Lung Shuen Wan was the original 'coastal market centre' in this area?\" Elsewhere (loc. cit. and p. 95) he points out that the Lung Shuen Wan Tin Hau Temple retained the patronage of the Pak Kong and Sha Kok Mei villagers, despite the greater convenience of the Tin Hau Temple within Sai Kung Market.\n\n18 These are figures of shops as registered in the Block Crown Lease (DD215, DD224). It is more than likely that these were shop spaces rather than shops, and in the event that a shop might take up more than a shop space, there were fewer shops in Sai Kung and Hang Hau in the early 1900's than noted here. For comparison, in 1905, Yuen Long had only seventy-four shops and Tai Po Market twenty-three large and fifteen small ones. See James Hayes, Hong Kong Region, p. 36.\n\n19 Ints. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, Father George Carusso 20.5.81, Mr. Lei Kan 19.6.81, Mr. Ue Shun Hing 10.7.81.\n\n20 Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81.\n\n21 Mr. Cheung Ts'oi 20.6.81, Madam Chiu I Mooi 7.5.81, Mrs. Foo, née Lei, 28.6.81.\n\n22\n\nMrs. Kong Lei San Kiu 21.6.81. Mr. Cheung Kin Wa 10.6.81 of Taai Fung Nin (opened c. 1933) in Sai Kung Market remembered that the shop used to slaughter a pig each day to sell to the boat people.\n\n23 Mr. Chan Kei Shang 28.5.81, Mr. Chan Shou 19.6.81.\n\n24 Mr. Hoh King 6.5.81, Mrs. Lei née So 20.6.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Cheung Ming Shing 8.6.81, Mr. Lai Foh 8.5.81. Mrs. Lei used to obtain piglets from Kam Lei Loi in Sai Kung Market. It took six to seven months to fatten them, and two dollars to have each pig carried back to Sai Kung Market. She also had rice and pig feed (chiefly rice husk) from Kam Lei Loi on credit. Kam Lei Loi was a butcher's cum general store, where her husband worked.\n\n25 According to Mr. Yau T'aam Shang, 15.5.81, the interest rate in Sai Kung Market was 5 cents per dollar per month, i.e. 60 percent per annum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209080, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "210\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nterms to define. It has three different meanings:\n\n1) It refers to the centre of a burial site, in other words, to the area enclosed by the two sides of the semi-circle.\n\n2) It is used for xue (which see).\n\n3) It may refer to the slope of the land.\n\nSince long has so many meanings it is usually qualified by another term; thus:\n\n#shanlong which refers to any knoll, hill or mountain on the site. It is itself qualified by the adjectives: huo ★, living; si ♯, dead; zhen, true; and jia, false; all of which refer to the nature of the shanlong.\n\n★ shuilong refers to any depression which occurs on the site. *sha refers to the topography of the land on either side of the long.\n\nSince these basic terms are often confused—the xue of one school being the long of another—the point to remember about them is that they all refer to the physical nature of a site.\n\nThe next series of terms refers to different areas of a site.\n\nA tai is the spot where the yangqi No 4, of the mountains comes into contact with the yinqi, of the plain.\n\ntang refers to the flat ground in front of the central long. Tang is subdivided into antang ★★ which indicates the centre, and mingtang ♬ † which describes the areas to the right and left of the antang.\n\nchao refers to the flat ground in front of the antang.\n\ndiwu is any feature visible from the long such as trees, rocks, walls, houses, roads, etc.\n\nWhen selecting a site water is also vitally important; literally so since the direction of its flow influences the number of sons born into a family. From a purely practical point of view, good drainage is essential to prevent water seeping into a grave and making the ancestors uncomfortable: were that to occur they would cease to promote the family's prosperity.\n\nOf the many water-related terms only four need to be listed here.\n\n** shuilu refers to the direction of the water's flow.\n\n★ zhengqiao wei is the name of the point where water enters a site.\n\nxiaoshui is flowing water.\n\nnashui refers to areas where water may accumulate.\n\n|\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209132, "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-1981", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n21\n\nhis hand, catching the gifts which he then presses into the patient's head. More gifts are asked for, and are pressed into the base of the throat, the belly, the back, and other places that are sore. These stones and flowers are to strengthen the patient and to begin to drive out what is dirty, and to repair the damage done by the attacking spirit to the patient, either by its rough handling of the soul or by spearing it. Injury of that kind to the soul reacts on the body and causes it damage as well.\n\nThe next step is to finish cleaning out the sickness and any damage it may have done to the body; so that the soul, if it has already departed, may return in safety. First the shaman puts his lips to the places in which he has inserted the heavenly stones and flowers and sucks out the dirt and sickness, at the same time silently bidding what is harmful and unclean to depart. He then takes the bunch of leaves he brought with him and sweeps the patient from head to foot, sometimes singing aloud, but always bidding the sickness to go.\n\nThe treatment by this spirit is now complete. Often the helping spirit is the one who has caused the trouble because the patient in some way or other annoyed him. Once the man knows what he has done and has, as it were, apologised, or the shaman's spirit friends have persuaded the annoyed spirit to cease his attack, the situation can easily be put right. But before the spirit goes he may stop to gossip with the audience; he may also advise further treatment of the patient by other spirits; the cause of the illness may not be simple or single, and in any case one spirit's powers are limited, even if he did cause the damage. In simple cases it may not be necessary to fetch the attacking spirit; but if the attack is serious then the illness can only be cured by fetching the attacker; and it may take quite a long time to find him while the shaman explores his network of friends in the spirit world.\n\nThe attack on the man may not be the result of either anger, malice, or hunger; it may be the result of love or the wish for friendship. Spirits sometimes take an unreasonable liking for human beings — it is, as I said earlier, an improper and alarming state of affairs, and a sensible person (especially an aristocrat who has to consider his dignity at all times) is likely to ignore all the usual danger signals made by omens or in dreams. If the patient does that there is nothing for it but for the spirit to make the man or woman ill. After the spirit has made his wish for friendship known, there is nothing more the patient can do if he wishes to get better other than to accept the friendship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209137, "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-1981", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "26\n\nEDGAR WICKBERG\n\nrights. The two most common were: the right to collect revenue from the land, and the right to use the land. A third right, that of permanent sublease tenancy, might also be established and recognized. The first and second of these rights, the ones most commonly found, were called \"ownership\" rights, and it was customary to speak of one \"owner's\" owning the \"topsoil\" and the other \"owner's\" possessing the \"bottom\" soil. Although these terms, used in the New Territories as elsewhere, are colourful and memorable, they are somewhat misleading to those of us who today think of mineral rights, air space, and so on. I prefer to think of these as simply two different rights in land: one a revenue right, the other a right of agricultural cultivation. In most places where this separation of land rights was found, each of the two rights in question was perpetual, could be inherited, and could be freely mortgaged or sold. Thus, the owner of the revenue right might not even know the location of the land from which he drew revenue; he had inherited or purchased a right to income from it, which he, in turn, could freely dispose of. In that sense, the revenue right became, by the late Ch'ing period, more a right to income from a given piece of land than a partial \"ownership\" of that land. The only responsibility he had towards the land was to pay the tax, which, being lower in amount than the revenue he received, allowed him a net profit. The holder of the cultivation right, on the other hand, was closer to what we would consider an \"owner\". He was free to farm the land as he wished, and he might sublet it if he chose. His only responsibility was to pay the revenue charge to the person who held the right to collect it. Since that charge was usually much less in amount than what he might gain from farming the land himself or by collecting rent from a tenant, he, too, made a profit. We tend to think of this person as an \"owner\" because he might very well have farmed the land himself, and, even if he did not, he might reside close by and keep track, thereby, of the condition of the land. Yet there were holders of the cultivation right who did not live near the land in question, and who knew little of its actual condition. In such cases, the tenant who actually held a lease from them might come, in time, to be recognized as having a permanent right to be a tenant on that land. Once that happened, such a tenant might be able to sell his right to be tenant, or mortgage it. He might also, if the land in question were sufficiently sizeable and fertile, sublet part or all of it to someone else. In this way, several different rights in a given piece of land were established, and, thereby, a large and fertile piece of land might support a large number of people, each with a right to some aspect of it. In this way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209138, "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-1981", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE N T, c 1900\n\n—\n\n27\n\nall\n\ntoo, multiple rights in land became negotiable. Thus, by the end of the Ch'ing period, in the places where this system existed, the revenue right, the cultivation right, and sometimes the tenancy right could be bought and sold, or mortgaged (as well as inherited), and, since mortgage could be assigned, might be transferred yet another step or two. The economic and social significance of these developments in late imperial China awaits full investigation.\n\nUnder what circumstances did such a system come into being? I believe I have identified five kinds of circumstances. There may be many more. In one case, where a frontier is to be opened or devastated lands reclaimed, patents may be given to an entrepreneur to make the necessary arrangements. He may then recruit persons to do the work, giving them a perpetual lease to cultivate the land subject only to their paying him an annual rent on a perpetual basis. In this way, both entrepreneurship (which sometimes included partial financing of reclamation) and the actual labour of opening the land, are given their rewards. Such was the most common origin of the multi-tiered tenure system in Ch'ing Taiwan; but as far as I know these circumstances never applied to the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nIn a second case, local power sometimes extending beyond the purely local to become influence in higher places was the basis of such an arrangement. In this case, clans or individuals who arrived early in a given region, claimed the best lands for themselves, and, in time, perhaps produced degree holders who exercised influence, or through armed forces asserted their local power, would then claim what amounted to \"protection money\" from other landowners in their region. Again, the result was the same: a right to part of the produce of the land. But in this case, there seems to have been little sense of responsibility for paying the tax and, indeed, the arrangement, based on power rather than documented land rights, might not have been recognized by the Chinese government if ever brought to notice. We are most familiar with this form of revenue claim from reports of the activities of the Tangs of Kam Tin just prior to the British assumption of sovereignty over the New Territories.\n\nIn a third case, on a frontier where there were non-Chinese aboriginal peoples, treaties might be made with the latter in which Chinese settlement and land rights were allowed subject to the perpetual payment of fees to the aboriginal claimants. In Taiwan, where this situation existed, such a fee was called \"barbarian\" rent, or \"barbarian\" revenue (fan ta-tsu).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209139, "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-1981", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "28\n\nEDGAR WICKBERG\n\nIn a fourth case, a sale of land was the origin of the relationship and the convenience of the buyer was the reason. In such a case, described as common in the New Territories, the name of the original owner was retained on the property rolls after the land had changed hands, and he continued to pay the tax for the new owner. The reasons were convenience and money-saving for the new owner. A new registration was expensive and inconvenient. It cost less and was less troublesome to pay a fee to the former owner, which he would use to pay the tax. The size of that fee in relation to the amount of tax might be a subject of research interest. It seems likely that in some cases, at least, the practice of pao-lan that is, of tax-farming as a profitable business was a part of this arrangement. In any case, sales of this kind were common in the New Territories at the time of British takeover.\n\n—\n\nIn a fifth case, a would-be seller of land, who wished to dispose of lands that were too distant or otherwise inconvenient for him to manage but did not want to part with them completely, did not sell the lands but instead gave them out on a perpetual lease, subject to payment of a fee by the lessee which would allow the \"owner\" to pay the tax, the land continuing to be registered in his name. In such cases, the owner might be a widow who could neither farm nor manage the land; or it might be a clan or a monastery too distant to administer the holding. The perpetual lessee might be an individual farmer; or it might be a local clan or other institution, like a temple or monastery. Through this \"near sale\" practice of perpetual lease, an official document of lease being part of the arrangement, it appears, the owner maintained at least a tenuous tie to the land, should he wish to recover it for his own use at some later date. Parenthetically, this kind of near-sale was a common practice in late imperial Chinese property dealings. Some of the early British officials remarked that the perpetual lease of this kind was often confused with the Chinese customary mortgage (tien), also in use in the New Territories. By the terms of such mortgages, the borrower did not pay interest to the lender, but instead he transferred his property, on a long-term loan basis, as it were, to the lender, who, during the life of the unredeemed mortgage loan, had the benefit of all income he could derive from the land. Since such mortgages often were in force for decades, the position of the mortgage holder became that almost of an owner, or, at least, of a perpetual lessee. These practices, by which there were degrees of alienation of one's land, provided for flexibility in land dealings. They also responded to the needs of a society in which agricultural land, particularly that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209140, "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-1981", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE NT, c. 1900\n\n29\n\ninherited from ancestors, could be fully relinquished only with the greatest reluctance.\n\nWhen we look at New Territories land tenure institutions within the context of Chinese tenure institutions in general, some of the things that confuse us from the writings of the early British land officials are clarified. Thus, in those writings, the relationship between the holder of the revenue right and the holder of the cultivation right is discussed in the same breath, so to speak, as the relationship between the latter and his tenant, with no apparent distinction between the different rights that are being discussed, and no indication that several of these may exist simultaneously on the same piece of land. For example, one writer speaks of a relationship between \"owner\" and \"lease-holder\" in which the former charges a rent only sufficient to enable him to pay the tax. He then adds that there are also some leases in which the relationship is \"really that of landlord and tenant\" and in which rack rents are charged. These are treated as simply two kinds of lease, with no discussion of the possibility that they might both exist on the same piece of land at the same time. What we are talking about, then, is a system in which there may be several parties with rights to a given piece of land at a given time and with differing contractual relationships written or oral between them. The basis of this was the fragmenting of the right to land into rights to several different aspects of a given piece of land. Once those rights were established as perpetual, each of them could be inherited, rented, mortgaged or sold. If we understand this, we can see how several different relationships, claims, etc. apply to the same piece of land.\n\n―\n\n―\n\nHow common was the multi-tiered system in the New Territories of 1900? One British writer estimated that almost every plot of land had at least two owners. The same writer elsewhere estimated that 80 percent of the land tax was paid through an intermediary. It was the tax-farming, or pao-lan activities of the powerful, and the fourth practice referred to above by which the actual owner paid the former owner to pay the tax for him, that seem to have encouraged the use of the term \"taxlord\" by early British land officials. The term, apparently coined by one of them, J. R. Wood, came to be used to refer to all those who claimed a revenue from the land without having documented \"ownership\" or being in actual occupancy. The term, though convenient, is unfortunate in one way, since it suggests a single origin to a relationship and a claim which, as I have tried to show above, was actually derived from several sources in several situations. \"Taxlord\"\n\n!\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209141, "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-1981", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "30\n\nEDGAR WICK BERG\n\n-\n\nclaims were not settled by the British administration until 1908. Despite the wide prevalence of revenue-claiming practices and institutions, the British recognized only those revenue rights that could be documented. Thus, the raw power and somewhat less raw influence of the Tangs of Kam Tin which underlay their revenue claims, and which the Pat Heung region, at least, had but recently thrown off by force, was not recognized. Only in the fifth circumstances and sometimes the fourth where a perpetual lease document, or perhaps a satisfactory sale document could be produced, were such rights recognized. It is of interest to note that despite the wide prevalence of multiple \"ownership\" noted by early British land officers, only the claims of about 40 \"taxlords\" were sufficiently documented to be recognized, and the land involved amounted to only about 200 acres, in a total New Territories cultivated acreage estimated at 40,000 acres. Those whose claims were so recognized were awarded lands as full owners elsewhere in the New Territories, and the multiple-\"ownership\" system was thus retired.\n\nIt is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the New Territories and Taiwan on these points. In 1900, north Taiwan was 100 to 150 years past the frontier age which had shaped its multi-tiered land system. But by 1900, fewer than 50 percent of the cultivated lands in the north had such arrangements, and when the Japanese put an end to the system in 1905, they were actually following through on an attempt that had been made in the 1880s, under Chinese rule, by Governor Liu Ming-ch'üan to end the multiple \"ownership” system. This is not the place for extensive comparisons, but we may observe in passing that the much greater prevalence of the multi-tiered system in the New Territories in 1900 as compared to Taiwan at the same time may be a result of the much greater importance of clans here than there.\n\nII. The rate of tenancy.\n\n-\n\nHere we are speaking, properly, in terms of a multi-tiered system, of subtenancy: not the taxlord-\"owner\" relationship, to use the early British terms, but the relationship between the \"owner\" and the tenant under him - the man who actually cultivated the land. Much less has been written about tenancy at this level than at the upper-level of taxlord to \"owner\". Understandably, the British interest in 1900 was primarily in determining a single owner who would be responsible for paying the tax. Owners were asked the names of their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209142, "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-1981", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE N T. c 1900\n\n31\n\ntenants and tenants asked the names of the owners from whom they rented, primarily, it would seem, as a double-check on the identity of the owner, although there was, no doubt, some concern about future landlord-tenant disputes. Unfortunately, these records are unavailable to us, and we therefore have no direct written means of determining even the rate of tenancy in the New Territories in 1900.\n\nI have attempted to arrive at an estimate of the rate of tenancy by examining the Block Crown Lease Schedules of 1905 for three Demarcation Districts in the Yuen Long region, adding to this interviewing in the villages within those districts and other materials, wherever I can find them. My findings so far are, of course, quite tentative and local, but I think they may be generally suggestive of the situation in some other parts of the New Territories. The area I have covered so far extends from near the Tang clan stronghold of Kam Tin eastward to the very end of the Kam Tin Basin. In other words, it includes a major portion, although by no means all, of the Pat Heung region. My estimate is that total cultivated land in this area in 1900 was close to 1,500 acres. The population, according to the 1911 Census, was about 2,650, which I take to be about 530 households. Thus, if the land had been equally apportioned, each household would have had about 2.75 acres to farm, enough for subsistence and close to the maximum an average-sized family could farm with its own labour. In fact, however, the land was not so apportioned, at least not in ownership terms.\n\nMy estimate is that slightly over 50 percent of the land in these three Demarcation Districts was tenant-cultivated in 1900. I arrived at this estimate as follows: all cultivated land over three acres in the name of a single owner I took to be land that he and his family probably could not cultivate themselves and so would either lease out or work with hired labour; all clan-owned land would, of course, have to be counted as tenant-cultivated, whether the tenants were or were not members of the owning clan. Third, any land located over a mile from the address of the owner I took to be too distant for him to work regularly and hence likely to be let out to tenants. The sum of these figures represented my total of tenant-cultivated land. Not surprisingly, the major portion of tenant-cultivated land was clan-owned land. In this region, about 35 percent of the land under cultivation was clan land. Most of the difference between that and my figure of slightly over 50 percent was accounted for by holdings\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209144, "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-1981", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE N.T. c. 1900\n\n33\n\nmigrating for a time. What makes this picture plausible is that it accords well with the findings of C. K. Yang for a village located near to the city of Canton. The Pat Heung region did not have the population pressure upon arable land that helped shape the tenure system of Yang's village; but there was a common factor of clan ownership which immediately removed a large proportion of the land from the possibility of private ownership and also made tenancy, at a substantial rate, inevitable. My findings so far are also generally consistent with John Brim's reconstruction of the tenure system in the Yuen Long region as a whole.\n\nI have identified 44 persons or households as non-corporate owners of lands amounting to over 3 acres each. The largest of these large owners owned over 50 acres, quite sizeable by New Territories standards. Another held 25 acres. All others owned less than 20 acres, the usual amounts being between 3 and 10 acres each. Parenthetically, let me say that I am well aware of the limitations of the Block Crown Lease Schedules as a research tool, including their possible inaccuracies in owner registration, and I have, I hope, maintained an open mind to the possibility that the picture may have been somewhat different from what I now see. Although some of these large owners might be classed as absentee owners for some of their lands were quite distant from their homes, there was very little absentee-owned land of this kind. And there was no urban Hong Kong or even market town (that is, Yuen Long) ownership registered for lands in this region.\n\nA small proportion of the lands of the region were subject to mortgages. Most often these were of the customary type referred to above, in which the lender takes over the land and its income throughout the life of the loan, acquiring his compensation for the loan from the land proceeds rather than from interest, which is not paid. There were, however, some interest loans, although I could not discern any patterns in the use of one type of mortgage or the other. Those lending and those borrowing were in all kinds of relationship to each other. That is, they might or might not be of the same village and surname; they might often be major owners lending to individuals or else to their own clans (in which case the major owner in question might also be a trustee of that clan); they might be clans lending to persons of the same surname or a different surname; or one clan might mortgage its property to another clan. In some cases, major landowners, some of whose lands were distant from their homes, were registered as mortgage holders on other lands away from their home territories.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209145, "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-1981", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "34\n\nEDGAR WICKBERG\n\nOne might infer that in such cases the large owner was using mortgage loans as well as direct purchases to expand his holdings over a large span of territory. Not all large \"absentee\" owners appear as mortgage holders, however.\n\nOur interpretation of the mortgage data is severely limited by the fact that we are looking at a single slice in time, 1905, which may not give us a full picture of the lending and borrowing operations of individuals as they might appear over several years of activity. It also is well known that at the time of British takeover of the New Territories many long-standing customary mortgages were paid off under an apprehension that they might not be recognized by British policy. Therefore, the situation of 1905 as reflected in the Block Crown Lease Schedules, does not necessarily typify that of any given year in the nineteenth century.\n\nIt would be of interest to compare land tenure in Hakka areas and in Punti areas. Of the four major villages that make up my area of study, only one is completely Hakka, although Hakkas are found in one other. In addition, much land in this region was owned by the Hakka clans of the large village of Wang Toi Shan, which is in the eastern part of the Pat Heung but outside the scope of my research so far. The limited amount of information I have allows little generalization. The small Hakka village of Shui Lau Tin contains a few major owners whose holdings are well beyond the lands of the village itself; but many \"outsiders\" owned lands right up to the gates, so to speak, of Shui Lau Tin. The Wang Toi Shan Hakkas, on the other hand, owned land all over the region of my study. More about them below.\n\nHakkas were important as landlords. We do not normally think of Hakkas as landlords. But in this region Hakka-owned tenant-cultivated land amounted to about 175 acres out of 1,472, or about 12 percent. Locally speaking, about 20 percent of tenant-cultivated land in the western end of this area was Hakka-owned; and in the western extremity Hakka-owned land was almost 50 percent of all tenant-cultivated land.\n\n―\n\nThus, of four reasons commonly given for relatively high rates of tenancy - population pressure on land; existence of sizeable land-owning clans; frontier or land reclamation; and commercialization it would appear that the presence of the clan was clearly the most important reason for the level of tenancy in this part of the New Territories, and probably in the entire New Territories as well.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209146, "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-1981", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "ANOTHER LOOK AT LAND AND LINEAGE IN THE NT, 1900\n\nIII. Conditions of tenure\n\n-\n\n35\n\nThe existing literature on the New Territories and the small amount of interviewing I have been able to do so far suggest that there was considerable variation in both the form of contract and the term of tenure on the land. On individually-owned (that is, non-clan) lands there might be written leases, but the unwritten, or oral lease, was quite common (as it was in Taiwan). There was an open-endedness about the arrangements. A term of lease might not be specified, there being the understanding that the lease ran from year to year and, assuming each side kept to its terms, was understood to be renewed. How did such a lease without term and subject only to performance – become (if it did) a lease that guaranteed the right of the tenant to stay on the land? Or were such guarantees of perpetual lease, as opposed to this open-ended lease, never the outcome of years of open-ended lease but instead a product of documented arrangements from the very beginning? As far as I know, this point has never been researched. On lands owned by clan trusts it appears that in some parts of the New Territories the land was leased in turn to branches of the clan, with the understanding that the leasing branch for that year had to be responsible for managing all expenditures to which clan land-derived funds were to be applied. For the Ping Shan area, Potter reports a practice of leasing clan lands only to the poorer branches of the lineage, the richer branches simply enjoying the benefits. There was also, it seems, the practice in some times and places of letting out clan lands to the highest bidder, whether or not a clan member. This last practice apparently was common in the Pat Heung region. No doubt there were other variations besides those just mentioned. What is needed is research that will explain why a certain system was used at a given time and in a certain situation.\n\nSo far as I know, rent on rice land was always paid in grain, in a fixed amount that reflected an established ordinary yield per unit of land. A fixed rent favoured the tenant in the sense that anything he produced over the normal yield was his, unless and until he did so with such regularity that the landlord was alerted to the possibility of renegotiating the rental figure. Many tenants, however, disliked grain rent, as opposed to money rent, because they felt that they were cheated by the measuring devices used by landlords. Landlords also complained of tenant slyness in measurement, and it is clear that payment in grain was, in the New Territories as elsewhere in China, a fertile source of landlord-tenant disputes and suspicions. The early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209310, "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-1981", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n199\n\na small family, 1 shing (about 760 sq. ft.) for a large one.\n\nBasic family requirements\n\nAssume a family of 2 adults and 3 children and assume each child eats 0.75 as much as an adult. Such a family would require 4.25 adult requirements. Assuming all food and Crown Rent met from harvest with no cash sales or casual labour income.\n\nIn land, this implies:\n\nTai Wai good average land, 1 tau can feed 1.94 adults (as above) without outside assistance, 4.25 adults, therefore require 2.19 tau, which requires 4 shing of seedbed and 0.5 shing vegetable gardens or 2.19 + 0.4 + 0.05 = 2.65 tau,\n\nTai Wai best land\n\n1 tau can feed 3.03 adults (as above). 4.25 adults therefore require 1.4 tau which require 2.75 shing seedbed and 1/2 shing vegetable gardens or 1.4 + 0.275 + 0.05 = 1.73 tau.\n\nWong Chuk Yeung good average land\n\n1 tau can feed 1.38 adults (as above). 4.25 adults therefore require 3.08 tau which require 6 shing seedbed and 0.5 shing vegetable gardens or 3.08 + 0.6 + 0.05 = 3.72 tau.\n\nLarger families (4 adults, 6 children)\n\nIt may be assumed that economies of scale appear, and that the family would require about 1.75 of the land of the small family, e.g. (Note: not checked)\n\nTai Wai average land 2.64 x 1.75 = 4.62 tau\n\nbest land 1.73 x 1.75 = 3.02 tau.\n\nWong Chuk Yeung average land 3.72 x 1.75 = 6.51 tau.\n\nTo translate to Block Crown Lease acreages\n\nAssume approximate equivalence 1 tau and 0.175 acres (=7630 sq.ft.)\n\nTherefore,\n\n \n Basic family requirements\n \n \n \n \n Tai Wai average land\n 2.64 x 0.175 = 0.462 ac.\n \n \n \n best land\n 1.73 x 0.175 = 0.302 ac.\n \n \n \n Wong Chuk Yeung average land\n 3.72 x 0.175 = 0.651 ac.\n \n \n \n Small family\n \n \n \n \n Large family\n \n \n \n \n \n 4.62 x 0.175 = 0.809 ac.\n \n \n \n \n 3.02 x 0.175 = 0.529 ac.\n \n \n \n \n 6.51 x 0.175 = 1.139 ac.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209587, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "222\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nacceptable to the better parts of the community. There were those who looked with disfavour on the theatre. The behaviour of the habitues of the pit, as well as vulgarities in some of the productions of the day, brought the stage into disrepute among the strait-laced. Attitudes were beginning to change, however; in part this was due to attendance at the theatre of that most moral Queen, Victoria.\n\nAs for the quality of the inaugural performance at the Victoria Theatre in Hong Kong, a reviewer said of the actors, \"though somewhat behind the great houses, yet they were such as to give hope of good things ere long. It must be borne in mind, that with several of the performers it was their first appearance on any stage\". On the other hand, so few were interested in appearing on the stage, it was a matter for concern as \"the corps dramatique consists of only eight members it does not auger well for the general diffusion of dramatic talent among the 'aspiring youth' of the colony\". At the next performance, the reviewer faced the dilemma of how to criticize amateurs and still not discourage them. He gently suggests that \"we may perhaps be allowed to hint, that a little more time and attention would not be ill-bestowed by the performers in studying the characters they assume as some are considerably over-acted. But our wish is not to be censorious\".\n\nAfter this initial burst, amateur dramatics limped for three seasons and then faced death. In 1852 under a heading \"The expiring drama\" amateurs were invited to attend a meeting at the City Hotel \"to plan for a series of productions for the season in order to prevent the demolition of the Victoria Theatre\". There was a revival of interest and the season opened in January. It was noted that the new group, which called itself the Victoria Amateurs, was received \"with unmingled applause by the fullest and most fashionable audience we ever witnessed in the Theatre or anywhere else in Hong Kong”.\n\nRevived interest in amateur dramatics was necessary if the Theatre was not to be converted to other uses for it was not a paying venture for its proprietor, George Duddell. The Anglican Bishop had offered to lease it from him for conversion into a Sailors Home. Duddell, however, had interests of his own in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209588, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "223\n\nseamen's boarding houses and did not welcome pious competition, Rather than lease it to the Bishop he preferred to turn it into a sail-loft. However, the meeting at the City Hotel to revive interest in drama raised enough money by subscription to lease the building for another season.\n\nThe building was to be used not only as a theatre, but as a venue for Balls, meetings and other public purposes, but further funds were needed for refurbishing the building which had fallen into disrepair through infrequent use and the natural effect of time. The newly formed Theatrical Committee reported that “the interior will require repainting, and considerable alteration in seats. The roof ought to be lined with wood. This would improve appearance and acoustics. The stage should be lengthened by carrying it back some twelve or fourteen feet\". The Committee also reported that they had been successful in securing a group of amateurs who agreed to perform on the condition that tickets be issued gratis, \"so as to secure attendance alone of the respectable portion of the community\". This stipulation suggests that the earlier efforts of amateurs may have failed because rowdies had taken over and driven away audiences.\n\nAlthough the season got off to a good start, there was not sufficient financial support to sustain it. No more performances are reported in the Theatre. The last notice I have found of the building is in 1859 when an auction was advertised at the “Old Theatre next to the Oriental Hotel\".\n\nPORTUGUESE AND GERMANS\n\nThrough the years notices of performances by Portuguese amateurs appear. The first mention is in 1847 for a production at the \"Theatro da Sociedade\" at which music was provided by the visiting Macao Band. In 1852 the \"Theatrino Particular\" on Wellington Street announced a performance of Portuguese amateurs. One of the pieces presented was by young boys aged between eight and fifteen. The next year the boys performed in the Victoria Theatre under the direction of the schoolmaster, Mr. J.J. da Silva e Souza. As an entre-act four young girls performed a Spanish dance, the \"Guarrache”.\n\n!\n\n:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209778, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "shopkeeper, land speculator, auctioneer and entrepreneur; William Tarrant, Land Office clerk and later editor and proprietor of the newspaper Friend of China, Charles Markwick, auctioneer for the Government; Hugh Mackay, shopkeeper his lot No. 4 was resumed in 1859 for nonpayment of Crown Rent; and Wong Ah Hoy, one of the original So Kon Po cultivators.\n\nWong sold his lot in 1852 to Chang On Kee, a merchant trading at Hong Kong, who in turn sold it to George Duddell in 1857. Duddell had already bought in 1851 the lots of Markwick and Tarrant. Thus all the arable land of the valley was in his possession, except the lot of Mackay which reverted to the Government shortly after. Duddell added to his holdings by purchase from the Government in 1853 of Farm Lot 13. This was between his valley lots and So Kon Po village.\n\nIt was probably in the 1850's that Duddell experimented with growing coffee plants in the valley. Evidence of the project was still to be seen in 1878. The Hong Kong Daily Press in that year published a series of articles on places of interest around Hong Kong. The issue of 17 December 1878 gave directions for a walk to the \"Coffee Plantation\". The hiker was directed to proceed to the Race Course, passing the Obelisk and keeping straight on over a bridge to the gardener's cottage. There he was to turn to the right for one hundred yards, with the race course on his right and a densely wooded hill on the left, and follow the footpath up the hill through the trees. On descending the hill on the other side, he would find himself near some huts occupied by Chinese quarry-men or stone-masons and on the path leading to the coffee plantation. The writer noted, however, that \"the coffee shrubs are now neglected\".\n\nGeorge Duddell, having retired from Hong Kong some years previously, sold his So Kon Po land to William Keswick, of Jardines, in 1884. The lots, whose twenty-one lease had been extended to seventy-five years, were regranted to Keswick as Inland Lots 955, 1018, 1019, 1020 and 1021. Keswick transferred the present site of St. Paul's Convent and Hospital to a Jardine enterprise, the Hong Kong Cotton Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing Company. This was in 1898. The property was bounded to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209809, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "46\n\n4.\n\nChing Sheung (注1) or Sheung Tin (注a) Land\n\n(a) This is land bequeathed by the original owner (i.e. ancestor) or set aside by his inheritors for the specific purpose of ancestral worship. It is usually held in the name of a clan that bears the original ancestor's name. Rent and proceeds from the land are devoted primarily to the worship of ancestors, and secondarily to the education of members of the clan, relief of poor members, marriage and funeral expenses of members etc.\n\n(b) The land cannot be alienated without the consent of the representatives and elders of the whole clan,\n\n(c) The land is normally cultivated by distribution amongst members of the clan or by lease to a member.\n\n5.\n\nLand held by Clans\n\n(a) Portions of property owned by a clan (tso£) are sometimes leased to a family within the clan. These families have often cultivated the same fields for generations, paying an annual rent to the clan accountant. Sub-letting is frowned on and generally forms grounds for cancelling the lease. Alternatively, the various families of a Tso (n) may cultivate the land for a year at a time in rotation and at a fixed annual rent.\n\n(b) Another method of leasing tso (1) property within the clan is to hold an auction where the highest bidder for the annual lease is granted the tenancy for the following year. Money derived from the bid is devoted to ancestral worship etc. as stated in 5(a) above,\n\n(c) Proper granting of leases by the trustee of the clan is not a regular feature and generally forms a large proportion of land disputes by reason of its omission.\n\n6.\n\nFamily Disputes\n\nThe first and most important step is to discover the status of the parties, i.e. are they properly married by Chinese custom or are they co-habiting under some lesser bond?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209813, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "50 \n\nusually takes place at midnight or in the early hours of the morning in the temple or in the house, with the object of informing the ancestors. Being ancestor worship, which can be performed only by males, the girl remains at home out of the way and no members of her family may be present. A large sieve, usually of bamboo, is placed on the ground. In the centre of it, the bridegroom stands on a rice measure (tau), with red cloths draped over his left and right shoulders. He wears a felt hat with silver flowers round it or a feather. In olden times, a Chinese tall hat was worn but, when this fell out of fashion, the felt hat was adopted as the most respectable of modern headgear. The feather represented the old Imperial custom of presenting a feather to the best scholars.\n\n(d) Shortly after this ceremony, and on the same day, comes the actual wedding, which is known as the crowning, when relatives and friends of both families are invited. Relations are given cups of tea by the bridal couple. The important feature is that the marriage dates from this ceremony, not from the time of entry of the sam p'o tsai into her new family, although a girl will sometimes say that she was married, for instance, at the age of 6.\n\n(e) There is no traditional requirement for the sam p'o tsai to marry the son. I dealt with several cases where the girl declined marriage and the parties agreed to separate. Brought up in a brother and sister relationship, the boy and girl may lack the right approach to marriage.\n\n9. Customary Agricultural Leases\n\n(a) In the absence of a written agreement to the contrary, leases of agricultural land are normally on an annual basis, starting in the early part of the year. Payment of rent may be in cash or in 'kuk' (*) either in one lump sum or after each of the two rice harvests. Most leases are verbal.\n\n(b) It is common practice for members of the lessee's family to take over his lease in the event of his death. Acceptance of rent by the lessor in these cases implies recognition of the new lessee.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209814, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "51\n\n(c) Sub-letting is a practice more common amongst immigrant vegetable farmers than paddi farmers. It is rare to find an original lease that prohibits sub-letting and in general, landowners do not seem to object to it as long as their rents come in. In some cases, they even collect rent direct from the sub-lessee,\n\n(d) It is customary for a land-lord to reduce the fixed rent in respect of a harvest which has been particularly poor, but discretion is entirely in the hands of the landlord and the request must be made by the tenant himself before the crop is actually harvested, so that the landlord may have a chance of examining the crop to check the truth of the claim.\n\n(e) The termination of an annual lease of paddi land is affected customarily by the land-owner giving notice, either verbal or written, to the tenant between the time of collecting rent after the second harvest (October/November) and the Winter Solstice (December). The land should then be handed back by the tenant to the landlord at the end of the first moon of the following year, in the case of paddi land.\n\n(f) Leases of vegetable land are customarily for a period of 12 months running from the beginning of the first moon to the end of the twelfth moon. No set period of notice is required for recovery of the land, but in general, the landlord should give sufficient notice to ensure that the tenant does not plant further crops which would carry him beyond the end of the year. Three months' notice is probably adequate. Less notice would not be wrong but it might be unreasonable unless the landlord either gave compensation for standing crops or allowed an extension of the lease until the crop was harvested.\n\nTwo\n\n(g) Payment of rent for vegetable land is usually in cash in lieu of paddi. Traditionally, paddi land was regarded as more valuable than vegetable land. Since 1950, a reversal in values has taken place and the lack of clearcut custom regarding vegetable land often gives rise to difficulties.\n\n(h) In the past, recovery of land by a landlord was an unusual occurrence and tenancies often continued for several", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209815, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "52\n\ngenerations. With the general increase of agricultural activity since 1949 (due to the influx of industrious refugees), tenancies are more frequently called in. Sometimes a mere pretext covers the real reason that a hardworking tenant has spent much capital in improving poor land which the landlord now wishes to lease again at a higher rent. It is always wise before intervening in tenancy cases to be sure that a good reason exists for recovery of the land. These reasons might be that the tenant is a poor one who makes little use of the land; the tenant has failed to pay rent or has otherwise committed a breach of conditions, e.g. illegal Temporary Structures; the landowner is short of land and has a large family. Where it is necessary on the facts to find in favour of the landlord, it is often easier to persuade the tenant to comply by offering to find him alternative Crown Land.\n\n(i) It is a recurring feature in many cases that tenants tend to sink capital into land, particularly with chicken farms, without having any real lease to protect them. Rapacious landlords take advantage of this and often deliberately refuse to issue written leases. I have had no success whatsoever in trying to educate tenants in this respect.\n\n10. Graves\n\n(a) Bodies are normally buried in an earth grave (huet chong) for 5 years or so. At the end of that time, they are usually exhumed and the bones arranged in an earthenware funerary pot (kam tap). Richer families and clans will sometimes install the exhumed bones in a masonry grave (shan fan) instead of a funerary pot.5\n\n(b) Huet chong (#) and kam taps () are always sited in groups on hillsides or ground where the fung shui is good. It is not usual to build or cultivate near these areas.\n\n(c) The choice of site of a shan fan () is again dictated by fung shui (k). Considerable sums of money may be spent in fees for the fung shui sin shang (★★★4) and in construction, although workmanship is rarely first class. The site is usually high up, commanding a view of water in some form or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209819, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "56\n\nwith kuk (*) and the other with mai (*), and candles and joss-sticks placed standing in the rice. Worshipping takes place at the shrines of the earth god (t'o tei £) and kitchen god within the house. If the applicant can still afford it, he holds a feast for friends and relatives who often bring presents of mirrors and furniture.\n\n12. Some Fung Shui (¥) Problems\n\n(a) Certain localities, particularly hills, are sometimes regarded as throwing out good or bad influences, according to the animal which the locality represents. In the same manner, strong objections are frequently raised to the opening of windows in a house that faces some other house or temple. The window represents the open mouth of a tiger ready to swallow up the occupants of the building facing it. A lamp flashing in the direction of a house is equally obnoxious.\n\n(b) Antidotes to these evil rays or influence are often difficult to apply. One method is for the aggrieved householders to put up a paat kwa (^) or eight-sided diagram on the outside of their house. Alternatively, a mirror sometimes will suffice to reflect the evil rays. A third method is to erect some effective barrier in between, such as trees or bamboos, with a temporary wall until the trees have attained sufficient height and bushiness to be an effective screen.\n\n(c) These objections are for the most part confined to Cantonese rather than Hakka (). However, because of their greater belief in animism, Hakka (*) are the more concerned with fung shui (¥) trees and rocks, damage to which they will strenuously oppose.\n\n13. Oaths\n\n(a) Before the lease of the New Territories to the Crown in 1898 and the coming of British law, the question of which party to a dispute was telling the truth was customarily settled by a form of trial by ordeal in a temple. Both parties would attend at a mutually agreed temple (miu, never a clan temple or Tsz t'ong) with witnesses and all interested villagers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209866, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "103\n\nHeung (\"White Metal Village\").\n\nThe last is by the old silver-lead mine, which was opened about 1891 by a company which also worked a mine in Hainan. The ore was treated on the shore and shipped away; but the mine closed down later. The ore now found about the mine is not concentrated enough to be paying; and silver-lead is not of very high value.\n\nAnother enterprise, which was carried on for a short time in 1926, was the making of cement bricks on the sand bank; but this soon failed; another of the many derelict enterprises which litter the New Territory. This beach was also worked a long time by sand junks, in fact until some fields were wrecked by salt water; but this has ceased now.\n\nNorthward, navigation is impeded by rocks, and villages are mostly small and unimportant, except Tai Pak and Yi Pak (\"Great and Lesser White\").1 These are Hakka villages. The villagers here protected their fine beaches by piling stones in the water 100 yards off shore, so that sand junks could not get near: if they did, the villagers repelled them with guns. Now, Tai Pak is a great centre for the distilling of \"moonshine\". Besides Tai Pak and Yi Pak there is Sam Pak (“Third White\"), a deserted valley with an old kiln; each of these places has a sandy beach, but whether the \"pak\" refers to that, or to the deserted fields (pak tin) the Hakka settlers may have found when they first came, it is impossible to say.\n\nThere is another Tai Pak: it is the islet just opposite the village1 close to Pingchau, with a large limekiln on it,\n\nThe hamlets at the north end of Lantau furnished in 1934 an emphatic warning of what may happen to strangers who rashly lease New Territories land against the will of their neighbours. A Chinese doctor and his wife from up country leased some fields for cultivation from District Office, South. This inconvenienced some villagers of the hamlets nearby, who conceived they had a better right to them. One night they came in a body, hacked the doctor to death, chased his son into the sea; he escaped by swimming and tied up his wife and daughter to a tree. They were released next day. It was a year before any of the culprits were caught, and out of five only one was hanged.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209868, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "105\n\nwith rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean \"Dragnet Isles\". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean \"Big and Little Forked Island\". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide.\n\nPatung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island\") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20\n\nits English name\n\nTo the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island\"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the \"Peak\", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern,\n\nBetween the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209874, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "In fact it has almost as many people as Lamma, nine times its size and close to Hong Kong. Its average elevation is about 100 feet, and there are three villages.\n\nMany other islands lie outside the British boundary. Of them I can say practically nothing, as I have never visited them, and there are no large-scale maps of them. They remain a rich field for enquiry and research in every direction.\n\nIn conclusion, I can only hope I have not bored you unduly; if I have, I can only say that having known and visited the islands for twenty years, I find them more interesting every year, and if I have interested some of you, I shall feel this afternoon has not been spent in vain.\n\n9th August 1937\n\nI\n\nNOTES\n\nSee J. Dyer-Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China fifth edition, revised by E.T.C. Werner (1925), re-issued by OUP, Hong Kong, 1983, pp. 297-8.\n\n* Yuen Chau Tsai, (\"Little Round Island\"), where the residence of the District Officer was is now the home of the Secretary for District Administration. The adjacent anchorage was reclaimed a few years ago.\n\n* Naikwuchau is now called Hei Ling Chau (\"Happy Island\"). This followed its early postwar lease to the Leprosy Mission (Hong Kong Auxiliary) which resulted in the change of name, intended to reflect the \"healing\" nature of the work and the improvement in the patients' lives.\n\n* Now the Rural Committee Offices.\n\n* Tai Ho at present uses for its name characters meaning \"Big Oyster\".\n\n* The yamen is usually now called the Tung Chung Fort, or Tung Chung Walled City.\n\n* At Tei Tong Tsai (\"Little Pits\").\n\n* Ngong Ping (“High Plain\").\n\n* Dedicated to Yeung Hau Wong.\n\n* Tsin Yue Wan at present uses for its name characters meaning \"Fried Fish Bay\".\n\n* Now usually called Fan Lau (\"Divided Streams”).\n\n* This fort is known as Kai Yik Kok Fort (“Chicken's Wing Point\"). On it, please see A.M. da Silva Fan Lau and its Fort, an Historical Perspective, in Vol. 8 (1968) of this Journal pages 82-95.\n\n* Tai Long Wan (\"Big Wave Bay\").", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209912, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "149\n\nBut they were in the minority. Most spinners entertained what appeared to me to be an impossible dream: government support without concomitant control. They criticised the Hong Kong Government on three policy areas which threatened their operations, namely the rise in land value, the 'hurried' introduction of labour legislation, and the administration's refusal to impose import control on foreign textile products. The Korean and Taiwanese governments were often mentioned as examples of political systems supportive of industry. But simultaneously, the spinners were aware of the twin evils of red-tape and corruption which often accompanied government subsidies. Their real desire appeared to be for the government to provide the ‘infra-structure' and leave them a free hand to run their business. As A12 said:\n\n'The more government assistance the better. But this is difficult to realize. When I say help, it is not necessarily with money. To control inflation is a form of assistance. To regulate finance and prices... Now the government does not know what changes will be introduced tomorrow. If there was a definite policy, then we would know what to expect.'\n\nThe tone and omissions were as important as the actual contents of their answers. Their opinions were strongly seasoned with resignation and cynicism. For example, B32 said to me:\n\n'Mr. Wong, all these [statements] are against the government. No comment. You see, there is no use participating. It is only superficial democracy. All are yes men. The more \"yes\" you say, the more honours you get. So all these are theoretical, cannot be done in practice. For example, the setting up of the Cotton Commodity Exchange. We are all in opposition, but the government wants to have it. Just another gambling house!'\n\nOf course, the flavour of powerlessness was not quite real. The spinners had strong political muscles as they provided employment on a large scale. When conflicts of interests did occur, they could force the government to yield. In the early 1970s, for instance, there was a dispute over the re-evaluation of the value of industrial land on 'Crown lease'. Immediately after the Second World War,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209913, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "150\n\nthe government provided land to industry at nominal prices for a period of about twenty years as an inducement for investors. When this original lease expired, the industrialists had to pay the market price for their land. But when the renewal became imminent in 1971, the cotton spinners joined force with twenty-six industrial bodies to oppose this re-assessment of industrial land value. They also obtained the support of all the unofficial members in the Legislative Council. Even though the government maintained that the legality and validity of the re-evaluation was incontestable, it finally agreed to modify the statutes in June, 1973, after a protracted confrontation, (Hong Kong Cotton Spinners Association 1973; Miners 1981: 357-359). Yet in spite of their substantial political power, the spinners expressed a passive attitude towards politics. Their views were couched in a common format: 'It would be good if the government would do this and that. But we know these would not happen'. Even the most prominent public figure among them, A22, confessed that he took up unofficial positions in the government because he was invited to do so and he 'hated to say no'. They were hardly the revolutionary bourgeoisie as portrayed by Marx which 'creates a world after its own image'. (Marx and Engels 1967:84)\n\nIn their defensive posture, political vocabularies were conspicuous by their absence. Terms such as democracy, private property, equality, elections and so on were never mentioned. The recurrent phrase was 'peace and stability'. The theme of nationalism, so dominant among American, African and the pre-war Southeast Asian Chinese businessmen (see Seider 1974: 807; Heilbroner 1964: 30-31; Stokes 1974: 557-579; Wong 1975: 117-120), was raised by just two spinners. B1 mentioned this to dismiss the idea:\n\n'In Hong Kong it is money [that accounts for executive turnover]. In South Korea, you can say you are working for your country. But here? (He shrugged).'\n\nThe sole local-born spinner, B4, admitted to some 'nationalistic' sentiment:\n\n'I would want a sense of belonging and like Hong Kong to develop. I wish to try to create a society of my own identity,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209980, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "217\n\nwas great and must have left them with little time or money to spare for their ruined temple. Finally, and almost certainly the most seriously, the influx of a new population, and immense schemes of redevelopment completely altered the generally rural background of village and market town life that still characterised pre-war East Kowloon.\n\nThus, in the Tung Shan Temple we can see a temple, founded for purely rural reasons slowly growing until it became the predominant community temple of the whole of rural East Kowloon. During this period its management changed from a purely private, clan-based system to a typical community temple structure of committee members and chairman of a type typical not only of the rural community temples in the rest of the New Territories but also of those in urban Hong Kong at this date.\n\nFounded in a rural community this temple could, and did, develop both physically and in its management structure to reflect the needs of that community. It could not, however, survive the complete destruction of that community, and its ruination directly reflects the collapse of its founding community in the face of massive urbanisation, and the establishment of the new urban communities created by that urbanisation. The new urban communities have formed their own shrines, and their flourishing condition, alongside the continued ruin of the main temple of the defunct rural community, show more clearly than anything else can the essentially community basis of the temples of this area and their management groups.\n\nNOTES\n\nIn the 1904 Block Crown Lease for Survey District No. 3, New Kowloon, the ownership is recorded in the monk's name Shing Kin (Hsing Star Bridge) and the property is listed under Lot 1101 as temple 0.7 acres, house 0.2 acres, and potato ground 0.33 acres. An entry \"Kwun Yam Temple, Ngau Chi Wan\" had been crossed out by the Assistant Land Officer who recommended that a lease for the temple buildings and site be given to the Registrar General, 28 April 1904.\n\nFrom south-east Kowloon, Ngau Tau Kok and Cha Kwo Ling; from east Kowloon, Ngau Chi Wan, Ping Shek, Sha Tei Yuen, Upper and Lower Yuen Ling and Chu Shi Liu; from central Kowloon, Tai Hom, Po Kong, Nga Tsin Wai, Upper and Lower Sha Po, Nga Tsin Long and Kak Hang; from Kowloon City, the commercial areas, Sai Tau, Tung Tau and Hoklo Village.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209986, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "223\n\nor the artisan. And even The Water Margin 水滸傳, an omnibus of tales about a large band of outlaws, tells us next to nothing about the life of ordinary men and women. drama, poetry and documentary writings.\n\nSo it was, also, with\n\nEarly travellers, missionaries, traders and diplomats from other cultures were not tied in the same way to one social class in China. They do show in many cases a marked preference for chronicling the deeds and circumstances of the elite, but in their writings they roam over all aspects of Chinese life because they could take no knowledge on the part of their readers for granted. By the time that Chinese scholars and Western sociologists came to be interested in popular culture and the workings of everyday life. China was in the throes of modernisation and encroaching foreign influences, and the old accounts of China as seen through the observant and frequently bigoted eyes of early Western writers came into their own again. Here lay a mass of material on what life was like before the -isms and schisms of the twentieth century began to warp it in strange ways.\n\nnow.\n\nWhat has been happening in recent years has been a dovetailing of the study of old China with the study of China We can very well use scientific analysis to show how contemporary people behave, but we cannot necessarily use it to discover why they hold a particular set of beliefs and prejudices. Here the study of Chinese history and traditional culture can help us to achieve an understanding. On the other hand we have no good information on how the common people of imperial China behaved, but we can track back from what we know of how contemporary people behave to gain a greater understanding of what those earlier times must have been like. One China did not cease in 1911 or 1949 and another different China take its place: there is a meaningful continuity over time. Here lies the justification for the Ancestral Images approach, and I do not find it surprising that at the time of writing this a Chinese translation of the books is about to go to press why shouldn't the Chinese want to explore the cultural links with their past, even if through the dim eyes of a foreign observer?\n\nHow good, then is this list of books I have quoted from? Is it a representative sample of what is available? Are all the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209996, "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": 255, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "233 \n\nOLD HAU WONG TEMPLE, TAI WAI, SHA TIN \n\nP. H. HASE \n\nOn 14th June 1982, as part of the development of Sha Tin, an area to the north of Tai Wai Village was cleared. At the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905) this area had been separated from the walled part of the village by the village moat. The area was at that date crossed by the main footpath leading from Tai Wai Village to the footbridge over the Shing Mun River from where the footpath continued through to Tai Po. \n\nOn this area, very close to the edge of the moat, a temple to Hau Wong had been built. This temple had been abandoned at some date between the Block Crown Lease and 1914. The abandoned temple had been used as a playground for village children in the period up to the last War. During the last War the roof was removed and used for fuel. After the War the temple was occupied by squatters who demolished part of the walls and divided the building into three units, two of which were used as residential units (in one case part of the unit being used as a sitting area for a cooked food stall), with the area near the original altar being used as an engineering workshop. Later the old moat was filled in and the whole area became covered with squatter structures many of which backed onto the outer wall of the temple: by 1955 only a small part of the doorjambs of the temple remained visible. \n\nSince the whole area was due for clearance the opportunity was taken of discovering what could still be uncovered of the structure of the old temple, measuring it and if possible discovering more on the history of the temple. The attached plan and description is the result. Since the measurements could only be made in the 24 hours between the demolition of the squatter huts and that of the temple, all was done in great haste. \n\nEntrance \n\nThe entrance front of the temple was constructed of rudely coursed blue brick faced in the area around the entrance with finely laid granite ashlar slabs, and faced with well laid blue brick \n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210003, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "240\n\ntrading contacts with Tai Wai. At the same time the temple is currently used by the villagers of Tai Wai for purely village rituals such as the hanging of the lanterns for new-born sons, and the only communal worship is conducted by the village elders, and not by the elders of the Heung.\n\nIt was probably this conflict between the communal and the purely village interest in Hau Wong and his temple which led to the decision to build an entirely new, and much larger temple, just outside the village. Such a site would certainly make it easier for non-villagers to worship, and that this was aimed at is shown by the specific mention of Lek Yuen (1), the old name for Sha Tin District, in the doorjamb inscriptions. At the same time all the donors named in the door inscriptions were Tai Wai villagers, the most prominent, Wong Yin-Tsun (2), being a villager who had succeeded in securing an official post in Shantung province.\n\nThe villagers believe that this new temple was only built a few decades before the Block Crown Lease - probably, therefore, the date 1888 on the door is the original foundation date. The foundation was not successful: most villagers wanted the god back in the old temple inside the village, and difficulties which arose were blamed on damage to the Fung Shui of the village as set out by Lai Po-i. After about 30 years, the temple was closed and the god taken back to his old home opposite the village gate: since then his temple, in the village, has been considered basically for Tai Wai villagers only.\n\nNOTE\n\n1 Chinese Monasteries, temples, shrines and altars in Hong Kong and Macau, Keith G. Stevens, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 20, 1980, pp. 1–33.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210195, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "145\n\nfree of disease. Thus the control system achieved its main objective, which was not the protection of women from exploitation, but, as it was commonly expressed in Hong Kong, 'the provision of clean Chinese women for the use of the British soldiers and the sailors of the Royal Navy'.\n\nIn Britain during the 1870s and 1880s the system set up by the Contagious Diseases Act came under attack by various moral reformers who considered that the licensing of brothels by the state implied official condonation of immoral behaviour. They also objected to the discrimination by which the women were compelled to submit to a demeaning medical examination. As a result of a long campaign the system was brought to an end and the Contagious Diseases Act was repealed by Parliament in 1886. In itself this had no effect on the colonial ordinances, but colonial governments were then instructed by the Secretary of State to follow the British example. The Governor of Hong Kong protested vigorously to London, claiming that the repeal of the local Contagious Diseases Ordinance would be unanimously opposed by the Executive and Legislative Councils, by the naval and military authorities and by all classes in the community, since it was the only means of controlling the spread of venereal disease, of preventing the proliferation of brothels in respectable areas of the city and of protecting young girls from being forced into brothel slavery. But the Secretary of State was adamant that the law imposing the compulsory inspection of women must be repealed, though he was prepared to allow the registration of brothels to continue solely for the purpose of providing a means to check against the possible enslavement of their inmates. The Hong Kong government continued to prevaricate, forwarding petitions to London from the keepers of 42 brothels reserved for Europeans and from 23 European prostitutes begging that weekly examinations and the issuing of health certificates might be allowed to continue. These pleas had no effect and the Secretary of State sent Hong Kong a copy of an ordinance which had already been passed in the Straits Settlements with instructions to introduce a similar bill as soon as possible. He also ordered that the issuing of certificates should cease forthwith. Finally in 1889, two years after the original directive from London, a bill entitled the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance was introduced into the Legis-\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210197, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "147\n\nThe continued existence of a system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong soon came to the notice of the moral reform societies in Britain which had succeeded in abolishing such houses at home and were determined to end the system overseas as well. Pressure was brought to bear upon the Colonial Office by written appeals from the societies and by questions and speeches in parliament. So in 1893 a new Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, sent instructions to Hong Kong that the registration of brothels and the periodic examination of their inmates, whether nominally voluntary or not, must cease forthwith. Once again the Governor expostulated, forwarding a petition from the leading Chinese who objected that with the abolition of registration prostitutes would have no opportunity to complain about ill-treatment and that brothels would proliferate in respectable residential areas. The Colonial Surgeon also added his views, claiming that it would be cruel to forbid the women to attend for regular examinations; they were well aware of the need for early diagnosis of venereal disease and came of their own free will. But the Secretary of State, under pressure from moral reformers in Britain, was obdurate, and a bill to repeal the 1890 ordinance and abolish the whole system of control was introduced into the Legislative Council in 1894 and passed by the official majority against the unanimous opposition of the unofficials. Hong Kong's long delaying action to avoid reform was apparently at an end.\n\nThe results of this measure were soon evident: prostitutes ceased to attend for their weekly examinations; a large number of new brothels were opened in areas of the city which had formerly been free of them; and the incidence of venereal disease in the garrison soared. In 1897 half the soldiers in Hong Kong were under treatment for venereal diseases, compared to 15 per cent ten years earlier. In Singapore, which had been given the same directive to abolish registered brothels as Hong Kong, the incidence of venereal disease among troops reached 60 per cent. Faced with this situation the governors of the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong submitted a succession of reports to London and proposed draft legislation which would broadly have had the effect of reintroducing the legal system of control that had existed before 1889. The China Association in London and its branches in Hong Kong and Singapore strongly supported the Governors' views and se-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210213, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "163\n\narea of about 115 km2 and contains 330 Mm3 of water at mean sea level (about 1.3 m above Hong Kong principal datum (PD)). Sand is brought into Deep Bay close to Black Point on the flood current and moved along the Hong Kong coast by wave action during storms. Silts and clays appear to be largely derived from the catchment draining to the inner part of Deep Bay.\n\nThe tides are complex, with a strong diurnal component superimposed on a semi-diurnal pattern. The usual sequence is thus two high waters and two low waters in just over 24 hours, with one high and one low significantly higher or lower respectively than the other. On certain occasions (14 in 1984) the diurnal component completely dominates and only one high and one low occur in a day. The maximum tidal range is about 2.8 m.\n\nHistorical background\n\nOyster cultivation is traditional and has been practised in the Pearl River estuary for several hundred years. The coastal town of Shajing (JP) has long been associated with oyster fattening. Oyster cultivation has been practised in Deep Bay since at least 1800 (Bromhall, 1958; Mok, 1973).\n\nDisputes over the ownership of Deep Bay oyster beds led to short term leases being granted in 1909 to those organisations, both those based in Hong Kong and those based in China, who could prove good claim to ownership prior to 1898 when the Crown Lease of the New Territories commenced. One oyster bed was reclaimed from the sea around 1915/16 and now forms part of the Tin Shui Wai area. Additional oyster beds were leased, mainly in the mouth of the Shenzhen River, during the period 1909 to 1933. The original 1909 leases were extended from 1931 to 1952.\n\nDuring the early part of World War II many oyster farmers with much traditional expertise moved from Shajing to settle in the Lau Fau Shan area, but the majority of the beds were either ruined or fell into disuse by 1945. Reorganisation of the industry in the immediately post-war era was influenced by events within China culminating with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Further leases were granted to some oyster farmers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210233, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "183\n\nmarsh, which has been enclosed by bunds to form kei wais, (iv) a shallow channel running parallel to the outer bund; (v) a zone of mangrove plants some 15-25 m. wide with Kandelia candel, Avicennia marina and Aegiceras corniculatum as the commonest species, (vi) Deep Bay, which forms part of the estuary of the Pearl River and also receives water from the Sham Chun River and smaller streams. At intervals channels run through the mangrove zone to join channel (iv) beside the outer bund to Deep Bay; water moves along these channels during the rise and fall of the tide and thus the kei wais are filled.\n\nWithin the kei wais are small, irregularly shaped, muddy islands. Essentially all of our results were obtained from Mai Po kei wai No. 7 (total area ca 9.3 ha, area of islands 5.6 ha, area of open water 3.7 ha). This kei wai is 820 × 120 metres with its shorter sides parallel to the shoreline. It is surrounded by a bund which, on the seaward side, is pierced by a sluicegate with a concrete frame. The frame is about 2 m. wide and is usually closed by a gate consisting of heavy wooden planks, placed horizontally, which can be raised or lowered in slots in the concrete frame (Plates 7-9). The sluicegate is essential to the operation of the kei wai because it enables the operator to control exchange of water between the kei wai and the adjoining estuary. The kei wai, like others in the neighbourhood, was held on lease renewable every seven years.\n\nSource of Future Produce\n\nAs already mentioned, an important source of future produce is the adjoining estuary: fry and larvae are carried on the high tide through the open sluicegate into the kei wai where they are \"trapped\" when the gate is closed. Species entering in this way include marine fish, shrimps and crabs. In addition, the source of produce is supplemented and diversified by the operator, who may add fry of tilapia (Sarotherodon mossambicus, syn. Tilapia mossambica) and the brackish-water striped mullet (or grey mullet, Mugil cephalus). Small oysters (Crassostrea gigas) are bought from local fishermen and used to stock oyster beds set up in the vicinity of the sluicegate; their growth period is 1.5 to 3 years.\n\nThe basis of production of the kei wai is the usual two food", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210236, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "186\n\nY.H. CHEUNG, K.Y. TAI, S.W. TSAO AND L.B. THROWER\n\nthe kei wais during the first to fifth lunar months. This was harvested by people from China and used for feeding pigs: an average of 15,750 kg. is harvested per year.\n\nYield from a shrimp harvest carried out on 3 October 1978 was as follows:\n\nShrimps 9 kg Crabs 3 kg Freshwater fish 9 kg (striped mullet — 3 kg, tilapia 6 kg) Marine fish 3 kg\n\nSimilarly, yield from a fish harvest carried out on 6 October 1978 was:\n\nShrimps 12 kg Marine fish 225 kg Freshwater fish 498 kg (Japanese sea perch: 24 kg., striped mullet: 360 kg., blind sea bass: 18 kg., tilapia: 120 kg., eels: 18 kg.) Miscellaneous fish 90 kg (sea bream: 150 kg., tiger fish: 15 kg.) Crabs: 135 kg\n\nIf these figures are used to calculate the total annual yield, the result for 90 shrimp harvests and 2 fish harvests would be:\n\nShrimps 834 kg Crabs 540 kg Marine fish 720 kg Freshwater fish 1,806 kg Miscellaneous fish 180 kg or a total of 4,080 kg. usable produce, not including the harvested seaweed.\n\nUnfortunately, the year of our study was the last of the current lease on kei wai No. 7 and another tenant was to take over. Consequently, the operator probably tried to extract the maximum yield during his last year of tenure. Our calculations may therefore have given an over-estimate of total yield. Indeed, the operator's own estimate of mean annual yield was just one-third of our own. However, careful comparison of every category of produce suggested very strongly that he had under-estimated. Consequently, our own estimate for annual yield has been used to calculate the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210237, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "187\n\nfinancial return.\n\nUsing costs and prices as at November, 1978, the following results are obtained:\n\nIncome\n\nShrimps $HK41,700\n\nCrabs 4,500\n\nFreshwater fish 25,250\n\nMarine fish 24,750\n\nTotal income 96,200\n\n(NB. Because of concern over population by heavy metals, oysters from the region of Hau Hoi Wan were almost unsaleable at this time).\n\nExpenses\n\nRent (per annum) $HK11,000\n\nFish harvests 600\n\nIce 90\n\nTransportation 1,800\n\nOther, including fuel 300\n\nTotal expenses 13,790\n\nGross profit $82,410\n\nAt this time the exchange rate was HK$4.80 = US$1, and the Hang Seng Consumer Price Index for December 1978 was 126 for all items, and 122 for foodstuffs; the baseline of 100 referred to July 1973 to June 1974 (Anon, 1979).\n\nThus, operation of a single kei wai yielded a gross income of about $6,800 per month which appeared to be a satisfactory income. However, our year of study was likely to show an unusually high income because it was the last year of the current 7-year lease whereas returns related to the current period. We were informed that the rental would be raised to about $31,000, which would make operation of the kei wai a much less rewarding occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210321, "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": 292, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "271\n\nAt the present time there is a tea plantation on Lantau at the Ngong Ping plateau next to the Po Lin Monastery. Mr. Brook Bernacchi, for long a leading barrister here, established this plantation at his home there in the 1950s. His plantation is not operated along the traditional village lines, but more on the commercial lines of plantations in other parts of China. However, commercial tea-growing on Lantau peak is nothing new, it seems. In 1971 I interviewed a very old village woman, born in one of the Tung Chung villages in 1879, who had accompanied her mother to pluck tea at plantations in that area which were apparently run by Chinese persons from outside the island. This was in the late 1880s and 1890s, some time before the lease of the N.T.\n\nThese notes, gathered from visits and interviews, are sufficient to show that tea cultivation and tea drinking from local bushes was common in some parts of the New Territories, and together with Dr. Hase's account, that it still lingers today.\n\nHowever, there is also evidence which suggests that tea cultivation was probably a major enterprise at one stage in the Hong Kong region. The 1688 district gazetteer refers to tea growing on Tai Mo Shan where there are what appear to be tea terraces on many of its slopes, especially on the north side. There are also terraces to be seen in the Ma On Shan Country Park and on the hills south west of Crooked Harbour and other places in the north-east New Territories. From the wide extent of the terracing work presumably done for this purpose in various parts of the New Territories, it would seem that a commercial crop was intended, and perhaps realized for a period. The Hong Kong Government's Botanical Report for 1906, commenting on one of these areas, states, \"Tea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill ... There is a tradition tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone account for it.\" It is interesting that this early official reference is mainly to the area in which Mau Tso", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210322, "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": 293, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "272\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU\n\nNgam village is situated and that tea growing there had come to the attention of the Botanical Department soon after the lease of the New Territories in 1898. It is, however, of interest to note that contemporary villagers in the areas of these terraces state that their ancestors, as far as they know, had no interest in these terraces, and no-one claims any ownership of them today.\n\nTea was also being cultivated in some localities in San On County in the 1850s. Writing on the county in 1858, Revd. R. Krone stated \"Tea is also cultivated in several places and is generally called \"Shan-cha” (mountain tea). It has a rather strong astringent taste, but is much liked by the natives, and particularly by those who are of advanced age, who consider that it promotes digestion and cools the system. Many drink only this indigenous tea\" 16\n\nTo summarize, it is possible that tea cultivation was at one time flourishing in the region. If the terraces I have mentioned were truly tea terraces, it must have been a commercial venture on a large scale. However, since no memory of commercial tea cultivation remains in village tradition, at least in those places where I have made enquiry, final proof is unlikely to be available. On the other hand, the cultivation of tea for local consumption appears to have been practised in many villages in the 19th century and after, and perhaps earlier. The Mau Tso Ngam experience is simply one of many, though it is one of the few in which the practice is still carried out.\n\nFinally, may I enter a plea for research on another aspect of village activity, the collection and preparation of medical herbs? Coincidentally, my information also comes mainly from Mau Tso Ngam. When interviewing an old village lady born there in 1884, but married to Hok Tsui village at Cape D'Aguilar on Hong Kong island, I was told about the tea bushes but did not follow it up and, instead, heard more about medicinal herbs. Her information was that her family and those of the main clan in the village, the Chengs, collected and prepared herbs on the hillside for sale in Kowloon City market. They did this all year round when they were not busy in the fields. The herbs had to be washed, dried and chopped or sliced. They were taken for sale four or five times a year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210532, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "120 \n\nJOHN KARL EVANS \n\nThe lettering suggests that this inscription should be dated to the second century A.D. This was, however, a century of notorious religiosity. In the course of his sixth satire, a prolonged diatribe against married women published in or shortly after A.D. 116, Juvenal vividly describes how penitent followers of the goddess Isis atoned for their transgressions by plunging into the freezing waters of the Tiber and then crawling across Rome on blood-stained knees (Juv. 6.522-541). Some fifty years later, in A.D. 177, there occurred at Lyons one of the most terrible of the Christian persecutions, recounted at length by Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica. One brief excerpt will serve to give a sense of the whole:\n\n7 \n\nThen Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attalus were brought forth to face the beasts brought forth for a public exhibition of the inhumanity of the heathen, since the day for combat with wild animals had been specially set aside for our people. There in the amphitheatre, Maturus and Sanctus once again passed through every conceivable torture just as if they had suffered nothing at all before, or rather as if, having already overcome their opponent in the several preliminary bouts, they were now competing for the victor's crown. Once more they ran the gauntlet of the whips, in accordance with the local custom; once more they were mauled by the beasts; once more they suffered everything which the maddened populace, seated on one side or the other, howled for and cheered on, culminating with the iron chair that roasted their bodies and suffocated them with the stench. Even at this point their tormentors did not cease, but became more and more frenzied in their desire to overcome their resistance. Nevertheless, they heard nothing from Sanctus beyond the confession of faith that he had been accustomed to make from the outset (5.1.37-39).\n\nA large body of comparable evidence for the heterogeneous religious attitudes to be found within the Roman Empire could be amassed without difficulty, but it would be pointless to do so. These few examples should serve to demonstrate just how wide the parameters of belief really were. Whether in Rome or a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210545, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "133\n\nthe manes derived pleasure from flowers strewn about their graves; whether the tradition of providing them with a meal on these occasions was equally long-standing is unclear, but it was certainly well-established at the outset of the Empire.\n\nInterpretation of the Cult Practices\n\nSince the late nineteenth century, a series of exceptionally competent classicists, notably Attilio de-Marchi, Franz Bömer and Jocelyn Toynbee, have focussed their attention on the cult of the dead in the Roman world. Each has compiled the relevant evidence with painstaking thoroughness, but without attempting to explore similar institutions in other cultures. In the absence of such an analytic framework, however, historians of Greece and Rome have not been able to generate a set of meaningful questions against which to test these accumulated data. The major advantage of the comparative approach employed here is that it locates this mass of information in a broader anthropological setting, where pertinent questions are already to hand. These have been raised by anthropologists with a specific interest in mortuary practices, whose work in contemporary societies, including the Chinese, has grown increasingly sophisticated over the last thirty years.\n\nAt the outset, it must be emphasized that the concerns of the modern anthropologist cannot be blindly grafted onto the ancient material. Because classical scholars will always be restricted by the deficiencies of their evidence, there are several interesting questions that cannot even be attempted. One brief example will elucidate the point. Anthropologists at work in Taiwan and the New Territories have frequently examined the generational depth of the ancestral cult in the villages in which they have conducted their field studies. At what point, they ask, does an ascendant cease to receive offerings as an individual on his death-day anniversary and become instead an undifferentiated member of those distant ancestors who are honoured collectively on other occasions? In a land-poor village, for example, Steven Harrell determined that ancestors \"more than one or two generations removed from the eldest living family members” received combined offerings at the Ch'ung Yang.\" Ahern found", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210546, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "134\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nmuch the same thing, despite the fact that her village was land-rich: in Ch'i-nan, observance of the death-day anniversary “is a sign that the deceased has living descendants who personally remember him.\"58 Long ago, Sir Henry Maine likewise concluded that in classical antiquity the great-grandfather was the most remote ascendant to whom offerings would customarily be tendered.59 It is for the Roman historian a tempting hypothesis, and there is a certain amount of evidence that can be submitted in its support. Ovid speaks in general terms of the sacrifices which the grandson offers to his grandfather (Fasti 5.426), while Aeneas, the hero of the Virgilian epic, who celebrates the death-day anniversary of his father Anchises but not that of his grandfather (Aen. 5.49-103), typifies the more specific materials at our disposal. More to the point, as we shall see, the Romans were not at all optimistic in this regard, and devised plans that at times are ingenious in an effort to secure perpetual offerings. Still, we cannot say with any confidence at what moment they expected these to cease in the absence of such careful planning. There must be a reasonable body of data at hand before a generalization such as Maine's is warranted, and in this instance, that threshold has not yet been reached.\n\nThis example notwithstanding, there are questions that can profitably be explored, and we may begin with a deceptively simple item: what is it that obligates any given individual to sacrifice to another? More precisely, is this obligation defined in terms of kinship, the transmission of property, or a combination of both? In the Chinese context, it is universally agreed that an individual who is descended from the lineage ancestors, who has married and produced sons, and transmitted his property to them, must be accorded an honourable place in the ancestral shrine and receive the sacrificial offerings. Many married couples, however, remain childless, or only have daughters, who are destined to venerate the spirits of their husbands' ascendants. What options are available to these unfortunate persons, if they are to avoid becoming kinless hungry ghosts? In Ch'i-nan, Ahern discovered that an only child has an absolute obligation to attend to his or her ancestors, and especially the parents and grandparents. This duty extends to a daughter who has married, a son who has married uxorilocally, and even to a child adopted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210554, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "142\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\ninherit more than a portion of his estate would not harbour strong feelings of guilt about his death, and would thus be less inclined to view his spirit as potentially malevolent. Although more work needs to be done in this area, there is some evidence that suggests that the punitive capacity of the manes did wane during the Empire. In Ravenna, for example, an impressive number of gravestones are extant which clearly show that, late in the second century A.D. and thereafter, it was no longer the ability of a spirit to avenge itself that protected the tomb from desecration, but the threat of a municipal fine. There are many variations on the warning to be read on the tombstone of L. Baebius Silvanus: siquis post obitum eorum qui supra scripti sunt has plancas aperuerit dare debebit rei publicae Ravennatium sestertium duo milia nummum \"if anyone opens this tomb after the interment of those who have been named above, let him pay 2,000 sesterces to the municipal treasury of Ravenna” (CIL 11.43 = ILS 2863).81 This takes up too much of the stone to be practical, but then everyone seems to have understood what the abbreviation S.P.OBIT.E.Q.S.S.S.H.PLANC.A.D.D.R.P.R. HS...Ñ stood for. We end, as we began, with the stock epigraphic phrase.\n\nConclusions\n\nThe cult of the dead in Rome and China, two societies far distant from one another both in space and time, have now passed in review, and several striking similarities have been observed. In each, there is an afterlife conceived in material terms, and a ritual centred on sacrificial offerings considered essential for the well-being of the deceased. The spirits of the deceased are commonly thought to be capable of punishing individuals who neglect these rites, but in so doing they infringe upon the larger sphere of the hostile and aggressive ghosts. In both societies, it can be argued that men and women cease to receive offerings as individuals when there is no one left who knew them at first hand, and that property can play as decisive a role in fixing responsibility for the maintenance of the dead as kinship. Finally, in both Rome and China the capacity of ancestral spirits for punitive action may be due at least in part to the postponement of the ritual and economic emancipation of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210559, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "147\n\n22 Anthropologists tend to use the terms \"ancestor worship\" and \"cult of the dead\" interchangeably, but as Yang (1945) has pointed out, the former is inappropriate in the Chinese context \"because the Chinese do not worship their ancestors in the way that gods are worshipped\" (p. 90). The term \"cult of the dead\" seems more accurate, for both Roman and Chinese practices satisfy Emile Durkheim's definition of a cult as \"a system of diverse rites, festivals and ceremonies which all have this characteristic, that they reappear periodically.\" See The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J.W. Swain (New York, 1915), 80.\n\n23 Pet. Sat. 71.\n\n24 Cf., inter alia, ILS 7814, 8077, 8079, 8081, 8240, 8246, and 8341; on the concept of the domus aeterna, see further the discussions of Cumont (1922), 48; and Lattimore (1942), 165–167.\n\n25 Cf., inter alia, ILS 7583, 8426, and 9143. The abbreviation $.T.T.L is more frequent: ILS 1555, 1659, 2514, 2654, 4960, 6801, 7594, 7595, 7749, 7766, 7802, 8100, 8131, 8421, and 8445. On this and similar formulae that presuppose a belief in sensation after death, see again Lattimore (1942), 65-74.\n\n26 CIL 6.2357 = Buecheler, Carm. Epigr. 838 = ILS 8204. On this phenomenon, see again Cumont (1922), 58; and Lattimore (1942), 118-123, and 230-237.\n\n27 These nine days, called the denicales, began and ended with funeral banquets at the gravesite, the silicernium and cena novemdialis respectively. With the latter, the deceased took his or her place among the maiores, or ancestors. For more detailed discussion of these rituals, see de-Marchi (1896), 1.192-199; Toynbee (1971), 50-51; and D.P. Harmon, \"The Family Festivals of Rome\", in H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 1.16.2 (Berlin, 1978), 1602-1603.\n\n28 Cf. Bömer (1943), 48; and Toynbee (1971), 35.\n\n> \n\n29 There is a considerable literature on this point; cf., inter alia, Fustel de Coulanges (1874), 17-22; Cumont (1922), 3, 50; Lattimore (1942), 126-135; and Toynbee (1971), 37. As H. J. Rose, Ancient Greek Religion (London, 1948), 29-30; and R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), 104-120, have emphasized, the classical Greek cult of the dead was similarly structured.\n\n= \n\n30 One should also note CIL 12.5102 Buecheler, Carm. Epigr. 188 – ILS 8154, from Narbo in southern France: \"I drink without cease at this my tomb, the more eagerly because it is here that I must sleep and dwell.\"\n\n31 See R.E.M. Wheeler, “A Roman Pipe-burial from Caerleon, Monmouthshire”, AntJ, 9 (1929), 1-7; and H. Laver, \"Roman Leaden Coffins Discovered at Colchester\", Trans. of the Essex Archaeological Society, n.s. 3 (1889), 273-277; cf. G.C. Boon, \"Mensa Dolenda — a Caerleon Discovery of 1774\", Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 25 (1973), 346-358. More generally, cf. again Fustel de Coulanges (1874), 21-23; Cumont (1922), 50; and Toynbee (1971), 37, 51.\n\n32 See Festus, v. culina; and, inter alia, CIL 1,1059, 5.7459 = ILS 8342. These amenities are also discussed by Fustel de Coulanges (1874), 22-23; Cumont (1922), 53-57; and Toynbee (1971), 51.\n\n33 See Goody (1962), 393-394, and 401; and E.K. Gough, “Cults of the Dead among the Nayars\", Jour. Amer. Folk., 71 (1958), 449-450; cf. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, \"Religion and Society\", in his Structure and Function in Primitive", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210874, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "208 \n\nCARL SMITH \n\nlency Chen Lan-pin, I had the honour through Dr. Eitel to receive your kind remembrance of me and my family. Your ever affectionate pupil and friend, Ho A-lloy.\" Time and fortune had not loosened the ties between pupil and master. \n\nWhen a new Chinese Ambassador was appointed to the United States, Ho Shun-chee returned to China. He served for a period as Secretary of the China Merchants Insurance Company at Shanghai. Tong King-sing, a former schoolmate, was the chairman of the company. \n\nIt was proposed that Ho Shun-chee be put in charge of a newly organised telegraph company, the Wa Hop, formed to build a line between Hongkong and Canton. The company was principally financed by Chinese capitalists in Hongkong. Later the company was taken over by the Chinese Government. \n\nThe careers of his brothers are not as well documented as that of Ho Shun-chee. The third brother, Chung Sang, was a worry to his elder brother. When A-lloy was teaching in the Government school he wrote to Dr. Legge about Chung Sang, who was then a student in the mission school. A-lloy thought it would be much better if his brother were more directly under his supervision. He requested Dr. Legge to release him that he might transfer to the school where A-lloy was teaching. He expressed a low estimate of his brother to Dr. Legge, describing him as \"by nature a very stupid, lazy and disobedient boy..., all play, flying his kite.” \n\nFurthermore he had been accused of stealing some money. The boy could not have been as stupid and lazy as his brother alleged for he was later manager of the Wah Tze Yat Po, a Chinese newspaper published in Hongkong. When his lease for the paper expired in 1889, it was taken over by Ho Wyson and Dr. Ho Kai, two of the sons of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong. \n\nA-lloy's second brother was A-fuk. Prospects for his career were bright. He too began by teaching English in a Chinese school supported by the Hongkong Government. From there he went into the Hongkong office of the North China Insurance Office as interpreter and Chinese manager. He died in 1873. \n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210884, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "218\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThere may have been some substance to these reports, for, after leaving the service of the Hongkong Government, he became attached to the Kwangtung Provincial Tax Bureau. It was while he was in the Kwangtung Government administration that he became interested in the development of the mines of the province.\n\nA specimen of lead ore from the Wei Chau area was brought to his attention. It was almost pure ore. He sent a party to inspect the mine. Previously it had been worked by the Government, but after expending a large amount of money, the work had to be suspended because the mine was flooded. A-mei thought he could overcome this problem with modern machinery. He approached the Viceroy and was able to get his approval, but in the face of opposition from other officials, he decided not to pursue the project further.\n\nSome of his friends, however, did start work, having raised some $8,000. By the time the water problem was solved, all the money had been spent and further work was abandoned.\n\nHo A-mei's interest in the mineral wealth of Kwangtung had been aroused and he sent prospectors to various areas of the province to secure ore samples. From the reports he was convinced mining could be undertaken with profit.\n\nIn 1880 he became interested in some old mines at Tam Chow near the Bogue forts (Fu-mun) on the Pearl River. Some 30 years before they had been successfully developed at a profit of some $300,000, but this mine was also flooded so work had been abandoned. With the experience of his friends at the Wei Chow mines in the Wing On District in mind, A-mei decided it was not worth pursuing the reopening of the Tam Chow mines.\n\nIn 1883, however, a number of stone cutters struck a rich vein of ore about half a mile from the old mine. A-mei sent a specimen to England and it was found to be 13 per cent silver. He bought the mine for $10,000.\n\nNot long after, his attention was directed to mineral deposits on Lantao Island at Silvermine Bay. Investigation of the site indicated it was worth working. He arranged to lease the site for $2,000 a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210895, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "229\n\nsought out by a reporter of the Hongkong Telegraph for an interview on the housing to be built on the land of the Fuk Tin Co in Cheungshawan.\n\nThis was not the first plan to develop the area. In 1864, an enterprising member of the Tang family arranged with certain other clan members to develop their holdings along the foreshore. The documents relating to the proposal state: \"The lessors' intentions are to invite people to settle thereon, and erect boatbuilding sheds, houses and shops thereon, in order to open up the place for trade, so that some income may be derived therefrom by them to turn it to account.\"\n\nThe owners did not have the capital to develop the area so as to attract those who had been dislocated by events in China or by the clearance from the Tsimshatsui area of Kowloon after British occupation. The owners of the land were happy to make terms with one who was ready \"to superintend the work as first founder of the place.\"\n\nThe income from the family houses, boatbuilding sheds, rope works and the use of the shore for breaming junks was to be managed by the lessee. The kaifong of the place was to be allowed a certain part of the income for hiring watchmen and meeting other public expenses. The balance was to be divided into two equal shares, one for the descendants of the ancestor Tang Shek-cho, the other for the developer, Tang Fu-kowk, alias Tang Chi-nam. The agreement concluded with the pious hope that after the making of the lease \"may the inhabitants be in prosperity and make good profit! May the source of the wealth be multiplied!\"\n\nIn 1876, Tang Fu-kowk, the promoter, acquired title to improvements members of the clan had made at Laichikok. These consisted of a flour mill with two water dams, an improved stream called Tit Lo Hang (Blacksmith's creek) and a vegetable plantation.\n\nAt the time of the interview with Ho A-mei in 1895 there was a severe shortage of Chinese housing in Hongkong. Even before the plague of 1894 struck it had been in short supply. To control", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210933, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "266\n\ning in the New Territories. Unfortunately, the British misunderstood that the soldiers were sent there to assist the uprising.\n\nWith this as an excuse, the British invaded the Walled City on the 8th day of the Fourth Moon (i.e. 19th May) and drove away the Imperial officials and the three hundred soldiers.\n\nThis ended the Ch'ing rule over the Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, June 1987\n\nAnthony K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n2\n\nSee JHKBRAS 20(1980): 139-141.\n\nThey were said to be Hakka stone workers and Triad members.\n\nCheung Yu-tang E, a native of Wai Chau H, was a Fu-cheung #or Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion in 1854. He was stationed in the Walled City for thirteen years. Then he retired in the 5th year of Tung Chih (1866) and died four years later in the 9th year of Tung Chih (1870) at the age of 76.\n\nSee Chapter 82 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsu edition 廣州府志卷八十二,\n\n5 See the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong, 1898 (signed at Peking, 9th June, 1898): Treaties between China and Foreign States Vol. 1, P. 539-540. Shang-hai, 1917.\n\n6 See Despatches and other Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the Lease of Kowloon Customs and her territory on the 9th day of the 4th moon in the 25th year of the Kuang Hsu Reign (1899).\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the British Occupation of the Kowloon City and the French Occupation of Ng Chuen and Shui Kai Prefectures 奧督撫譚鈺麟鹿傳霖泰英人佔據九龍城法人圖佔吳川遂溪兩縣請飭籌 on the 15th day of the 5th moon in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210945, "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": 7, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n277 \n\nTemple and paying respect to Governor-General Chau and Governor Wong, a roast pig is to be prepared, and the sum of 8 silver dollars is to be awarded, in addition to 3 silver dollars for the men and horses. The feast for the day is to be arranged in the manner stated in the previous clause. \n\n16. Should the provincial or metropolitan graduates, imperial students by special selection, or official functionaries, of the literary or military order, be accompanied by masters-of-ceremony, as they pass by the Governor's Temple, the masters-of-ceremony are to be paid 20 cents each. \n\nWe have not been able to discover if these rules were used as stated. Village elders remember the feast, in which scholars sat at the most honoured places, and poetry and rhymed couplets were written. However, we have not come across any concrete reference to the Po Tak Temple as a place for litigation or reception of officials. \n\nThe clauses concerning litigation and entertainment of officials and degree-holders are not found in the regulations of the New Alliance. Its regulations are brief, although one clause, giving the history of the alliance from 1908, is of particular interest. The lack of any reference to the literary competition should also be noted. A translation of the regulations is given below: \n\n1. If money has to be distributed for the public affairs of this tung [] [a group of villages: this use of ... is common in the New Territories] the shan-sz of the heung are to meet to discuss the matter. Money must be distributed to each share as stated in former regulations, and not in this manner (SØER). [It is not at all clear what \"this manner\" refers to.] \n\n2. Under former regulations, the New Alliance [met] on the 1st of the Sixth Month. It was divided into five shares. However, when the land came under British rule, there was insufficient money for annual sacrifices. In the thirty-fourth year of Kuang-hsü [1908], the accounts were closed and cancelled, and sacrifice was to cease from then on. The half share held by Loi Tung Village was scattered and excluded. The shan-sz then met and sought contributions. At that time, San Tin heung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210977, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "14\n\nearly Manchu emperors. The Jesuits' basic strategy was to establish the compatibility of a conversion to Christianity with the continuation of the Confucian ceremonies of respect to the Emperor and to family ancestors. They had to defend this strategy against other influential church lobbies in Rome, especially the Dominicans. The Jesuits were defeated, eventually, but they had produced in the course of this epoch-making controversy La Querelle des Cérémonies Chinoises an enormous wealth of material highly favourable to Chinese culture and society, among which the standard collections of Father Lecomte and Father Du Halde are best known. After these Jesuits' memoirs had lost their polemical value within the Church, they found a new lease of life with the Philosophes, who turned them against the whole ancien régime.\n\nChina's position in this Age of Enlightenment is well-known. Rather than chart it in greater detail, I should like to emphasise that for the French Philosophe, China was a perfectly abstract entity, an ideological construct, an intellectual artefact. Needless to say, almost none of them had ever visited China or had contemplated doing so. The Philosophes, and the Jesuits before them, knew nothing of the deeply rooted dissatisfaction of the Chinese people with foreign Manchu rule, of the rampant peasant unrest, the bureaucratic control of the economy, the atmosphere of intellectual rigidity, or the repression against dissidents. In their eyes, China was not so much idealised, but rather completely reprocessed, reconstructed so as to fit into French intellectual and political controversies.\n\nYes, China was an abstraction, and this was not considered a handicap. For China as reconstructed by the Philosophes was an essential prerequisite for the achievement of a genuine philosophical universality, for a universal and world-wide approach to human nature and human society. China enabled these Philosophes to break away from a Eurocentric view of world history, founded only on Greek and Roman cultures and on earlier Hebrew traditions. To include China in their views on modern progress, to appeal to China as much as to Greece and Rome, was a major intellectual and philosophical advance towards universality. Voltaire was most concerned with this generalising approach to world", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211001, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "38\n\nWith two governments claiming jurisdiction over it, the Walled City fell between two stools, as one undertook minimal administrative responsibility to avoid diplomatic embarrassment, the other none at all. The result was a near vacuum of administrative function and authority.\n\nAfter Chinese officials departed in 1899, the City's population was much depleted. Some of the original inhabitants stayed on. Their landownership was terminated by the Hong Kong government, which, in turn, granted them 5-year leases. The leases were necessarily short because of the awkward political circumstances. The government was in fact reluctant to grant land leases for any but public purposes and the Protestant Church became a major beneficiary of the situation, receiving several short-term leases to operate schools and charities in the City. In 1906, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church converted the former San-sheng (Three Saints) Temple into a chapel, the T'ien-kuo chiu-tao t'ang (Heavenly Kingdom Chapel). Sermons given every Wednesday and Sunday evening seem to have attracted many women and children from the neighbourhood, who might have attended as much for reasons of faith as for the entertainment.\n\nThe Church also obtained the lease of an official building to operate an old people's home, called the Kuang-yin yuan, and an alms house. Later, these were turned over to the Chinese Christian Churches Union which also ran a home for widows and orphans, known as Eyre's Refuge, in the large compound. In 1908, the Holy Trinity Church converted the former hsun-chien's office into a primary school, the T'ien-kuo A (Heavenly Kingdom) School, operating it until 1936. For some time around 1931, the Church's youth groups also held their activities there.\n\n52\n\nThe former Lung-chin Communal School was also put to good use. Between 1900 and 1905, it was the Land Court's office. Then the Secretary for Chinese Affairs took it over to run a free secondary school for over 300 students with funds from the Hou-wang Temple nearby. At one time, a public dispensary shared the premises. In this way, the schools and other charities, besides meeting the spiritual and material needs of the City's inhabitants,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211066, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "102\n\nof this has yet been found although contemporary maps indicated at La Loma a \"Burial place of infidels.” Infidels comprised non-Catholics and included European Protestants, Chinese, and Indians. Incidentally, still living in Cainta, only a few miles away are the descendants of the Indian troops of the expedition who decided to stay after deserting or being left behind after their boat capsized, but their distinctive looks are, however, slowly disappearing. Sadly, after being governed by the East India Company for eighteen months, Manila had to be returned to the Spanish by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Speculation still exists amongst Filipino scholars about what the Philippines might have been if the British had remained in control — a British colony in the Far East, rich in natural resources, fifty years before the acquisition of Singapore and Malaya and eighty years before Hong Kong.\n\nTrade continued to prosper after the resumption of Spanish Authority, and, until 1821 the Philippines continued to be run from Mexico. Treaty ports and trading posts were established in several places including Sual in Pangasinan, on Luzon Island, in Iloilo on Panay and on Cebu and Protestant cemeteries were established in each town, where beforehand the burial of Protestants in consecrated ground was prohibited, (as was the importation of Protestant Bibles).\n\nWith the expansion of trade, a burial place for the four hundred to five hundred aliens from Europe and North America living in Manila, was becoming an urgent necessity.\n\nIn 1827 the first British Consul General was appointed and it was his successor, John William Perry Farren (sometimes referred to as Fearon) who in 1860 attempted to establish a Protestant Cemetery for the mostly but not exclusively British residents. Sadly, Farren became one of the cemetery's first residents within weeks of its establishment.\n\nOn May 27th, 1862, the Spanish Government by a \"Superior Decreto\" granted permission to construct the Cemetery, and on March 11th, 1864 a lease was signed between Farren and Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, the Owner of Hacienda de San Pedro, of a parcel of land of 31,656 \"varas cuadradas\" (22,467.85 sq metres or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211067, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "103\n\n5.55 acres) for a Cemetery for Protestant foreigners and the right to construct a Cemetery was confirmed by the Spanish Government by a further Superior Decreto of August 30th, 1864. The lease was for a period of 90 years from May 2nd, 1863 at an annual rental of one hundred Philippine pesos (P), (presently Stg. 2.50).\n\nIn 1907 the area of the Cemetery was reduced to allow for the construction of an electric street car line from Pasig to Manila and the rent for the remaining 16,811 sq metres (4.15 acres) was reduced to P85.00. Road widening took another 469 sq metres in June 1941, shortly before the Japanese occupation during which the destruction of the boundary wall added to the inevitable neglect. Nevertheless, P429.30 back rental for the period of the war had to be paid in January 1946. In 1947 the lease was extended until December 31st, 1987.\n\nThe five hundred odd burials give an interesting insight into the variety of life amongst foreigners who took up living halfway across the world in these lovely islands.\n\nMostly British, with Germans the second largest national group, they included master mariners from Liverpool and Plymouth, seamen from Nova Scotia, Belfast and Hamburg; businessmen from London and Lancashire, a Parisian shopkeeper, an operatic impressario from Milan, engineers on the British owned Manila Railroad, a diplomat who had served in the American Consular Service for forty-five years, and many children. Jews were also buried in the Cemetery, as were Japanese, although all these remains were removed to Japan during the occupation in 1942. Perhaps the most interesting burial was Prince Ludwig Zu Lowenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg who went to Manila as a military observer during the revolution against American occupation and was killed by a stray bullet during fighting in Battangas in March 1899.\n\nThere were 93 recorded British deaths in the Philippines during the Second World War, mostly priests and civilians, from natural causes, privation, enemy action and execution by Japanese and by Filipino collaborators. These people were buried in many different places including Baguio Cathedral, Cebu, Davao, La Loma,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211435, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "127\n\nfluently in the process, although he suffered much teasing and abuse from the native boys.\n\nBorn and bred in the city, Grandfather was an intellectual and romantic, but not a good businessman. He loved to read, an enjoyment my mother also shared. Physically he was fair-skinned and fine-haired. Grandmother, on the other hand, from a village environment, was warm, hearty and practical. I have no recollection of her, but I understand that she was an active person, with a good deal of energy and drive. A snapshot of her shows an angular face with rather long teeth and high cheek bones. Cousin Helen Jong Zane is said to resemble her somewhat in looks and temperament.\n\nGrandfather handled Uncle with little understanding. The latter was required to do more than was reasonable for a growing boy. He had little energy left to do well in his studies, for he often fell asleep while doing his homework. Grandmother thus felt compelled to be protective of him against Grandfather's explosive temper. Mother, bright and delicate, was very pleasing to Grandfather and did not have to do any hard manual work. She became a fine needle worker and helped to supplement the family income by sewing denim slacks and buttons at home for tailor shops. Neither Uncle nor Mother had the opportunity to have much schooling.\n\nAlthough Grandfather was able to make a small profit from his 'dim sum' business, the Chinatown fire on 20 January 1900 disrupted it, and the family was, among many, to be confined in a camp set up in Kalihi during and following the conflagration. My grandparents were not among those residents who received compensation from the government for their losses after their release from the camp. Later that year, Grandfather bought the lease to a farm at Kapatai, Luluku, Kaneohe, for 1,000 dollars from Chun Chiu Yee8, the father of Mrs. Sam Young. The farm was named Hook Sung Waiiii and was a leasehold from Mendonca, a Portuguese of some means, although I was given the impression that the Magoons owned the land. This large piece of property was located on the Pali side of the present site of the State Hospital, at the foot of the Koolau Mountain range. It embraced a profuse spring pouring clear, cold and delicious water into a deep stream flowing through and past the entrance of the farm. Mother said that she would always watch with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211440, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "132\n\n-\n\nAnna,\n\nshe took along the children of good friends with her as well Bessie, Clara, Dora and Laura Chung, and Alice Ping Lam. In spite of the primitive surroundings, it was a treat for city children to enjoy the freedom of the outdoors. How nostalgic is the smell of sweet ripening rice in the fields. The memory of early morning breakfasts of steaming rice, hot tasty dishes and strong tea. The smell of smoking guava wood under the big wok! The feel of crispy rice from the bottom of the wok! The clear, cool, invigorating mountain air! The soft dawn suddenly bright from the glow of the rising sun seen through the wide, paneless windows of the large kitchen where we ate! And the never satisfied appetites for anything edible around the farm! We did not have a care.\n\nBetween chores we would wander into the dense guava bushes growing wild in the uncultivated areas, and would pick, taste, discard or eat only the sweetest fruits. The white-seeded ones were the best. There were mangoes and bananas, all for the picking. We got our vitamins the joyful way. Or we would wade in the deep cold stream or in the drained rice fields to catch snails, opelu and catfish that were left in the puddles after the harvest. While the older children kept an eye on the younger ones, without supervision from the busy adults, we always found something to occupy our time and were never bored.\n\nUncle decided to make a change in 1916. He moved to a small leasehold, located off Lilipuna Road not far from Kamehameha Highway, owned by Joseph Whittle, a sign painter. The neighbours were John William Grote and Henry Cobb-Adams. The former was the postmaster and the latter the tax collector in Kaneohe. Uncle increased the amount of vegetables he produced and replaced the buggy with a large horse-drawn wagon to take his produce to the Honolulu market. When the lease expired in 1918, he moved to a property owned by the widow of William Henry, who had been a gaoler at the Oahu Prison. This farm was on the Maikai side of Kamehameha Highway, separated from the Cobb-Adams property by a narrow stream. Aunt had a green thumb and from selected seeds sent by Step-Grandmother from Shekki, she was able to raise high quality vegetables that brought a good price and profit.\n\nAs business increased, Uncle invested in a Reo truck and started the first truck farming business in that community, acting as agent for other farmers on a commission basis. Although Cousin Mary learned to drive", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211533, "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": 250, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "226\n\nto this one, although the bamboo arm-rest was a bit of a luxury not always found! This latrine was probably built early this century. Sheung Wo Hang had 30 latrines to service its approximately 100 families at the time of the Block Crown Lease in 1905; the great majority of them were very close in style and construction to this one.\n\nNOTES\n\nP. H. Hase\n\n2 Journal Vol. 23, 1983, p. 241-246.\n\nMy thanks are due to Mr. M.Y. Lee, of Sheung Wo Hang village, for drawing the latrine to my attention, and for helping me to measure it.\n\nSee plan attached, and plate 11.\n\n4 See plate 12.\n\nA NOTE ON RICE HULLERS (RE)\n\nIn March 1972, I visited the New Territories' village of Ma Yau Tong, situated off the Po Lam road leading to Rennie's Mill in Junk Bay. I knew the village representative, Mr. Li Tak (...) from my days as\n\nDistrict Officer South, 1957-60. He was aged 79 in 1972.\n\nWith friends from Ngau Tau Kok old village in East Kowloon, who knew the Ma Yau Tong people, I looked carefully round the houses, paying special attention to old ones and their contents.\n\nLike most N.T. villages, Ma Yau Tong had been a rice-growing settlement, but in their case they had stopped planting some 10 to 15 years before my visit. I was interested in the farming tools and equipment, and made notes on a pair of rice hullers that we saw. However, we were only able to learn the details about one of them. The other was much older, and had been in the house longer than the old lady who lived there. As she had already lived in the village for 48 years, after marrying into one of the village families when she was 20 years old, it had obviously been made before about 1920. “About 100 years\", they guessed, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211535, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "228\n\nIt reads in translation:\n\n+\n\n+\n\n\"There are two sorts of rice huller. One is made of wood. The other sort is made of mud. This sort is made with a round bamboo frame, filled with clean yellow mud. Bamboo teeth are pressed into both the upper and lower hulling faces. The upper frame of the huller has a hollow to receive the grain, the capacity of which is double that of a wooden huller. If the grain is at all damp when it goes into the huller, it will be crushed. After hulling 200 shek (E) of rice, a mud huller will start to fall to pieces. Wooden hullers require strong men to operate them, but mud hullers are suitable for operation by women or young people. The ordinary peasants use mud hullers of this type.\"\n\nI am grateful to Mr. Yau for drawing my attention to this description.\n\nJames Hayes\n\nA GLIMPSE OF THE LAND SETTLEMENT AT SHEK PIK VILLAGE,\n\nLANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG\n\nIn the opening years of this century, following the lease of what is now the New Territories of Hong Kong, all land that was being utilised or had been occupied was surveyed by the new government. A Land Court was set up to settle all claims to ownership of land, and any disputes were adjudicated. Finally, a register of ownership for each of the 355 Demarcation Districts was prepared and bound into a folio together with a survey sheet and a Block Crown Lease.\n\nWhilst the work of the survey and land court are well-documented in the official reports of the time,1 few materials showing the process in the villages have survived.\n\nTo my mind, the most interesting of these are the small printed \"chits”, known to villagers and government staff alike as Chi Tsai", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211537, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "230\n\nThe main additions to our knowledge of the land situation at Shek Pik afforded by the chi tsai come from the notations giving the local place name (4) of each property, and whether a field was being cultivated by an owner or another party, and whether the claimant held a mortgage on someone else's property, as did Chi Yau-kei in a number of cases. Other information, on the use of huts, the occupancy of houses, with the numbers by which they were known in the village (?), and on abandoned (uncultivated) land, was also provided. Mortgages held by Yau-kei were also noted.\n\nIn Chi Yau-kei's case, the chi tsai appear to show him in possession of a considerable amount of land, some abandoned or fallow but mostly under his own (and his family members') cultivation and use. His fields extend over demarcation districts 312, 315, and 318, but are mostly located in the last.\n\nIs such information reliable? It could only have been given by the claimant. Unless he was slack in his answers, deliberately to avoid giving more information than he had to, or because he could not be bothered — it would have been easier to say that he occupied and farmed everything himself — the chances of accuracy are fairly good. If so, it is a pity that more chi tsai from the village have not survived, as they would have told us more about land use than it is possible to gain from the ownership schedules in the Block Crown Lease.\n\nFinally, a word about the forms themselves. They are of additional interest because each carries a red oval-shaped \"chop\" bearing the title of the New Territories Land Court in English and Chinese. In every case, there is another \"chop\", also in red, from the District Officer, added after the claim of ownership had been substantiated, stating that the paper is only for identification and record purposes and has no value by itself, since only the Tsap Chiu would be taken as an accurate record — presumably in case unscrupulous persons tried to pass the Chi Tsai off as title deeds in a fraudulent sale.\n\nThe forms have another value, in that the District Officer's notice is the earliest example I have seen of the use of the Chinese title “Lei Man Fu (li min fu)”, the time-honored description of the officer and the implied duties of the post. The full inscription reads:\n\n!\n\n \nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211540, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "DEZAKETTRE DWUKISME)\n\nJames Hayes\n\n233\n\nNOTES\n\nSee the list of printed papers given at pp. 271-272 of my book, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1977). Perhaps I should add that whilst the progress of the survey and land settlement are described, the records of hearings in cases where disputes could not otherwise be settled are not now available, save for some reports in the local English-language newspapers.1 See Chapter 4, \"Shek Pik, A Multilineage Settlement of Cantonese Farmers\" in Hayes 1977, op cit, pp. 104-128. I have also used some of the documentary material in my paper Education and Management in Rural South China in the Late Ch'ing at pp. 575-592 of Vol. 1 of Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Asian Studies 1984, (Hong Kong, Asian Research Service, 1985).\n\n1 Although surviving “Chi Tsai” from the New Territories are few in number, they are not rare either. I have come across them here and there in my research, but unfortunately dismissed them as being of no particular interest or value, compared with the Block Crown Leases and actual customary deeds of sale and mortgage.\n\nOne entry from my Notes, for instance, taken at Chuk Yuen Village, New Kowloon, in July 1963, states, \"Her husband's father was Lam Hei (), and she showed me a few chits for lot numbers claimed at the Land Court in 1901. They included one interesting receipt for 13 tax receipts, presumably Ch'ing land tax receipts, which must have been submitted as proofs of ownership at the land settlement following the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898“. A collection of some dozens of chi tsai from New Kowloon villages is in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong (HKMS104): these will be the subject of a separate note in due course.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211566, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "259\n\nNOTES\n\nThere are several instances where Faure distorts the anthropological literature completely. The “frontier” which Pasternak (1969) refers to, for example, has to do with the socio-political consequences of a certain economic relationship between man and his use of specific strategic resources, namely water and land. Land reclamation is not an accurate translation of this frontier situation. Faure also reads Freedman's (1958:2) interpretation of a passage by Fei (1946: 1) superficially and without much understanding of its context or rhetorical intent. Freedman's purpose in quoting Fei was to argue that the function of the lineage as a political and local organization transcends its identity \"in name” as a descent group. But it should be noted also that Freedman deliberately distorted Fei as well. Had Faure actually read Fei, he would have also discovered that the phenomenon which Fei (1946:5) was describing was not even a descent group at all, which should make it quite enigmatic indeed. Sometimes among the peasants, the clan is found, but it is of another kind. In Yunnan, for instance, I have seen that in villages local organization is formed in terms of clan which includes even members of different surnames. Functionally these are not strictly kinship groups. I shall leave open as to the nature of the so-called clan-village. I rather suspect that such an organization among the peasants is a local organization, not a kinship organization.\n\nWhen reading Fried as he does Freedman, Faure confuses the model for empirical reality. Underlying the petty disputes over the definition of lineages and clans as analytical constructs, Fried (1970) was trying to make a more important point about the political functions of a genealogy in allocating differential access to scarce strategic resources (i.e., lineage property), this according to Fried being more important than the existence of property per se. The relative distinction between stipulated and demonstrated descent must be understood in this light.\n\nSheer numbers never mean anything. Even in Faure's (p. 96) analysis of a Chinese funeral, there is no a priori reason to believe that the lineage or village should have any role or obligation to play in ritual preparations. The scale of any such operation is always determined by the family of the deceased. “Work” is delegated among volunteers within the community (not necessarily a territorial one), whether it be neighbours, colleagues, or friends. Correspondingly, compensation for services rendered is made either as payment or as fa see.\n\nI suspect that variations in village organization and relationships within village clusters were shaped during the formative period prior to the time when the village had any formal identity. The diversity of local experience can only be attributed to the diversity of interaction within different villages. Rules prohibiting intermarriage in Man Uk Pin and the lack of an ancestral hall in Wong Keng Tei are other examples of local phenomena which must be understood in reference to the way the villagers themselves define or interpret the nature of their own community.\n\nSee Strathern's (1984) study of the \"community\" in an English village.\n\nThe whole problem with Faure's description of “lineage-building” is that it is too easy to project a genealogical structure onto residence patterns, especially with help from Block Crown Lease Demarcation District Maps and the like. As for the Sha Tin Wai example, I doubt whether Faure bothered to match up the registered ownership of houses with its actual inhabitants or even to seek informant testimony with regard to this period of household mobility. In practice, villages rarely update actual ownership records unless there is a conveyance of sale or other transaction that requires re-registration. That registered ownership is usually a couple of generations behind is thus the norm rather than the exception.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211710, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "100\n\nTsun Wan has several local industries; . . . In the valley running up into the hills to the south-west of Tai Mo Shan there is a village consisting entirely of watermills, where wood is ground up for the manufacture of joss sticks. This picturesque place is about half a mile beyond Tsun Wan, near the 9th milestone, and follows the stream upwards, first on the one bank and then on the other. The first watermill is reached in 5 minutes' walk from the road, and beyond are a dozen more little houses perched on the sides of the valley, each with its waterwheels busily turning. For a small tip the owner of one of these mills will show you inside; the atmosphere is thick with fragrant dust, and through it you can dimly see great stone-headed hammers pounding away the aromatic wood.23\n\nFrom the description cited, the area seems to be Tso Kung Tam (2H), which is situated to the north-west of Tsuen Wan. According to elder villagers, there were six water-wheels in operation after 1930, and one of these was still in operation until 1952-1953. Later, they were replaced by electrically driven grinders, and manufacturing activities expanded to include the production of incense coils. Heywood's description was written during the last few years in which the incense wood was pounded by water power. The whole area was resumed by the Government around 1978 for the construction of the Tsuen Wan Mass Transit Railway Terminus.\n\nAlthough Tsuen Wan is the best known of the incense milling centres of the New Territories, and was the only one to survive after the 1920s, in the early years of the century there were at least two others. Sandalwood mills were noted at Pak Kiu Tsai between Pun Chung and Wun Yiu immediately outside Tai Po New Market during the Block Crown Lease surveys of about 1905. Similarly, early twentieth-century maps show sandalwood mills at Heung Fan Liu (56%, “Incense Powder Sheds\") just outside Tai Wai in Sha Tin. Heung Fan Liu and Pak Kiu Tsai are sites very similar to Tso Kung Tam in Tsuen Wan immediately alongside a fast-flowing stream with a substantial year-round flow of water to power the water-wheels. Heung Yuen Wai (I, \"Incense Tree Grove\") in Ta Kwu Ling may also be a placename referring to the incense trade → adjacent villages are called Tsung Yuen (AB, \"Pine Grove\") and Chuk Yuen (†, \"Bamboo Grove''), suggesting three local specializations. No sandalwood mills at Heung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211745, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "135\n\nbeen only too pleased to have the buildings back in operation, and the daily prayers re-started. Kuk Shan Kit, however, died after being at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for only a few years. His disciples dispersed to other monasteries. Only one disciple, a lady of over 40 when she arrived from Lo Fau Shan, stayed at the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz, where she lived until she died early in 1991. It is because of Kuk Shan Kit's early death, and the dispersal of his disciples, that the nunnery escaped being rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s.\n\nBefore the War, the nunnery seems to have been dependent on donations from villagers and on offerings made by wayfarers, despite the fact that, at least on paper, it owned a considerable amount of land. At the Block Crown Lease Survey (1905) it was registered as the owner of 2.49 acres of First Quality, 1.8 acres of Second Quality, and 0.23 acres of Third Quality riceland in the Ping Shan area (DD79), 3.79 acres, 0.42 acres and 0.26 acres in the Ping Che area (DD77), 0.87 acres of First Quality riceland in the Wo Hang Au area (DD38), and 1.22 acres of First Quality riceland in the Man Uk Pin area (DD37), totalling 8.37 acres of First Quality, 2.22 acres of Second Quality, and 0.49 of Third Quality riceland; 11.08 acres overall. The only houseland owned was the nunnery itself. Unfortunately, the title deeds for this land have been lost, and it is impossible to be sure when they were donated to the nunnery. The tiny plots near the nunnery were also owned by the nuns, but the value of these plots was so low that they were left unregistered.\n\nIt should be noted that the average holding of an average New Territories family actually farming their own land in the early part of this century was about one acre. Land rented out was usually rented at 50% of its crop, so that the 11.08 acres of the nunnery's holdings should have produced enough, if all rented out, to provide for the subsistence needs of five families, and hence should have been more than sufficient for the needs of a couple of elderly nuns, even if they did have to provide free tea to all wayfarers. However, it seems likely that only a small percentage of the income from this land actually reached the nunnery. This point is considered more fully below.\n\nThe Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz and the Ping Yuen Hap Heung\n\nPolitically, the nunnery stood at a nodal point in the tangled web of local politics. The area near the nunnery was certainly settled in the Ming period. The Punti Ho (I), Tang ( ), Man (A), To (#), and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211754, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 169, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "144\n\nThe Shing Ping She was thus required to maintain the Kim Ho Temple, and at least the Heroes Shrine part of the Ping Yuen Temple, and had to meet the costs of the rituals it conducted there. It also had to maintain the bridges and roads, and to meet the costs of the patrols it sponsored. However, it had no land at the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905). Apart from the temple itself, the Ping Yuen Hap Heung owned no land at that date either. Similarly, none of the individual villages of the area owned any significant amounts of communal land. The Shing Ping She did, however, have enough income to buy a good deal of land within the New Territories later — five and a half acres was bought, together with a house, between 1911 and 1920, at a cost of $1,272.50 for just over three of the five and a half acres. Villagers believe the She also bought land at Wang Kong Ha during this period.\n\n18\n\nThe She seems to have imposed a grain tax on all householders and cow owners within the patrol district. At least in the 1930s, as the elders recall, some of this grain was passed to the nuns at the Kim Ho temple and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for their sustenance, but most was sold.\n\nThe villagers claim that the Shing Ping She also bought from the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz all the nunnery's lands within Ping Che and Ping Yeung, at a date somewhen in the 1920s, but without changing the registration of the land in the Land Registry. This is possibly why the She's programme of land purchase in its own name comes to an abrupt end in 1920.\n\nThis claim may well hide a more complex situation. As mentioned above, neither the Shing Ping She nor the Ping Yuen Hap Heung held any communal land in 1905, although they had significant communal commitments: Loi Tung, equally, seems to have had no communal land to provide income for the needs of the Loi Tung Yeuk. At the same time, the nunnery land does not seem to have been used to meet nunnery needs. After the fire, the abbess repaired the roof by seeking donations, not by selling or mortgaging part of the land, and this was clearly the position also at the time of the 1868 rebuilding, since the inscription in the temple records the donors. In the 1930s, the nuns' rice came from donations from the Shing Ping She, not from rent. It seems very likely that the Ping Yuen Hap Heung and Loi Tung people had placed their communal lands under the name and protection of the Buddha. This is not uncommon in the area; such an arrangement made it more difficult for managers to embezzle the land entrusted to them, and protected it from external...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211764, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "154\n\n19\n\n, at Law Fong) are believed to have entered the area after 1700. See Map of Ta Kwu Ling.\n\nIt is interesting to note that, of the 21 villages in the Ta Kwu Ling area, seven are purely Punti, nine are purely Hakka (including two of originally Punti but now Hakka speaking Mans), but five are of mixed Punti and Hakka residents, including the large village of Chau Tin (which has only a tiny handful of Hakka residents), Fung Wong Wu, Kan Tau Wai, and Law Fong, and Tong Fong which consists partly of Punti speaking Mans, and partly of Hakka speaking Mans.\n\n+\n\n1\n\nYeung, and Ng, at Fong Wong Wu; Siu, and Ho, at Chau Tin; Wong, at Kan Tau Wai; Pang, and Au, at Tai Po Tin; Fu Lau, (and others) at Wo Keng Shan; Yiut, at Chuk Yuen; Chan, and Yiu, at Law Fong (Luofang); Chau at Wang Kong Ha; Yeung, and Kwu, at Sai Ling Ha (Xilingxia), and others.\n\n21 The temple bell, of Chien Lung 21 (1756) was donated by \"all the faithful people of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung...\n\n...to stand for ever before the altar of the Lady Tin Hau*. Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 670. The only earlier dated item in the temple, a Cloud Gong of 1727, was donated by a single family from Ping Che, Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 661. The temple continued to be owned and controlled by this group of villages. Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Oxford Univ. Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p. 104 is incorrect in saying that the temple was owned by Ping Yeung. In the Block Crown Lease, the Manager of the temple was Man Shan-fung, of Ping Che. The Tong Fong people, although closely related genealogically to the Ping Che people, were not part of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, and did not take part in the Ta Tsiu.22 Faure, op. cit., p. 103.\n\n+\n\n+\n\n23 The four managers at the time of the Block Crown Lease were Tang Hung-wai (a houseowner of Loi Tung), Chan Shing-pong, called a houseowner of Ping Yeung in a District Office report of 1979), Man Ying-shau (probably a villager of Ping Che, a relative of the houseowners Man Ying-kei, Man Ying-wai, and Man Ying-fat), and Chung Choi-wah (a houseowner of Man Uk Pin). These died in 1938, 1926, 1925, and 1942 respectively, according to a report made to the District Office in 1979. The abbess, Wong Tik-yuen, was appointed a manager in 1926, but she died in 1931. After the War, the lack of managers caused trouble on a number of occasions. A temporary manager was appointed in 1968. In 1979 the Chairman of the Sha Tau Kok Rural Committee and others were appointed as managers, although he, as a Lin Ma Hang villager, had no connection with the nunnery. This seems to have been with a view to rebuilding the nunnery. This proposal has led to a string of vigorous complaints from the elders of the six villages with shares during the last three years, but the situation remains, at present (1991), unresolved.\n\n24 See Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 100-127, for a discussion of the Yeuk.\n\n25 The only alternative was a dangerous, difficult, and often impassable waist-deep ford, as the 1896 Kwong Fuk bridge tablet makes clear. See Faure, Luk and Ng, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 298.\n\n26 See Robert G. Groves, \"The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories\", Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Symposium Report, 1964, pp. 16-20, and Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha, \"Xianggang Xinjie xushi zhi xingqi yu shuailao: Dabuxu yanjiu\" [The Foundation and Decay of Market Towns in the New Territories of Hong Kong: A Study of Tai Po], in Chinese Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1985, pp. 633-655. The very widespread support for the Tsat Yeuk can be gathered from the list of donors shown on the Kwong Fuk bridge tablet, Faure, Luk and Ng, loc. cit.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211788, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "178\n\nbe embellished by a variety of cosmoramic views which will add much to its beauty\" 92\n\nThis process was continued and another new drop scene, “A View of Palermo\" was unveiled on May 6, 1852.93 Thus everything was done to turn the godown into something that resembled a theatre.\n\nB.\n\nOf course it would be more or less a waste if everything had to be demolished because the lease of the building could not be extended. Yet that was possibly the case, for during the season 1852-1853, after many doubts whether any theatricals would be given at all, the Imperial Theatre became the scene; it can only be guessed if this was the same as the Theatre Royal.\n\nC.\n\n94\n\nFor subsequent years we are on somewhat firmer ground.* The seasons 1853-1854, 1856-1857 and 1857-1858 came off in the same building, viz. a godown in the Commercial House or Commercial Hotel compound that was situated at the northwestern corner of Park Lane (Nanking Road), and Church Street (Kiangsi Road) (the names of the roads were, in 1864-1865, changed from the old \"homelike\" ones; Park Lane, Church Street, Mission Road, etc. into ones more in tune with local conditions: Nanking Road, Kiangsi Road, Foochow Road, etc.).† Despite the fact that the theatre was housed in one and the same building throughout this period it bore several different names. It was called the Tae Ming Theatre (i.e. Great and Bright Theatre) 1853-1854; once the name Old Theatre was attached to it (1856), then it was called the Theatre Royal (1857-1858). There was some political irony involved when the Herald announced that on March 8, 1854 the Tae Ming Theatre had opened \"under a concession from and immediate patronage of the Tae-ping-wong\" (the leader of the Taiping movement). Because of the change of regime in the native city the name \"Imperial\" Theatre was mockingly considered a little inappropriate.\n\nOriginally the stage was rather small, but later it was \"extended in the rear and the wings thrown back, giving a larger area for action\".95\n\n* See Map at Appendix III.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211789, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 204, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "179\n\nAs was common, it was occasionally furbished up, not always to the taste of the critic who at one time in 1857 feared the decorations \"threatened to overwhelm me with a fall of flowers and garlands from the roof\". This was not at all what a member of the amateur company wanted to hear and he acidly reacted that \"as your 'witty (?) contributor' complained of being so uncomfortable amongst the roses which surrounded him, it has been proposed and seconded by one of the ladies he admires so much |Mrs. Nesbit, cf. Calendar, 26.3.1857 — JHJ to put in a few thistles for his especial benefit, should he ever honour our private theatricals with his presence”. \n\nThe theatre was also used for a number of recitals, the acoustics reportedly being good.\n\nD.\n\nFor some reason or other (had the Commercial House temporarily closed down? cf note 94) the godown theatre could not be put at the disposal of the amateurs during the 1855-1856 season so they had to look elsewhere. They were saved by the firm of Cramptons, Hanbury & Co who agreed to lease one of their godowns to the A.D.C. It was very probably situated on Church Street (Kiangsi Road) and for the opening night on January 23 1856 a drop scene of the Lake of Geneva had been painted which aroused \"a general murmur of admiration and applause\".\n\nWith the sale by public auction of the Commercial Hotel (cf note 94) in November 1858 the fate of the Theatre Royal was also sealed, and not only of the theatre itself but of the scenery and properties too, for a reporter of the Herald saw a few days after the sale \"the mangled remains of Palaces and Cottages, of Bombastes' Wood [from Bombastes Furioso — JHJ] and Captain Copp's tavern [from Charles II — JHJ] lying in sad ruins in the open air\".\n\nE.\n\nSic transit gloria mundi, but, not deterred, the Thespian society managed to obtain a new building which was proudly called The New Theatre Royal. Once again we are at a loss where to find it, no information whatsoever appearing in the Herald. It was larger than the previous house, which was deemed all right for theatricals but much less so for solo", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "213 \n\nOur Wife: \n\nCount de Brissac: Major Taylor \n\nRosine: Mr. W. Hyslop (of Gibb, Livington & Co) Pomaret, father of Rosine: D.A.C.G. Cooksley \n\nMarquis de Ligny: Mr. Stuart \n\nMariette: Lt Maynard of the 31st regiment \n\nThe Goose with the Golden Eggs: \n\nMr. Turby: D.A.C.G. Cooksley \n\nHis wife: D.A.C.G. Hayter \n\nClara, their daughter: Mr. A. Broom (of Jardine, Matheson & Co) \n\nBonsor, clerk: Dr. Sexton of the 5th Bombay N.L.I. (native lancers and infantry) Flickster: Li Yonge, 2nd Beloochi regiment \n\nAfter a lapse of almost three years the amateur theatricals took a new lease of life in a tastefully fitted up godown-theatre (for a description see Survey). It was a subscription-night with about 250 spectators, of whom 30 were female. For the first time some real names of actors were given and it became clear that the cooperation of the military had been sought for the occasion. Because the names are no longer phoney, it is finally useful to present a cast list. Among those mentioned was D.A.C.G. (i.e. Deputy Assistant Commissary General) Cooksley who died in July during one of the campaigns against the Taipings, at Quinsan. Fine playing, if one did not mind the pieces. That, however, had become a standard complaint by now. \"There was nothing striking or witty in either of the plays so that an occasional local pun or remark interpolated by the actors elicited the greatest applause\"; rather sourly the critic continued “this should not be as it interferes with the harmony of the play”. In Our Wife \"the gentle blushing Rosine was capitally got up by Mr. HYSLOP who created quite ‘a sensation' when he made his curtsey to the audience\". In contrast Mr. STUART \"was graceful in his part but lacked energy where it was requisite to give effect to the plot\". That female dress was not always easy to wear for the men was underlined when \"Lt MAYNARD acted the strong-minded cousin Mariette very fairly, despite the difficulties of crinoline”. In The Goose with the Golden Eggs the Mrs. Turby of D.A.C.G. HAYTER was \"the best piece of masculo-feminine performance we have seen\". It had to be admitted though that not all men were equally up to female characters: \"Clara, as represented by Mr. BROOM, although admirably got up in the coiffure, was rather outré in the dress, especially about the sleeves; while the manner and voice resembled more the roughness of the father than the gentleness of the mother\". (NCH 14.2.1863). \n\nL \n\n17.2.1863 (Tue) \n\nRepeat of 13.2.1863. \n\n2.3.1863 \n\nS. LOVER: \"The White Horse of the Peppers\" (1838) \n\nT: Comic drama (2 acts) \n\nR.B. BROUGH: \"Crinoline*\" (1856) \n\nT: Farce (1 act) \n\nC: Amateurs of the British 31st regiment \n\nTH: N.N. \n\nR: Cast: \n\nThe White Horse of the Peppers: \n\nMajor Hans Mansfeldt: W. Parrott Gerald Pepper: A. Keeble Magdalene: H. MacGuire Crinoline: \n\nMrs. Coobiddy: S. Gale Mr. Coobiddy: W. Phillips \n\nAgutha: S. Gule \n\nDillon: J.S. Galbreath \n\nCapt. LeBrown: J.S. Galbreath Miss Tite: P. Conron", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212128, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "47\n\nthe Ch'ung-fu-ssu or Office for Christian Clergy, was set up in 1289 to supervise their activities, and this body is last heard of in 1351. The Ming revolution against the Mongols in the 1360s, which swept through China from south to north, was strongly nationalistic in character, and references to foreigners in Chinese cities cease after these cities passed under Ming control. The Mongol capital Khanbalik (modern Peking) fell in 1368, and China thereafter retreated into a long period of isolation from the outside world. Nestorian Christianity was now spent, and the next wave of Christians to arrive in China, nearly two hundred years later, were Roman Catholics from Europe. They came by sea, as it was now no longer possible to travel overland through Central Asia, and they found that the work of evangelism had to begin all over again, as scarcely the faintest memory of Christianity had survived in China.\n\nThe number of Nestorian priests in China was never large. In the T'ang period they probably numbered a few thousand at most. As we have seen, Wu-tsung's decree of 845 gives a figure of about 3,000 foreign monks, and a slightly earlier Buddhist work asserts that the grand total of Manichean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian monasteries in China was smaller than the number of Buddhist monasteries in a single small city. In the Yüan period, according to a census taken in the 1290s, Mongols and other foreigners in China accounted for as many as one person in thirty-five of a total population of seventy-two million. Even so, the number of Nestorian Christians in China was estimated by John of Cora in 1330 to be no higher than 30,000. This estimate may be slightly low, but it is clear that it is on the right lines.\n\nThe Nestorian missions to China have generated an extensive and often romantic literature, and much, probably too much, has been claimed for the effectiveness of their missionary activity. In T'ang China the Nestorians had the Christian missionary field to themselves; in Yüan China they were joined by missionaries of the European Latin church. On both occasions the influence of Nestorian Christianity on China appears to have been insignificant. The major, if impermanent, missionary achievement of the Nestorian church beyond its heartland in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the hills of Kurdistan, was not in China, but in Arabia, India, and Turkestan. The mission to Turkestan was particularly important: the ethnic character of the Nestorian church, at first predominantly Syrian and Persian, was substantially modified between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212135, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "54\n\nOther Official Identities\n\nWhile technical Chinese terms, derived from a transliteration of the proper name Nestorius, exist to distinguish the Nestorian church and the Nestorian theology from other types of Christianity, ching-chiao ('brilliant teaching') has become the normal term used by Chinese writers for Nestorian Christianity in China, just as t'ien-chu chiao and chi-tu chiao, also terms invented by Christian missionaries for use in China, have become the standard terms for Catholic and Protestant Christianity respectively. Indeed, at one point in the seventeenth century, Chinese Catholics considered abandoning the term t'ien-chu chiao and calling their religion ching-chiao hou-hsueh, the 'revised brilliant teaching'. It was, of course, the discovery of the Sian tablet in 1625 which gave a new lease of life to the term, and its revival is a curious irony of history. In fact, far from being the usual term used by the Nestorians for Christianity, ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching', had fallen out of use by Yuan times, and was only used for a short period by the Nestorians in Tang China. It seems to have been invented by Archbishop Adam shortly before the erection of the tablet in 781, and was probably only consistently used during his lifetime.\n\nThe term fa-ch'in ching-chiao was never used by Nestorian Christians in Yüan China to characterise their religion. They almost certainly did not know that Nestorians had come to China in T'ang times, even though references to the earlier mission probably survived in the church's archives in Baghdad. In official correspondence, Nestorian Christians in the Yüan period are referred to as Yeh-li-k'o-wen. The term has never been satisfactorily explained, and the suggested derivations from either the Greek archon (ruler), Syriac arkdiqun (archdeacon), or Turkish arkhun (fair-complexioned), all pose problems of one kind or another, though the third suggestion is certainly the most plausible. 'Christianity' was merely the teachings of the 'Yeh-li-k'o-wen', an expression found in several official contexts. This colourless expression supplies additional evidence for the indifference of the Nestorian Christians of the Yuan period towards missionary activity among the Chinese population.\n\nIn the T'ang period, moreover, Christianity seems to have been known by an almost equally colourless name, ching-chiao, the 'teaching of the scriptures', until shortly before 781, and to have been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212356, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 298, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "275\n\nfew fishermens' houses, and a newly-built hotel.\n\nThis dispute in 1875 did not end the matter. It broke out again between 1902 and 1905. The documents which discuss this last conflict make it clear that the decisions of Tin On-pong in 1875 had not been fully implemented. In 1902, all the land behind the landing stage, which Tin On-pong had ordered to be sold by the Yuens to the Cheungs, was still in the hands of the Yuens. The right to collect toll, however, was wholly in the hands of the Tung Ping Kuk, and the Yuens were not collecting their four-tenths. Presumably the Yuens had passed this right to the Kuk, so long as their land-owning rights were left untouched. The Cheungs seem to have been left with nothing, other than what they could get by their dominance of the Tung Ping Kuk of the “Transit Toll\" income.\n\nBetween 1875 and 1902 conditions on the Sham Chun River had changed. Firstly, from the mid-1890s steam launches had begun to trade with Sham Chun. These vessels were less dependent on the tide than were the junks, since they were more manoeuvrable, so that they could turn within the river. They were, therefore, less dependent on the landing place behind the Ching Shui River island. They had come to dominate the local trade by 1902: by 1904 the Wa Lu company had achieved a virtual monopoly in the steam launch business here.\n\nIn addition, in 1898 the New Territories lease had included within the territory of Hong Kong all the waters of the Sham Chun River up to the high water mark on the north bank.\n\nThe Yuens saw in these circumstances the opportunity to regain their position. They sought a lease from the Hong Kong Government of a 2,000-foot-long strip of the main river bed on which to erect a wooden wharf. This would connect with their agricultural land by a wooden bridge which would pass over the wastes of the river banks, thereby side-stepping any claims to ownership of the tolls put forward by the District Magistrate on the grounds of imperial ownership of the wastes. The wharf so built would have blocked the exit from the channel behind the island at the mouth of the Ching Shui River. The Yuens produced this plan in conjunction with the Wa Lu steam-launch company. The plan would have ended at one stroke the use of the old landing place, and would have rendered all sailing junks using", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212357, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 299, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "276\n\nthe river more or less helpless unless a steam launch either towed them out, or at least assisted in turning them round. The wharf proposed was to be built very close to the Imperial Maritime Customs station: the Customs supported the proposal since it would make their anti-smuggling work in the area far easier.\n\n―\n\nA lease (for a smaller area of 850 feet not so obviously blocking the channel) was granted by the Hong Kong Government. The Tung Ping Kuk, however, (represented by two Cheungs and a Wong; by this date the Wongs were normally allies of the Cheungs, being united by their mutual antagonism to the Tsois whose land lay between them) complained to the San On Magistrate, who promptly had the Yuen elders imprisoned for the \"fraudulent attempt to divert the toll from the Kuk to themselves\". The District Magistrate also made a strong statement of the rights to take toll being a Government right, founded on Government ownership of the wastes of the river bank. The Kuk sent young men to tear the new wharf down. The affair then petered out - the Magistrate was willing to take a far more active role in 1903-1905 than in 1875 or earlier, and the opening of the railway a couple of years later made all discussions of rights to toll somewhat academic, since trade now began to flow in different directions altogether.\n\nThese documents show three points of interest: the ineffectiveness of the Magistrate in settling affairs of this sort in the mid/late-nineteenth century; the critical importance of control of markets, roads, ferries, bridges and other nodal points of the traffic system in local politics; and the blood-thirsty and implacable nature which inter-village disputes could assume.\n\nThe disputes over the ownership of the landing place at Sham Chun lasted some seventy years, from the 1830s to 1905. Effective action by the District Magistrate seems to have been limited to the period 1903-1905: the actions of the Magistrate in 1875 were ineffective in the extreme, and there seems to have been no action at all in earlier disputes. In 1875, it was only when the dispute had escalated to such a state that the army was forced to intervene that any effective Government action was seen but it came very late. In other inter-village disputes in the area in this period the same ineffective inaction by the District Magistrate can be seen. There seems to have been no action taken by the District Magistrate in the bloody fighting (about 1850-1860) between Wong Pui Ling and Ta...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212607, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "141\n\nThe Mongols conquered Burma in 1287, but the conquest did not last long; and a later invasion was repulsed in 1769. The British came in the nineteenth century to occupy Lower Burma. The French established themselves in Indo-China, whence they intrigued into Upper Burma, producing a situation not unlike that which, ten years later, led to the Fashoda incident on the Nile. The British, who had been having trouble with King Thibaw, decided to forestall French projects, and march on Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed and the Court of Ava sent into exile. The British are not Burma's real problem: they have, as usual, provided stability and security. The danger lies to the West and to the East, where 400 millions in India and 450 millions in China, hem in a small country. It is not as if Burma is densely populated; the density is only 64 to the square mile, as against 295 in India and 145 in China.\n\nBurmese intercourse, facilitated by easy sea communications, has been greater with India than with China. In 1936 the overland trade with China amounted barely to a paltry 1,000,000 rupees. The subsequent increase brought about by the opening of the Burma road was quite artificial, the result of the blockade of the China coast by the Japanese. When the artificial conditions cease, the trade will revert to its normal channels, round by sea, and over the Indo-China railway or up the Yangtze.\n\nOwing to the relative short range of Indian pressure, overwhelming Indian penetration was what the Burmese had to fear most in the past, but signs are not lacking that the psychological effect of the building of the Burma road, and subsequently the behaviour of the Chinese troops, who retreated through Burma in 1942, may have changed the emphasis. Time will show.\n\nAlready in 1941 the most virulent whispering campaigns flourished, aimed at the Chinese, and directed more especially at the alleged graft and incompetence on the Burma road. That the Japanese were behind these campaigns is as probable as the plausibility which these rumours derived from the actual state of affairs on the road. Later, there were mixed feelings, when the Chinese troops entered Burma to take part in the defence; it would not be too strong to say that in many native quarters their entry was viewed with suspicion.\n\nAs is known, part of the Chinese troops retreated in 1942 into India, where they were reorganised and trained by American officers, but paid and equipped by the British taxpayer, under reverse lease-lend. It may be news, even to General Stilwell, that the idea of training and equipping\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212746, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "40\n\nin\n\nwould have been 20 when her father left Shanghai. She presumably remained there until she married in 1917. We know that Marie, in her middle age in Jersey, never referred ever to her time in China nor to her mother. If the subject ever arose, even with close relatives in Jersey, she promptly changed the subject. The only time she ever let slip anything about life in China was when the Chinese silken slippers were produced and she told her second cousin once removed that when her father, William Mesny, returned from a distant and lengthy trek, he found that his Chinese wife had bound her (Marie's) feet in accordance with custom. He ordered them to be unbound at once and never to be bound again. Incidentally, he wrote in his Miscellany in 1896, when Marie would have been two, that “... women must cease to cramp their feet: crippled women cannot produce healthy and hardy children.”\n\nIn 1905, writing about Eurasians, when his son would be 20 and his daughter about 10, he wrote 'the only prospects of a future easy life for the Eurasians in Shanghai are to be trained for service in foreign houses; the boys as clerks and such like, the girls as mistresses at least, though of late a good many of them have been induced to demand marriage and have succeeded in obtaining it.' There was little future in China for people of mixed blood, especially in the twenties and thirties of this century, and none outside it. Mesny's daughter's extreme sensitivity about her mixed blood simply reflects the era in which she lived.\n\nMesny's Knowledge of Things Chinese\n\nThere is no doubt that Mesny's knowledge of Chinese life, customs, history, geography, etc. was extremely wide, bolstered, understandably, by works written by other foreigners, such as the Chinese Reader's Manual by W F Mayers, which is quoted from extensively. He went to some pains to explain that he saw as one of his responsibilities the importance of him educating both Chinese and foreigners in each other's cultures.\n\nMesny was not backward in expressing his views and opinions on all matters to do with China, be they economic, political, religious, social, or personal, occasionally echoing those of the few like-minded foreigners who professed that westerners, and in the case of Mesny, the British in particular, were well-intentioned in what they were doing in China but mistaken in their political and religious views, policies, and convictions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "94\n\n[passport) of Prince Su was printed on page 235 of Volume 4 [18 March 1904] of Mesny's Miscellanies.\n\nTseng Kuo-fan [1811-1872]\n\nA Confucian statesman and general who defeated the Taiping rebels in Nanking and put an end to the rebellion. He was first a militia leader, then a Governor-General of the Two Kiang provinces and finally the Imperial Commissioner for the suppression of the Taiping Rebels. Later he became the Imperial Commissioner ordered to suppress the Nien rebellion. He was Viceroy of Chihli in 1869. His Hunan Army provided the Manchu dynasty with a new lease of life.\n\nTso Tsung-t’ang [1812-1885]\n\nAn official who first came to the notice of his emperor when he was an active and successful military officer during the Taiping Rebellion. He was raised to an earldom and up to 1866 earned renown as an administrator in the provinces of Fukien and Chekiang. With his experience during the Taiping Rebellion he was sent to Shensi and Kansu to suppress the Muslim revolt [1862-1873] and, en route, he helped suppress the Nien rebels. He remained Governor General of Shensi and Kansu for many years and later in 1884 he became Governor of Fukien province during the French attack on Foochow and Keelung in Taiwan. He died in Foochow the following year.\n\nWard F T [1831-1862]\n\nAn American mercenary and founder of the 'Ever-Victorious Army', a Sino-foreign military force which aided the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty suppress the Taiping rebellion. He was killed in battle in September 1862 near Ningpo and was at first succeeded by another American, Burgevine, and then by Charles Gordon [q.v.]. Ward married Miss Yang, the daughter of the official banker Yang Ta-Ki, a Tartar. A magnificent mausoleum was erected over his grave in Sungkiang in 1877.\n\nWylie, Alexander [1815-1887]\n\nA missionary and scholar, editor of the Chinese Recorder.\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212882, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "176\n\nfrom other places [to Shek Lei Tau].\n\nIt is now clear that we have come to the end of [the available] burial ground and that there is nowhere to which we can effect removal [of the graves]. We therefore appeal to you in grief and resentment for your understanding and support in this matter. We shall be most grateful if you will advise the concerned authority to rescind the order and cease development in the area.\n\n15\n\nNo further action was taken by the Lands Department at the time, and during my three years as Regional Secretary, New Territories, I was concerned to retain the grave area and wrote to the department on their behalf. So far as I am aware, the rights of the Kau Wah Keng people to this remaining part of their traditional burial area are still being respected.\n\nCharitable Graves\n\nAnother kind of grave should also be mentioned. This is the yi chung or 'charitable grave' which was built to contain the remains of persons without descendants. Sometimes it was provided by a charitable society or a conscientious local organization, or at times by worthy individuals, after or during an epidemic which had killed numbers of people. This action was taken by the Tung Wah Hospital of Hong Kong and by the Lok Sin Tong of New Kowloon after the Plague of 1894. It has also been taken by rural committees in the postwar New Territories, and by temples and other religious bodies, for the remains of persons who were killed or died during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between 1941-1945. Several such graves were provisioned by the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee.\n\nA grave of this kind had to be moved and reprovisioned at Sai Cho Wan on Tsing Yi Island when that part of the Island was being developed for industry in 1977. The Tsing Yi Rural Committee took up this responsibility, writing to the District Office to explain the position and ask for money to effect the removal and reconstruction in another place. The letter is not without charm and interest:\n\nBefore the War, Tsing Yi Island was a well-wooded spot, with lots of birds and wild-life. Magpies, partridges,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213093, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "142\n\nimportance of an unexampled calamity. However in spite of difficulties in balancing the budget, many public works projects were completed during his term. He governed with a liberal-mind for he increased the number of unofficial seats in both the Legislative and the Executive Councils in response to a demand for reforming the government. He also agreed to have an unofficial majority on the Sanitary Board. Generally regarded as an able administrator he stayed for fully six years as Governor, the longest tenure held by any governor thus far. In the history of modern China, he would be remembered as the Governor of Hong Kong who imposed a five-year ban on Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who then went to London and was kidnapped but rescued by Sir James Cantlie but that is another story.\n\nSir James Stewart Lockhart, the main target of Lowson's attack, was Registrar General and acting Colonial Secretary in 1894. There is a biography of him written by Shiona Airlie entitled 'The Thistle and the Bamboo.' He emerged from it as a capable but ambitious man who was eager to seek promotion ahead of his time, and in spite of what Lowson said of him, he got on well with the Chinese. The function of a Registrar General in the early years was to deal with Chinese affairs, not legal matters as at present, in fact, the initial title was Protector of the Chinese. In this office, Lockhart maintained good relations with the directors of Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk and the District Watch Committee, the three main representative bodies of the Chinese community. As to his character, he was said to possess 'humoured geniality which endeared him to his contemporaries' but 'occasionally his patience snapped and from a man considered in the main to be warm-hearted and genial, he became angry and stubborn.' He made at least one important contribution in connection with the Epidemic. After the Resumption of Tai Ping Shan Ordinance was passed, action had to be taken to demolish the old houses. Both landlords and tenants put up a spirited resistance as they both had to suffer financial loss, no rent to be collected by the landlords for sometime and no cheap lodgings for the tenants who were mostly coolies. The coolies threatened to go on strike which would paralyse the city in already very difficult circumstances. Lockhart, who was fluent in Chinese, having been a cadet in the Hong Kong Civil Service, was instrumental in solving the dispute which ended amicably. In 1895, at the age of thirty seven, he became Colonial Secretary when his acting appointment was substantiated. In addition, he was appointed as Special Commissioner for the New Territories in 1897 after the lease was settled. In 1902, he went to Weihaiwei as its first Civil Commissioner. On his departure the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "157\n\nThe villagers in the central part of the northern New Territories, accustomed to marketing at Sham Chun, were able to make do after 1899. They had the old satellite market of Shek Wu Hui (Sheung Shui) within British territory; as soon as the new frontier came into effect, Sheung Shui saw its business boom - it quickly replaced Sham Chun as the primary market for this area. At Sha Tau Kok the population within British territory accustomed to shop at Sha Tau Kok had no alternative but to continue to do so. Problems abounded. Village memories of the Customs are uniformly bad.\n\nThe Customs officials caused the goods of the merchants to be seized unless bribes were paid. They demanded a payment of 18 bushels of rice from each merchant. The villagers from the New Territories would come to the market to have their cloth dyed. Even if the amount of cloth was very small, 25 or £10 would be charged as a licence fee - if it was not paid, the goods would be seized and the villagers penalized. As for the merchants, if they sold a pig, or if a seed-pig was bought for rearing in the villages, when they went to the Customs they would have to pay $40 per tan as registration fee for the pig. At festivals, the village ladies would come to the market to buy oil or local sugar in small quantities. They would have to pay 50 or 60, or even 120 or 130 cash (#5 - #13) as fee before they could get an export licence. For cattle, for every cow crossing the frontier - in either direction for farm work, a Certificate had to be issued, at $20 Haikwan.\n\nAnd, if the Certificate was lost, there was heavy punishment, and a replacement had to be taken out, to avoid confiscation of the cow. Further, at the harvest, if the crop was carried across the frontier, you had to pay what was demanded - it is said that a percentage of the crop was taken. The Customs swallowed money whatever purchases were made. These sorts of evil practices caused the villagers to hate the Customs to the very pit of their stomachs.\n\n12\n\nIt is unlikely that the Customs were as corrupt as they are often portrayed by the villagers. The payments complained of were all reasonable, if it was accepted that the transactions were \"imports\" or \"exports\". The villagers could never see that their day-to-day marketing should be so regarded - they were only doing what their ancestors had always done.\n\nThe elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned the District Magistrate on 19 April 1899, begging that the lease of the New Territories be not proceeded with. Their concern was, essentially, that if it did proceed, then they would be faced with “excessive taxation\", especially Harbour Dues and Marine Fees, given that the waters off Sha Tau Kok would become Hong...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213108, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "158\n\nKong waters. This petition was probably written because of fears as to the practical problems they would face if they lived in British territory, and their market was in Chinese territory. \"In the early years after the lease, grievances over the Customs remained at high heat. In the winter of 1906, the villagers from the New Territories went on strike, and refused to go to market. In 1907 there was a full-scale riot, triggered by a Customs official beating a villager for not paying duty. Later that same year, the elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned to the authorities at Canton, begging that the Customs officials at Sha Tau Kok be restrained.4 Later, relations with the Customs improved a little, but the duty demanded from villagers remained a major irritant and grievance throughout the period from 1899 to 1951.\n\nAnother irritant, and brake on economic development, was the political chaos in the border area of China. As can be seen from the Calendar of Border Disturbances at Appendix 1, political trouble in this area began even before the Revolution of 1911. An abortive rebellion in the Wai Chau (Huizhou,H) area in 1900 saw the Ch'ing Government lose control of the wild lands east of Yim Tin. A second abortive rebellion was centred in these hills, at Sam Chau Tin (Sanzhoutian,E), in 1904-1905.\n\nA second period of disturbance came after the Revolution, during the years 1911-1928, when the area immediately north of the frontier was the plaything of various competing political groups and would-be warlords, passing from one to the other week by week - 'In those days, when we went to market, the soldiers would be wearing yellow, but the next week, they would be wearing brown'. This period was marked by large-scale banditry, piracy, and general turmoil. With the large garrison of Customs and military personnel at Sha Tau Kok, bandits never threatened the town itself, but the Yim Tin Customs post was sacked by bandits in 1913 and (three times) in 1916, Nam O (Nanao,) Customs post at the entrance to Mirs Bay, was sacked in 1913 and 1914, Chan Hang in 1915, and, a little east of Chan Hang, Kai Chung (Xichong,) Customs post was sacked in 1916 and 1917. The Customs post at Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong,) was sacked in 1919 and 1920, while the Sha Yue Chung Ferry (the lifeline of the market to the east) was captured by pirates in both 1921 and twice in 1922. For nearly one and a half years in 1918-1919, indeed, all the Customs Stations in Mirs Bay east of Yim Tin were forced to close, so lawless had the area become. The irregular soldiers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213141, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 209, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "No. Name of Shop\n\n191\n\nAddress\n\nof Shop\n\nName of Owner\n\nVillage of Owner\n\nSource\n\nComments\n\nTobacco\n\n67\n\nGuesthouses\n\n68-71.\n\nWIS\n\nC\n\nC\n\n'3 or 4\" guesthouses See below under \"Others\" Basel missionaries. 1859\n\nOpium Divan\n\n72\n\nWIS\n\nLunie-burners\n\n73-74\n\nYin Lou\n\nC\n\nC\n\nFt.L\n\nOilers\n\n75\n\n=\n\n}\n\nWH\n\nC\n\ngroceries\n\n76\n\n77\n\n仙\n\n78\n\n利\n\n79\n\nSE\n\nB\n\n1 or 2 limekilns\n\nLockhart's Report, 1899\n\nsweets and small\n\n) these may be two of\n\nB\n\n) the guesthouses\n\nB\n\nJ\n\nB\n\n)\n\nHO\n\n...\n\nB\n\n) nothing is now\n\n18\n\nW\n\nB\n\n} remembered about\n\n82\n\n87\n\nK\n\n4\n\nB\n\n> these shops\n\nB\n\n}\n\n#4\n\n¥\n\n}\n\nProstitutes\n\n85-96\n\nRow neat\n\nCity\n\nC\n\nLS\n\nSaltworks\n\n97-115\n\n-\n\nYon In EL\n\nC\n\nHawken\n\nC\n\nWIS\n\nPunti girls from City\n\nOffered opium to clients\n\nHL workers from\n\nSwabue, sold salt retail\n\nDetail of works in Block Crown Lease\n\nFish, meat, vegetables, cooked food (including noodles), handicrafts\n\nfuel. Also at Yim Liu Ha\n\nE\n\nNOTES\n\nSee G A C Herklots, The Hong Kong Countryside, Hong Kong, 1951, pp 86-89 for tigers and leopard on Ng Tung Shan, and the Hsin An County Gazetteer (1819 Gazetteer, ch 3. Chung Lap Pao Edition, 1979, p. 45) for tiger, wild boar, and deer in the area\n\n2 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, ch 3, 127\n\nA salt commission was established at Nam Tau (Nantou) just outside the present borders of Hong Kong, probably in the Nan Yueh period, in the second century BC This was later divided into 4 commissions, probably during the Nan Han period (tenth century A.D) Of the 4 Nan Han commissions, the Kwun Fu commission certainly covered the Mirs Bay area in the Sung; the headquarters of the commission were moved temporarily from Kowloon City to Tip Fuk (Deep Fuk) on the east coast of the Bay in 1163; and probably did so from the establishment of the commission The borders of Tung Kuan County and its predecessors bent round to include just the coastal strip of Mirs Bay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213143, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "193\n\nH\n\nDetails of the early Hakka examination successes are known from a recently recovered genealogy, of the Chan (陳) lineage of Nam Chung. It is understood that a copy of this genealogy will be deposited with the Hong Kong Museum of History. I am indebted to Mr Chan Wing-hot for drawing my attention to the information in this genealogy.\n\nQ Seen 8\n\nAt the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905), 12.68 acres of saltpans were recorded. However, the serious inadequacies of the first survey here led to another being conducted in 1912, when 17.11 acres were recorded. However, in 1912 two areas were left unclaimed, probably because storms had breached their bunds and ruined them. These two areas totalled about 3.3 acres. In addition, there were about 0.6 acres of houses, huts, and waste within the saltpan reclamation, which, therefore, totalled about 21.2 acres. The saltpans were very valuable property in the nineteenth century - the Basel missionaries (see below, n. 17) record the sale of a share by a Tam Shui Hang villager in 1882 for \"several hundreds of dollars\" (Basel Mission archive, doc. AT-16, Nr. 45). In the 1920s, however, and still more in the 1930s, cheap imported salt caused ever-growing problems, which led to the closure of the saltworks before the War. A bridge was built to the saltpans in 1934 (Administrative Reports for the Year 1934, App. J, \"Report on the New Territories for 1934\", p. J17). After the War, the abandoned saltworks became the site of a major squatter settlement, recently cleared. Today, the saltpan area has disappeared under new reclamation, and all that remains is a new Tin Hau Temple, replacing the old one previously on the saltpans, built on a new site on the new waterfront.\n\nFor details of the history of the temples in the area, on the settlement of the Hakka in the area, the reclamation projects they undertook, the founding and management of the market at Sha Tau Kok, and the functioning of the Shap Yeuk as the district management body, see P.H. Hase, \"The Alliance of Ten Settlements and Polities in the Sha Tau Kok Area\", in D. Faure and H.S. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, Stanford University Press, 1995.\n\n12. No details on the earlier history of the temple survived the very full restoration of 1894, but Shan Tsun elders believe it to be very old.\n\n13. In the 1688 Gazetteer (Ch. 3) a ferry “along the coast” is mentioned called the \"Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry\". There can be no doubt that this is the ferry to Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong, etc.), 12 miles down the coast. Ma Tseuk Ling, at the head of Starling Inlet, is the nearest old village to the Wu Shek Kok Temple (Wu Shek Kok village - probably a foundation of the early nineteenth century). The coasts of Starling Inlet within two or three miles of Ma Tseuk Ling were blocked with mudflats and mangrove everywhere except at Wu Shek Kok, where alone a hill falls steeply into the sea. Wu Shek Kok is, therefore, the only possible site for a \"Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry\" landing place. The Ma Tseuk Ling villagers owned the Wu Shek Kok Temple, and the Ma Tseuk Ling military post (1688 Gazetteer, ch. 7), was at Shek Chung Au, just a few hundred yards from Wu Shek Kok. These Ma Tseuk Ling connections with the Wu Shek Kok area strongly suggest that the Wu Shek Kok hill was regarded as forming part of the Ma Tseuk Ling area. Later, Wu Shek Kok formed part of the Ma Tseuk Ling Yeuk of the Shap Yeuk.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213144, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "194\n\n14 The oldest surviving dated object is the bell, of 1922 (D Faure, A Ng B Luk, F. M. Xianggang Beiming Huabian, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, Urban Council, Hong Kong, Vol 3, p 733) The temple, however, appears in the Block Crown Lease (1905), and the local villagers believe it is old\n\n15 The Sam Heung villagers have recently elected a tablet at the resited replacement temple, stating that the temple was first built in the Chia Ch'ing reign (1796-1820), and that the Ta Tsiu was instituted as soon as the temple was built While the grounds for these statements are not given, they are reasonable, and probably correct, although a date late in the reign is likely\n\n16 D Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op cit. p 107\n\n17\n\nA copy of this genealogy is in the collection of New Territories historical documents at United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong I am indebted to Dr D Faure for drawing my attention to this reference\n\nOur information on mid-nineteenth century Sha Tau Kok comes primarily from documents of the Basel Mission, which had a Mission Station in the town 1849-1854, and whose missionaries regularly visited it in the late nineteenth century The missionaries rented four houses from a local village elder, near the western end of Upper Street, backing onto the wall The missionaries drew a map of the town in 1853, plans of typical shop units in 1849 and 1853, and wrote a long description of the town and district in 1853 – Map 2 is a re-drawing of the missionaries' map of 1853, corrected by measurements taken from the 1924 aerial photograph of the town (13 November 1924 original in the Department of Geography, University of Hong Kong) The written description of 1853 is Basel Mission archive, doc Al-2, Nr 44, “Half-Yearly Report of the missionary Rev P Winnes, from 1st January to 1st July 1853\", printed in translation in P H. Hase. \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 30, 1990, pp 281-297 See PH Hase, \"The Alliance of Ten\", op cit, for redrawings of the plans of mid-nineteenth century shop units, and also for a drawing of a cross-section of such a shop unit I am indebted to Rev Carl Smith for drawing my attention to the importance of the Basel Mission documents to the history of Sha Tau Kok, and for allowing me to use his transcripts and notes I would also like to thank Mrs W Haas, and the staff of the Basel Mission archive in the preparation of this article\n\n19 The Tung Wo Kuk was so named in direct emulation of the older Punti Council in Sham Chun, which was also known as \"The Council for Peace in the East\", PA, Tung Ping Kuk - the choice of the name Tung Wo Kuk must be seen, in these circumstances, as a marked sign of local pride and self-confidence\n\n20 See n 11\n\n21\n\nThe villagers believe that the name Sha Tau Kok is taken from a poem by a Ch'ing official who passed by and was so impressed by the beauty of the sun rising above the sand-dunes that he wrote a poem on it ADV AEAA. \"The sun rises from the sand-dunes the moon hangs where land and ocean meet\" I have heard this story from a Sheung Wo Hang elder, and see also Shatoulaode quwer xuanguanbu (Sha...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213261, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "63\n\nIn another case a post-graduate Chinese student told the author:\n\n'Before, I thought it was all superstition. But now I realise it makes sense to proceed in harmony with nature. In life, one of the most important things is to maintain harmony. Although Mother is a Catholic she also believes in fung sha.\n\nThe author, years ago, personally knew young Hong Kong Chinese teenagers who did not believe in, or were not convinced about the efficaciousness of fung shui. But now, after becoming middle-aged or elderly, they have become firm followers. 'A woman who did not believe nearly died,' the author was informed. 'After recovering, she became convinced.'\n\nAs Hong Kong has become more developed and affluent, people have had more money to spend on 'luxuries', such as fung shui. Certainly, modern education alone seems not to deal the final blow (Freedman, 1976:235). Yet it is more likely that a New Territories' villager, who lives close to nature and is a member of a tightly knit group, is more likely to believe in fung shui than his urban cousin. Urban society is divorced from close, everyday contact with mother earth and her cycles. For the urban dweller the modes of thought which underly the practise of fung shui have to be consciously cultivated in order to comprehend them. There are, of course, some New Territories' villagers who do not believe in fung shui in spite of the close web of relationships in rural life.\n\nEugene Ho (who one assumes is Chinese although he could be Eurasian) wrote in the South China Morning Post letters to the editor columns, on 25 May 1987- 'I find the whole theory of fung shui wholly devoid of cognitive content.' He went on to say that many of the casual 'laws' of fung shui, (if they are really \"laws\" at all) are no more than half a probability.\n\nNonetheless, when the British took over the New Territories on a 99-year lease in 1898, they promised to respect the then existing (Qing Dynasty) religious rites, ceremonies and social customs. The Hong Kong Government Gazette of October 7, 1899, published (one year after the New Territories were taken over) as a supplement to the Convention of Peking, said that graves in the leased Territory were never to be removed. Some law lecturers at Hong Kong University feel, however, that, because", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213388, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "| \n\n198 \n\n- Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom, New York Harper, 1940 \n\nCumine, Eric, Lunghua Cartoons, Cartoons of Camp Life A Souvenir for all Internees of Japanese During Occupation of Shanghai (privately printed in Hong Kong by the author, 1973) \n\nCummins, J S, ed, The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete 1618-1686, Cambridge Hakluyt Society, 1962 \n\nDabbs, Jack A, History of the Discovery and Exploration of Chinese Turkestan, The Hague Mouton, 1963 \n\nDaly, Emily Lucy, An Irishwoman in China, London Lane 1915 \n\nDarwent, Charles Ewart, Shanghai A Handbook for Travellers and Residents, 2nd edition, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1920 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) \n\nDavid, Armand, Abbé David's Diary Being an Account of the , translated and edited by Helen M Fox, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1949 (531/C6/949d) \n\nDavis, Sir John Francis, Sketches of China, partly during an inland journey of four months, between Peking, Nanking and Canton, London, Knight 1841 \n\n— The Chinese A General Description of China and Its Inhabitants, London Knight, 1844 \n\nDavies, Major H R, Yunnan, the link Between India and the Yangtze, Cambridge The University Press, 1909 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing) \n\nDay, Clarence Burton, Hangchow University, a Brief History, New York United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955 \n\nDayer, Robert Albert, Bankers and Diplomats in China 1919-1925, the Anglo-American Relationship, London, Totowa, (NJ) F Cass, 1981 \n\nDease, Alice, Blue Gowns. A Golden Treasury of Tales of the China Missions. Maryknoll, New York Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, 1927 \n\nD'Elia, Paschal M, The Catholic Missions in China a Short Sketch of the History of the Catholic Church in China From the Earliest Records to Our Own Days, Shanghai Commercial Press, 1934 \n\nDenby, Jay, Letters from China and Some Eastern Sketches, London John Murray (Preface dated 1911) \n\nDemberger, Robert F. The Role of the Foreigner in China's Economic Development 1840-1949, in Dwight H Perkins, ed, China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective, Stanford Stanford University Press, 1975, 1947 \n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213451, "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-1995", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "14\n\nEven portions of the sea and the bed of the sea, foreshore, sand beaches, and any land whatever which may be turned into use and profit, are claimed and in some cases registered\n\nAll land in the New Territories with effect from 23rd July 1900 was declared to be Crown Land.\" Any Crown Land not included in a Block Crown lease was, therefore, unleased Crown Land. But the District Commissioner records:-\n\n\"Certain prescriptive rights over \"Crown Land\" have, however, always been recognised either tacitly or by official acknowledgment; most villages have rights of this kind over a greater or smaller area adjoining them, where they graze their cattle, cut grass and bury the dead...\"\n\nThe question of clan lands has right from the outset been a thorny problem. The Memorandum states:-\n\n\"Small villages and hamlets often place themselves under the protection of large and influential clans to which they refer all their complaints and from which they expect assistance in case of attack, robbery, and lawsuits. In some instances the smaller villages pay their land tax to the Government through the influential clans... These clans have, as before stated, claimed large tracts of land, which they have never occupied, but which they have leased in perpetuity to others, who undertake to bring the land under cultivation. The greater part of the land claimed by clans was never registered and, as a rule, it appears that no land tax was ever paid on this land to the Government.\" The cultivators, who have paid rent for years to the clans, in view of the fact that the land had not been registered, were afraid to dispute the rights of ownership, as they anticipated it would result in the land being resumed by Government and they would thus be deprived of their right of cultivation.\n\n+\n\nThe sequel is to be found in the \"Memorandum of the work done in the Land Office, Hong Kong, in respect of the New Territories for the year 1899***.\n\n\"The most serious matter of all, however, has been the stand taken by the farmers against the clans, their former landlords. The clans and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213452, "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-1995", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "15\n\nfarmers agree that the farmers are absolute owners of the soil in perpetuity, but have been paying money or produce to the clans for generations, which the clans claim to be rent payable to them. The case for the farmers is that the land is and always has been theirs absolutely free from rent, and that the amount paid by them to the clans was the Government land tax, which they claim to pay direct to the Hong Kong Government without the intervention of the clans... The system of payment in produce is one of the farmers' troubles because the measures used by the clans are larger than those intended by the deeds, and are not the measures in general use in the district.\n\nThis \"taxlord\" problem was settled by the Land Court which found the status of the clan taxlords to be \"under Chinese law... entirely illegal\" and disallowed their claims as “untenable”. In some cases, however, grants of Crown land were offered them in compensation for loss of income.\n\nGrants of Crown land to the clans were registered under the Crown lease in the name of the clan's ancestral temple, that is, in the name of mythical grandfather or Tang. The tradition is that a proportion of the rent from such land is set aside for the maintenance of ancestral halls, for the upkeep of schools and for other objects connected with the clan's welfare. No clan land may be sold or mortgaged without the consent of all the clan members who may, of course, number hundreds.9\n\nSuch clan land (tso) sometimes is leased to one of the families within the clan and they pay an annual rent to the clan accountant who is usually one of the male heads of the families within the clan who so serve for a fixed period in rotation. Sub-letting by such a family is not permissible and, if it occurs, the lease is usually cancelled. Alternatively the various families of the clan may cultivate the land for a year at a time in rotation and at a fixed annual rent. A third method whereby clan land may be leased within the clan is by auction of the tenancy for the following year. The proceeds of the auction are devoted to the worship of ancestors and for the education and welfare of clan members.\n\nThat type of land tenure has a close resemblance to the traditional tenure of ancestral land or sheung t'in described by Lockhart's memorandum.2", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213455, "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-1995", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "18\n\nconveyances and mortgages (Part II passim) and the derivation of title in accordance with the Crown lease, grant or licence (section 49).\n\nThe ancient Chinese law governing leases is also described in the Memorandum and although it is now superseded by the leases granted by the British it will be of interest to consider it in comparison with modern customary agricultural leases.\n\n\"The relation between landlord and tenant is often a complicated one, chiefly owing to the system of perpetual lease. Under such leases the landlords have practically renounced all rights to the exercise of ownership and are content to do nothing further than to receive a yearly rent. They can sell this right to receiving rent, but the land is otherwise under the absolute control of the cultivators, who often sell their perpetual lease.\n\nThe landlord is called the owner of the \"Ti Kwan\" which may be termed the right of receiving rent. The tenant is said to possess the \"Ti Min\", or right of cultivation.\n\nThe most common practice in the case of land-owners who do not farm their own land, is for them to let it out to tenants, who pay them a fixed rent in kind or in money, the amount of which is settled beforehand. In bad seasons the landlords grudgingly reduce their rent on being asked by their tenants but they are not compelled to do so.\n\n\"Gompertz, writing in 1901, stated that short leases of agricultural land for a year were not uncommon and were usually determined at the end of the spring or autumn harvest by six months' notice on either side.109\n\nCustomary agricultural leases provide the subject-matter of quite a few disputes and this frequent consideration by the courts has caused this kind of lease to be particularly studied.\" \n\nIt has also resulted in there being available a few judicial decisions on this type of land tenure, which are regrettably absent, as already observed, in other branches of the customary law. The most important decision is that of Williams, Acting Chief Justice in the case of CHAN PUI and CHU YAN KIT. That was an appeal from the land officer sitting at Tai Po who had heard expert evidence on the local custom.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213473, "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-1995", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "36\n\nHong Kong Sessional Papers, 1900, pp 26-269 This Report was forwarded to London under cover of Sir Henry A. Blake's despatch to Mr Chamberlain of 19th February 1900 and this Memorandum of Land was subsequently published as Command Paper 403 in November 1900 (vide Committee Report, 1953, Chap III para 39 and Appendix 10 at p 207, where only two extracts appear) Mr Lockhart stated that the Memorandum was prepared with the assistance of Mr. Messer and Mr Ts'oi, Cader and First Clerk respectively\n\nA later, verbose but less informative source is \"Some Notes on Land Tenure in the New Territories\" attached to the Report, dated 4th March 1901, on the Land Court for 1900 by Mr HHJ Gompertz (who in 1909 was elevated to a puisne judgeship), a Member of that Court - Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1901 p 371 at p. 374\n\n17\n\nThe Emperor of China\n\nre the Chinese Government and Imperial Rent\n\nReport, DCNT, 1959-60, para. 171. The District Commissioner's Report for 1947-48 records (at para 29) that it was discovered in that year that one hamlet had never paid Crown rent since the British occupation of the New Territories This was remedied by the grant of a Block Crown Lease\n\n90 8. New Territories Ordinance (Cap 97)\n\n\"Report, DCNT, 1959-60, para 171\n\nTA\n\ne The Chinese Government\n\nby Bruce Shepherd, Deputy Land Officer, dated 17th January 1900, being Appendix VIII to Lockhart's Report, para. 12 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1900, p 277 at p 279)\n\n44\n\nReport dated 18th February 1905 of Mr C. Mcl Messer, member of the Land Court (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1905, p. 149)\n\nReport dated 7th March 1905 of Mr JR Wood, Member of the Land Court (Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1905 p. 147)\n\nIbid, and see also Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, para 21(1), (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1912, p 46)\n\n7\n\nTregear, op cit, p 62\n\nDA\n\nReport, DCNT, 1959-60, para 177 and Tregear, loc cit\n\n44 Wilson's Notes\n\nalso sometimes termed \"Ching Sheung\" according to Wilson's Notes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213593, "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-1995", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "160\n\nmaintaining high productivity as outlined previously. However, the mangroves are also very important as mud stabilizers. As the pioneers grow out onto the mud, the band of vegetation becomes broader and the rear becomes drier. Eventually new land is created, which can be used for agricultural purposes. They also play a role as an important protective barrier against destructive storm waves, thus reducing the risk of flooding.\n\nMan's impact on the mangrove\n\nThe most significant impact by man has been the drainage and reclamation of the mangroves to provide sites for settlement and agriculture. This century alone about 1700 hectares of mangroves have been converted into deep fish ponds and vegetable growing areas and many of these, more recently, have been converted into container storage facilities and other industrial purposes. Many of Hong Kong's mangrove stands have already been totally destroyed; Mai Po's mangroves still survive to give an impression of what Deep Bay, indeed much of Hong Kong's shoreline would have looked like because they have been protected since 1976 as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The effects of deep fish pond development, vegetable gardening, industrial usage and new town development can all now be seen in the Deep Bay area.\n\nThe likelihood of further major reclamation of Deep Bay for urban expansion poses new threats to the ecology of this mangrove area and to the life which it supports (Irving & Morton, 1988).\n\nHowever, at present, the biggest threat is pollution. The many streams and rivers that drain into Deep Bay carry an enormous load of agricultural, domestic and industrial waste. Increasing pollution loads have already been reflected in a changed use of the ponds in recent years. A marked decrease in shrimp harvest has led to the conversion of some gei wais and mangrove areas to freshwater ponds to protect them from marine pollution. If this trend continues, then extreme changes will result as more and more of the mangrove areas are turned into deep ponds and, as pollution has a greater effect on mudflat productivity, the whole area will eventually lose the ecological value which it now has as a multifaceted series of habitats supporting an enormous variety of flora and fauna. In particular, it will cease to be a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213594, "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-1995", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "161\n\nhighly productive area for fish and shrimps and, as a result, will cease to be the venue for the enormous variety of wading birds that congregate there as they overwinter or merely rest on their migratory flight.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nHodgkiss, IJ, Thrower, S L & Man, S M (1981). An introduction to the Ecology of Hong Kong (2 volumes) Federal Publications, Hong Kong\n\nHodgkiss, I. J. (1986) Aspects of Mangrove Ecology in Hong Kong Memoirs of the Hong Kong Natural History Society 17 107-116\n\nLiving, R & Morton, B. (1988) A Geography of the Mai Po Marshes. Hong Kong University Press.\n\nMorton, B. & Morton, J (1983) The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong Hong Kong University Press\n\nWWF HK (Not dated) Mangroves. Mai Po Nature Reserve Pamphlet issued by Worldwide Fund for Nature, Hong Kong\n\nPLATES\n\nPlate 1 Buttress roots in Heritiera\n\nPlate 2 Kandelia plantlet developing from 'dropper'\n\nPlate 3 Heritiera fruit\n\nPlate 4 Avicennia tree plus pneumatophores\n\n[These will be published in a later Journal - Editor]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214029, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "64\n\nto Leng Shan in Fanling from Dongguan in 1190.5 In 1220, they were then driven out and moved to Fan Ling Lau, as their residence was appropriated by neighbouring Tangs. In the Ming Dynasty, due to population pressure, some Pangs moved to what is now called Fanling Wai and built forty-two houses and the village walls. Fanling Wai is composed of a walled village and its extensions which are referred to by the Pangs as Wai Noi Tsuen, Nam Bin Tsuen, and Pak Bin Tsuen. The houses in the past were built one-storey high of clay bricks with tiled roofs. Wooden ancestral tablets were placed at the center of the house for worship. Nowadays, due to population growth, nearly two hundred village houses stand in a row in the village. They have been built and rebuilt into two- or three-storey cement houses since the 1980s, and they contain paper-made ancestral tablets for veneration. The Pangs call this type of house zu wu (literally means the ancestor's house) and point out that they should be passed down the male descent line, usually from fathers to sons, for maintaining the Pangs' lineage community.\n\nOutside the walled settlement, there are many village houses with dark-red tiled roofs, white walls, and a balcony. Villagers call it the Spanish style. These houses were mainly built in the 1980s, under the 1972 Small House Policy. The policy allows every New Territories male villager, whose ancestor had settled there before the British Government took over the lease in 1898, to apply for building a house in his village. The house is allowed to be built of no more than 25 feet in height (three storeys) and 700 square feet covered area. Since this type of village house is built by male inhabitants (nan ding), villagers colloquially call these houses ding wu (male's house).\n\nFrom the 1980s onwards, the Pangs have rented out their available village houses for profit when the demand for rural housing increases substantially. After the Second World War and the unstable political period in China in 1949, a huge influx of immigrants from China to Hong Kong, together with the subsequently increased birth rate, exacerbated the housing problem in Hong Kong's urban area. In order to relieve the over-crowded living conditions, the government has not only provided low-cost public housing but also commenced the development of satellite towns (nowadays called new towns) in the New Territories. Housing is nevertheless still in substantial demand because of its inadequate supply. In the 1980s, the private housing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214030, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "65\n\nmarket began to boom. As a result, more urban people were hitherto willing to rent New Territories village houses because of their lower rent as compared with that in the urban area. In Fanling Wai, village houses for rent are now in great demand. This is because the village is situated near the railway station and modern highways linking Fanling to urban Hong Kong. Besides, a large shopping mall, swimming pool, sports field, hospital and park are also available in the vicinity of Fanling Wai.\n\nZu wu: Transfer through the Patrilineal Line\n\nIn retrospect, when Hong Kong was under the rule of Imperial China, villagers were free to build houses without restrictions. But after the British Government took over the lease, village houses could be built and rebuilt into cement houses, which did not exceed 25 feet in height and 1,000 square feet covered area. In Fanling Wai nowadays, most of the zu wu are three and a half storeys, with a covered area ranging from 250 to 800 square feet. They are customarily transferred in the Pang's male descent line. When villagers dispose of them due to financial difficulties, their segment members have the priority to purchase them. In fact, the needs for collective agricultural activities such as irrigation and the defense of property and life were incentives for them to share a common residence. Villagers also believed that this settlement was propitious for them and their descendants, and also for their wealth. For achieving these aims, the Pangs transferred their housing property through the patrilineal line, which thereby defined this space/territory as their common settlement and generated a shared sense of lineage identity or of rootedness. The Pangs today still claim that, albeit the vanished pragmatic needs, they should abide by this customary practice for maintaining their lineage community. Fanling Wai has hitherto been considered by the Pangs as a native place to claim their identity, and the settlement itself also serves as a religious centre to give them spiritual protection against ill-health and economic insecurity.\n\nThe villagers' statement is further supported by the legal transactions of 100 out of 634 house lots of the zu wu from 1898 to 1994, in which all were transferred through the male descent line. Though the market value of housing property has been increasing since the mid-1980s, the sale of the zu wu to non-Pang lineage members is socially prohibited.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214040, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "75\n\nthrough the lineage membership. But interestingly, the above sections clearly show that the transfer of zu wu but not ding wu should abide by the patrilineal descent principle. If the Pangs can manipulate the lineage membership to sell their ding wu, then why do they not apply it to the zu wu? And, in so doing, how do they justify these different transfer practices? It reveals that space but not membership is being manipulated in the transfer of different housing property to hold the balance of the Pangs' self and group interests.\n\nConclusion\n\nThis article depicts how the villagers of the Pang lineage redefine or negotiate the transfer practice of housing property when the local society undergoes modernisation and industrialisation at a rapid pace. The Pangs' strategy, I would argue, is also commonly adopted by other villagers to gratify their material desires and to preserve traditional identity in the modern and capitalistic society of Hong Kong. This is because most patrilineal lineages in the New Territories are the kinship-cum-territorial social groups, and villagers are conscious of the territorial boundaries of the inside and outside of their lineage village, which thereby affects or shapes the transfer of housing. This common structural characteristic conditionally provides the villagers with a common and unifying strategy of manipulating spatial difference in the transfer of different types of housing property to preserve tradition and to gratify personal material desires.\n\n+\n\nNOTES\n\nAn earlier version of this paper, which is extracted from my master thesis, was presented in The Symposium of The Current Post-graduate Research on Hong Kong Society held in the Hong Kong University in March 1997. I thank Drs. Choi Chi-cheung, Cheung Siu-woo, and Lum Tik-sang for their theoretical guidance and constructive comments. Thanks are also due to Drs. David Faure and Ngo Tak-wing for their careful reading of and useful comments on this revised paper. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for errors and poor expression.\n\nPersonal names cited in this paper are pseudonymous, except those of villagers who passed away before the lease of the New Territories in 1898. Cantonese terms, in italics, are romanized in pinyin. Hong Kong place names are spelt according to A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government, 1960). It should be noted that though each male indigenous villager is entitled to this building...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214051, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "86\n\nReclamation\n\nVictoria Harbour, the raison d'etre for Hong Kong's foundation, formed the focal point around which the new settlers clustered and around which the banks, business houses, the shipyards and, later, commercial factories were built. Hemmed in by hills both to the north and the south, the population around the harbour became concentrated on the limited flat or less steeply sloping land available along the coast. Expansion was only possible by reclamation into the sea (and later by higher buildings), spoil being obtained from nearby hills thus providing additional building land. Until the advent of motor vehicles, reclamations were unable to benefit from more remote fill sources, like the Peak where site development necessitated balanced cut and fill. In all several hundred hectares of land were reclaimed in the hundred years up to 1941 (compared with many thousands in the 50 years following).\n\nSome of the people who were lucky enough to lease the first lots of land fronting on the sea, which had been auctioned in 1841, extended their lots by illicit reclamation over the foreshore absorbing such land as could easily be reclaimed, a procedure which was soon forbidden. Quite early, probably in 1842-3, some valuable land was reclaimed in Victoria, part of which was subsequently occupied by the Hong Kong Cricket Club (now Chater Garden).\n\nThe first formal praya (waterfront) reclamation scheme was partly carried out in 1851, by the filling of a small creek in the Bonham Strand area, but as might be expected it aroused stiff opposition from affected lessees who claimed marine rights. This, compounded by the destruction of part of the original praya wall by severe typhoons in 1867 and 1874, delayed matters but, despite these problems, by 1886 an 8km-long near-continuous strip of land (the major discontinuance being the section adjacent to the naval and military areas), perhaps broadly averaging around 100m wide was formed between Kennedy Town and North Point, the seawalls providing much needed access for handling marine cargo. In 1887 further reclamation was recommended to alleviate overcrowding in the city. As a result, the Praya Reclamation Ordinance was gazetted in 1890 and a year later Paul Chater (later Sir Paul) initiated a band of reclamation, totalling 26 hectares and extending three kilometres westward from Murray Road along the northern foreshore.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "99\n\n1941 there were thirteen operational batteries (complete with underground ammunition magazines, living quarters and access roads) on the Island, the earliest emplacements for these being built around 1895, an underground battle headquarters off Queen's Road near the naval dockyard (completed in 1940) and scores of reinforced-concrete structures comprising pill-boxes, observation posts, searchlight positions, anti-aircraft sites, bunkers, shelters, ammunition and stores dumps, tunnels and water tanks. On Stonecutters' Island the Royal Navy built between the World Wars a huge ammunition depot which included eleven large underground magazines; earlier the first land-based explosives' depot was completed here in 1876 from where it was transferred to Green Island in 1906. Of the original six battery emplacements designed and constructed on Stonecutters' Island during the period 1880-1905, only one remained commissioned at the outbreak of hostilities.\n\nThe two battery positions on Devil's Peak in Kowloon overlooking Lai Yue Mun gap were constructed soon after the New Territories' lease was signed in 1898 and a redoubt on top of the hill was completed by the Royal Engineers in 1914. The guns however were removed in 1936 and transferred to the Island. Subsequently the 18km-long Gin Drinkers' defence line was constructed during the mid-1930s across the hills to the north of the Kowloon peninsula and comprised a series of pill-boxes, trenches, bunkers and tunnels, the key feature being the underground Shing Mun Redoubt covering some five hectares on the northern flank of Smugglers' Ridge.\n\nThe decision to construct air raid shelters so that the whole urban population could be protected was not taken until 1940. In the space of about a year some 22 kilometres of 2.5m-size tunnels (of which about 80% still exist) were constructed on the Island and in Kowloon, including one adjacent to the Secretariat in Lower Albert Road which extended to Government House causing structural damage. In view of the urgent need for these tunnels, the project was arranged on a cost-plus basis and gave rise to rampant corruption, one architect involved even committing suicide to avoid giving evidence. The sub-standard pre-cast concrete breeze blocks made by the Director of Air Raid Precaution's girlfriend's firm are still (or at least until recently) known in the trade as Mimi blocks. Unfortunately the report on the Commission of Enquiry was never made public; it was taken into the Stanley internment", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214119, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "156\n\nwhich came out at the end of the last century (about Europeans living in the Colony), that (Spurr 1995: 48):\n\nThere was no real pleasure, nothing but a heavy and pompous extravagance, with no return on the large sums fooled away, an outstanding ignorance of all the surroundings, the Chinese, their language and their ways, or even of the very place itself.\n\nYet, having said that, today, as in the past, many Europeans do come to Hong Kong and, during their stay, they do learn something about local history, and Chinese customs and culture. This need will no doubt continue. In such cases the RAS can help.\n\nIn addition, a number of scholars visit Hong Kong or write to the RASHKB from overseas. Information has been requested on the pre-World War II Fox Hunt, held at Fanling in the New Territories, details regarding past Hong Kong personalities and wildlife sightings, to give but a few examples.\n\nHong Kong can be proud of its religious tolerance, with regard to temples, ancestral halls and the like, and, when the British took over the New Territories in 1898, on a 99-year lease, they promised that Ching dynasty laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott 1958: 38). Consequently, unlike many territories occupied by more oppressive colonial powers, in spite of the British and the Chinese keeping largely apart, an affinity of sorts developed between the two races. Governor Sir John Bowring, too, who chaired RASHKB meetings in the 1850s, disliked weaning the Chinese away from their own religious beliefs and practices (Spurr 1995: 51). A fair amount of local culture has been retained in spite of westernisation and the passage of time.\n\nThis retention of local culture in the Territory means that, if scholars want to study \"things Chinese\" which are closer to customs of the old China, and to visit locations where fewer changes have taken place, they are more likely to come to Hong Kong (or go to Taiwan). Here old customs and the modern can be seen side by side. This is less likely to be the case in the People's Republic where much has been disrupted by the influences of Communism over the past half century, including such events as the devastating Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214565, "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": 423, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "392\n\nfor that area. Our local guide quite unabashed, led us straight into the main courtyard, where we took photographs before a polite message from the Admiral, relayed to us by a staff officer, advised us that he was shortly expecting visitors.\n\ni\n\nNOTES\n\nZhoushan Island, as with many other cities and areas in China, is now rapidly undergoing industrialisation with plans for an airport, factories and container terminals. There has even been talk of building a bridge across to the mainland. Zhoushan is romanised using the current Chinese pinyin system. Formerly it was known as Chusan using the western system devised by British scholars during the late 19th century.\n\ni China was published in 1844, illustrated by Allom and referred to in general as Allom's China; however, a former missionary, the Reverend Wright, wrote the text.\n\niii\n\nFolk memory can be short, especially when it suits the authorities, and in 1998 people in Wei-hai under the age of seventy either looked blank and disbelieving when we told them of the British lease, or corrected us saying that we were mistaken. They explained that it was the colony of Hong Kong which had been handed back in 1997 and that the British had never been near Weihai.\n\niv Other pedants may wish to note that the word Tatar tends to be 'misspelled' as Tartar. The original word in Chinese is Dada'er in pinyin and Ta-ta-erh in Wade-Giles. My history professor used to bark that tartar is on teeth!\n\nA Chinese historian writing during the late 1950s described the progression of the British forces up the South-east coast of China in a very abbreviated history and mentioned in a few words that \"the local people in Amoy [Xiamen] had dislodged the British occupationists and forced them to evacuate the port city. The Chinese defenders made a gallant stand at Tinghai [Dinghai]. Fierce fighting continued for six days and nights. The British suffered heavy casualties. Although General Ko Yun-fei [Ke Yunfei] was covered with more than forty wounds, he fought till he breathed his last. Hei Shui Tang [Black Waters], a people's armed unit, also inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy\". [Tung Chi-ming: An Outline History of China: Foreign Languages Press: Peking: 1959; P 215].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214650, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "29\n\nNga Tsin Wai in 1902\n\nA great deal of information on Nga Tsin Wai can be gathered from the Block Crown Lease, which in Nga Tsin Wai dates from 1902. Nga Tsin Wai forms part of Survey District 1, the very first area to be surveyed, and, as a result of experience gained, the later surveys were improved, particularly by the inclusion of the Chinese characters for the names recorded, and the recording of the village the landowner claimed to belong to. Although this useful information is omitted from the Nga Tsin Wai Lease, a good deal of information can still be had.\n\nAt the Appendix is a summary of the land-holdings of Nga Tsin Wai as recorded in the Block Crown Lease. For the purposes of this summary, any villager owning a house in Nga Tsin Wai in 1902 is considered a villager of Nga Tsin Wai, even if he owned other houses elsewhere. Any villager not recorded as owning any house is considered an Nga Tsin Wai villager if the bulk of his farmland was near the village. Any trust is considered a Nga Tsin Wai trust if the Manager (or any one of the Managers) was a Nga Tsin Wai villager, or if it owned a house within the village: any manager of a Nga Tsin Wai trust is also considered a Nga Tsin Wai villager, even if he would otherwise not be. There were other landholders in the Kowloon City area - especially men of the Ng clan resident in Sha Po - who are here considered as Sha Po villagers rather than Nga Tsin Wai villagers, and so are not included in the summary. This is not entirely satisfactory since, in 1902, there was probably no clear distinction drawn between Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po, and the distinction drawn here between Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po villagers is one unlikely to have been accepted by the villagers in 1902. However, it is the best that can be done.\n\nThe village consisted in 1902 of about 140 houses within the walls (not including the Tin Hau Temple and the Village Office), and some 48 outside the walls, plus the Ng clan Ancestral Hall and school. Six of these 188 houses were owned by village trusts: 73 individual villagers or groups of villagers owned the others. A further twelve house-owners classed here as Nga Tsin Wai villagers owned houses only in Sha Po, and five more owned houses only in Kowloon City. These villagers are here classed as Nga Tsin Wai villagers because of acting as trustees of Nga Tsin Wai village trusts or because the bulk of their agricultural land lay near the village, or because they formed part of groups of villagers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214652, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "31\n\nOne of the things which stands out most clearly from the Block Crown Lease at Nga Tsin Wai is that the Chans were already only a remnant in the village in 1902. Eight Chan clan households are recorded owning houses in the village, but five of these are recorded as owning only houses (four of the five only owning a single house, within the walls). Yet another Chan is recorded as owning nothing except one one-hundredth of an acre of arable land. A seventh household consisted of no less than five adult men as joint heads of household, owning jointly a single house within the walls, and a small amount of arable land (one-fifth of an acre). These seven households are clearly relics of an earlier period when their ancestors were villagers in reality. Most of these families had sold out, and kept back just the one house, possibly for ritual reasons, disposing of their arable land, and, probably going into business in the City.\n\nand the one-fifth of an acre of arable land, however, was almost certainly a Tso Uk (祖屋, \"Ancestral House\"), owned by all the Chans from all the various scattered places where they then (and now) live. This house was doubtless put into joint ownership when the Chans started to desert Nga Tsin Wai, so that the clan would retain their links with their place of origin. The house still functions in this way today, with the Village Headmen of all the various Chan villages being the joint owners. The house is used for various rituals at the Ta Tsiu and elsewhen. Only two Chan households remained in 1902 as genuine villager households - Chan Ying-kam, who owned five houses in the village and one in the Market, and 0.43 acres of arable land; and Chan Fu, who owned three houses within the walls, one outside, and one in the Market, and 0.86 acres of arable land. Chan Ying-kam was also the Trustee of the only Nga Tsin Wai Chan clan trust to survive as a functioning Nga Tsin Wai body to 1902: the Chan Shuk Ching Tso, which owned 0.16 acres of arable land (the Chan Chiu In Tso functioned insofar as it was one of the three joint owners of the Tin Hau Temple and the Village Office, but this trust, in 1902, retained no other property in the Nga Tsin Wai area).\n\nThe Yung clan, which had bought into the village, probably only a few years before the 1902 Survey, consisted of just two brothers, Yung Wing-kwong and Yung Wing-fai. They owned only the two houses they lived in, and no arable land - the houses were owned jointly. These brothers had doubtless bought the houses as a place to live in: they were very probably merchants working in the Market.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214655, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "34\n\nThe 1902 Lease does record a number of apparently very poor households, as for instance Ng Fuk and Ng Ki-san, who held between them a mere 0.05 acre of arable land, Ng Shing-po who held just 0.04 acres, plus a further 0.08 held jointly with Ng Loi, Ng Tso-kwai who held 0.04 acre, Ng Ying-shan who held 0.06 acre, Li Yung-wun who held 0.04 acre, and Ng Ping-fuk with 0.04 acres. Ng Chan Shi, Ng A Hing, Ng Lam-hing jointly with Ng Tso-hing, and Ng Tsun-ming are all recorded as owning only houses, with no agricultural land, although there can be no question that these were genuinely resident villagers in every respect. These areas of agricultural land are far too low to support a household. In these instances, however, we are probably seeing men whose fathers were still alive, and where the bulk of the family land was recorded under the father's name. In such circumstances, where an adult son had himself bought a piece of land with money he had saved from his own labour, then this small piece of land was often regarded as the son's alone, and would have been so recorded. This cannot be proved at Nga Tsin Wai, since the Tsuk Po in most cases records the posthumous Tong names rather than the names recorded in the Lease, but it is extremely likely for Li Kam-tak, for instance. This man held 0.1 acres, of which 0.06 acres were held jointly with two others - but Kam-tak was an important Ng clan elder in 1902, the trustee of the moderately significant Ting Fuk Tso, with its holdings of a house in Sha Po and 0.37 acres. Similarly, Ng Loi, with his 0.08 acres, was nonetheless a significant elder, the trustee of two trusts, including the important Chiu Pak Tso. Ng Ping-fuk, too, may have had only 0.04 acres of agricultural land, but he also owned two very large houses outside the village, as large between them as six standard houses, and was one of the trustees of the small King Tai Tso.\n\nAnother reason for these tiny estates may have been that families were unsure whether it would later on prove to be advantageous to have a name entered on the Lease (as was definitely the case with the Ch'ing Imperial Land Registers), and so some families allowed adult sons to enter themselves as the owner of some small plot in case this later proved of value. In none of these cases should the small estates recorded be taken as the household's sole economic resource. Few households in Nga Tsin Wai (other than the remnant Chans, and the Yungs) seem to have held less than 0.4 acres of arable land.\n\nIn many cases, households would have extended their land holdings", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214656, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "35\n\nby renting arable from the ancestral trusts of which they were members. 28.91% of the total arable land owned by the Ngs of Nga Tsin Wai was held by ancestral trusts. As usual in the New Territories, these trusts ranged from the very tiny to the very large. Thus, the Ching Yam Tso (in the name of the pivotal ancestor of the twelfth and most junior of the descent lines of the Ngs) owned only a single house within the walls, and 0.13 acres of arable land. There were only three descendants alive at the time of the Block Crown Lease. There can be little doubt that this house was a Tso Uk, used by the descendants to hold their ancestral tablets and to perform family funeral and other rituals (this was a common practice at Tai Wai in Sha Tin, where, as at Nga Tsin Wai, the houses within the walls were just too small to cope with rituals). The arable land was doubtless rented out to provide income for maintenance of the family graves. Similarly, the 0.14 acres of the Man Hing Tso, the 0.12 acres of the Shing Pak Tso, the 0.07 acres of the Tsak Tai Tso, and also the 0.1 acres owned by the Li Yung Fat Tso - all of these probably reflect small areas rented out for the maintenance of graves.\n\nAnother reason for these tiny trust estates which is quite likely in some circumstances (and which would reflect similar practices in Sha Tin) would be trusts set up by brothers on the division of their father's estate on his death, when some part of the estate was found to be difficult to divide, and so was put into a trust, so as to be held by the brothers jointly - examples in Sha Tin include small orchards, rice-drying grounds, buffalo wallows, and so forth. This is almost certainly the case with the King Tai Tso, where the trustees and sole beneficiaries in 1902 were the King Tai Ancestor's younger son and the son of his already deceased elder son - this trust owned only 0.04 acres of land.\n\nOther trusts, however, were devices for holding family property. The Chiu Pak Tso owned a large house in Kowloon Market, and 0.99 acres of arable land. The two trustees, Ng Shing-po and Ng Loi, were the only members of this trust: individually, the two owned only houses (Shing-po owned two houses within the walls and one without, and Loi owned one within and two without), and one small plot of arable each (probably the family vegetable garden - 0.04 acre in the case of Shing-po, and 0.03 in the case of Loi). This trust was probably set up in the name of the ancestor who was the grandfather of Loi and the great-grandfather of Shing-po: this was effectively another uncle-and-nephew land-holding, but where the family preferred to hold the joint estate more formally, as a trust. Other similar situations are likely to lie", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "37\n\nname of the three brothers of the Sz Ko Ancestor, but none were very wealthy (Tak Ko, 0.68 acres: Fung Ko, 0.12 acres: Hon Ko 0.13 acres). The four \"Ko\" Ancestors, that is the Sz Ko Ancestor, and the other three, also owned 0.46 acres jointly. The income from all the land owned by these latter trusts, and the land held jointly by all four, was doubtless used for ritual purposes and the maintenance of the graves, with the Sz Ko Tso used for more aggressive commercial dealings.\n\nAn alternative investment strategy was used by the Yat Un Tso (E - this was named from the founding ancestor of the Fourth Fong, i.e. of the last nine descent lines of the village, representing probably four-fifths of the clan: about a half or a third of the members of this Tso were also members of the Sz Ko Tso), and the Wai Wing Tso (77 - this had identical membership with the Yat Un Tso). The Yat Un Tso, rather than investing in arable land, like the Sz Ko Tso, invested heavily in the development of the Market at Kowloon, but, like the Sz Ko Tso, was clearly involved in aggressive investment in land: the Wai Wing Tso invested in arable land near the village. The availability of rentable Sz Ko Tso, Yat Un Tso, and Wai Wing Tso land made the junior descent lines the wealthiest in the clan: the Village Headman of 1902, Ng Kam-tong (A) was from this section of the clan (the ninth descent line).\n\nBefore the coming of the British, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers owned a good deal of the subsoil rights, both over the Market, and in the general Sha Po area”. Some of these rights they had sold out before the coming of the British to the New Territories in 1898. On other parts of their land, however, the clan developed shops for rent. The Ng Yat Un Tso owned no less than 0.28 acres of house land in the Market, at the far southeast edge of the Market, next to Hoklo Tsuen. This was developed as five very large shops or workshops (one was jointly owned with a trust named in the Lease as the Shing Un Tso, possibly in error for the Tai Un Tso, the Founding Ancestor of the Third Fong). Several of these shops had large courtyards and wells. This strategy was also employed by the Shing Tat Tso, which owned one very large lot in the Market, with fifteen workshops scattered around a large courtyard. This complex stood on the southeastern edge of the Market, between the Market and the southern edge of Sha Po Village. This complex was probably used for some offensive trade or trades.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214661, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "40\n\nThe 1902 Lease also shows us a glimpse of how women were treated in the village then. It was a frequent occurrence that men died, leaving widows. Traditionally, there were three ways of dealing with this. In poorer households, the widow would live in a corner of the house, which would be taken over by her sons. Where this happened, the Block Crown Lease, of course, does not show it. However, in other cases, especially where the widow was elderly, with adult sons, she would be given the house she had lived in for life, while the sons took the other houses and the farm, guaranteeing the mother a certain fixed amount of food per month for her upkeep (in some villages, the sons would execute a legally binding deed to this effect). At least three examples of this practice can be detected in the Nga Tsin Wai Block Crown Lease. The widow Ng Chan Shi (“Madame Ng, of the Chan surname”) is recorded as owning merely 1 house within the walls, and 1 house in Kowloon Market. Li Chan Shi (“Madame Li, of the Chan surname”) owned a house outside the walls, and 0.37 acres of land - probably to provide her with vegetables, and possibly for a small market garden plot. Li Ip Shi (“Madame Li, of the Ip surname”) had a house outside the walls, two houses in Kowloon Market, and a vegetable plot of 0.06 acres, with a further 0.05 acres held jointly with Li Ping-sang.\n\nThe alternative method of dealing with widows, especially where there were infant children, was to allow the widow to occupy the land in trust for her sons' coming-of-age. Sometimes this was formalised, with the widow shown in the Block Crown Lease as Trustee, but very often the widow is shown as full owner, everyone understanding the arrangement. There is one clear case of this in Nga Tsin Wai. Li Ng Shi (\"Madame Li, of the Ng surname\") is recorded as the owner of three houses within the walls, and a very large house at Sha Po, together with 1.24 acres of arable land. While it was theoretically possible for a woman to own land (e.g. land she bought with her own money), it was very rare, and it can be confidently assumed that this land was land held by her as widow, in trust for her infant sons.\n\nThe 1902 Block Crown Lease, therefore, shows us a prosperous village, filled with people, surrounded by what, for the New Territories, were broad areas of arable land, with the essential components of a self-confident village of a fine Ancestral Hall and School, and with access to a literary club. The Lease shows us that the village families were mostly holding enough land for their subsistence, especially if", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214662, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "41\n\npart of it was being used for market gardening. The villagers in the Ng and Li clans had enough trust land to provide a fallback for poorer clan-brothers, although the Lease shows us the Chan clan already almost gone from the village. The Ng clan are shown as taking an aggressive part in the lending of money on mortgage, and thus increasing the clan land-holdings by foreclosure: the Lis, however, may not have had enough spare cash to do this. The village elders, Ng Kam-tong and Li Lai-ting in particular, stand out. Nga Tsin Wai does not show anything very different from other New Territories villages of this period, albeit it was more prosperous than most, but the Lease does bring the then village community to life.\n\nTraditional Lifestyles\n\nIt is likely that the Nga Tsin Wai area was never a standard rice subsistence area. The proximity of the Market at Kowloon must have encouraged a measure of market gardening here from an early date. If the Lams settled at Po Kong because it was convenient for their trading business, it would seem likely that growing vegetables and cutting fuel for ships was always part of the Po Kong lifestyle. Nga Tsin Wai was doubtless also involved in this sort of business from the beginning.\n\nNonetheless, at the end of the nineteenth century, a good deal of the land of Nga Tsin Wai was still used for growing rice. The land here was extremely fertile: rich, deep soil with few stones, and well watered: eminently suitable for rice growing. The present village elders remember hearing about rice-cultivation in the village from their grandparents, although pig-rearing and vegetable growing for the market was already very important in the late nineteenth century when those grandparents were active.\n\nAccording to the memories of the village elders of today, it is likely that the percentage of the land devoted to vegetables and livestock for the market grew steadily from 1841 onwards, until rice was, by the late nineteenth century, being grown only to meet the subsistence needs of a minority of villagers, who were otherwise living on the cash income from market gardening. Buyers from the new city of Hong Kong came to Kowloon City and Shamshuipo and Tsuen Wan from 1841 on looking for vegetables and meat animals to meet this new, and insatiable, demand. Market gardeners in the Kowloon City", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214663, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "42\n\narea faced in consequence a sellers' market, and doubtless the result was a steady increase in the number of fields under vegetables, and in the number of village households rearing pigs and other livestock for the market. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, buyers from Hong Kong could only buy from villages on the mainland sea-coast opposite the City, since there then were no roads to bring in produce from further afield, and no vehicles to carry anything either. However, even though market gardening must have increased in importance throughout the later nineteenth century, it is likely that demand from Kowloon City and the ships calling there was enough to make market gardening a significant feature of local life even before 1841.\n\nThe Nga Tsin Wai villagers say that rice cultivation stopped in the village well before the last War. Most of the elders cannot remember seeing any rice cultivation there in their youth in the 1930s. By then, the area was entirely devoted to producing food for the market. One contact said his mother and grandmother ran a pig-farm in the 1930s with 40 head of pigs - a very large farm for the New Territories at that date. That farm operated out of sheds built on the family fields, but a lot of villagers kept pigs and cattle actually within the walls of the village. The elders say that a lot of houses within the walls were empty in the 1930s. Many of the villagers had moved to the larger and airier homes outside the walls leaving empty premises behind (twelve villagers in 1902 owned houses both within the walls and outside, and a further nine had houses only outside the walls then). These empty houses within the walls were mostly used as pigsties and cattle sheds in this period: indeed, it is doubtful if there had ever been enough resident population at Nga Tsin Wai to fill all the village houses within the walls.\n\nA Sha Tin villager, Hui Wing-hing, F, of Shek Kwu Lung Village, wrote a series of poems about villages in Sha Tin and adjacent areas, mostly in the period 1890-1905, i.e. at approximately the same time as the Block Crown Lease Survey. For each village, he wrote about what caught his eye as important and special in that village. Market gardening was what he found most significant about the Kowloon City villages, and, in particular, the growing of fruit for the market. He has this to say of the League of Seven and Six Villages areas in his poem on the villages of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and Tsuen Wan:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214665, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "44\n\nThe lychees at Po Kong are really abundant.\n\nOf these verses, the reference in line 169 is to a temple near Ma Thu Wai. The reference in lines 170-172 is probably to the ejection of the Ch'ing officials from the Kowloon Walled City. In line 174 the reference may be to the prostitutes' quarter in the Market. The \"hospital\" in line 175 is the Lok Sin Tong.\n\nFor three villages - Po Kong, Sha Tei Yuen, and Yuen Ling - the poet singles out the orchards and vegetable fields he saw there as particularly significant and worth comment, and at Ngau Chi Wan it was \"herding\" - presumably of meat animals for the market - which he noted as interesting and special. The vast majority of villages visited by Hui Wing-hing were rice-subsistence villages, with almost every inch of arable land used for rice, and the Kowloon villages clearly looked very different. While Hui Wing-hing's attention at Nga Tsin Wai was taken up by the British takeover of the New Territories, there can be no doubt that Nga Tsin Wai, too, was to a large degree a market-gardening area in his time.\n\nAlmost all the coastal villages in the New Territories area had sampans, and added inshore fishing to their subsistence. It is a measure of Nga Tsin Wai's general prosperity that the Nga Tsin Wai village elders believe that their ancestors did not do this: the village had no sampans, and bought its fish - probably mostly from the coolies carrying fish from Tolo Harbour past the village to Kowloon Market. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers did, however, dig clams from the mud flats offshore, together with the villagers of all the other villages in the Kowloon Bay area. They also reared carp in the village moat, and possibly in other fishponds, for sale in the Market.\n\nNga Tsin Wai was never a poor village, but it prospered noticeably during the later nineteenth century. 1902, the date of the Block Crown lease must have been about the most prosperous period of this village community. The village fields were fast being converted to market gardens as the village faced their sellers' market in the growing City. The village had developed good contacts with shipping companies, so that many of the men were able to get good jobs as seamen. Many villagers were also getting good jobs in the Whampoa Docks, where, again, the village developed good contacts in this period. As the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214667, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "46\n\ntrust in his father's name (the Chan Hok Yin Tso) which owned 2.7 acres (Chan Tak-hing and his brother Chan Tsan-hing,\n\n(\n\n, were the only beneficiaries - it is likely that much of the property of this trust was amassed by Chan Tak-hing). His son, Chan Kwok-yan, 1872-1937) succeeded him on the Lok Sin Tong Board, the Kowloon City Kaifong, and as trustee for the Chan Hok Yin Tso, but he took to smoking opium, and the family business was closed down in 1930, when the family shop in Kowloon City was cleared for re-development.\n\nAs for the Lis, Li Ping-ngam, an \"honest farmer, who, on coming back from a meeting in Kowloon City, would take off his shoes and go back to work in the fields\", and resident in Sha Po, was an early Director as well312. He was probably dead by 1902. Li Ping-shang, who does appear in the 1902 Block Crown Lease, may have been his brother; if so, the lady Li Ip Shi mentioned above was very possibly Li Ping-ngam's widow, since Li Ping-shang owned a small piece of land jointly with the widow Ip. It is entirely likely that Li Ping-ngam was not quite the simple farmer he was remembered as. He may have been the dominant leader of the Li clan before Li Lai-ting (who could also have been called \"an honest farmer\").\n\nNg Shue-fan was also one of the Directors of the Lung Chun School within the Walled City () at the end of the nineteenth century33. This had been founded in the 1840s when the Sub-Magistracy was moved to Kowloon City, as a mark of the importance the Ch'ing Government placed on education and scholarship. Five trustees, who probably represented the local groups who had paid for the erection of the school in the 1840s, managed it: it is likely, therefore, that Nga Tsin Wai had been significantly involved in the foundation. By the end of the nineteenth century this school was being used as a Meeting Hall when meetings of the district elders and gentry were called. That Nga Tsin Wai provided one of the trustees is eloquent evidence of its local prestige and importance.\n\nNg Shue-tong was similarly important in local charitable affairs outside the Lok Sin Tong. Thus, when the Hau Wong temple was restored in 1879, he was the Chief Manager for the project (at least seven other Nga Tsin Wai villagers can be identified from the Donation Tablet)34. When the Hau Wong Temple had been restored in 1822,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214669, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "48\n\nbeen training in martial arts within the village before 1854 (Ng Shue-tong must have received such training). In the early twentieth century, according to the village elders of today, some of whom had studied with him, one of the Ngs was skilled in martial arts, and trained the village youths himself: at an earlier date it is possible that the village employed an outsider to teach these arts, as was done at Tai Wai in Sha Tin.\n\nThere was always a Village Office in the village. In 1902 it seems to have occupied the house immediately to the north of the Tin Hau Temple (the Tai Wai Village Office in Sha Tin also occupied the same site in that village). The Village Office was owned by the three clans of the village jointly, i.e. by the three trusts named from the three Founding Ancestors. The three clans chose one of the elders as Manager of the Temple and Village Office, and this Manager was the Village Headman, and the Chairman of the elders when they met together. In 1902, as noted above, this position was held by Ng Kam-tong.\n\nThe Village Headman had many duties, but ensuring the village was strong and could not be over-awed by any other village was one of the most important. The ancient and wealthy village of Po Kong, barely a quarter of a mile from Nga Tsin Wai, just the other side of the river, was always a potential threat to Nga Tsin Wai's pre-eminence, and, according to the Nga Tsin Wai elders, relations between the two, while usually reasonably cordial, were never close. There were the occasional brawls between groups of youths from the two villages, when their Unicorn Dances met at weddings and festivals, but the elders cannot remember any actual inter-village war between Nga Tsin Wai and Po Kong, or between the larger groupings of the League of Seven and the Six Villages. It is noticeable, however, as detailed below, that marriages between the two villages were not as common as might be expected.\n\nNga Tsin Wai families seem often to have looked for wives for their sons from within the village. Of the four widows who appear in the 1902 Lease and are discussed above, for instance, three probably came from Nga Tsin Wai itself. The present-day elders are unanimous that this was a preferred marriage strategy. Clearly, it helped the three clans to regard themselves as \"brothers\", given that everyone in the village must have been related to almost everyone else. In the Ng clan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214671, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "50\n\nbetter wooded - seven hundred years of cutting fuel by Nga Tsin Wai villagers on Lion Rock had left that mountain rather bare of wood). Their mountain could not supply all the fuel the village needed, given its bareness, and the villagers had to buy fuel in Kowloon Market from the hillside villages in Sha Tin which brought it there for sale. When the British closed the hills to wood and grass-cutting after the Lease, in order to undertake a major programme of re-afforestation (several hundreds of thousands of new trees were planted in the Kowloon Hills), this caused major problems to the villagers, since they now had to buy all their fuel (each village was given a fuel reserve to cut fuel from, but these had to be left until the trees there had grown). Illegal fuel gathering was endemic, and led to brawls between villagers and Forest Warders. One villager, at Ngau Chi Wan, according to the Ngau Chi Wan elders, shot and killed a Forest Warder who interrupted him while he was illegally cutting wood - the village, with considerable trepidation, decided to fee an expensive European barrister, who, to the village's vast delight managed to get him off (the village is still speaking of this 80 years later).\n\nVillagers often went down sick (the average age of death in the New Territories in 1911 was about 20 years of age, and those who survived to 16 could expect to die by about 45-50). There were several dozen doctors in Kowloon City, but they were very expensive, and the villagers rarely used them. The Lok Sin Tong would give free medicine as a charitable act in certain circumstances, and the villagers would sometimes go there, but usually the villagers used their own village remedies, using herbs from the hills, which were boiled up to make medicinal teas or used to make medicinal washes or baths. Not all the village families knew which herbs to pick - village families with this knowledge kept it secret as it represented good income. Some village remedies were fearsome - a tea made from boiling up bat-dung scraped from the floor of the Ancestral Hall was used to cure certain childhood fevers, for instance, and a split pod of wild black pepper was bound round the wrist of children seriously ill with malaria, and left there until it had eaten its way deeply into the flesh. Witchcraft, involving secret prayers and incantations, and strange ritual acts, was often used as well - there were several village women who knew how to \"call the spirits\" in this way.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214684, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "63\n\n16 The date is engraved on the earth god shrine in the village\n\nFor the Ta Tsiu at Nga Tsin Wai, see J W Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983, pp 157-159 See also p 162\n\n18 These guns were all sunk in the moat immediately to the south of the village gate when the Japanese came\n\n19 In the 1902 Block Crown Lease, the Ancestral Hall is shown as the Ng Kit-san house, and the Ng Kit-san house as the Ancestral Hall by some strange error\n\n0\n\n1\n\n༣།\n\nDespatch from Sir M Nathan to Colonial Office, January 11th, 1905, in file CO882/6, printed in Eastern No 88, Confidential Hong Kong Correspondence [December 15 1903 to February 27 1907] Relating to the Proposed Canton Kowloon Railway', printed for the use of the Colonial Office, April 1907, No 59, pp 81-88\n\nThe slopes to the east of Lion Rock were under the protection of Kwun Yam These slopes were called Tsz Wan Shan (Fill, “Mountain of the Cloud of Compassion one of the titles of Kwun Yam) There has been a temple to Kwun Yam half way up to the pass since at least 1853, probably much earlier The early ownership of this temple is unclear\n\nInformation on the Chus is taken from their Tsuk Po, a copy of which I was kindly given by Dr James Hayes, and from notes of interviews Dr Hayes had with Chu clan elders in the 1960s See also, Southern District Board, 1996, p 138\n\nOn the Tung Shan Temple, see J W Hayes, \"The Kwun Yam - Tung Shan Temple of East Kowloon, 1840-1940”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol 23, 1983 pp 212-218\n\n*For instance, in Aed (), Joint Publishing (Hong Kong), 1994, p 44, and RPF Lam, ed The Hong Kong Album, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1982, p 66\n\n25 I am indebted to Dr James Hayes for much of the detail of this section\n\n26 See A Lui, Forts and Pirates, op cit p 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214710, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "89\n\ncalled. 'hair vegetable), is a homonym for 'get rich'. This basin-meal lunch was the final item on the agenda for the day that the main ceremony was held.\n\nWith this having taken place on the Wednesday at Sheung Tsuen, and the god, Taai Wong Ye, having been burned the same evening, the bamboo-framed matshed was dismantled the following day. As follow up, the Author thus decided to return to the village three days later. The five tun fu pots filled with sand, with a single, split-bamboo talisman with prayers written on it in each pot, had been placed circling the old banyan tree (see Plate 7). Tied to the top of each talisman was a golden (foil) kam fa and a red ribbon - both auspicious colours. There were remains of joss sticks burned by villagers.\n\n10\n\nFurther follow up visits by the Author revealed that, on the 1st and the 15th of every Chinese month especially, joss sticks are burned near the tun fu pots largely by elderly women on behalf of their families. Nevertheless, the pots often give the impression of not being particularly well looked after. The site is untidy. This is a pity. The new West Railway line, of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, is planned to come into operation in November 2003. The tunnel is due to be finished in 2002. The pots will be left for the full duration of its construction and, if they cease to be effective, a nuen fu ('warming' of the talismans) \"revival ceremony\" may be needed. If so, Taoist priests will again officiate.\n\nComparisons of various tun fu ceremonies\n\nHow does the Pat Heung ceremony compare with other tun fu ceremonies that have been conducted elsewhere (Baker; 1980, 21)? Unfortunately the Author has not been able to find any written information, nor has he heard any oral accounts of tun fu ceremonies conducted outside Hong Kong although he gathers they do take place in places like Taiwan. Often in Hong Kong, like the one mentioned earlier (see Endnote 1) on Ma Wan Island, or those that the Author has seen in places like Sha Tin and Kam Tin, the pots were placed near earth-god shrines. All these ceremonies were much smaller than the main ceremony at Pat Heung described in this paper. No matsheds were erected at these smaller gatherings. Sometimes ceremonies are held close to tsz tongs (ancestral halls), although not normally inside.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214737, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "116\n\nmirrored by the meticulous interest of model enthusiasts. There has been less interest in events in Asian theatres of war, particularly those before the change of the tide of war after the Battle of Midway. Save for a few battles, little has been written in English about the major battles in the Pacific War. One exception is the Battle of Hong Kong fought against the Japanese forces in December 1941. In this Battle, two brigades of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps without air support fought three full-strength Japanese divisions supported by an air fleet.\n\nThe Battle broke out at 08:00 hour on 8 December, when the air raid on Kai Tak Airfield began, and lasted to 15:25 hour on Christmas Day, when the Governor Sir Mark Young made the decision to surrender. This led to the official ending of the almost 18-day fighting, which was intended to cease at 18:00 hours, when for the first time in history, a British Crown Colony was surrendered to enemy forces with her governor taken as a prisoner. This surrender occurred one hundred years after the creation of the colony. A miserable three years and eight months period followed for the captive defenders and civilians until the British administration returned on 30 August 1945.\n\nBriefly, the Battle was conducted in two distinct phases2. From 8 to 13 December, it was fought in the New Territories and Kowloon. This phase ended with the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt of the Gin Drinkers Line on 11 December and the final evacuation of defence forces to the Island of Hong Kong two days later. The second phase commenced in the early morning of 18 December when the Japanese made their first attempted landings on the Island near Lei Yue Mun Strait, the eastern approach to Victoria Harbour, and ended with the surrender one week later. Before the final capitulation, the Governor had rejected the Japanese request for surrender twice, on 13 and 17 December.\n\nWe shall consider a brief textual review of the English and Chinese publications and materials on the Battle of Hong Kong available in the University of Hong Kong Library, which provides points of reference for our re-assessment of the performance of the defenders of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214822, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "203\n\nis result-oriented, clients either multiply or fall away. The more \"miracles\" a god is perceived to have worked, now or in the past, the more popular he or she becomes with the public. Money flows like water to that temple, enabling major reconstructions that can double its size and more. Where there are no miracles, and results cease to flow from that image or shrine, the disappointed, discontented supplicants turn their attention elsewhere. I have frequently come across this attitude in the local temples, among worshippers and temple keepers alike, and it is apparently one of very long standing.\n\n25\n\nThis capacity to discard as well as acquire gods, is due to the very pragmatic attitude adopted by the people. It has been styled the \"shopping approach\" towards religion and the deities because it is so deeply grounded in expectation and its continuation is so much dependent upon results.26 In line with this approach, frustrated devotees sometimes took their disappointment and dissatisfaction a step further. Especially in crises, gods who failed to protect were not only abandoned but sometimes harshly treated. Whilst this phenomenon had been noted by many Protestant missionaries in 19th century China, the practice was observed long before that time. In 1583, the most famous of all Roman Catholic missionaries to China, Father Matteo Ricci, had written that “when these [idols] do not grant them what they [the people] desire, they beat them hard and make peace again with them later on.”??\n\nMany Gods in the Chinese Pantheon\n\nFrom the foregoing, it will scarcely come as a surprise to learn that the gods were legion. The pantheons of both Buddhism and especially Taoism have shown over many centuries the extreme creativity of the Chinese people in the matter of finding extra deities to worship. Over a century ago, Rev. Hampden Du Bose, \"for Fourteen Years a Missionary at Soochow,\" described the very wide range of gods adopted by different professions and groups in the late 19th century.\n\n28 There has, in addition, always been a strong impulse to seek assistance and protection from any new deity or spirit which appeared to have miraculous powers, and this is far from being dead to-day.29", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214829, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "211\n\n\"THAT SINGULAR AND HITHERTO ALMOST UNKNOWN COUNTRY\"; OPINIONS ON CHINA, THE CHINESE, AND THE \"OPIUM WAR” AMONG BRITISH NAVAL AND MILITARY OFFICERS WHO SERVED DURING HOSTILITIES THERE.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nIntroduction\n\nIn February 1840, the British Government advised the Qing authorities of the dispatch of an expeditionary force of troops and warships to the China Coast. Its purpose was to force the Chinese authorities to cease their harassment of British traders and officials resident in China, and to make reparation for goods and property taken from them. A blockade of China's principal ports was to be established, and one or two islands demanded as a place of residence and commerce for British subjects. A piece of Chinese territory was to be occupied, to be restored only when matters were settled to the British Government's satisfaction. Hostilities continued on and off until August 1842 when three specially appointed Chinese commissioners signed the treaty of Nanking on board a British warship in the Yangtse River.\n\nThis much is, of course, common knowledge. However, the subject matter of this paper is perhaps less well known. Among the by-products of the China Expedition were the books written by British naval and military officers about the War and their experiences in China. Some of the letters sent to family and friends at home have also found their way into print. Such books and letters, together with official papers, are used here to illustrate the sentiments, opinions and attitudes of the day towards China and the War, and I have occasionally quoted from them at length, in order to provide greater realism.\n\nScant Knowledge of China and the Chinese\n\nThis was the first time that British forces had fought in China. Consequently, there was no one with experience of conducting operations there on land or sea. Moreover, the higher levels of society to which the British officer corps mostly belonged - the aristocracy, the landed gentry and the professions - had little or no knowledge of China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214902, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 317, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "293\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nGillian Bickley (2201), Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare, with a foreword by Arthur Gomes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 303 pages.\n\nA97NIGHTMARE\n\nIn 1897, a series of anonymous articles appeared in the China Mail. Together they constituted a story entitled The Back Door. This was a fictional account of a successful invasion of Hong Kong by the combined forces of fin-de-siècle aggressors, France and Russia. The inference is that the author was perturbed that Hong Kong's defences at the time were inadequate and so, in an attempt to galvanise the authorities, wrote this \"wake up call.\" Copies of the story ultimately found their way to Whitehall in London.\n\nGillian Bickley\n\nAs the title of the story infers, the superior invading forces entered Hong Kong by way of the south side of Hong Kong Island. There was the bloody Battle of Deepwater Bay, fought in \"the jungle\" around the Golf Club and on the beach. There was shelling of the Peak from the sea and the sea battle of Sulphur Channel. Matters neared their end when the enemy captured the Kowloon Forts and the dynamite and gunpowder stored on Stonecutters' Island were fired. At the last stand, on Stonecutters', the defenders were ultimately annihilated.\n\nThe Back Door evidently arose from the same anxiety that drove Britain's negotiations with China; concluded in 1898 when China granted the ninety-nine year lease of the New Territories, which Britain had requested as a protective buffer against attack.\n\nGillian Bickley discovered a copy of this story some years ago and it evidently fired her imagination, probably because as we all know, Hong Kong was invaded on 8th December, 1941, by the Japanese - also by superior forces - and ultimately capitulated on Christmas day. The Japanese, however, entered Hong Kong from the north, through the New Territories. Had the Japanese, she wonders, read The Back Door?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214959, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "10\n\nLin Zexu and the Conflict\n\nLin Zexu is not the subject of this paper. However, since he is the central figure of the Symposium, it seems appropriate to devote some little space to this extraordinary man, who no doubt cast a giant shadow on Anglo-Chinese relations.\n\nEmperor Qianlong, great emperor though he was, apart from issuing prohibitive edicts seems to have done little to stop the opium trade. Jiaqing (1796-1820) who followed was equally ineffectual. His successor Daoguang (1821-1850), however, was a man of a different mettle. In 1836, Imperial edicts having failed to check the opium trade, the problem was hotly debated in Beijing. There was one faction that favoured legalizing opium importation and so turning it to public profit. To this Emperor Daoguang replied: 'It is true, I cannot prevent the introduction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people,\" noble words by a great monarch. In 1839, deciding to take forceful action, the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as his Commissioner charged with total eradication of the infamous trade. Commissioner Lin journeyed to Guangzhou and immediately ordered all commerce in opium to be stopped. He further demanded that merchants should surrender all stocks and sign a bond to cease importing, in effect laying the factories to siege. This much is well documented as well as the ensuing course of events which led to the 1st Opium War.\n\nLin Zexu presents an interesting character study of contrasting portraits. For many years the British sources had portrayed him as 'fierce, unscrupulous, and fanatical.'\" Most of the known paintings of him show a fierce, pugnacious countenance. It is, therefore, gratifying to include in this paper a reproduction of a rare painting depicting him as a handsome man with a dignified yet kind expression on his face.** Gradually the picture has changed and Lin is being recognized as an intelligent and learned man, a capable and resolute official, a competent administrator, and a fair and just dispenser of the law; most importantly, he was incorruptible. A modern, progressive man, he observed, however, all the Chinese ceremonies, made sacrifices at temples, and made offerings to the spirits of his ancestors. He liked poetry, which he practised for his own leisure. A man who, at the height of the opium", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214984, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "36\n\nAll those interested in joining were told to report to Weihai Wei where they were housed in the barracks of the previous British-officered colonial regiment of Chinese, as the buildings were still in existence. Weihai Wei, located on a bay on the north coast of the province of Shandong, was formerly the HQ of the Chinese Northern Fleet. The British lease of this was signed on 1 July 1898 on the stipulation that the British could lease it as long as the Russians held Port Arthur, the port on the other side of the Gulf of Zhili. Weihai Wei was the summer station of the British Asiatic Squadron, known as the China Fleet. Later, after Qingdao [Tsingtao] had been taken from Germany, this was used as it had better port facilities, railway and roads.\n\nOn arrival at the recruiting centre, each prospective recruit received a medical. He could be rejected, amongst other reasons, for having trachoma [an eye disease], tuberculosis, venereal disease and bad teeth. Between 30% to 60% were rejected as medically unfit mostly due to eye troubles, which is not surprising in a region known for its summer sandstorms and dust. Lyn Macdonald, in her book Somme mentions that some labourers were recruited from the Chinese prisons. I, personally, would not consider this correct, as the authorities would interview each candidate and, if found to have a criminal record, would be rejected. With the large number applying why would they recruit prisoners, who may cause unnecessary trouble? Daryl Klein mentions that some coolies were recruited from Shandong and comprised men of differing work backgrounds, namely farmers, carpenters, brickmakers and bricklayers, dressers, weavers, brass-smiths, black-smiths, bakers, stonemasons and ex-soldiers. Nowhere does he mention ex-prisoners.\n\nIf the above tests were passed, the men were given serial numbers, which, with their names, were written down in romanised letters and Chinese characters. Difficulties arose if the men did not know their names or surnames. He may say that he lives in a family village and offer the village surname as a suggestion or simply give his nickname, but most knew their mother's surname because of the Chinese custom of exogamy. Problems also arose when trying to ascertain the recruit's address, for similar reasons.\n\nA bracelet, stamped with his number, was securely fixed to his wrist. As this was considered degrading this system was eventually discontinued.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "120\n\n向你們致謝，同時亦期望在我回來之後，大家的共同合作可以延續下去。你們也提及教育問題，亦是我十分關心的問題。我關心的不單是大學教育，還有整個殖民地境內全部學校的教育。我希望最近構想的步驟能如期實行，能有效地減低各學校裡擠迫的情況和增加教師的數目，從而提高教育質素，並提供更多獎學金，使窮境的孩子能與富家子弟一樣，從教育中受益。\n\n至於我們的大學，得到華商與位於太古的大商號的慷慨捐贈，經濟上已足夠設立三間學院，我希望在大學建築物落成和學生入學以前，我們能夠得到更多款項，能把學院數目增加一倍，並為舊學院設立教授職位。（鼓掌）\n\n剛才何啟博士說，希望我在英國時能為大學的捐贈事宜做點事，我當然會盡力而為。（鼓掌聲）為大學取得捐贈，也是這裡各人要面對的一項集體任務，我亦放心把它交托給你們去辦，因為我知道你們對此都十分熱心，而且已有華人慷慨解囊，我相信我不用多說，我本人對興建大學的熱忱，已是眾所周知的，諸位先生，對於你們所表達的心意和送給我的演說，我誠懇而高興地向你們致謝。\n\n現在，我要和你們說再見，不愉快的日子很快便會回來重續我們的友誼，我在此祝願，在我離開的一段日子裡，本地社會欣欣向榮，公眾衛生環境良好、貿易蕭條告一段落、百業興旺，社會繁榮昌盛，我的妻子亦盼望能早日返港，希望到時我倆能身心康泰地回來，和你們見面。\n\nincreasing the teaching staff so that the education will be better, and in providing an increased number of scholarships so that the children of the poor may reap the benefit of our education equally with the children of the well-to-do class.\n\nAs regards the University we have, by the generosity of the Chinese, and by the generosity of a great firm at Taikoo, succeeded in getting sufficient funds to establish three faculties. I hope before the University buildings are finished and the doors opened to students that we may double the number of faculties for which we are providing chairs in the University, with, of course, a corresponding increase in the amount of the endowment. (Applause).\n\nDr. Ho Kai has said he hopes I shall be able to do something in England to raise subscriptions for the University. Well, I shall do my best. (Applause). At the same time it is a matter which primarily affects us out here, and a matter which I can leave with confidence in your hands, because I know all your people are interested in it and I have had examples of Chinese generosity. I need not say how personally keenly I am interested in the project. That is already well known.\n\nGentlemen, I thank you most cordially and heartily for the kind sentiments which you, sir, have expressed, and for the address you presented to me. I say good-bye now, only for a short time, and hope soon to be back again, and to renew my friendships here, and during my short absence I trust that the colony may in every way prosper, that the health of the colony during this summer will be good, that the trade depression will cease and that with increased trade you may have increased prosperity and that I shall return in good health to you and with my wife, Lady Lugard, who is most anxious to return to Hongkong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215519, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 296, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "246\n\ncould be traced in regard to this burial ground, though the noted Scottish botanist and traveller Robert Fortune, who visited Hong Kong between 1843 and 1846, recorded:\n\nBefore leaving China [1846], I had occasion to visit this spot of ground (the old barrack area in West Point), the grave of many a brave soldier. A fine road31 leading round the island…passed through the place where they had been buried. Many of their coffins were exposed to vulgar gaze, and the bones of the poor fellows lay scattered about on the public highway no one could find fault with the road having been made there, but if it was necessary to uncover the coffins, common decency required that they should be buried again…38\n\nOther Early Cemeteries\n\nHong Kong's initial progress as an entrepôt was slow, nevertheless, by the 1850s, Hong Kong's position as a trading centre had gradually been consolidated. Before the emergence of a recognizable Chinese merchant class in the later half of the 19th century, foreign merchants, the bulk of whom were British, dominated the local political and economic scene. Nevertheless, some of the most prominent and best remembered foreign traders came neither from Europe nor North America, but from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. These included the Parsees, the Indians and the Jews.\n\n39\n\n40\n\nA Parsee (or Zoroastrian) cemetery in Happy Valley was granted as early as 1852, and the first grave was erected there in 1858. The Jewish Cemetery, located south-east of Wong Nai Chung Village and near some paddy fields, was first laid out in 1855 when the first of the Jewish merchants from Guangzhou settled in Hong Kong. The lease for land for a cemetery was granted in 1857, the year of the first burial.42 As the community was not large, the number of burials was small. By the end of the 19th century, burials were limited to about sixty. The cemetery was described as 'neglected' in an 1890's tourist guide.44\n\nThe Muslim cemetery in Happy Valley had been deeded to the community in 1870, and a mosque with rooms for burial preparations was added. Prior to this, a Mohammedan cemetery, located at roughly the present site of St. Stephen's Girls College along Park Road, can be found in an 1863 map.46\n\nHowever, no further information on this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215524, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 301, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "251\n\nSituated on the South slope of Danger Flag Hill, Kowloon, on Military Reserve Land, midway between the Military and Association Rifle Rangers and about thirty yards to the North of the line joining the butts. The Cemetery measures fifty-feet square and its limits have been defined by wooden pickets.77\n\nThere was another Indian cemetery at Tai Shek Ku78 recorded in a government notice, which was ordered to be closed in 1927;79 however, the origin of this cemetery is not known.\n\nCemeteries in the Early 20th Century\n\nThe first two decades of the 20th century was a period of steady economic and administrative development in Hong Kong, in spite of the influx of Chinese as a result of unsettled condition following the 1911 Revolution in China. A long list of cemeteries was added during this period.\n\nIn 1903, the 'Sai Yu Shek Cemetery'80 (晒魚石墳場) was appointed 'to the North of Kowloon City and West of Nga Tsin, as a sufficient and proper place for a burial ground for Chinese living in the vicinity of Kowloon City.'81 In addition, there was also a Sai Yu Shek (Christian) Cemetery.82\n\nIn the same year (1903), it was also announced that the 'Po Kong Po Cemetery' (), 'situated to the North-east of Kowloon City and West of the Village of Sha Ti Un'83 () was to be closed. Again, no information examined has revealed the origin of this cemetery, although the cemetery is mentioned in a privately published memoir regarding the burial of a woman in 1896.84 As this burial predated the lease of the New Territories in 1898 and the fact that the cemetery was adjacent to several villages in the Kowloon City area, Po Kong Po Cemetery might have been an extension of some villagers' burial ground,85\n\nA year later, another Chinese Christian Cemetery was authorized ‘on the hillside about 200 feet to the North of Kowloon Walled City, measuring, on the North 208'9,' on the East 208'9' and on the West 208'9,' and defined by boundary stones.' This cemetery still exists today as the oldest surviving cemetery on the Kowloon Peninsula.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215559, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 336, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "286\n\nof gravity of the tower low and to afford the minimum resistance to wind and wave. This lighthouse became superfluous and stopped operating in 1896 after Waglan lighthouse came into operation in 1893.\n\nSeveral considerations\n\nIn building Hong Kong's first lighthouse many factors were considered, such as need, finance, location, the apparatus to be installed and the staff.\n\nIn the beginning of the 1870s the need to erect lighthouses was envisaged by the Western mercantile community. In fact, in 1872, the combined tonnage, outwards and inwards, amounted to about six million. The need to provide navigational aids for the heavy sea traffic was thus obvious. The revenue raised by levying vessels entering Victoria Harbour would be able to support the running costs of lighthouses.12\n\nSurveys were conducted to look for suitable sites on which to erect lighthouses to light the approaches to Hong Kong harbour. The three best sites were considered to be,\n\n• Waglan, an island off the south-eastern extremity of Hong Kong,\n\n• The North East head of Lema Island, and\n\n• Gap Rock, 26 miles southward of Hong Kong.\n\nHowever, all these three were then under Chinese jurisdiction. Negotiations with the Chinese Government did not reach satisfactory conclusions for both parties. This was because the Chinese Government would not cede or lease any island for such purposes and the British Government did not wish to spend money on projects not under its direct control.\n\nThe second-best sites, all within the jurisdiction of Hong Kong, were considered to be Cape D'Aguilar, Green Island and Cape Collinson, as reported by the Harbour Master, H.G. Thomsett in March 1873. Lighthouses in these places would cover the eastern entrance and the western entrance to Hong Kong harbour. Eventually, this is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215562, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 339, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "289\n\nIn 1888 the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments reached agreement. Gap Rock Lighthouse would be built by the British and maintained by them. The island remained Chinese territory not to be used for any other purpose. On the Chinese part, the Kowloon Customs was to contribute $7,500 towards the initial cost of the light and $750 annually towards its maintenance.22 The agreement was not put into effect. Towards the close of the nineteenth century, however, the proposal for lighthouses at the two main approaches to Hong Kong, on Gap Rock and Waglan Island, was revived. The previous agreement was then implemented.\n\nIn 1891 a lighthouse was built on Gap Rock, at the south-western extremity of Lema and Kypong Islands. Lighting equipment was constructed in Sweden and the light was first shown in April 1892. Three years later the lantern was smashed by a severe typhoon. According to experts' opinions later the lighthouse should have been built on the northern part instead of the southern part of the rock. But to rebuild it would cost somewhere near $140,000. So, the original light continued to function usefully through forty years of typhoons until the Japanese invasion in 1941.\n\nGap Rock is in the form of two hillocks, about 80 to 100 feet high, and the gap between gave the place its name (in Chinese it is called Man Mei Chau, meaning the last island or Mosquito Tail Island). The lighthouse tower is nearly 50 feet high, and the light is thus about 142 feet above mean sea level. In heavy storms seas broke right over the lighthouse but it stood, as a tribute to its builders and a pointer to the developments which have marked the growth of the port of Hong Kong.23\n\nWaglan Lighthouse\n\nUnlike Gap Rock Lighthouse, Waglan Lighthouse has a different history. It was constructed by a Paris company for the Chinese Customs Light Department of the Imperial Maritime Customs in 1893. It started to operate on 9th May in the same year. It was run by the Chinese Maritime Customs from Shanghai. Following the lease of the New Territories by Britain, in 1898, it was transferred to the administration and control of the Hong Kong Government on 1st January 1901.\n\nWaglan was a First Order light of 45,000 candle-power burning", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215895, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "# Appendix I: A chronology of events concerning Devil's Peak and its vicinity\n\nDate\n\nEvent\n\nSource\n\nRemarks\n\n \n 1368-1643\n Lei Yue Mun classified by the Ming Dynasty as one of the 16 major sea passages and placed under naval patrol.\n Siu, 1997, p.24\n \n \n \n Circa 1646-1656\n Lei Man Wing, a supporter of a Ming Prince, occupied Devil's Peak and established his own \"customs post\" at Lei Yue Mun.\n Siu, 1997, p.24\n \n \n \n 1656\n Lee Man Wing surrendered to the Manchu Dynasty.\n Siu, 1997, p.25\n \n \n \n Circa 1661\n Cheng Sing King (Coxinga or Surname of the Royal Family) drove the Dutch out of Taiwan (Formosa), his general Cheng Kin settled at Lei Yue Mun.\n Siu, 1997, p.26 c.f. Leung 1980, pp.68-69\n \n \n \n Circa 1735\n Cheng Lin Cheng, the great grandson of Cheng Kin, a pirate, established his camp in Devil's Peak. The name Devil's Peak owed to the ferocity of Cheng.\n Empson, 1992, p.104 (Plate 1-19); p.106 (Plate 1-20)\n \n \n \n 1753\n Cheng Lin Cheong built a Tin Hau Temple along the coast as an observation post. This temple has been repaired several times since then and still exists.\n Empson, 1992, p.98 (Plate 1-14)\n \n \n \n 1819\n The name Devil's Peak appears in Hong Kong maps produced by James Wyld and Captain Belcher,\n Empson, 1992, p.128 (Plate 2-1)\n \n \n \n 1841\n The term \"Lei Yue Mun fort\" appears in a map to the Sun On Gazetteer, referred to as \"San On Country Directory\",\n Empson, 1992, p.112 (Plate 1-24)\n The location of the fort is uncertain as the map is not to scale and not at all accurate.\n \n \n 1845\n \n \n \n \n \n 1860\n The name Devil's Peak appears in the lease map for the Treaty of Peking 1860, by which Kowloon was ceded to Britain.\n \n \n \n\n127", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216098, "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": 397, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "331\n\nTram with an open-neck shirt and an off-white, wet-wash Saigon-linen suit. He had a necktie in his pocket to put on for meetings. He carried a Hong Kong (rattan) basket: no briefcase for him. One thing you did not do, in those days, was to mention the expiry of the lease and the hand back of the Territory to China in 1997, I did once, at a reception, and regretted it. You could hear a pin drop. It really was a 'borrowed place on borrowed time.'\n\nWhen I arrived conscription was still in force and every able-bodied British subject had to serve. If you were young, in your twenties, you usually joined the Regiment (the Volunteers). People like me, in my thirties, served in the Special Constabulary (in 1959 it became the Auxiliary Police). Those over 40 were drafted into Essential Services, such as air-raid warden duties. New recruits such as me, in the police European contingent, did three months basic training and 10 days at camp every year. At the latter the European contingent was grouped with the Portuguese and Eurasian contingent. There was a separate camp for Chinese. This was said to be largely for language reasons. Of course we all turned out during the five days of the 1956 riots. These were sparked when a junior civil servant pulled down a Nationalist flag, on the \"Double Tenth\" (10 October), from a Shek Kip Mei resettlement block in north Kowloon. The riots were very much Communists against Nationalists. Later, triads stepped in and took advantage of the situation.\n\nRoutinely, we Special Constables went on street patrol a couple of nights a month and raided opium dens and brothels. One of the interesting places we enjoyed going to was Circular Path, to the south of Queen's Road Central. With urban renewal this path has now disappeared. It contained, among other accommodation, a number of back-street workshops where reputedly stolen jade items and the like were \"re-worked.\"\n\n**\n\nI remember being on police patrol in Central, in April 1956, when we received news that the twice knighted, grand old man, Sir Robert Ho Tung, had passed away. He was 93, although for much of his life he did not enjoy good health. A Eurasian, he had \"gone the Chinese way.\" With his fabulous wealth he lived the life of a Chinese gentleman. It is sometimes said, 'All rivers which run into the China Sea turn salty.' In other words, all ethnic groups living in China get assimilated sooner or later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216127, "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": 426, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "360 \n\ndate was April 25, 1940, but his contemporary annotation of photographs puts the date as May 24.\n\nConditions were perfect and there was no sign of the Japanese fighters which he feared could attack his plane - painted in Chinese military colours. Although at one point he lost altitude badly after dismissing his tow, he soon found the thermals and soared to 5,700 feet and stayed aloft for four hours 44 minutes, an Asian record.\n\nHe writes: 'I see my embassy, tiny, great water reservoirs, the beginning of the magnificent Yangtse gorges, innumerable rice fields looking like contour lines on a relief map. A splendid landscape in miniature, the kind the Chinese love for their gardens.'\n\nHe notes at one point flying over the Tutuila 'where I used to go for a good curry.' This U.S. Yangtse patrol boat with a displacement of 395 tons was marooned at Chungking by the Japanese occupation of areas down-river like Hankow. The USS Tutuila was bombed by the Japanese in July 1941, the first U.S. Navy ship damaged by Axis powers in World War Two. It was decommissioned in January 1942 and handed over to the Chinese in March under Lend-Lease and renamed Mei Yuan. One can imagine that in wartime Chungking, Europeans could be assured of a decent meal aboard a U.S. patrol boat that was more or less a permanent fixture at the quayside.\n\nPictures show Louis beside the machine with an air force pilot who was possibly the one who towed him up, and a few others nearby. Afterwards, massive crowds have gathered around Louis's plane to celebrate the record-breaking flight. He was justifiably proud of his achievement and maintained his interest in aviation, flying between subsequent diplomatic posts in a succession of small private planes.\n\nLouis de San was transferred to Hong Kong in 1941; on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, he secured a berth on a freighter which took him and his wife to Ceylon and they passed the war in Africa. Louis de San held various diplomatic posts for Belgium, ending in Damascus in the 1970s. He died in 1995.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216238, "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": 537, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "471\n\n8 months of their occupation, and their view of their role here, and putting this into a satisfying chronological framework, while at the same time casting light on the internal politics and disputes within the Japanese administration. While not attempting an analysis in depth of the internal bureaucratic structures in place under the Japanese, the book in fact gives a great deal of information on this as well, incidentally showing why the Japanese administration was so grossly ineffective and inefficient in almost everything it undertook. It is also of great value in clarifying the involved and tangled politics among the various parties involved in the restoration of British rule - the Nationalist and Communist Chinese, the British, the Americans, and the Japanese. For the first time, a book puts flesh on the major figures of the Japanese period, especially Governor Isogai, so that they cease to appear as the cardboard cut-outs they have normally been seen as, and can be seen as real people. Much the same goes for the book's excellent delineation of the major Chinese elite figures and the role they played under the Japanese, especially Sir Robert Kotewall and Sir Shouson Chow. Also of the greatest value and interest is the careful discussion of the role and changing attitudes of the Chinese elite to the Japanese and the British (although this could, perhaps, have been still more nuanced than it is), and the detailed, and very satisfying, analysis of exactly how the period of the Japanese Occupation shaped and changed British attitudes to Hong Kong and its citizens in the post-War period. Fascinating stuff, and all of it immensely useful and valuable.\n\nThat is not, however, to say that the book is without flaws. Unfortunately, the first half of the first chapter, and most of the concluding Epilogue chapter, are caricatures. These sections cover Hong Kong in the 1930s, and after 1947. These give a sketch of the British in Hong Kong as lethargic, \"troglodytic,\" stupid, third-rate, racist, status-seeking, arrogant, selfish and self-centred - colonialists in the comic-book tradition, in other words - and assume that, having said so much, little else requires to be said. The account of Governor Grantham and his administration in particular cannot be said to be in any way a well-rounded portrait. Snow seems to have taken the \"Gin and Bridge all day\" description of 1930s Hong Kong at face value, which is a very great pity. There is, of course, some truth in this sketch of the British, as there is in all good caricature, but it is not the truth, but a distortion of the truth. For this reviewer, reading the first Chapter almost led me to give up reading the rest, fearing that the book would be throughout", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216365, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "73\n\nHester Jane Bredon (1866-1886) and the subsequent twenty-two years of living alone in Peking after Lady Hart moved back to enjoy life in London, we may surmise that Hart's years of liaison with Ayaou (roughly 1857-1865) gave him his fill of romance, including both his satisfactions and its limitations. For whatever reason, after that his need for feminine companionship declined as he steadily and inexorably became more enamoured of managing the Chinese Imperial Maritime Custom Service.\n\nThis point can be proved by what Hart says in his diary entry for 23 July 1864:\n\nMerely, I presume, that I have gotten through the \"love-fever, 20@30, term of life, and that for the future something other than woman will chiefly attract me. (Smith, Fairbank, Bruner 1991: 384)\n\nHart, of course, did not want to embarrass his family by confessing to a long relationship with Ayaou, a relationship that affected his life in so many ways, including his first experience of fatherhood. Thus, in Declaration 1 and 2 he attempted to reduce the extent of his relationship with Ayaou. He even covered up the year when his third child by Ayaou was born so that the duration of his sexual relationship with Ayaou was made even shorter. (We will give a more detailed analysis of this issue later in the paper.)\n\nHart also attempted to reduce the extent of his relationship with his children by Ayaou. In Declaration 2 he stated: \"To the best of my recollection and belief I have seen Anna twice or three times only and Herbert once only. This was in China. I have never seen Arthur.\" It might be true that, as suggested before, Hart never had a chance to see his youngest son Arthur, as his intimate relationship with Ayaou might have ceased before the boy was born. However, it seems unlikely that he saw Anna \"twice or three times only and Herbert once only\". It was fatherhood that made Hart cease his relationship with his new native partner Ayi and resume his relationship with Ayaou. If he had not had both enjoyment with and responsibility for his children by Ayaou, particularly the girl Anna, he would have already abandoned Ayaou in 1858. It has been argued that (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 232) Hart “was a man of conscience and in later life affectionate, almost doting, toward little girls and young women. One can imagine how his baby", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216369, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "77\n\n1863. However, $30 was still a lot of money at that time. If Hart had completely ceased his sexual relationship with Ayaou and never resumed it after 1863, it would not seem to be necessary for him to continue to pay Ayaou a monthly sum of $30 until 1866. Some may argue that Hart paid Ayaou the money not just to keep her, but also to contribute to the upbringing of their children; however, the words Hart uses in his statement do not give us any indication of this. He states that \"she continued to be kept i.e. paid ($30 a month) by me till I went home on leave in 1866 (Declaration 1)\"; it appears to refer to female companionship.\n\nIt may also be argued that in his diary entries between 1864 and 1866, there is no mention of his having resumed his sexual relationship with Ayaou, and if he had, he would have recorded it as he did in the missing volumes of his earlier diaries. Hart did tidy up his diaries after he was asked by reporter Hosea B. Morse for permission to see them in connection with a proposed biography in 1902, and he also left two substantial gaps in the earlier diaries. However, this fact does not necessarily mean that Hart \"was forced to destroy\" some of his earlier diaries, as has been suggested (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 150-1). Hart actually left half of Volume 2 with empty pages and almost the same again with Volume 3; these form the two gaps in his diaries. This allows for the possibility that Hart simply did not write anything between 29 July 1855 and 20 March 1858, nor between 6 December 1858 and 9 May 1863. Hart himself states on the flyleaf of Volume 4 “Journals from 6 Dec. 1858 @ [to] May 1863 lost, probably in the Boxer siege 1900\", and this may be deliberately misleading on his part when one considers the empty pages. It is more likely that during his intimate involvement with Chinese women, more particularly with Ayaou, he simply stopped writing in his diary. This gives us an indication that Hart avoided mention of his intimate relationship in any depth in his diaries.\n\nHart's abstinence from womanising and his political ambition\n\nIt should be noted that Hart decided to cease his sexual relationship with Ayaou around early summer 1863—the exact time, if it is not simply a coincidence, when he knew almost for certain that he would be appointed as L.G. Hart was formally appointed as L.G. of the CIMC", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]