[
    {
        "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": 205414,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 176,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n169\n\nNOTES\n\nI am most grateful to Mr. Yuen Chun-fang, Liaison Officer, Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for help with the interviews which yielded part of the information given above.\n\n1 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, 1845 (London, W. Clowes & Sons, for H.M.S.O., 1846) p. 147 and the same for 1846, p. 230.\n\n2 G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong, Birth Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937) p. 208, quoting from the Canton Press, February 1842.\n\n3 Sayer, p. 91.\n\n4 Sayer, p. 30.\n\n5 A. R. Johnston (H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade) \"Note on the Island of Hong Kong\" first published in the London Geographical Journal Vol. XIV, and reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846.\n\n6 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 28 March 1857 p. 4, Table No. 4.\n\n7 The Last Year in China......by a Field Officer actually employed in that Country. 2nd edition (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843) p. 75.\n\n8 K. S. MacKenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London, R. Bentley, 1842) p. 160.\n\n9 See Hong Kong Administrative Reports for 1934, 1935 and 1936 at pp. Q.86, Q.84 and Q.81 respectively.\n\n10 This information, like any other for which no specific source is quoted, comes from Mr. CHOW Chik-san of Kau Wai, aged 77 and Madam CHAN CHOW Ping of San Wai, aged 81.\n\n11 Rev. W. Lobscheidt, A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China Mail office, 1859).\n\n12 See Summary of Report of Squatters Commission 1891-1906, pp. 97-103.\n\nThis volume of MSS. is kept in the Library, Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong.\n\n13 For accounts of Cantonese and Hakka see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong etc., Kelly and Walsh Ltd., 4th edition, 1903) pp. 202, 211 and 323-326.\n\n14 LO Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) pp. 80-88. This is the English translation of the text, but not the notes, of their work published in Hong Kong in 1959.\n\n15 This information is taken from the accounts given at p. 5 of Prof. Woo Sing-lim's The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Co., 26th year of the Chinese Republic, 1937) published in Chinese and English and at pp. 578-579, under the name CHOW Cheong-ling, of Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, published in London, Shanghai etc. by The Globe Encyclopedia Company, 1917.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205963,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 43,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "38 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nmutual incomprehension of Chinese and Europeans. Only a few missionaries had a working knowledge of the Chinese dialects spoken in Hong Kong; but missionary effort went mainly into the evangelisation, conversion and education of the Chinese, and most missionaries, many of whom were not British, were antipathetic to the Colonial Government, whose raison d'être in their view, judging by the contents of the contemporary publication The Friend of China, was to protect the opium interests of the great European hongs. Eitel claims there was in 1854, apart from the missionaries, 'not a man left in Hong Kong thoroughly acquainted with both the written and spoken languages of China'; and in 1859 there were said to be only three men in government service, (excepting Lobschied, the Inspector of Schools) who had some knowledge of Cantonese; but only one, the Interpreter of the Supreme Court, 'was at all acquainted with the written language and that imperfectly'. The Chinese could not bridge the gap either: there were few educated Chinese and fewer who could understand English. In 1867, an editorialist in the China Mail averred that 'we can safely assert that the average knowledge possessed by the compradore class in Hong Kong is almost entirely useless in any situation of official responsibility'.8 \n\nAbove all else Hong Kong needed a group of officials with competence in spoken and written Chinese, especially the former; and, although this was less understood at the time, it lacked officials with an understanding of the structure of Chinese society (of what we would call today the social anthropology of the Chinese). Sir Hercules argued, in defence of his scheme, that it was quite impossible to conduct the government of 120,000 Chinese without proper interpreters who knew their language; but Eitel probably comes closer to the nub of the matter with his declaration: “English education among the Chinese people of the Colony, and Chinese knowledge among the English officials of Hong Kong are the two factors upon which the success of the general scheme of English colonial policy to a great extent depends....\" Communication with the Chinese was needed not merely for social and cultural contacts but for reasons of social control over a Chinese lumpenproletariat, without a stake in the Colony. \n\nThe scheme initially propounded by Sir Hercules to the Hong Kong Legislative Council on 23 March 1861 was designed primarily to establish a staff of interpreters, to be used in the courts,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206108,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 188,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n183\n\n24TH MAY, 1969\n\nVISIT TO OLD SHAU KEI WAN\n\nThe programme notes prepared for the visit are reproduced below.\n\nEd.\n\nThis visit is to an area soon to experience redevelopment. Within a few years, extensive reclamation and clearance of squatter structures will transform the district. Dirty and non-descript, nonetheless it has interesting relics and associations that are worthy of attention.\n\nShau Kei Wan, the name means \"Rice Basket Bay\", clearly so named because of its shape, is an old settlement probably dating back to centuries before the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. Its population was given as 1,200 persons in the first Hong Kong census of May, 1841. Then as now, the population were farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, scattered in various settlements round the shores of the bay, named by the British \"Aldrich Bay\" after a military engineer officer who served in Hong Kong in those first years.\n\nShau Kei Wan has for long been known locally as the 'Bay of Hungry Men'. Writing as long ago as 1858, the Rev. W. Lobscheid noted:\n\n\"This village is called by the natives Ngo-yan-wan (the harbour of the starving men). They relate that, about 150 years ago, a few junks were driven into this harbour by a hurricane. The weather continuing very rough for several days, and being in want of provisions, they went on shore in order to purchase some rice and other necessaries. But nothing could be obtained, and the unfortunate men had to leave almost in a starving condition. From that time, they called the place the harbour of the starving men', which appellation it bears up to this moment.\"\n\n[From A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong, etc. Hong Kong, Printed at the \"China Mail\" Office, MDCCCLIX p. 38.]\n\nIn another version of the same story, given in a Chinese publication in 1947, the name is ascribed to the fact that Shau Kei Wan was a base for lawless pirates, the \"hungry people\". This account said that because of the geographical advantages",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206112,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 192,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n187 \n\nReturning to our starting point we go for tea to the Tsung Tsin School. Since the First World War under wholly Chinese management, this is the successor of the Basel Mission, a body of German Protestant missionaries who began work in China in 1847, and worked almost entirely among the Hakka population. The Basel Mission began their work at Shau Kei Wan early on, about 1860. A chapel was built there. It was clearly not a very large structure; in the 1872 Blue Book it is reported as being capable of seating 50 persons with a general attendance of 25; and the much larger building you can see today dates from 1933. There was also a Basel school which, according to official records, gave free education to 29 local boys in 1891. Today the Mission's school accommodates 1,500 children in morning and afternoon sessions. \n\nFinally, another word from Lobscheid about the Shau Kei Wan of his day. After observing that \"the inhabitants are, as in all places where the boat population preponderates, very superstitious\", he continues: \n\n\"During last summer [1856 or 1857] this village was severely visited by the cholera, which carried off many a victim. In such times the people take recourse to very foolish ceremonies, in order to expel the plague devils who appeared to be very busy in this 'harbour of the starving men.' When at last the epidemic ceased raging, they heard of the severe hurricane which had destroyed the shipping at Namoa. A weather prophet took advantage of the alarm, which this catastrophe created in the minds of the people, and boldly predicted a similar and more vehement visitation of Shau-ki-wan, which was to take place on a certain day between 9 and 11 a.m. I was unfortunate enough to visit Shau-ki-wan on that ominous day, and happened to arrive at the time when the storm, which was said should destroy all the residences and shipping, and kill all men and beasts, was tremblingly expected. Seeing the people looking rather strangely, and finding most of the doors shut, and the inhabitants dressed in better costume than they were accustomed, I inquired into the reason of this singular state. My assistant then told me, that the people were in great dread of a storm; that they had been worshipping the Queen of Heaven all the previous night, and that there were few who expected to survive the awful visitation of heaven.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207720,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 108,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n93\n\nsuccessful in negotiating a Reciprocity Treaty effective in 1876. This gave Hawaii and the United States duty-free trade with each other. For Hawaii, it meant that sugar and rice, the principal agricultural products exported to America in that period, brought about an era of prosperity to the islands.\n\nHawaii, since its chance discovery by the English explorer, Capt. James Cook, in 1778 in his search for a Northwest passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, advanced rapidly from a primitive, feudal state into a stable monarchy under Anglo-American tutelage. Beginning with King Kamehameha I in 1795, King Kalakaua was the seventh ruler of this tiny kingdom in the central Pacific Ocean, which is over 2,000 miles from San Francisco and 5,000 miles from Hong Kong. By 1898, Hawaii was annexed as a United States territory until 1959 when Hawaii became the fiftieth state of the American Union.\n\nEarly relations between China and Hawaii started soon after Capt. Cook's discovery in 1778. American and European trading vessels passed by Hawaii on their way to the Pearl River estuary. The sandalwood trade from Hawaii to China flourished from 1790-1840. To the Chinese in the Canton-Macao area, the Hawaiian Islands became known as Tan Heung Shan #2 or Sandalwood Mountains.\n\nBy the time of King Kalakaua's reign, the Pearl River delta area furnished the principal labor supply for Hawaii's agricultural development and Hong Kong had become the principal port of departure. In 1864, the Hawaiian government started to take an active part by establishing a Bureau of Immigration. The ending of the American Civil War (1861-1865) affected the sugar market favorably for Hawaii. Dr William Hillebrand, newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration, went to Hong Kong and other areas in the Far East in 1865 in search for labor suitable to Hawaii's burgeoning sugar plantations. With the help of the Reverend Wilhelm Lobscheid and the Chinese emigration agency, Wo Hang *, Hillebrand carefully selected 521 Chinese laborers, including ninety-five women and thirteen children,\n\nThey left Hong Kong in two single-deck ships, the Alberto and Roscote, arriving in Honolulu on September 23 and October 12, 1865.2 Chinese labor, both under contract or as free immigrants, contributed greatly to the agricultural economy of Hawaii.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213207,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 29,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "8\n\n00\n\nuntil the outbreak of war in 1914. During the period when the congregation met in the Union Church Hall, the community also conducted a school there. The group meeting there was called the Deutsche Kirchen und Schulegemeinde (Rev. Albert Plag, \"Bethesda and the Berliner Frauenverein Für China”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1969, v. 9: 149-150, Carl T. Smith, “The German Congregation in Hong Kong until 1914\", ibid, 1975. v. 15: 292-295).\n\nIn the 1896/97 the Hildesheim Mission opened the Ebenezer Home for the Blind. There were two homes, one on Hong Kong Island and one in Kowloon. During the First World War they were placed under the supervision of the Church Missionary Society, though the Sisters in charge were allowed to continue to care for the children. Among the first Germans to return to Hong Kong after the end of the war were several deaconesses of the Hildesheim Society. The Ebenezer Home and School for the Blind is now located on Pokfulam Road.\n\nTwo German missionaries became Inspectors of Schools in Hong Kong. Rev. Wilhelm Lobscheid was sent to China in 1848 by the Rhenish Missionary Society, but in 1857 he changed his allegiance to the British-based Chinese Evangelization Society, yet another of the groups inspired by Gutzlaff. He was Inspector of Schools in Hong Kong from 1855 to 1859. He published in 1859 a valuable historical account entitled A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education, and the Government Schools of Hong Kong; with remarks on the history and religious notions of the inhabitants of this island. From 1861 to 1866 he acted as an emigration agent, recruiting labour for British colonies in the West Indies. His labours in this endeavour again produced a book which contains much of interest as its title suggests, Chinese Emigration to the West Indies: A Trip through British Guiana undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the Chinese who have emigrated under Government Contract With Supplementary Papers Relating to Contract Labour and the Slave Trade.\n\nAnother German, Rev. Ernest J. Eitel was Inspector of Schools from 1878 to 1896. He was influential in setting policies for the development of education in Hong Kong. He was sent to China in 1862 by the Basel Missionary Society. Three years later he transferred to the London Missionary Society. He married Miss Eaton, an agent of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. She was head-mistress of the Diocesan School for Girls. Mr. Eitel became a naturalised British",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214411,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 269,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "235\n\nrecently went to Siam, where he successfully concluded a trade treaty, and was now preparing for publication an account of the Siamese kingdom. His son has assembled a fine collection of insects of the local area and continues to add to it. Dr. Harland has undertaken to compile a complete fauna of Hong Kong, while Dr. Lorraine has a large collection of shells, gathered by him during his travels in America and India. Mr. Wade, the Chinese Secretary, has an impressive Chinese library and is involved in the study of the history of the reigning Chinese dynasty and informed me of a plan he had to compile a Chinese dictionary; only this plan is so immense, that one man would hardly be able to realize it. Well, that is all I know about the learned pursuits of certain individuals, living in Hong Kong. Much, undoubtedly, is undertaken in the privacy of a study and will only become known on completion. I have not said anything of the labours of missionaries: but they, on the whole, don't like to talk about their affairs. I only know, that of those living in Hong Kong many intensively study the Chinese language, not only themselves but their wives too, and I think that one can expect finer seedlings from the preaching of the latter by reason of the greater receptivity of the female nature.\n\nAs for literary works, apart from several translations of holy books, every year treatises appear in Chinese and not only theological treatises, but others, which reveal to the Chinese much useful European knowledge and the latest inventions. Perhaps some of these treatises came from the pen of one of the Hong Kong missionaries. One of them, Mr. LOBSCHEID, is constantly within the Chinese border, about fifteen miles from Hong Kong, where he is engaged in practising medicine, and to those that come to him for cures from their bodily ills, he doesn't fail to point out their spiritual infirmities as well, and the only way to rid themselves of them. I had already met him in Japan, when he was on the American ship Pageton, and now saw him again in Hong Kong, where he had come for a short time. I received from him as a gift the Japanese translation of several books of the New Testament, done by whom I don't know, but as far as I do know, not quite comprehensible to the Japanese. And so, hardly had the Japanese opened a number of their ports to foreigners before the missionaries had prepared the most essential material for their conversion. One cannot demand perfection at the first attempt: it is sufficient to make some sort of inroad; in time it will become more and more even, and improved.\n\nTo the charitable organizations of the town belong the hospital",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214876,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 291,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "261\n\nA TORN SCRAP OF PAPER: RELATING TO A MONEY LOAN ASSOCIATION, SMALL LOANS, OR WHAT?\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThe torn scrap of paper shown at Plate 1 was found between the leaves of a Chinese book bought some time ago from a second-hand dealer in Hong Kong.\n\nMeasuring only 3\" by 2\", it was probably incomplete, yet someone had kept it as a record.\n\nIt contained seven names and seven amounts, but one of the names had been scored out.\n\nReading from the right, a translation of the characters and amounts, as given in the Cantonese rendering which I believe to be appropriate, runs as follows:\n\nYip Tung 10 cents; Yeung Tai 7 cents; Ah Yee 8 cents; Seng Ho 13 cents; Seng Chan 16 cents; Name crossed out 7 cents.\n\nThe currency being used, singly or in combination, for the accounts was the sin, a one-cent coin, and the ho, a ten-cent coin. The first can be found in Rev. W. Lobscheid's An English and Chinese Dictionary, revised and enlarged Japanese edition, Tokio, J. Fujimoto, 16th year of Meiji [1884], p. 220. The second appears on p. 162 of Ernest John Eitel's A Chinese Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect (London, Trubner & Co. and Hongkong, Lane, Crawford & Co., 1877) p. 162. Lobscheid's dictionary was originally published in Hong Kong in 1868, but to date, this author has never seen a copy of the original edition.\n\nFor the sake of clarity, the renderings made in translation are given uniformly in cents, instead of variously in the two different units used in the original.\n\nI believe these coins were Hong Kong currency, but the date of their introduction is not known to me. However, it could not have",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214877,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 292,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "262\n\nbeen later than 1868, when Rev. Lobscheid first published his dictionary.\n\nThe paper is not modern, of indifferent quality and badly stained, and Chinese ink and a brush were used to write the record. These facts, together with the currency in use, provide some indication of the period at which the paper was written. Most likely, it was the late 19th or early 20th century.\n\nA Money Loan Association?\n\nWhat can one make of it? I like to think that these men were members of a money loan association. This involved revolving a small sum among themselves, and paying differing amounts of interest, depending upon the order in which they agreed to take the loan, those waiting longer paying less by way of interest. If this were the case, the person drawing up the list and crossing off one name on it, was most likely the organizer.\n\nThe fact that those on the list are a mixed bunch strengthens this supposition. Two of them are listed only by family name, namely \"Sang Chan\" and \"Sang Ho\": that is a Mr. Chan and a Mr. Ho. The two men may be presumed to have been casual acquaintances of the organizer or of the man who kept the record, or else strangers introduced by other persons in the group. By contrast, \"Ah Yee\" was clearly well known to either man, this being a familiar form of address. So, too, were Yeung and Yip, whose family and personal names are both set down. The person whose name was removed from the list appears also to have been a friend or relative, as personal names only are given.\n\nIt is known that the usual number of persons joining together in this way was around twelve, each in turn to take a loan, month by month, during the lunar year. This period was considered to be the most practical by the organizers of these ephemeral bodies, since it restricted time, capital and interest to what they hoped were realistic levels. Thus it is likely that more persons were involved than those listed, and that this torn fragment may provide the names of those who had yet to receive their loans, with the amounts of principal and interest due.\n\nThe variations in the sums listed are explained by the amount of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]