[ { "id": 204260, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 28, "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\n25\n\nMunia is a fairly common resident, especially in the New Territories, but it is hard to say how successful it is at nesting, for it tends to build several nests before eventually raising a brood. The Chestnut Munia, a handsome black and chestnut bird, is often found in quite large flocks in Mai Po marshes in autumn and some may be seen all the year round there, but it has never yet nested as far as we know,\n\nThe above is a very brief summary of birds that are likely to be seen in Hong Kong during the year. If readers would like to know more about them, they might first of all join the Hong Kong Bird-Watching Society. By doing so, they can get into contact with its fifty or so members, and will be able to join them on frequent expeditions to various parts of the Colony. They will also receive a copy of the Society's Annual Report and will be able to borrow books from its increasingly important and comprehensive bird library. Unfortunately the local bird-books, such as they are, are out-of-print and the ones covering neighbouring countries are expensive, especially if one considers how few of Hong Kong's birds each one covers. But three books in particular may be recommended in that between them they have pictures and notes on about 275 of our birds, besides unillustrated notes on a few more.\n\nThese are:\n\nR. T. Peterson, G. Mountfort and A. D. Hollom. Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin, 1954\n\nK. Kobayashi. Birds of Japan. Osaka, Hoikushi, 1956\n\nB. E. Smythies. Birds of Burma. London, Oliver and Boyd, 1940\n\nAll these and many more are available from the Society's library. A new 'Check-list of the Birds of Hong Kong' is due for publication later in 1960 and will contain notes on the status and distribution in the Colony of every species so far recorded here.\n\nDuring the last three years or so, members of the Bird-Watching Society have noted several problems of bird-life in Hong Kong, which, though not particularly difficult, are puzzling because of conflicting or incomplete evidence. I should like to end this article with a few examples, so that bird-watchers who feel so inclined can go out armed with an objective.\n\n(a) Does the Peregrine nest in Hong Kong? It may be seen occasionally all the year round. If so, where? Lion Rock, Sharp Peak or perhaps Tai Tan Yang are possibilities.\n\n(b) What are the curious little rails or crakes which are flushed every autumn by snipe-shooters in the marshes? One is not allowed to shoot them and they are only seen briefly in flight,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204599, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n69\n\nhad now come for Dr. Rennie to leave Peking, since he had been appointed Senior Medical Officer of the British Forces. He left in April 1862, and one of the last pen-pictures he gives us in his diary is of a Mrs. Wright, a milliner at Shanghai, whom he met on the road between Peking and Tungchow, riding in a cart with a friend, Mrs. Innocent, the wife of a missionary, these two good ladies being on their way to the Legation to stay with the house-keeper, Mrs. Reynolds, since the three had been old friends in Shanghai.\n\nOnly a few years later the Legation was in disrepair. A. B. Freeman-Mitford, who was a member of the Legation staff from 1865 to 1866, described it as it appeared to him in June 1865.\n\nOur Legation is situated in the southern part of the Tartar city. We occupy a most picturesque palace called the Liang Kung Fu, or Palace of the Duke of Liang, which, like all Chinese buildings of importance, covers an immense space of ground. There are courtyards upon courtyards, huge empty buildings with red pillars, used as covered courts, state approaches guarded by two great marble lions, and a number of houses with only ground floor, each of us inhabiting one to himself. When the Legation first came to live here the whole place was put into repair, and redecorated in the Chinese fashion with fluted roofs of many colours, carved woodwork, kylins of stone and pottery, and all the thousand and one fancies with which the Chinese cover their buildings. Unfortunately the repairs were badly executed, and nothing further has been done to keep matters straight, so the Legation, which ought to be as pretty as possible, is really a disgrace to us. The gardens are a wilderness, the paving of the courts is broken, the walls are tumbling down, and the beautiful place is going to rack and ruin. In this climate of extreme heat and cold a stitch in time saves ninety-nine. Fancy a residence in the heart of a great and populous city where foxes, scorpions, polecats, weasels, magpies, and other creatures that one expects to find in the wild country, abound. That will give you an idea of how space is wasted in Peking.\n\n12 A. B. Freeman-Mitford. The Attaché at Peking (London, 1900), 66-7. The author, who later became the first Baron Redesdale, spent the years 1866-70 as a member of the British Legation in Japan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207785, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "158\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nTABLE IX\n\nSpares & Equipment for Chevrolet Charcoal Truck No. 21 1944/45 On 500 Km. Runs\n\nTruck No. 21. List of Tools Spares and Equipment: 23:3:45\n\n \n Truck Equipment\n \n \n \n 1 Pair wheel chains\n 1 Tow Chain\n \n \n 18 charcoal sacks\n 5 new filter bags\n \n \n Truck Spares\n \n \n \n 1 coil lock\n 1 ignition switch cable key and\n \n \n 1 set manifold gaskets\n 14 used filter bags\n \n \n 1 clutch plate (used)\n 5 lengths rope\n \n \n 1 cylinder head gasket\n 1 scoop\n \n \n 1 tin hot patches\n 1 funnel\n \n \n 1 tin rubber solution\n 1 water can\n \n \n 1 box carburettor parts\n 1 5 gal. engine oil tin\n \n \n 1 tyre repair outfit\n 1 2 gal. gear oil tin\n \n \n 2 tins radiator cement\n 1 1 gal. gear oil tin\n \n \n 10 ft. 10 amp electric wire\n 1 1 qt. tin brake fluid\n \n \n 10 sq. in. 0.002 shim metal\n 1 1 qt. tin paraffin\n \n \n 1 fuel pump repair kit\n 1 1 qt. tin old engine oil\n \n \n 2 front wheel grease retainers\n 1 bottle distilled water\n \n \n 1 distributor top\n 1 front wheel inner bearing\n \n \n 1 front wheel outer bearing\n 3 universal needle bearing assemblies\n \n \n 1 headlamp bulb\n 2 exhaust pipe gaskets\n \n \n 1 set new ignition points\n 2 sets old ignition points\n \n \n 6 old spark plugs\n 1 rotor arm\n \n \n 1 condenser\n 2 fuses\n \n \n Truck Tools\n \n \n \n 1 sentinel jack plus handle\n 1 screw jack plus handle\n \n \n 1 blower handle\n 1 chev. tyre lever\n \n \n 1 plug lead\n 2 spring tyre levers\n \n \n 1 wheel wrench\n 1 starting handle\n \n \n 1 3 lb. hammer\n 1 chev grease gun\n \n \n 1 blower handle\n 2 old fan belts\n \n \n 1 new fan belt\n 1 '41 stub axle plus king pin\n \n \n 1 compressed air line\n 2 rocker arms\n \n \n 1 '39 stub axle\n 1 each front and rear wheel studs\n \n \n 1 bar white metal solder\n 1 blower belt (gasogene)\n \n \n 1 each master cyl. front and rear brake cups.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209500, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "135\n\n1911.40 After the First World War, the number had risen to over 2,000. (These figures do not include several thousand seamen, mostly firemen, stokers and stewards, without permanent domicile). At the beginning of the century, it is claimed, Chinese tended to ‘avoid Scotland and Wales', but were strongly attracted to London, especially Limehouse. With such small numbers present in Britain, it seems certain British judges and lawyers rarely came in contact with Chinese, only very occasionally perhaps in certain Liverpool or London courts; but never, one surmises, in normal social intercourse. In the 1920s, then, the Chinese in Britain were still a mysterious, but minute, social entity, habitually caricatured in the press and by novelists as 'vellee' strange people who spoke a particularly difficult and dissonant language and wrote, as Dr. Johnson noted, a script that was perversely pictorial to alphabet-lovers. Even professors of Chinese, sinologues and sinologists, were regarded at that time with as much wry amusement as were Assyriologists or Egyptologists, seekers after equally rarefied knowledge of no great practical importance.\n\n47\n\nThe first mass movement of Chinese to the outside world occurred in the nineteenth century. It was mostly 'coolie emigration', to use Campbell's descriptive term, the drift of mainly uneducated and relatively unskilled, though hard-working, Chinese to places where opportunities appeared to be brighter than in the homeland (a territory then much wracked by rebellion, foreign wars, famine and other afflictions). Lock Ah Tam, as mentioned above, is representative of the first wave, an emigrant who did well in his adopted country. As China was forced reluctantly into the modern world and into normal diplomatic relations with foreign powers, a different type of Chinese was becoming known abroad — the educated Chinese, a member of the 'Mandarin class', as Europeans were wont to describe him. In 1876 Kuo Sung-tao was appointed as the first Chinese minister in England.18 A Legation was then established in London, in 1877, with a normal complement of officials and secretaries. Chinese diplomatic staff became a common sight in Whitehall although, until the 1911 Revolution, most wore traditional Chinese attire and sported the queue. (After 1911, they took to frock-coat and top-hat and adopted European hair-styles).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "6\n\nfrequently in consultation with rural committees and village representatives.\" For example, during the year 1956-57, of 138 land disputes which the District Officers dealt with, 30 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 92 were settled out of court and 16 were decided in court.” And in the following year, of 112 land disputes, 19 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 70 were settled out of court and 23 were decided in court. The method of disposal of one such case is recounted in the District Commissioner's report for the year 1948-49:\n\n\"For the first time since 1913 a land dispute, which had dragged on for nearly a year, was resolved when one of the parties satisfied the District Officer Taipo of his good faith by decapitating a cock in a local temple, a supreme test of honesty. As the dispute was not formally heard under Part II of the Ordinance, the legality of this expedient will fortunately not be subject to review by a Judge.\n\n1920\n\nThirdly, the Full Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to entertain a further appeal from the decision of a judge of the Supreme Court under section 23 of the New Territories Regulation Ordinance, 1910,\n\nThere are, however, a further eight unreported cases of the Supreme Court sitting in its appellate jurisdiction from decisions of the land officer in land cases arising in the New Territories. The cases all date to the first post-war decennium until 1956. The pre-war records of the Supreme Court were destroyed during the Japanese occupation 1941-45; and since 1956 there has been no appellate proceeding of this type.\n\nWithout proof by evidence in court, it would clearly be dangerous to rely upon works describing customary law obtaining generally or in certain areas of China in the past, as information as to customary law obtaining in the New Territories for Chinese customary law \"is subject to divergencies not only from Province to Province but sometimes from clan to clan in the same neighbourhood.\" Such books may have some comparative value. It is, however, to be regretted that it is difficult in Hong Kong today to trace even one copy of those works written in English to which reference was made by the 1948 Committee.*2\n\nApart, then, from the Report of that Committee, which covers the wider field of Chinese customary law generally obtaining in Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 360, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "310\n\n31 Under such conditions temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius.\n\n32 Gap Rock is sometimes known as Daam Gon Shan, in Cantonese, meaning \"Carrying Pole Hill,\"\n\n33 Besides Waglan Island, lighthouse keepers on Green Island (who were also Government Marine Department Staff) carried out weather observations and passed information on to the Royal Observatory Office at Kai Tak Airport.\n\n34 When the author visited Waglan, in 1999, all the buildings, including keepers' and soldiers' quarters and the fog-horn building, were still there although they were generally dilapidated.\n\n35 Author interviewed Tam Cheong-wai, then Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, Government Marine Department, 22 February 1999. Tam has since retired.\n\n37\n\nIX\n\n10\n\nB.P. stands for \"Bailey Pegs\" the maker's name.\n\nFare was not spartan if compared to that given to British soldiers during World War Two when, the author recalls, on active service \"iron rations\" sometimes consisted of a tin of bully beef and a packet of \"hard tack\" (army biscuits) for each soldier.\n\nAuthor's interview with Lai Tak-wah, Government Marine Department, 12 February 1999.\n\n38 Sometimes known as the \"Rose of China.\"\n\n39 A number of rocks in Hong Kong are imagined as resembling animals, birds and other objects. There are Lion Rock, Amah Rock and Lovers' Rock (\"Marriage Fate Rock\"). The last is along Bowen Path and is supposed to symbolise an erect phallus.\n\n40 The author recalls in Britain, between the two World Wars, that there were still a number of pictures of Grace Darling hanging in homes showing her rowing a lifeboat in a storm.\n\n42 The notification of marriage appeared in the South China Morning Post in August 1935.\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215879, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 178, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "111\n\n(a) a satellite pentagonal pillbox (shown in a government 1:600 survey plan of 1963 but not in any 1:1000 plan); and\n\n(b) the inscription “REN 30th Coy 1914\", first reported by Dr. Solomon Bard.\n\nFrom old aerial photos and survey plan, an earth mound that looks like a double circular earth gun revetment for a heavy 75mm or 105mm AA gun (United States War Department 1944: pp. 110-116) could be found along the watershed to the northwest of the redoubt. It was to the southeast of the ruins of a bunker, which has been incorporated into the Chinese Permanent Cemetery. This revetment-like earth structure was destroyed when the Cemetery was built. The revetment was huge and was almost as large as the 9.2 gun emplacement in Gough Battery. The slopes below the redoubt have several tunnels, probably also of Japanese occupation origin. One is found above the steps of the Lord Wilson Trail leading to the Chinese Cemetery and another near the ruins of a bunker below the northern rock face of Devil's Peak. We leave the nature of the circular earth mound and the tunnels to experts on military engineering.\n\nThe 196m site\n\nFurther down the ridge, at 196m above the mean Principal Datum (mPD), lies the '196m site.' The site is connected with the redoubt by a firing trench built of stones, which is full of dense undergrowth.\n\nThis levelled site is small in size with the ruins of a concrete structure (approximately 40 square metres on plan) that is believed to be an observation post or machine gun emplacement that covers both the redoubt and Gough Battery. Only lower parts of some of the wall structures have remained on site. But apparently, there is no immediate danger to visitors. An area bigger than the 196m site itself uphill has been formed and developed into a plant nursery, probably by morning hikers. Such unauthorised site formation and planting work has not only created visual blight, but has also accelerated the soil erosion process by removing the top soil and the natural vegetation (Figure 6).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]