[ { "id": 212233, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "152\n\nnot do for a house to be very isolated, or it would be continually attacked by robbers. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is a fine building, and also the Governor's house. Just behind the College are some fine buildings.\n\nAnd now, after a glance at the island, I will go on to describe the inhabitants. Of course they are mostly Chinese; next come English, Parsees, Portuguese, Americans, Germans, French, and Arabs. Spaniards might also be mentioned. The Chinese are the working part of the population. Generally they are industrious and active. The lower classes however are dirty and degraded. The middle class are generally well informed and intellectual. Some hold very important situations. One striking feature in Chinese character is their don't care sort of feeling. If they can get out of doing anything they will, unless they see a chance of being well paid for it. Anything they do not want to understand, they pretend great ignorance of. In fact unless money is in the way, one would take them for a race of idiots. Never can you tell if they are pleased or angry. They are the most cold-hearted race that can be imagined. The men agree well together; never do I hear any quarrelling among them. They do not take wine or beer, and a drunken Chinese is as uncommon a thing here as a really honest one. One needs be very sharp to deal with them.\n\nI went to buy some earthenware, and it was as much as I could do to keep the fellows civil. A crowd always collects in a shop when they see an Englishman. I should have lost my watch, purse and umbrella twenty times over if I had not kept my eyes open. As pickpockets they beat London all to nothing. I had to keep my eye on the whole lot of them. They will even cut off the tail of one's coat and quietly walk off with it; and a few coat tails makes them a suit of clothes.\" One has to be all bluster, and to keep a walking stick or umbrella continually in motion, to keep pace with them. I being a stranger, perhaps they wanted to try my patience over what I was buying. It seems a favour for them to let you buy of them. In fact they never speak of the English but as fan-kwai, i.e. foreign devils. They are very hypocritical. There is no knowing their thoughts or intentions. In fact a Chinaman in Hongkong is quite a riddle.\n\nThey generally dress in white. All wear a sort of coat, and very full knee breeches and gaiters. Their shoes always look very neat, although the soles are above an inch thick. They are slippers in appearance rather than shoes. They never wear a hat except when they wish to keep off the sun, when they use one as big as an umbrella. A Chinaman ordinarily dressed, with his long pig-tail hanging down behind, does not look so bad after one is used to it. Some of the wealthy ones stalk about in the evening with all the dignity imaginable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212245, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "164\n\nswing him about. He is a tall fellow, and when well rigged up, as he is when he attends on me, he does not cut a bad figure. He never was a personal servant before, and in fact never was with Europeans before. He consequently regarded me with almost as much amazement as I did him. He must have had queer ideas of what Englishmen eat, as well as the cook, who does not understand English cooking. Since I cannot explain what I want, for several days his blunders were very laughable. [I] gave him orders as I thought for a good breakfast. Went to sit down [and] found a strange medley; and had to make a meal of rice and potatoes. Told him to make some pork curry; so he and the cook got some fat pork, and stewed it in lard, and thus served it up. Now however he does very fairly. I cannot scold him, [and it is] well for him, for he would not understand me. However I am getting hold of the lingo and will soon give him the arrears, with interest. He seems desperately afraid of doing too much work, although I give him $5 a month.\n\nMy coolie is an old stager and has been employed in the college for several years. I have to rout him about pretty sharp, to keep everything clean and tidy. The cook I know but little about, except that he has the national characteristic of being a rascal. I know, as it is I have to keep the three of them nearly; and if I did not look precious sharp I might keep all their fathers and mothers. Things go no one knows how. The rats the other night went to the [meat-]safe, and ate up two pork chops, bones and all, after which they washed out the plate very clean, and put it away among the earthenware! Remarkably clever! However I told John Chinaman to tell the rats to come again, and eat as much as they thought proper, and welcome, for I should take the amount out of the wages at the end of the month. Strange to say the rats do not accept the invitation.\n\nMr Beach tells me the first few weeks will give me nothing but a continual battle with them, till they find out the depth of my purse. They always try and find out just how far you can afford to go. It costs a good deal to live here at all decently and properly. Yet I hope to be able to save money which I get quite to rights. My expenses this month have been heavy. Five pounds have had to go for clothes suitable to the climate; and I have only laid in a slender stock. People here dress almost entirely in white, since it is the coolest. Fancy me walking about with a white suit and helmet. It is rather expensive however as so much washing is required. The washing costs about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212304, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "223\n\nthe 'Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade',\n\nA romantic web has been woven around Jardine's, far more than any other western firm in the Far East. This romanticism stretches to fiction, and Taipan and Noble House, both written by James Clavell, are reputed to be based on the 'Princely Hong'. Also a play named Poppy, about the Opium War of 1840, with comic Gilbert and Sullivan style songs, was staged in London in the early 1980s.\n\nAnother better-known song, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' written by Noel Coward in 1932, has it that:\n\n\"In Hong Kong They strike a gong\n\nAnd fire a noonday gun\n\nThere is no agreement, however, as to where the Hotchkiss Mark I, three-pound, quick-firing naval gun came from. Some say documents prove that before 1961 it was owned by the Hong Kong Marine Police. Others believe it came from the Royal Navy although Jardine's maintain the Senior Service has no record of the gun.\n\nThe colourful myth that appears in guidebooks is that a penalty was imposed on Jardine Matheson by an irate British admiral because the firm fired a salute to its chief manager as he sailed into the harbour. Another tale has it that the gun was fired to honour the arrival of its opium-carrying fleet. From then on, so both stories go, the Navy compelled Jardine's to fire a gun daily. As A.I. Diamond, previously of the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, wrote:\n\n\"Neither version explains by what authority the Navy could have compelled Jardine Matheson and Company to fire a gun at all let alone daily at noon, presumably in perpetuity.\"\n\nThe true account is quite different. In the British Empire the armed forces used to fire guns at set hours to signify the time. In Hong Kong this practice stopped in 1869 because, by then, many people owned watches, and to save the cost of gunpowder. An extract from the Hong Kong Daily Press, dated January 3, 1870, records:\n\nIt is interesting and just to note that the renewing of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212595, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "129\n\nWhen humans experience helplessness it is natural to turn to unseen powers for strength, hope and guidance. Typical Hong Kong funeral ritual paraphernalia, with many taboos, incorporate the trinity of the three Chinese religions: Buddhism (usually adulterated), Taoism and Confucianism - if indeed the last can be termed a religion. Buddhism is peaceful and gentle; Christianity is more aggressive; and Confucianism seldom considers the afterlife being more concerned with earthly subjects like filial piety. Folk religion and animism, with joss sticks placed at the feet of special rocks and trees in which spirits dwell, often play parts.\n\nInterrelationships of the above and hedging are important. If one doctrine does not succeed in 'brightening a person's soul another may.' If you live on a precipitous mountain and pass both a Catholic and a Buddhist shrine every day while driving down a steep, dangerous road you cannot afford not to make the sign of the cross and bow; just as many people carry lucky charms to prevent mishap.\n\nThe wish of the average Englishman is for a simple interment, unlike most Chinese whose funerary rites are more complicated. Mourners usually require advice from priests, staff at funeral homes and temples, fortune tellers and others. Reasons for doing something are sometimes obscure and mourners, after asking 'why', are often told, 'It's always done like this.' Most want to believe they are doing the right thing for their dead. This was obviously so in this case study.\n\nAlthough most Chinese funerals include supernatural beliefs and practices these are often related to basic values embracing rank, achievement and security. These are important to most people both in this world and the next. A funeral is also an expensive social event which can be noisy. In this study, a very average funeral in 1988 cost $50,000 and there were seven ceremonies, some short, some long. In addition, the family had to gather together to perform other duties. These were time-consuming.\n\nNevertheless such ritual has therapeutic effects for mourners. Burning a paper car and various 'necessities', together with other rituals, are indicators of serious intent.48 The family in surcoats of sacking symbolise relinquishing everything. Food, money, colour, symbolism and homonyms (Sz is the homophone for both 'four' and 'death') play prominent parts, not only in society as a whole but also at funerals.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212837, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "131\n\nwith him.\n\nThe marriage customs are many and curious. We happened to be passing a village on the day of a wedding and were invited to see the communal dancing; the ceremony included inspecting the bride and groom in bed by the fitful light of torches. It seems that immediately after the feast the lucky couple retire to bed and are there visited by all and sundry to an accompaniment of the sort of joking which does not appear in print. The custom of men seizing their brides in mock raiding attacks, staged for the purpose, is also common. During one such attack, until we discovered what it was about, we thought that we were being sniped at by the Japanese.\n\nNancha is high up the mountain, some 6,000 feet, overlooking the Salween, which here flows at 1,000 feet above sea level. The river itself was out of sight in the bottom of the valley where it ran between steeply-sloping banks. Across the valley on the mountain on the far side a mile away we could see in the bright sunlight the villages occupied by the Japanese. Their system of garrisoning was not continuous; they had one or two central posts, and from these they would man one or other of the lesser posts. Through my glasses I could see the posts; trenches with grass huts screened in the jungle nearby, and the ubiquitous Japanese flag. They were sited where the path entered the village high above the river: a mile away as the crow flies, to reach Nancha from one of those villages would take the best part of a day.\n\nFrom Nancha, Jack left to reconnoitre the Salween ferries, while I moved on more slowly as I wished to study the country and make friends with the people; we took three days to reach the Lihsaw village of Hsintang. Despite the small size of our party our progress was triumphal: the young women were shy and kept out of the way; the men were still cowed and not sure of their position; but the old women everywhere came out to greet us. They met us with gifts of bananas, brought up from the hot valleys below, chickens and eggs, neatly done up in long tubes of plaited rice-straw; and being of Chinese blood they prepared tea for our refreshment and invited us indoors to drink it. They said, \"We have not seen you Englishmen for a long time. Where have you been for the last two years? We have waited for you a long time, and now conditions are so bad that they are no longer to be borne. But you have at last returned and set our minds at ease.\" This blind confidence was very touching: may Britain long prove worthy of it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "CHOK HUNG vs. LI FUI CHOI\n\n\"No enquiry has ever been made to ascertain what Chinese law is. It is an extraordinary fact that the Court of this Colony, in which the Chinese live and trade as freely as Englishmen and citizens of other countries, should do with regard to the Chinese what it would never dream of doing with regard to Frenchmen or Germans or Americans; and not only that, but that it should be entirely in ignorance of Chinese law on any subject which concerns the family life and family law of those who form the bulk of its inhabitants, which is so often before the Courts—its marriage law, and the rights of property it gives; its law applicable to children. We are in the dark as to the law of majority, as to the customary law of China generally, and above all as to its law of succession. The attitude of the Court has been to let the troublesome question wait until it is definitely raised by the parties. I myself have been guilty of this, though I have rebelled more than once or twice.\n\nPage 20\n\nDuring the last half century, there have been three such enquiries, of which the results have been published. I refer, of course, to the Report of the Committee appointed in 1948,1 Greenfield's article on marriage,2 and the report and recommendations on the same subject by the Attorney General and Secretary for Chinese Affairs in 1960.2 The latter two publications do not deal with any Chinese customary law of marriage particularly obtaining in the New Territories, but the first does deal with certain aspects of Chinese customary law peculiar to the New Territories.\n\nIf a search is made of the law reports, only two cases will be found where the particular Chinese customary law obtaining in the New Territories was considered. Prima facie, that is a remarkably small number for 57 years of law reporting, and it is worthwhile probing the reasons for this dearth of case law.\n\nFirstly, the Chinese much prefer to compose their disputes or to refer them to extra-judicial arbitration than to a court of law.**\n\nSecondly, in deference to this general desire of the litigants, the District Officers arranged for the bulk of the disputes which came before them, in their Small Debts Courts or when they sat as Assistant Land Officers to decide summary land cases, to be settled out of court, most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215144, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 240, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "198\n\nNo.26, which, during the early 1980s had a marvelous garden presided over by Mrs. Heddenstett, a keen cook who grew every imaginable type of herb.\n\nSedan chairs were, of course, the method of transport, in the 1930s on these roads, and photograph No. 4 shows the handlers taking a rest, with a bare Kowloon in the background. The text reads: \"The chairs are comfortable, the springy movement imparted by the bamboo poles, so long and flexible, is delightful, and the steady, almost automatic stride of the men inspires confidence in their ability to bear us safely to the topmost points and down the steepest slopes.' (Presumably these photographs and remarks were taken from the S.C.M.P. of the day.)\n\nLastly, photograph No. 5 is a faint image of an Englishman showing his pith helmeted son the view of Kowloon, with not a building to be seen, taken in the 1930s.\n\nToday of course, the snakes are still active, and recent sightings (and, in some cases, deaths) include pit vipers and cobras. On the subject of wildlife, the author recently heard the coughing sound of a barking deer, high above the road, but hasn't seen the small red-shelled land crabs for years now.\n\nCivet cats and porcupines are still about late at night, the latter shedding quills on the roadway.\n\nUntil a few years ago, a stone monument to the Middlesex Regiment stood at the junction of Harlech and Lugard Roads, but has been removed. The author does not know of its present whereabouts.\n\nThe Geotechnical Department has had a busy time over the last few years, spraying shotcrete on many of the slopes above Harlech and Lugard Roads, to the distress of many of us, but, despite this, the area still has great charm. Current plans from the Government are to upgrade the area to make it more “tourist-friendly” and the author is liaising with the relevant Government Departments to make sure that this is done in a sensitive way. In the absence of major typhoons for many years, the vegetation on Harlech Road has grown wildly and former beautiful views to the south are now obscured. Permission was granted two years ago to cut \"windows\" into the vegetation, and this has proved very popular with visitors and locals alike.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216358, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "66\n\nfor unmarried Englishmen resident in China to keep a Chinese girl and I did as others did. Ayaon lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. Later in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom, though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. Between 1858 and 1864 she gave birth to three children. In 1866 I went home on leave and on that occasion the connection between Ayaon and myself was finally dissolved. I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars and she married a Chinaman. As all the children were born while Ayaon was being kept by me I decided to provide for them respectably and accordingly I made it part of the arrangement for separation that she should surrender her children to my Agent and she did so. I had the children sent to England to be educated and launched in the world and I settled a sum of six thousand pounds for their benefit which sum has long since been divided and distributed between them. Their names were Anna, Herbert and Arthur. To the best of my recollection and belief I have seen Anna twice or thrice only and Herbert once only. This was in China. I have never seen Arthur. Anna died some seventeen years ago and about the same time Arthur went to Canada, Herbert married and in or about the year 1905 went to Canada to join Arthur.\n\nHart's main purpose for producing the documents\n\nBetween 1904 and 1905, Hart was troubled by two of his children by Ayaou, Herbert and Arthur. The Court and Personal Column of the Morning Post for June 30, 1905, reported (ibid: 1480): \"Mr. Herbert Hart, eldest son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., of Hong Kong, together with Mrs Hart and their only son left Liverpool by the steamer Bavarian yesterday for Ontario, Canada”. Hart's wife, Lady Hart visited the Morning Post soon after she learnt the news and the next day the newspaper made the following correction (ibid): \"We find that the paragraph in our issue of yesterday announcing the departure of Mr Herbert Hart for Canada does not relate to the only son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., Inspector General of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, Peking.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]