[ { "id": 211101, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "137\n\npublic meetings, fomenting agitations in regard to liberty of the subject and such things as the average Chinaman will never be able to discuss with safe familiarity for several generations to come.\n\nHe admitted there might be exceptions to his sweeping indictment. “A few there are among the Chinese who are quite at home in these essentially Western matters; but very few indeed, and to their credit be it said they have discretion enough to see that their day is far off. These master-minds of regenerate China had no share in the ludicrous proceedings at the Tung Wah on Sunday.\" Did he specifically have in mind Dr. Ho Kai?\n\nAs for those who did \"speechify\" at the meeting, in the editor's opinion, they had made fools of themselves.\n\nThe paper called for stern action against the two main speakers. It took particular exception to the remark made by Ho A-mei that any legislation or Government action that is directed against the Chinese exclusively should be resisted. It suggested that “if the Government fails to make an example of a man who publicly promulgates this sweeping doctrine, then we shall consider that the Government fails in its duty. A maxim like that must be taken seriously and crushed forever.\" The writer sees in the words of Ho A-mei the seeds of revolt and the breakdown of British authority.\n\nIn his remarks, Ho A-mei had called for more police vigilance. It was not the light and pass regulations that were needed to prevent criminal activity, but more detection and prevention by the police. The China Mail rose to the defence of the law-enforcers and charged A-mei with \"laying calumnies against the police.\" In fact, according to the editor, \"there are mis-statements enough in his speech to brand him forever as a man not fit to be allowed to speak in public.”\n\nAnd as for Mr. Ho Tung, his speech \"should remove him from the roster of Justices of the Peace.\" The writer saw him as a dangerous rabble-rouser who should be checked before he caused greater damage to British authority. “Apart from the absurdities in which he wallowed, he gave utterance to sentiments which can", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212234, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "153\n\nAnd now we come to Mrs Chinaman. Of all the oddities in the world she is one. She wears a coat and trousers like the men, and you cannot tell them apart, except by the pigtail, which of course she does not possess. Her hair is combed back over the forehead, and all is twisted up in a great knot behind, which sticks out like a handle. Her pretty little feet however are the chief beauty. They very much resemble the hoof of a horse. Imagine the elegance of her gait. The first one I saw I mistook for an old sailor on wooden legs, in the distance, and wondered he did not get a pair of crutches to get on faster with. They move of course very slowly. Running is impossible. John Chinaman shows his wisdom in this particular. Without this restriction she would be quite unmanageable, and to live with her would be quite out of the question. If she does not behave herself, she gets a thrashing; and she cannot run away, or walk far, to go and gossip with neighbours. She just hobbles about the house, and that is all. The lower orders however do not carry it to quite such an extreme. Among them the women work like the men. In the boats you see the women sitting and rowing with perhaps only a loose pair of trousers upon them. They are not at all particular about decency. Twice I took a boat and went out to the ship, to bring my own and the Bishop's boxes: and the crew were mostly women that pulled the boat.\n\n―\n\nshe knows better\n\n―\n\nMrs Chinaman has a very shrill voice; in fact she is always a little piece of goods; but she is very quarrelsome, not however with the husband but with some others or men at all of her own sex. One of those little exchanges of compliments between them is enough to make anybody roar with laughter to see it, but the language they use, if any one understands it, is obscene and revolting in the extreme. The quarrel between them, as is the case with all the softer sex, generally springs from circumstances the most trivial. But at last they begin and the height of the engagement is only to be discerned by the height of the pitch of their melodious voices. You can hear them a quarter mile off distinctly. It is like a chorus of cats, at a nocturnal serenade, only ten times louder, and perhaps the music is conducted in rather quicker time. What surprises me is to hear how long the strain is kept up. If you pass the same place in an hour's time, you find the chorus still sustained in full vigour. To see them however is the best fun. They never look at one another, but always turn round, as if talking to a great audience, and though they toss their arms wildly about, and look like the incarnation of fury, they never so much as touch one another; and the quarrel always ends at last without a blow. They cannot swear, because their religion acknowledges no God whose name they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212235, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "1.54\n\ncan take in vain. So they make up for it in everything that a corrupt heart can imagine. Mr Beach gave me the translation of a few of those expressions, which I might perchance hear from the servants, or even from pupils who have just entered college, and have not forgotten the language of home. But let me hear the least sound of it, and I will send them off about their business pretty quick. But it is surprising the alteration that takes place in Mrs Chinaman when she is under the influence of Christian teaching and religion. The alteration is greater generally in them than in the men.\n\nMy headmaster is a married man; he was married a few months ago in the Cathedral and lives in the rooms under the Bp's Drawing and Dining Rooms! His wife, Mrs Hah-shoe, is quite a decent little body, and often toddles outside, and walks round the grounds at the back. She was trained up in a Christian family, and he was brought up by the Bp, whom he accompanied once to England.\n\nPopular opinion goes a great way with a Chinese. Rather than offend popular opinion, they will make any sacrifice. Only let a man get a bad name among the men, and then let him offend one of the women. The ladies know they may go any length with impunity, so they follow him, and mob him round the place, giving him every species of annoyance, and he dares not molest them for fear of his fellow men of the village and popular opinion. His only remedy in such a case is either to commit suicide, or to get off as far away as he can. Suicide among them is very common.\n\nThere is a custom among them that if one of a family gets a good berth, all his relations come and live upon him. Poor Hah-shoe has all his relations living upon him, which is a great drawback; but popular opinion compels him to submit to it. A child is only looked upon as a servant who is to help support his parents and relations. Few among the lower classes ever think of saving money for old age. Popular opinion also makes them continue the pig-tail, although they say it is a religious affair, by which, when they pass over a narrow slippery plank upon entering the regions of the dead, if their wickedness has been so great as to make them likely to fall off, there is a kind friend who catches them by the pig-tail, and hoists them safe over on the other side.\n\nAnd now having treated of the Chinese, I will go on to describe the remainder of the population. The English are generally rich, proud,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214195, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "In the past the Pole, one frequently found, was the butt of many jokes in the United States. In England it was often the Irish, in Hawaii the Portuguese, and for the French the Belgian. Likewise, in Guangdong Province there is, some people will tell you, a pecking order of sorts for a few of the counties. Again, in Singapore, inter-racial and inter-sub-ethnic group humour is by no means uncommon, although much is given and accepted in good heart.\n\nLee Kuan Yew, senior statesman of Singapore, is purported to have said: \"I understand the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to the Welshman and the Scotsman. Deep here, I am a Chinaman. Yes, an uprooted Chinaman, transformed into a Singaporean\" (spoken in the Singaporean Parliament, 23 February 1977) (Minchin, 1986:254). One can detect, not surprisingly, a strain of western, self-mockery and sardonic wit in Lee's remark (Minchin, 1986:257). It comes out again in a speech by Lee in the Singaporean Parliament on 23 February 1977:\n\n\"I do not believe in telling university researchers where they go wrong. They write all kinds of spurious silly articles or books. They get MAs and PhDs for them... I laugh away. But I never tell them why they are wrong. Because I am an Asian. I am not a Westerner. This is an Asian situation and do not be clever. Be modest. Just keep quiet. If they want to be wrong-headed, wish them luck\" (Minchin, 1986:XV).\n\nThe overseas Chinese living in Malaysia for several generations have absorbed Malay culture making their customs different from Hong Kong Chinese. As a Malay-Chinese friend of the author explained, the Singaporeans have obviously not absorbed Malay customs to the same extent. But Singapore is very much a melting pot and cosmopolitan, and it has jettisoned only a certain amount of its inherited Chinese 'baggage' so that it remains trim, but it has become sufficiently westernised to become, some would say, more 'rational' - judging by western standards.\n\nThe Cantonese living in a more simple habitat, over in Guangdong Province in China, prefer more direct, less complex humour than their Hong Kong cousins who are still, in most cases, at heart, very Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "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 } ]