[ { "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": 207148, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n213\n\nDealings in land and property were a major enterprise in early Hong Kong. An insight into the hazards of real estate speculation is given by George Duddell's testimony before the Land Committee in 1849. He speaks about his purchase of a lot at the south-west corner of Queen's Road West and Possession Street. As we walk along Fat Hing Street we shall be passing the south side of the lot. Duddell states regarding the purchase of the lots in 1844:\n\nThe lot was bought after unprecedented bidding for two hundred per cent on the original upset rental. The circumstances in palliation of my buying it at such a price are, the lot was airy and perfectly level with one rock only to clear it off before building could be commenced, combined with a great demand for houses, and the facility the lot offered to speedily erect them, with the fact I was outbid on all other lots the same day. The buildings were built and tenanted, but within a year they had left for other houses. These houses were void, vagrants plundering even from doors and glass from windows, every grate was stolen. I must hire a private watchman to protect useless property\n\nThe buildings were much damaged by the typhoon of 1848. In November of 1848, I surrendered them to Government. In consequence of requiring a Sailor's Home, I have by petition obtained back the lot, repaired the buildings and put my seamen into it.\n\nThe premises were known as the Circular Buildings. Duddell again surrendered them to the Government in 1850. Not long after, the land was resold to Quoke Acheong, the Compradore of the P. & O. Steam Navigation Company. He was a large land owner in this area. On this property and a section he had purchased across Queen's Road, he developed his own business enterprises under the firm name of Fat Hing. The firm gave its name to the lane south of Queen's Road off Possession Street.\n\nUpon the elevated promontory called West Point, Joseph Frost Edgar built a bungalow. In March, 1843, he was admitted as the resident partner of the firm Jamieson, How and Company. He was one of the first two unofficial members of the Legislative Council, serving from 1850 to 1857. An advertisement for the rent or sale of the West Point Bungalow, dated July 19, 1845 (Friend of China), provides a description of one of the early residences in Hong Kong:\n\nA substantial house consisting of two sitting rooms each 30 by 20 feet and in height 17 feet, separated by folding doors, five", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211679, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "69\n\nThe embarkation took place at midnight. It had begun to rain. There was no street lighting; the night was very dark and the gangway up to the hulk was slippery. These hulks were great steel pontoons, two hundred feet long, with a large deck house, in which were located the shipping company's office and some residential quarters. Wide stairs led down to the holds below, where the inward and outward cargoes were stored pending transfer elsewhere. To approach the ship you had to walk round outside the hulk along a gangway, about three feet wide, left between the deckhouse and the edge. To facilitate the movement of cargo no railings were put along this edge. I was carrying our younger child and I remember the feeling of horror when our other child, at a moment when the amah's attention was attracted elsewhere, toddled along to the edge to look over at the black tide rushing between the steel sides of the ship and hulk. My wife just in time snatched him back from the wet slippery edge.\n\nThe steamer was of the usual river design, like any small sea-going merchantman, but with more super-structure and a flatter bottom. There were not berths sufficient for all the refugees, who began to sort themselves out, some in the saloon and others in the smoking room. A wild alcoholic glow added to the sociability induced by the common dangers of the situation and I regret to say bets were taken whether one of the refugees, who was conspicuously expecting a baby, could last out till the ship reached Shanghai. When the Captain decided to start, husbands and bachelors were reluctantly persuaded to go ashore to return to their solitary and darkened houses.\n\nNext day the Consul decided to get in touch with the Chinese general who held the appointment of Garrison Commander at Kiu Kiang. This official was elusive but he eventually agreed to come to the Consulate for a conference. The safety of the foreigners in Kiu Kiang was really his responsibility and after some pressing he undertook to furnish protection. The British guards were consequently withdrawn from the Concession gates to the two hulks.\n\nDuring times of civil commotion respectable and well-to-do Chinese would bolt their doors or put up the shop shutters, as the case might be, and remain inside; but in any Chinese town there would also be an unruly element of loafers, pickpockets, thieves, and toughs, as indeed in any western city. Now was the opportunity for these hooligans. By midday the streets of the Concession were filled with a seething mob", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211908, "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": 323, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "298\n\nwere so responsible. Everything appears strange, and I feel altogether out of place.\n\nFor the five days I have been here I have messed with Mr Beach and Cleverly. I have of course never been in such society, and it is hard work to be the gentleman. However I tried my best. Mr Beach being absent I had to take the head of the table, and goose was given me to carve. I could not help thinking which was the greater goose of the two. But still with a little tact I manage to pass muster, and they both seem well satisfied with me. We spend two hours over dinner, from eight to ten, and then a chat in the Drawing Room, and to bed at eleven.\n\nIt is rather queer work to be looked up to in the way I am here. No one would imagine me to be the boy that used to clean boots and knives and run errands13 at a brewhouse. Truly God has been good to me, who am most undeserving.\n\nThe building is very large and beautiful. I had no idea of its being so extensive. I shall have 52 students when the vacation ends on Sept. 1st. At present there are 12 who live too far off to go home. The study room is a fair sized one, and adjoining is the college chapel. The work before me is quite unlimited. I can launch out as far as I like, and raise the college to almost any amount of perfection if all goes well. I have a Chinese master who greatly pleases me. He is the headman, and his appearance and manners are highly satisfactory. He will doubtless prove a great assistance to me. The other three are away for vacation. The Chinese classical master is a Chinese graduate, or what in England is equivalent to a Master of Arts. I understand he is a clever fellow in his department.\n\nThe library, which is my sitting room, is a large fine room, with glass doors and venetian shutters. One end faces the sea, and the other opens on the verandah. I have one part of the house to myself. I have also a private parlour, with three large glass doors and a fine view, and a bedroom, but I have ordered them to be lime washed and repaired, and shall enter them on Monday. At present I live in the bishop's bedroom, which of course is not a bad berth,\n\nThe selection of books in the library is very large. I have never before seen such a useful and valuable selection. There are on a rough guess about 5,000 volumes, and I have the entire charge of them, to lend out", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212242, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "161\n\nis the loftiest room I was ever an occupant of, being 15 feet high, which is the height of all the rooms upstairs belonging to me.\n\nAThe sea view is very good, though slightly interrupted by trees, which Mr Beach advises to cut down. We now come into the verandah, which has Venetian shutters, or rather doors, which open with a view of the playground, and the whole way up the Peak and surrounding hills. Many fine villas lie around. The villas in the corner of the [ground floor plan] are very fine ones indeed, and are occupied by high families. We can see them very capitally, although they are a good height above. If it were evening by moonlight we could see the dining and drawing rooms of each house well lighted up, and hear the piano, accompanied by some good male and female voices. Sometimes I have to wait half an hour before I can sleep, till they have finished.\n\nAMy bedroom has two large windows opening to the verandah, and one the other side with a sea view. I had the bed newly painted. You will see the mosquito curtain of green gauze, which however I never want to use. There is a capital barometer which I hang up inside the window; about the best I ever saw; so that I can always know the state of the weather and temperature. Over the mantel piece hangs my picture gallery of portraits, before which I spend several odd minutes, and wish often enough I had a great many additions to it, which I expect every mail. There is a mahogany dressing table, which however I do not use, so I cover it with my “deer skin”, and use it as a side board. I forgot to point out the round mahogany table in the parlour. Next allow me to show you my pantry, etc. There are two or three [meat-] safes and cupboards, a dresser, and shelves all round piled up to the top with Chinese books. The other day I had 500 large books put up there out of the way. Here all my provisions are kept, and the food that has been prepared in the kitchen below. Beyond is a spare room, which I can in emergency use as a bedroom. Indeed it was intended for that purpose, but I never want to use it so leave it locked up. Any of my friends who can honour me with a permanent visit shall be made very comfortable there I promise them.\n\n^We now turn the corner, and enter the library, which has large doors opening to the verandah, as well as the opposite end. The breeze in the daytime is generally very refreshing through the room.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214419, "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": 277, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "243\n\none so pretty!\" said my friend. \"That's dear,\" I remarked. \"Two shillings,\" she repeated flatly. \"You can't be from here, because you're too white. Where are you from? What's your name?\" probed P., trying to move nearer to her. \"I'm from Macau; my name is Etola,\" she answered in English, slurring over a few syllables as is the Chinese habit. \"Two shillings,\" she added later, after a pause. \"How pretty you are!\" continued my companion. \"Show me your hand, tell me how old you are. Who do you like better: us, the English or the Chinese?\" \"Two shillings,\" She replied. We drew up to the frigate; my companion took her hand, while I was already on the ship's ladder. \"Talk to me, Etola,\" he said to her, holding her hand. She remained silent. \"Tell me what you...\" \"Two shillings,\" she repeated. I with a laugh, and he with a sigh, paid the money and went to our separate cabins.\n\nHere, as in England and in the Cape, we were granted free entry into the club. The club is a type of superlative palace: its founders have spared no expense, to impart to the club the same opulence that is customary in London clubs. A number of big halls with windows facing the bay, a verandah, fireplaces, windows set in marble; bronze and crystal everywhere; excellent mirrors, elegant furniture - everything brought from England. But - alas! The halls remain empty; you'll have trouble attracting the attention of a sleepy Chinese man-servant, and then you'll order dinner and pay three times what it costs right nearby, in the tavern. The club is close to bankruptcy. The Europeans sit in their own corners for the greater part of the day, and in the evening prefer to gather in family circles - and so the club fails. But what a delight it is to relax on that verandah in the early evening, when the cool night air takes the place of the intense heat.\n\nAt six o'clock in the evening the whole population pours out of doors, along the seashore, along the avenue. Officers on foot and on horseback, business men, ladies make their appearance. On a meadow, near the Governor's house, music is playing. Not far from there, on a hill, in a stone house, lives the General commanding the local detachment, and right nearby a building, something like a monastery, houses an Italian bishop with a few monks.\n\nOur people left for Canton, at which time I was lying in a fever and half sleeping heard the launch being lowered. I was awakened by a crash of thunder; a storm had erupted just at the moment of their leaving.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214979, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "31\n\nrule over Malaya (known as the Emergency) and unmasking multiple pointless atrocities of the decaying colonial system.\n\nAnd the Rain My Drink, the novel considered the most exhaustive and also the most accurate picture of this particular period of time ever written, was first published in 1957 and it summarizes Han Suyin's experience of Emergency, accumulated during her several years' stay in Johore Bahru, British Malaya, in the double role of wife of Leonard Comber, her English second husband, at that time Assistant Superintendent in the Special Branch (i.e., in the British colonial police), and a doctor running a private medical practice:\n\nThe Emergency. We lived and breathed it; it penetrated our pores, we chewed it with every mouthful of food. Its formless pervasive threat held gaunt shape in my unquiet mind (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors).\n\nAt that time everyone except for the British already seemed to realise that there was absolutely no future for the colonial system either in that region, or in the rest of the world.\n\nThe book describes the great thirst for independence of the two peoples side by side inhabiting Malaya, namely the Muslim Malays and the Chinese national minority, and it emphasises the significant contribution of the Chinese jungle guerillas to liberation of Malaya from white rule:\n\nIt was the Japanese conquest of Malaya in 1942 which spurred national independence. The white man's myth of invincibility was shattered by the Japanese victories (from Chapter Three of My House Has Two Doors).\n\nHan Suyin gives an abundant and informative record on ruthlessness of the British Special Branch in handling the evading situation, on their failed attempts to suppress the upheaval, on numerous penal re-settlings of whole villages of Chinese rubber-tappers from the regions neighbouring with the jungle taken over by the guerillas to the true concentration camps, additionally located in unhealthy marshlands far away from the rubber-tree plantations, and on imprisonments, torturing and blackmailing both active participants to the liberation\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214980, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "32\n\nmovement, and the innocent uninvolved citizens as well. In a memoir-like fragment somewhat randomly chosen from the volume My House Has Two Doors, we read:\n\nAnd so the Emergency began. It would justify the suspending of all rights, giving the police (Special Branch) total power to arrest, search, detain anyone without trial and indefinitely, to disband all trade unions, arrest trade unionists, ban demonstrations, mete out the death sentence for 'possession of dangerous weapons,' which included school penknives, to apply censorship in all its forms, to impose curfews, to shoot suspects on sight.\n\nThere are a vast number of Han Suyin's excellent essays also, which had originally been published basically in the magazines of South East Asia (e.g., in the Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon) and tackle various different sociopolitical problems of former colonies, generated just in the course of their colonial past. Luckily enough, a good deal of these largely dispersed essays were saved from oblivion by a rather recent re-editing them in a book entitled Tigers and Butterflies - Selected Writings on Politics, Culture and Society (London, 1990). The very titles of some of these essays are eloquent enough to remind us of Han Suyin's steady interests and passions: Social Changes in Asia (1960), The Aborigines (1961), Relations between East and West (1963), The Rich vs the Poor (1964), or The Troubles Miscalled Racial (1965).\n\nThe entirety of Han Suyin's literary achievements - and especially those parts which tackle predominantly colonial threads - have still to be sufficiently investigated and discussed. One reason for this situation seems to be the vagueness of average Western opinion in the matter of colonialism as sociopathology of the world's not so very distant past. In this particular context, Han Suyin's profound analyses followed by very moderate conclusions ought to be studied very attentively indeed, whereas her remarkably open, yet self-restrained and balanced attitude can only be gratefully acknowledged, admired and revered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216144, "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": 443, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "377\n\nADVENTURES IN PUBLISHING:\n\nHOW THE CRIPPLED TREE BECAME KALEKIE\n\nDRZEWO\n\nPETER HALLIDAY\n\nA few weeks after I took up residence in Hong Kong in the autumn of 1967, I was taken to the cinema by what had now become a new friend. The film we saw that Saturday afternoon - I remember the circumstances with undiminished clarity - was Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones. The film made a very deep impression upon me and I have to confess that, as we filed out of the cinema, I wept unashamedly.\n\nIn 1972, or thereabouts, I was contentedly idling away an hour or so, browsing in a bookshop - to this day still a particular pleasure - when I came across a book entitled A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin. Memories of Love is a Many Splendored Thing came flooding back. Could this be the book behind the film or vice versa, I wondered?\n\nI bought the book but for many years - until quite recently in fact - could not bring myself to read it properly. This I have now done and have discovered that it is not a book to be trifled with. It should be read slowly and carefully, and savoured, if one is truly to understand and enjoy it. It is, as the Daily Express described it at the time, ‘a true story of piercing beauty.' As Ed Murrow said of Winston Churchill, Suyin 'mobilised the English language, and sent it into battle.'\n\nAlthough the Daily Express described Suyin's book as a true story, for some reason I had always assumed that it was a novel. Last year, however, through various circumstances, I discovered that this was the literal truth (I would have discovered it much earlier had I read My House Has Two Doors, also by Han Suyin, but unfortunately I did not read this until very recently). A Many Splendoured Thing tells the true story of a love affair between Suyin and Ian Morrison, a correspondent for The Times of London. They met in June 1949, in Hong Kong. Tragically, Ian was killed in Korea on 12 August 1950, when the jeep in which he was travelling was blown up by a landmine.\n\nA tribute to Ian Morrison appeared in Vol. 41 of JHKBRAS.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]