[ { "id": 212105, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "24\n\n30\n\nSir George Thomas Staunton, a member of the 1793-94 Macartney Embassy, whose translation of Ch'ing Law was the first published in Britain, had been at pains to emphasize this: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Being the Fundamental Laws... of the Penal Code of China (London, Cadell and Davies, 1801), p. 185. For its application in practice see the cases translated with commentary in Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967).21 Cited in Corinne K. Hoexter, From Canton to California, The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York, Four Winds Press, 1976), p. 136.\n\n11 Dr. William Lockhart of the London Missionary Society, writing in 1861, cites the case of the old scholar who so greatly assisted Dr. W.H. Medhurst with his translations and researches. See his The Medical Missionary in China (London, Hurst and Blackett. 2nd edition, 1861), pp. 21-22. \"He was a living concordance of the entire range of Chinese literature. He could find any passage without hesitation, repeat page after page of most of the works, and could easily take up any citation which had been begun in his hearing, and finish it without hesitation. This is not an uncommon thing amongst the educated Chinese, but this man possessed the faculty in a remarkable degree\".\n\n23 Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1941), p. 262. See also his New China and Old, Personal Recollections and Observations of Thirty Years (London, Seeley and Co., 1891), p. 271.24 Some of the literary material to be found in villages of the Hong Kong region is described in Dr. Patrick Hase's most useful paper. \"Research Materials for Village Studies\", Chapter 4 of Alan Birch, Y.C. Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds.) Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies (Hong Kong. Centre of Asian Studies. University of Hong Kong, 1984), pp. 31-46, especially between pp. 32-37.\n\n25\n\n—\n\nBy great good fortune, some of their libraries have survived and are in safe keeping. One of them came from Hoi Pa Village, Tsuen Wan, and had belonged to the builder of the traditional village house there which is now a listed monument. He lived between 1865 and 1937, and after his return from Jamaica engaged in educational pursuits in a literary club and at the Luen Fong School in Hoi Pa Kwan Mun Hau. When what had survived of his library was presented to the Urban Services Department in 1982, it consisted of some 200 books of various kinds, as well as manuscript essays and poems, including some of the famed \"eight-legged essays\" written in preparation for the imperial examination; all providing valuable documentation for the educational, social and intellectual activities of their period. South China Morning Post, 26 May 1982. See also the Chinese press of that date.\n\n16 What Francis C.M. Wei calls the operation of the principle of retributive justice\" featured prominently in Chinese stories. See his The Spirit of Chinese Culture (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), p. 151. See also Yao Chin-nung, \"The Theme and Structure of the Yuan Drama\", in Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (November 1935), p. 392.27 The Tsuen Wan experience is echoed in the fine description of what it meant to be a village boy in late 19th century Kwangtung, contained in the memoirs of a successful Hawaiian Chinese, born in a village near Macau in 1865. In them, he describes what one might call the \"extra-curricular\" part of education. This included the telling of traditional stories by the family elders and by itinerant minstrels and story-tellers, and through the plays performed by visiting opera troupes, as well as in literary pastimes: Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii (1879-1958) (Hong Kong, Cosmorama Pictorial Publisher, 1960), pp. 6, 26-29.\n\n28 Francis C.M. Wei, The Spirit of Chinese Culture (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947) p. 149.\n\n24\n\nFor the former, see the chapter \"Symbol and Tradition\" between pp. 50-75 of Ronald", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213895, "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-1996", "page_number": 247, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "221\n\nThus, a new political language, clustered around the ideas of labour and trade unions soon overshadowed the existing political language, which was introduced in the late Qing and clustered around the ideas of merchants and chambers of commerce. To curb the political power of merchants, the Canton government dissolved all the existing merchant associations in Canton. The directorship of the Canton General Chamber of Commerce was abolished and the Canton government appointed their own supporters to the Chamber. Liao Zhongkai even went to the extreme of making legislation in 1925 to prohibit \"compradore merchants” from taking up government posts.\n\nPolitical regulations were changing fast during these years. Trade unions continued to expand and were politically active in Canton. This eventually led to the 1925 General Strike which in Hong Kong involved a total of 300,000 labourers. It was known as the greatest and largest strike which had ever occurred in China, and retrospectively, the Chinese Communist Party would time and time again herald its success.\n\nAs for the Cantonese merchants and the Communication Clique, they retreated from Canton to Hong Kong after 1924. I have tracked down a very beautiful piece of information from 1941 - on a Julao Hui (九老會), or the Nine Elders Club. The club was formed by the retired leaders of the regional Chambers of Commerce. These retreated Cantonese, despite their previous competition, joined together as a social club to celebrate the abundance of their offspring and their own longevity. These nine gentlemen enjoyed a total age amounting to 676 by 1941. On this occasion, Liang Shiyi sent them a couplet. It read:\n\nThe three of us in person congratulating the nine elders, altogether in one hall we celebrate our thousand years.\n\nAs far as this small circle is concerned, it sounds like a happy ending.\n\nBeyond this circle, all we can see is a Hong Kong society with its members, for a long period of time, showing little interest in the issue of constitutional reform, representative or self-government, as their Indian, African, or Malay counterparts did. Even during those noisy years after the Second World War while the issue of decolonization was very much talked about and the British Empire actually collapsed,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214660, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "39 \nand Li Kun-fuk, 2 houses within the walls, and then with these two brothers or cousins holding 0.17 acres of land jointly, and Kun-sang in addition a further 0.01 individually; Li Tin-hi, 2 houses within the walls and 0.18 acres; Li Tin-yau, 1 house within the walls and 0.11 acres). The reasons for these households with far less arable land than could possibly allow for subsistence are likely to be the same as in the case of the Ngs, although, in this case, some of the Li households may have been in the process of moving out of the village. In the case for Li Kun-fuk and Li Kun-sang, however, who were important elders of the clan (Kun-fuk was the trustee of three trusts, and Kun-sang of two), the tiny-recorded individually owned areas of agricultural land must hide far more substantial areas actually under their control.. \n\nOf those households of the Li clan which recorded their land-holdings under the family head's name, the holdings varied from 0.31 acres (Kun-tai), and then through 0.45 acres (Yung-tai), 0.67 acres (Yung Wa and Yung Fat jointly), 0.89 acres (Yuk-hing), 0.93 acres (Kam Tak), 1.15 acres (Lai-ting, the dominant elder), 1.5 acres (Ping-shan, part of this was held jointly with Tak-hing and Chiu-hing, and another tiny part jointly with Ip Shi); to 3.81 acres (Loi: he also owned 0.86 acres jointly with Li Hau-fuk). Kun-tai, who held no less than 5 houses within the walls, must have been wealthier than his 0.31 acres of agricultural land-holding would suggest: he was also one of the trustees of the Luk Wa Tso. He probably had access to a significant amount of trust property. Yung-tai also had a significant amount of house property - three houses within the walls. \n\nRelatively wealthy villages like Nga Tsin Wai were usually marked by an interest in education. The village had a fine school, which was held in the Ng clan Ancestral Hall. Villages like Nga Tsin Wai often also had \"literary clubs\", where the more scholarly and better educated of the villagers would meet to write poetry together, and drink wine in the light of the moon. The Sub-Magistrate in Kowloon City encouraged such literary groups, in particular by sponsoring poetry competitions and so forth. Nga Tsin Wai villagers had access to such a club (probably in the Market), and the Li clan had a small trust to support it, the Man Lau Tong (\"Association for the Literature House\"). This owned only 0.05 acres, the income of which probably supported the costs of tea and wine for the Li clan members of the club, but it demonstrates the scholarly ambitions of the village. \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]