[ { "id": 205306, "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-1967", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205378, "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-1967", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n133\n\na rock on this hill, and on another rock near the tomb is inscribed the name of the interred official.\n\nWhen this Emperor passed the island of Lintin with his faithful minister Man, he asked the name of it; and on being told, he remarked how well the name of the island applied to his own solitary situation. On this the Minister Mân composed the following ode:\n\n過零丁洋\n\n彈\n\n身世\n\n零丁洋裏嘆零丁\n\n惶恐灘頭說惶恐\n\n人生自\n\n死丁\n\n山干妾\n\n世河戈浮破落\n\n沉碎\n\n風水\n\n辛苦遭逢起一經\n\n零惶打飄\n\n彈絮星經\n\n留取丹心照汗青\n\n宋·文大祥1\n\nPage 140\n\nOn passing the Linting Sea.\n\n\"We have gone through bitter experience from beginning to end. Shields and spears (or the weapons of war) have surrounded us, just as if stars had fallen from heaven. Our dominions are dismembered, like as the flowers of the willow are scattered by the wind; we ourselves are tossed about by fate, like the ping grass which floats on the waves.\n\nTong-kiang-shan by its name proved to us a dreadful omen; at Lin-ting in the ocean we bemoaned our solitude. Since man exists, his fate is also to die; let us only preserve our innocence, and the brightness of it will reflect even up to the milky way.\"\n\nThis minister, who remained faithful to the Emperor, was afterwards taken prisoner by the Mongols, and suffered much maltreatment from them for three years, when he was put to death with many tortures. A younger brother of his proved less faithful, and delivered the city of Wei-chau# into the hands of the enemy. His nephew, a son of the minister, was so much ashamed at the treason of his uncle, that he retired with his two sons into seclusion, and settled down in the west of the Sanon district. The numerous and powerful clan of Mân, which dwells in the plain of San-keaou, and whose chief place is the village of Poo-mee 莆尾, claim to be descended from this man.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206018, "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-1970", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 93\n\nislands of Nauru and Ocean Island; and the other is the Pilgrim Trade from Malaya to the Red Sea Port of Jeddah. The passengers in this latter trade are mainly Malays, who travel in near-luxury conditions comparable with European tourist class. Food and accommodation are suited to Moslem tastes and prejudices, an Iman travels on the ship, and there is a mosque provided in the accommodation.\n\nLater Chinese emigration to South-east Asia was largely the result of the economies imposed on the region by the European colonial powers, and the agricultural and industrial development which these powers initiated. On achieving independence at various times after 1945 each country has attempted with varying degrees of success - to weaken the economic and political position of their Chinese populations, and in the early 1960s Indonesia even attempted their repatriation on a substantial scale. It is in this country that the Chinese have been subjected to the harshest and most cruel treatment, with thousands being killed in pogroms reminiscent of the worst years in Indonesia and the Philippines in the earlier period. It may be that the contribution of the overseas Chinese to the economic development of South-east Asia, has in these latter years at least been counter-balanced by the political instability caused by their presence, but for this they are not wholly to blame.\n\nNOTE\n\nAn account of the Ch'ing government's attitude towards the emigration of its subjects is given at pp. 26-29 of Victor Purcell's The Chinese in Southeast Asia (London, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1965).\n\nIn his well-known work, The Middle Kingdom (London, W. H. Allen & Co., revised edition, 1883) vol. 1, pp. 278-9 S. Wells Williams states that \"The obstacles put in the way of emigrating beyond sea, both in law and prejudice, operate to deter respectable persons from leaving their native land. Necessity has made the law a dead letter, and thousands annually leave their homes.\" He then quotes the following striking passage from W. H. Medhurst's China: Its State and Prospects (1838). \"Emigration is going on in spite of restrictions and disabilities, from a country where learning and civilization reign, and where all the dearest interests and prejudices of the emigrants are found, to lands like Burmah, Siam, Cambodia, Tibet, Manchuria, and the Indian Archipelago, where comparative ignorance and barbarity prevail, and where the extremes of a tropical or frozen region are to be exchanged for a mild and temperate climate.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206980, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n45\n\nthe Sedangs, a warrior chant. Mayréna was in full dress uniform, complete with multiform decorations. He was saluted by the other European passengers, who inclined their bodies, and he responded with a military salute. Present were the ennobled and happy industrialist and several rich young men from the Brussels haute-bourgeoisie. The chaplain was a former curé, who had been unfrocked for immorality. And so Mayréna left Europe for the last time.\n\nThe voyage out was mostly uneventful, though Mayréna drank far too much and was often indiscreet enough to talk about his past with his courtiers. Court etiquette was strictly enforced aboard ship --- Buckingham Palace rules at table - except when brief forays were made ashore at Port Said, Aden and Colombo; then the King assumed his incognito as the Comte de Drey. On 18 April 1890 the Sachsen anchored in Singapore harbour.\n\nWhen Mayréna stepped ashore he was at once stopped by a courier from the French Consulate and told that the Consul wished to see him urgently. At the Consulate he was greeted politely but informed that the French Government now claimed rights over the territory of the Sedangs, that he was therefore no longer King, and would be arrested if he set foot in Indo-China. Mayréna, after much argument, returned to Ralph's Hotel, where his officials and courtiers had lodged temporarily, and informed the party that the Sedangs had revolted and that it was impossible to proceed to his kingdom. The group, it appears, were not surprised by the turn of events. They had enjoyed a splendid ocean vacation at the expense of the rich industrialist, Mayréna's backer, but had no desire to seek martyrdom among the savages of the Moï country. At the end of the week the party - court chamberlain, chaplain, other officials and passengers - all returned to Antwerp by the Sachsen. Mayréna stayed on in Singapore. There was little else he could do.\n\nMayréna's sojourn in Singapore is not well documented, though Soulié claims Mayréna met in that city a European he had known formerly at Haiphong, a companion of Miss Dahlberg's brother, who was now domiciled on the island of Tioman and making a living by collecting birds' nests, those of the sea swallow, for the Chinese market. Mayréna decided to accompany this trader back to Tioman, because the island was under the jurisdiction of the Malay State of Pahang, and once settled there he felt he could not be extradited to either France or Indo-China, where he would have had to face trial assuredly for treason.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207286, "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-1975", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "46\n\nCHIAO-MIN HSIEH\n\n1,400 miles long, runs between Lanchow and Urumchi via Hami in Sinkiang.\n\nThe Communist government obviously feels that the political importance of these railroads is greater than their economic value. Since the great bulk of China's population, markets, and production lies east of Lanchow and south of the Great Wall, many railroads are urgently needed in that part of China. One must wonder whether the two railroads built in the desert for the main purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union were so necessary and their construction so urgent. Moreover, there is at the moment a sand-dune problem confronting the operation of the railroad in these desert areas. This seems to be insoluble by use of present techniques and makes the value of the whole project even more questionable.\n\n3. In southwest China a railroad was built between Nanning and Pinghsiang in 1955, which is connected with Haiphong and Hanoi. The significance of this new rail link between the Red River delta and the South China province of Kwangsi is that it opens a new major sea outlet for south China.\n\nSince China is an amphibious nation, facing the interior continent in the northwest and the Pacific Ocean in the southeast, one of the most significant geopolitical factors in China's history is her changing relations with the continent and the sea. In ancient times China faced the northwest, where the \"Silk Road\" passed through: the Pacific coast was the back door. The Kansu corridor in the northwest was the main entrance, playing an important role in communications between China and central Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western sea powers acted to open China's coastal ports, China began to turn her face toward the Pacific, which then became the front door, through which came new ideas and knowledge, but also new problems and troubles. Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin replaced the cities in the northwest as the key cities. This reversal in geographic accessibility has transformed China's isolated condition to one of contact with the world.\n\nThe eastern coastal areas soon became the main part of China, where were located most of the large cities, heavy industries, railroads, and inland water routes, and about 70 per cent of the population. Because of its location, the area is vulnerable to attack by foreign sea powers. During World War II the area was easily", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208841, "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-1980", "page_number": 3, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "202\n\nTo\n\nand\n\nsites were also rendered ineffective by the emperor's golden pen. My knowledge, the elders knew of four sites. One of them was on Tiu Chung Chau at Kau Sai in Saikung. The fungshui of this site was ‘a golden bell hanging on a silk thread'. Every year at the Double-ninth festival, nine buffaloes came to worship at the grave; there was also the sound of a bell being struck. A second site was at Yuen Chau Chai at Kei Leng Ha Village. The fungshui name was 'the general comes down from his horse to drink three cups of wine'. In the middle of the sea, there is Wu Chau (with the adjacent island of Sam Pui Tsau) that resembles a pig, three cups of wine and two cups of tea. Another site was at To Tau Tsui at Wu Kai Sha, which is opposite Nga Chau (usually nowadays called A Chau) in the Tai Po Hoi. The fungshui name was crows going into the ocean. Legend has it that in the old days a mud embankment connected Wu Kai Sha to Nga Chau which sank into the sea after the emperor put down the dragon. The embankment has not been seen again. One more site was on Ap Chau opposite Kat O. The fungshui name was 'precious duck going through the lotus'. The legend is that Ap Chau used to be able to swim between Sam Mun Kan and Mirs Bay. Later, it was blocked by a duck pole, that is, the place currently known as Hak Ngam Kok. After that, when paddy ripened in the Yim Tin Village area near Sha Tau Kok, there was no rice grain on the stalk, because it was all eaten by the duck. After the emperor put down the dragon with his golden pen, the head of the duck... and then there was grain again.\n\nI know about the fungshui of only these four grave sites.\n\nhe cut off\n\nPassage 2\n\nRecorded by Ho Kei Fook\n\n\"An extraordinary person saw that Huang Hsiao-yang [rebel in the Canton area in the early fifteenth century] had features fitting to make him emperor and gave him a bamboo shoot to plant at home. When the 'bamboo grew to the height of his brows', he was supposed to be able to make an arrow out of it which he could use to kill the emperor with and thereby take over the throne. Huang planted the bamboo shoot as he had been instructed and a bamboo stem grew", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209666, "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": 323, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n301 \n\nsatisfaction of all, both parties agreed to give the disputed piece of land to the experimental farm of the welfare center for furthering the work of agricultural improvement. \n\nThis passage is taken from Chang Fu-liang When East Met West, A Personal Story of Rural Reconstruction in China (New Haven, Connecticut, Yale-in-China Association, 1972) 50-51. It will be seen that whilst the team tactfully used firecrackers in the final solution, it was not in the form originally insisted upon by one of the parties to the dispute! \n\nIn another recorded village case, this time from Amoy in the Fukien province, provision for the use of firecrackers in the settlement of offences against the community was included in the village rules. Describing ownership and management of seaweed growing areas in the early 1930s, the writer, who was one of the professors at Amoy University, stated: \"The rocks are jealously guarded and no one is permitted to pick up a single seaweed from another person's grounds. If such a case is discovered, the person will be fined by the village committee a sum of $50.00 and besides will have to set off a quantity of firecrackers as a means of confessing his offence against the owner\". (Tseng, \"Seaweeds of Amoy”, Lingnan Science Journal 12, No. 1 (1933), 49). \n\nAssociations in urban milieu seem also to have used fire-crackers in the course of disciplining their members. E. T. Williams describes how the Swatow Guild, comprising persons from six nearby hsien, fined those members who failed to participate in the celebration of the birthday of the Queen of Heaven, the guild's patron saint, no less than 10,000 firecrackers. At least, there was provision for this in its rules! (Williams, op. cit. 200). \n\nFar from home, a party of Chinese miners on the phosphate workings on Ocean Island were only placated and a serious riot averted by the offer of fireworks by the District Officer trying to settle a dispute with their employers and the native Gilbertese workers. This happened in the 1920s, and the Chinese were almost certainly Kwangtung men since recruitment was carried out by agents in Hong Kong under the supervision of the Hong Kong authorities. The District Officer was the future Sir Arthur Grimble.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209700, "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": 357, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n335\n\nthing rarely if ever seen in books on landscape architecture, a guide to the plants used.\n\nSince every kind of climate and ecological environment is included in this book covering all of China, it would be of great interest to know how botanical variety is adopted in different kinds of gardens.\n\nH. Y. SHIH\n\nOver Hong Kong Lew Roberts, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1982, 97 Colour Plates.\n\nOver the last few years the South China Morning Post has published a number of volumes of photographs of the highest quality, both having regard to the photography and to the printing. This volume is almost certainly the best of these, since it is simply by far the best photographic record of Hong Kong yet published.\n\nThe 97 plates of this volume are all aerial photographs, and give a very wide ranging view of Hong Kong, with 28 plates of Hong Kong Island, 17 of Kowloon, and 49 of the New Territories, and of subjects ranging from Government House to squatter areas, duck farms, and junk heaps.\n\nObviously, any volume of aerial photographs is bound to be short on reflections of the human element: a particular problem in a city such as Hong Kong where the vitality, colour, and bustle of the street-level community is so important in the creation of the spirit of the city. By photographing from the air, even though from a low flying aircraft and with razor sharp reproduction, almost all of this street-level vigour is lost. It is very much to Mr. Roberts' credit that, despite this huge disadvantage, he manages to suggest a substantial amount of the human element in his pictures, and in many of them actually manages to provide a new perspective on human activity. Thus, his photographs of the Aberdeen Junk Yards (No. 36) conveys the chaotic, busy nature of those yards perhaps better than any other type of photograph could. His photographs of Ocean Park (No. 39), the Shaw Brothers Studio (Nos. 88 and 89) and a Mai Po marshes village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210155, "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-1984", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "105\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND BEFORE 1841\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHail, little isle! and Hong's fair haven, hail!\n\nFirst-fruits of China to the ocean-queen! New orient realms, new navies' embryo sail Glass'd in thy shifting horoscope are seen. May British virtue shine, in thee confest; And in her colony be Britain blest!'*\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong evoked different feelings in both China and Britain. In China, needless to say, there was scarcely rejoicing. The sixty-year-old Tao Kuang emperor, monarch of China since 1820, when asked to sanction the proposed Treaty of Peace that granted Hong Kong to Britain, spent the rest of the day and most of the night pacing up and down the corridor of his Palace, deep in anxious thought. Several times he was heard to mutter \"impossible\" and to sigh deeply. At last, at 3 a.m., he stamped his foot and proceeded to the audience chamber where he affixed the \"vermilion pencil\" to the draft. One of his subjects, the great Chinese statesman Tso Tsung-tang (1812-1885), then an unknown and rather unsuccessful scholar, wrote four poems in which he expressed grief and indignation when he heard that the British had taken over Hong Kong; and when he learned the final terms of the peace he was so overcome that he thought seriously of retiring to some lonely mountain retreat for the rest of his days.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nIn England the young Queen Victoria, twenty-two years old and married with a baby daughter wrote to her uncle, the king of the Belgians, \"Albert is so much amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong and we think Victoria ought to be called Princess of Hong Kong in addition to Princess Royal\".2\n\nHer Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was not amused. He received the news of the Chuenpi agreement (January 1841) between Captain Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary, and the Imperial Commissioner Kishen, with disappointment and disapproval.\n\n* See Plates 1-3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210439, "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-1985", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "KAU SAI, AN UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT\n\nBARBARA E. WARD*\n\n27\n\n1. INTRODUCTION\n\nEvery traveller to Hong Kong remembers the junks. They swarm in the harbour: fishermen, cargo boats, pilot craft, countless small passenger sampans, wooden lighters clustering around the ocean-going ships like suckling pigs around their dams, Chinese boats of every shape and size. The men and women aboard them are the Boat People. Traditionally they were born, married, died on their boats. They went ashore permanently only after death, for it is unchancy to be buried at sea. In the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong today they number about 250,000. Their counterparts (perhaps two or three million) are spread all along the Pearl River and its branches, throughout the intricate network of navigable inland waterways in Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and all along the Chinese coast southeast from Fukien.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nWater dwelling is not unusual in China (or Japan, or, indeed, most of South East Asia) but the Boat People of Kwangtung and Kwangsi seem to have acquired a special notoriety from at least the Sung dynasty onwards. Known as Tanka, a name rightly resented by them as a term of derision and disrepute, they have been despised, placed at the bottom of local systems of social stratification, and often referred to as exemplars of loose sexual morality and other un-Chinese characteristics. They are still frequently explained away as being not really Chinese, or even not really human. I have heard well-educated landsmen expatiating upon their non-Han descent, their non-Chinese language, their utterly alien customs (which are often alleged to include matriliny), and the special biological distinction which gives them all six toes on each foot.\n\n* Barbara E. Ward passed away in 1982 before completing this manuscript, obviously an early draft for a full-length book. It is published here by kind permission of her husband, Dr. Stephen Morris, who has also supplied the plates. Miss Ward was, for many years, a member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211424, "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-1988", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "116\n\nhad to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then.\n\nIn a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote:\n\n\"My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine.\n\nNow I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211885, "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": 300, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "275\n\ntossing about. Great blame is therefore due to those who saw it for not describing what they saw, and to those who ought to have been on the lookout for not seeing it.\n\nJust before dark we saw another ship in the distance, quite disabled, or rather nearly so, and laid to. We steered close under her stern, and found the crew all right, and preparing to set her to rights. She was a Dutchman from Cape Town, bound for Batavia, Every sail in her was blown to rags and gone, except two spankers which helped to keep her steady. Yet she laboured fearfully. Instead of being thankful that we were not so badly off, the captain kept laughing at the poor fellows, and saying how mortified they must feel to see us going on so well under the circumstances.\n\nOn Sunday as they were clearing the wreck away, a lot of the upper rigging fell on the new yard that had been put up, and snapped it off as clean as possible, to add to our troubles. I expected no other, and am only surprised it did not give way during the storm. It will take two days to \"scarf\" the pieces together and put it up again, and even then it may not stand.\n\nI do not know how long it will be now before our journey will end. I am almost disheartened about it. Three months gone, and not yet got to St Paul's Island or Amsterdam, in the Indian Ocean. As to you ever hearing from me again, it seems out of the question altogether. This storm will have put us by very considerably and no mistake. I dare say you all very much wonder you have not heard before, but I have only this consolation, that it is not my fault. I am continually thinking of home, and picturing in my mind all the pleasures of the country in May and June, while here I am tossed on the ocean, in the depth of winter, where the cold is enough to freeze anybody, with everything damp and cold. No more going round the Cape for me while my name is John Fryer, if I can avoid it. It is worth a pound a day to put up with all the inconveniences, and were it not for the thought of what I am going to do, I could not endure it at all. It is now dinner time, three o'clock, so I must now stop.\n\nThursday, June 6th\n\nSince my last entry our circumstances have been much on the improve. Yesterday we got the topsail yard up, and the sail bent. The old yard\n\nPage 300\n\nPage 301", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211890, "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": 305, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "280\n\nWe are now going on very slowly indeed, and unless the breeze very much strengthens it will be a while even now before we reach Batavia. The weather is much warmer today and I have spent nearly all the time on deck. No one can imagine, unless placed in my circumstances, how much I long to see land once more, and to tread on \"Terra Firma\".\n\nWednesday, July 3rd\n\nI am now writing under far different circumstances to my last. Here I am in a fine hotel in Batavia, recreating and resting till the vessel is able to proceed to her destination. How I came here I will endeavour to describe as clearly as possible, although I have had to pass through so much that I have forgotten one half of it.\n\nNow to proceed. The day after we spoke with the \"whaler\" I have just mentioned, we spoke to another which came from the same town. She had lately caught a whale, and as she sailed past I saw the greater part of the blubber upon deck, cut up in large pieces. They were boiling some at the time, and the scent was quite alarming, as it blew toward our ship. They wrote their longitude by their chronometers on a large board, and we did the same. We were 90 miles out, and this is the result of the captain's ignorance and negligence in all probability.\n\nThe next few days we had a complete calm so that we were only making a few miles a day. The ship having only half of her sails that were capable of being used, made it slow work indeed. Day after day we went on till at last one afternoon we sighted \"Java Head\". The captain's impatience at the lightness of the wind knew no bounds. He walked about and swore, and stamped, and bullied, but all to no purpose. The next day we got off Prince's Island, and just moved a few miles along the shore.\n\nPleasant indeed it was to be in sight of land once more after such a long stay on the wide ocean, with nothing to vary the tediousness and monotony. If it had been a dreary desert land it would have been a treat to look at it, but how great the pleasure to see with the glass the most fertile and luxuriant island in the world, completely embossed with trees, of the most graceful and imposing appearance. We could see the waves as they washed the shores, and hear their dashing against the sandy beach. The heat was something considerable on account of the calm. Butterflies and small insects came off to the ship from the shore, and were the first", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212315, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "234\n\nWhen it opened, in 1868, it gave the Colony a new orientation. The first vessel the Docks built was the 46-foot launch, Duncan, for their own use, which affectionately became known as Old No.1.\n\nCertainly a considerable outlay of capital and expertise was involved, and the Docks were well supported by the P&O line, which ran a service from Hong Kong to Shanghai from 1849, and by Jardine's.\n\n**From Rangoon to Shanghai there is nothing equal to that great concern (the Docks); nor along the entire Pacific Coast of North and South America is there any undertaking equipped with better facilities...** (MacMillan, 1925).\n\nThe Cosmopolitan Docks (later purchased by Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks) began at Tai Kok Tsui in 1880, and by the 1890s the main docks at Hung Hom had built up rapidly. The local community (even by 1881 the population of old British Kowloon numbered only 9,021) was among the largest industrial settlements. It worked day and night for years with queues of ships waiting to be repaired. The Hong Kong Guide 1893 records:\n\n**The Docks**\n\nare the most extensive of any in Asia. Vessels of 550 feet in length and 30 feet draft of water can be docked at Kowloon.\n\nExtra dividends were awarded to shareholders twice a year, and sons of skilled craftsmen from Hung Hom followed their fathers into the Docks. The village was never asleep as journeymen worked on shifts around the clock. It was one of the most prosperous places in the Colony.\n\nWith a population of only 260,000, at the turn of the century Hong Kong was the second largest port in the world. By then her own ships sailed the Pacific Ocean and the seas of Asia. Easterners (the Chinese) and Westerners (the expatriates were mostly Scottish) had joined forces in the Dockyard, and the Board was representative of many nations of maritime importance. A strong sense of pride and community spirit existed. During World War I, ships of more than 5,000 tons were built.\n\nButterfield and Swire started to construct their dockyard at Quarry Bay, on Hong Kong Island, in August 1902, and work was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213286, "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-1994", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "88\n\nIt is not unlike the West where it is not uncommon practice to construct beams with a slight camber and columns with an entasis. This overcomes the illusion of sagging or concavity respectively.\n\nIncidentally, the length of a briefcase manufactured in many Chinese communities is, very approximately, 43 centimetres (around 17 inches). This, it has been suggested (Walters, 1988: 83), is designed to conform to the auspicious 'fung shui foot'. The actual size of a briefcase could, of course, be coincidence. Or perhaps it depends on the size of files and sheets of paper which the bag has to hold? But whatever the reason for the dimension, a liberal helping of luck is always welcomed by businessmen of whatever nationality.\n\nReturning to the case study: the front view looking out from a building is important for enhancing wealth. If one gazes north out of the window of the master bedroom, one can view the harbour which forms the dragon's lair with all its benevolent power. Beyond are the Kowloon Foothills (including Lion Rock and Beacon Hill), Tai Mo Shan, Ma On Shan, and the Pat Shin Range. Well out of sight is the Kun Lun Shan mountain range of South China. The Hong Kong harbour can be compared to the much smaller fung shui ming tong (ponds) that one sees in front of Chinese villages.\n\nThe water in the front balances the fung shui that flows down the hill at the rear. Of course, it also serves a practical purpose. Not only does the village pond contain fish, but also the water is used for washing, irrigation, and, in emergency, for fire fighting. As previously mentioned, water, in Cantonese, symbolises money. It is good fung shui to have water in front of a building or a grave. But looking across at the ocean, you need to be able to see an island or a strip of land. If there is no 'destination', there is no 'purpose'. A sailor needs to know where he is heading. He must not be 'rudderless'. Looking out to sea or gazing at a water feature, however, gives not only Chinese, but also Westerners, a relaxed feeling.\n\nCertainly, the ambience of a home or office means something to everyone, Westerner or Chinese. And, sometimes, on entering a building, a Westerner's subconscious senses may lead him or her to exclaim, 'I like this place: I can relax here!' It is, however, not always easy to provide an explanation why one's sixth sense indicates a feeling of peace or, contrarily,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213826, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "151\n\nTHE HOUWANG CULT AND\n\nTUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE\n\nHON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO'\n\nWhile the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded.\n\nTung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages\n\nSituated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on\n\nPl", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214050, "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-1997", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "85\n\nWharf, one of the oldest landing stages, originally consisted of a simple wooden pier which needed to be replaced as successive reclamations advanced the seafront. In the mid-1880s when it was rebuilt it was still the principal landing place on the Island, being by this time a substantial wooden structure. Numerous other piers and jetties have always been scattered along the north shore which generally served the smaller-sized coastal and harbour shipping, larger ocean-going vessels making increasing use of the deep-water facilities in Kowloon. In 1911, the main piers in the central district were Queen's Pier (rebuilt in the mid-1920s), Kowloon (Star) Ferry Pier, Blake Pier (previously Pedder's Wharf) and the old P&O Jetty. By 1930 there were still some 30 piers and jetties on the Island jutting out into the harbour. The effects of severe typhoons caused immense damage to vessels and facilities, and heavy loss of life, for example that in 1874 resulting in the deaths of 2,000 persons; old photographs show a devastated harbour with the remnants of numerous piers sticking out of the wreckage-strewn waters.\n\nBy 1887, on the Mainland there were three principal jetties, ranging in length from about 110 to 145 metres lying just north of the south-west tip of Kowloon peninsula and a 150m-long vertical seawall to the south. The dock area itself incorporated a 1.2km-long narrow-gauge steel tramway system which was manually operated along the wharfage and through the extensive godowns. As a result of the devastating 1906 typhoon, in which 10,000 lives were lost (over 2% of the total population), enormous damage was caused to the existing wharfs and to the new Star Ferry pier which was completely severed and marooned from the land. A 200m-long 13m-wide wharf with 9 metres of water at low tide was added to the complex in 1916 which was long and deep enough to allow the largest ship visiting Hong Kong at that time to come alongside. By 1925 there were already 18 deep-water berths available in Kowloon.\n\nEarly in the century there were also piers and wharves for passenger ferries and commercial vessels in other locations, for instance in 1904 a berth was constructed at Lai Chi Kok to serve the oil tank farm and, shortly afterwards, at the end of Boundary Street there was a 36m-long 2m-wide pier with sufficient depth of water to enable freight to be transferred to and from steam launches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214406, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "230\n\nHONG KON\n\n(from the notes of a Russian traveller)\n\nOf the many islands, scattered along the shores of the extensive Chinese empire, the English selected for themselves a small island not particularly distinguishable for its fertility, almost bare, of little use to China; but with a good harbour and lying on the route from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean - hence very useful to them - and founded a city here, a depot for trade not only with China but with neighbouring islands. The city, whose proper name of Victoria is hardly known even to its own inhabitants, looks over the strait separating the island from the mainland, and consists of one main street following the course of the shore; it's called Queen's Road, although neither the present, nor any future queens of Great Britain are likely to travel on it; a number of other smaller streets run parallel to this main street or cross it at right angles. The latter rise up the mountain so steeply, that the houses behind stand a whole storey above the ones in front and that is why all of them have a wonderful view of the harbour and the picturesque shores of China. Magnificent too is the view of the city from the harbour. The houses, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre at the foot of the hill, are shaded by groups of trees; the main street is interrupted in the middle by an avenue, from which a garden with convenient, winding paths, runs further up the mountain, so that the mountain itself, previously completely bare is now covered to a certain level by shady bamboo lanes or groves of various trees. People building houses here mainly tried to shield themselves from the burning rays of the tropical sun, which is why the houses all have something in common: each one has, without fail, a covered balcony, and has some semi-dark hall through which the breeze blows; also shutters are an essential accessory of windows. The best building, in my opinion, is where the beautiful is united with the useful, which is - the barracks of the regiment stationed here. The two-storeyed peristyle surrounding it gives it the appearance of a Roman temple and shields it on all sides from the sun's rays. The Governor's House built recently on an elevated site in the middle of a newly cultivated garden, would have been one of Hong Kong's best adornments, were it not obstructed by extensions which completely obscure it. Other magnificent buildings I must include are the hospital, the club and many private homes. The western part was the first to be settled and is now nothing very much: - narrow streets with small houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214512, "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "339\n\ncucumber. When we asked why we could not have stayed here as well, we were told that \"it would not be appropriate.\" Draw from that what you will.\n\nInstead we stayed at the adequate Pacific Ocean Hotel. Perhaps a better choice would have been the Yantai Marina Hotel on the eastern end of the sea front. This would have been nearer to the Chefoo School and the other main places of interest to us along the seafront.\n\nWeihaiwei - An Uncertain Possession\n\nThe pace never slackened for a minute. The following morning it was “all aboard” for another anachronistic piece of Britishness. On the way to Weihaiwei, about an hour's ride from Yantai, we received a briefing from Carol Tan on the background to Britain's involvement in this piece of territory that was leased by the British from 1898 to 1930.\n\nOne or two of the party, including myself, had been there before. Indeed, Jessie Stewart had lived there as a child in the 1930s. Gillian Sunderland's family had lived here many years ago, and Rowan Callick's grandfather had been a member of the Weihaiwei Masonic Lodge. But none of us had been to Liu Kung Island, the site of the naval base, and so this part of the journey was to be a bit of a challenge - not least for the \"organiser\".\n\nPort Edward\n\nany\n\nWhat we wanted to see in Weihaiwei fell into two areas: remains of the former Port Edward in the city itself and those on Liu Kung Island. Armed with a vast collection of old photographs from the early days of the British tenancy, thanks to Arthur Hacker, we went off in search of what we could find. The most likely area seemed to be the low hill rising at the north end of the bay around which the present-day city is clustered.\n\nUp above the small naval base, set off from the main road by a small garden, is a small but charming bungalow. Was this the former governor's residence? Some controversy here. The majority view was that the building was not grand enough. Perhaps it was the naval", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215279, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "could be nullified only by the use of the crown prerogative of disallowance. The Colonial Office was most reluctant to exercise this power except in extreme circumstances since it might cause the governor public embarrassment. There are only three cases to be found in the files before 1933 where the Colonial Office was consulted about a project and imposed its veto.\n\nThe progress of industrialisation in Hong Kong was completely different from all other British colonies where factories could be established only with the aid of protective tariffs and other government assistance and manufactured goods were sold only in the local market. Hong Kong island was originally occupied because it had the best deep-sea harbour between Shanghai and Indo-China. It served as a base for the British navy and a place where merchants could store their goods and transfer them from ocean-going vessels to smaller ships to trade at ports along the China coast and inland waterways. About 80 per cent of the goods passing through the harbour consisted of re-exports destined for South China from overseas or from North China, or exports from China being transhipped in Hong Kong. Since the principal reason for Hong Kong's existence was to be an entrepôt for trade with China, it has always been a free port with no customs duties on imports or exports. Industries were established early in the colony's history to provide for the needs of the port and to process primary products for local consumption and export to China. Shipbuilding and ship-repairing yards were established soon after Hong Kong island was occupied in 1841, followed by a rope-making factory in 1851, a flour mill in 1859, a sugar refinery in 1870, a distillery in 1871, tobacco and cigarettes in 1880, a cement factory in 1897, and a cotton spinning and weaving company in 1899.\n\nIn 1911 the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce carried out a survey of all European, American, and British Indian firms in the colony engaged in import, export, and manufacturing. The survey listed 38 trading companies which had also set up factories. The 1931 census found that about a quarter of the working population (112,133 out of 470,794) were employed in manufacturing industries. The 1930 Blue Book listed 3,164 factories and workshops under 102 categories ranging from 124 boat builders to 116 tin beaters and 14 weaving factories. Most of these establishments were very small, situated in the back streets and tenements of the urban area. In 1932 only 586 were registered under the new Factories and Workshops Ordinance, which regulated firms that employed at least 20 persons. It is difficult to quantify the size of the manufacturing sector in the absence of detailed statistics of local consumption, but it appears that domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1932 totalled at least HK$36 million (about £2,500,000).1 The main items exported were cement, refined sugar, preserved ginger, lard, knitted singlets and hosiery, and electric torches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215318, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "THE POPULAR RELIGION GODS\n\nTHE HAINANESE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n43\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is a study of the popular religion gods to be found on the altars of Chinese folk religion temples on the island of Hainan as well as in 'Hainanese temples' within the confines of former colonial territories in south-east Asia. I will be endeavouring to isolate the purely Han Chinese Hainanese deities from those of their surrounding neighbours, the non-Han minority peoples on Hainan itself as well as from emigrant Han Chinese communities in south-east Asia. The latter includes emigrants who speak the Han linguistic groups of Hakka, Hokkien (and its sub-groups including Minnan and Hengwa (Xinghua)), Cantonese (and two of its sub-groups) and Guangxi, as well as the smaller groups such as Chaozhou [Swatowese].\n\nThe tropical island of Hainan, literally \"South of the Ocean,\" lies off the south coast of China and was formerly part of Guangdong province. In 1988 it became a province in its own right. 150 miles in length and 100 in breadth, it is one sixth the size of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, half the size of Ceylon and four times the size of Cyprus, with its main port of Haikou and the provincial capital, Qiongzhou, both on its northern coast.\n\nSeparating the island of Hainan from the mainland is the Qiongzhou Straits, with the 170-mile-long Leizhou peninsula in Guangdong province leading into the mainland proper. The proximity of the Leizhou peninsula has led to a small number of the deities with a Guangxi base being incorporated into Hainanese legend and carried by emigrants to all parts of south-east Asia, often without the connection being realised. Devotees in distant parts have assumed that these deities were unique to Hainan, even to accepting place names within the legends as Hainanese when they were quite clearly from the Leizhou-Guangxi border region.\n\nHistorically, Hainan island was one of the later regions to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215564, "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": 341, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "291\n\nPART TWO\n\nShips that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing;\n\nOnly a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness:\n\nSo on the ocean of life we pass and speak to one another,\n\nOnly a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.\n\nIntroduction and aims of Part Two\n\nWith the rapid advancement of technology, especially since World War Two, many trades and professions have been severely affected and, in some cases, phased out altogether. Horses were replaced as draught animals by motor vehicles. Electronic sciences and automation have drastically altered our world. Lighthouses have also been affected, as we have seen above by the relentless march of progress, including by such inventions as radar surveillance, Loran and other shipboard navigation aids.26\n\nThe Trinity House automation programme in Britain involved the conversion of 60 lighthouses and lightvessels to automatic operation and the withdrawal of keepers (Navigation News; 1998). The last manned lighthouse in the United Kingdom was the North Foreland Lighthouse which withdrew keepers on 26 November, 1998. This ended the profession of lighthouse keeping in Britain with a history of nearly 400 years. It dated back to 1609 when Trinity House opened its first lighthouse at Lowestoft, in eastern England.\n\nHong Kong's first lighthouse, as we have seen, set up at Cape D'Aguilar, commenced operations in 1875 (Endacott; 1958, 163). But the Territory, too, has followed the trend to automation. Waglan Island (sometimes spelt Wang Lan) Lighthouse withdrew keepers in August 1989 (Gazetteer; 1960, 108).27\n\nThe aims of Part Two of this paper are to look largely at the men who manned Hong Kong's lighthouses. What sort of people were they? What kind of life did they lead and under what conditions did they work? In a letter to the author, Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) member A. J. S. Lack,28 who served as Deputy Director of Marine in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, wrote (Lack; 1999):", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215579, "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": 356, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "306\n\nWhen it was manned there was that special feeling of the island being \"inhabited.\" Hands were always available to tend flowerbeds or to do odd jobs in off-duty hours. That was when a small group of buildings and its contents were \"loved\" and better looked after - with brass gleaming like treasured altar plate - than the most fastidious housewife cares for her home. Without a human presence, a lighthouse is dead.\n\nThe smell of cooking, the clink of cups, and the buzz of conversation were replaced by the silent, cadaverous chill of the tomb. Yet at times this is broken by weird insect-like noises emitted by banks of grey cabinets of electrical equipment which demand neither leave nor pensions.\n\nIn 1989, with automation, at Waglan an era had ended.\n\nConclusions\n\nSome people, both visitors and lighthouse keepers, saw Waglan in the days when it was manned as a place lacking creature comforts and mod cons. Life was simple and austere. Conversely, others viewed it as a jewel in the South China Sea and close to nature.\n\nNear the shores of Hong Kong Island or Kowloon, especially in the vicinity of the harbour and to the west of the Territory, pollution is commonplace. There are the murky, estuarine waters of the Pearl River. But out at Waglan, one can experience the true tang of the ocean. One feels at peace. This is how lighthouse keeper Sydney Frank Bamsey, whose ashes were at one time buried there, saw it.\n\nConversely, it is also possible to feel like another keeper, Lai Kwok-keung. He told the press when automation was introduced in 1989, ‘I am not sad to leave.’\n\nHave you been to Waglan? What were your feelings about the island? One thing, however, is certain. Lighthouse keepers around the world are a fast-dying breed.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nThe two authors are deeply indebted to the staffs of the Antiquities", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216032, "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": 331, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "265\n\nin 1144, built to the west of the Bridge of a Thousand Autumns, Qianqiu Qiao, beside a small canal with landing places attached. It would seem to have been inside the present city, about where the road from the west gate crosses the canal, before you reached the City God Temple. It was restored in 1271 with a commemorative inscription composed by Liu Xiufu, and the whole establishment was enlarged during the Ming so as to have 109 rooms, with stabling for 80 horses, forty of which had to be kept constantly saddled, presumably for use by imperial messengers.\n\nMoving on to the Yuan [Mongol] dynasty, an interesting account, if indeed it is genuine, claims that Marco Polo mentioned the foundation of Nestorian Christian churches at Zhenjiang (Cinghian fu) by a Nestorian Christian governor, Mar Sargis [or Mar George] from Samarkand. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China during the 13th century employed foreigners within his civil service, one of whom was Marco Polo who spent three years as Governor of Yangzhou, the city a short distance upstream on the northern arm of the Grand Canal immediately across the Great River from Zhenjiang. The story goes that the maternal grandfather of Mar Sargis cured Genghis Khan of a sickness by administering sherbet and his secret recipe. The latter was passed down the family and each generation did good business ensuring their fortune. The story of his appointment as governor would appear to have been confirmed by various entries in the old records of Zhenjiang in which there are references to seven Christian monasteries [i.e. churches] in or near the city, adding that the Zhenjiang Christian population in about AD 1280 amounted to 215. These were started after Mar Sargis had a dream in which he was instructed to construct seven Nestorian churches. Using his fortune he is said to have completed all seven but unwittingly with one on the site of a former famous Buddhist monastery which Mar Sargis was ordered to hand back to the Buddhists. Of the remaining six two were said to have been on the ridge running inland from the former site of the British consulate.\n\nDuring the early days of the Ming, in the reign of the Yongle emperor, various expeditions sailed down the Yangzi from Nanjing, and out into the Eastern Ocean, a commander of several of the expeditions being the renowned eunuch, Zheng He. The policy of despatching such expeditions far beyond China's shores was short-lived. Between 1405 and 1425 Zheng's fleet voyaged through south-east Asia", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]