[ { "id": 206274, "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-1971", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n85\n\nsome of his property was sold at Sheriff's sale in 1847. Akow and Company sold its Queen's Road property in 1850, though Kam Cheong remained in Hong Kong. In 1852 he contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. His last recorded activity in Hong Kong is the sale of two lots in 1855. At this time Akow and Company was operating a hotel for foreigners in Canton.\n\nAfter the death of Chinam the government still had hopes of attracting substantial merchants. A group of Fukienese inquired regarding conditions for settlement. For several generations a number of these merchants had operated large Hongs in Macao and the Hong Kong Government would have liked to induce them to move to Hong Kong. The Government therefore welcomed application from Fukien merchants for land grants. In the light of the ancient rivalry between Cantonese and Fukienese, it was felt that the allocation of land to this group needed to be handled with care. The Governor explains in his report to England that,\n\nThese people constitute a very peculiar race, being far more commercial, migratory, and maritime in their habits than any other natives of China. Their spoken language is altogether unintelligible to the people of Canton, between whom and themselves a species of irreconcilable feud has existed from time immemorial. Hence they cannot inhabit the same neighbourhood without quarrels, and occasionally bloody conflicts. If land is put up by auction the Fokien (or Chinchew men) would in competition with the Cantonese either be excluded altogether, or mingled with the Cantonese be to the prejudice of general peace and order. It is important to secure the settlement of this class of people (in the present instance men of substance). The Council agreed with me to grant them a special location... placed much to their satisfaction in the neighbourhood of East Point, and they have commenced building on five contiguous lots,\n\n15\n\nThis report was dated July 1845. However, in the Surveyor General's return of registered allotments as of 24 June 1846 he reports that the lots granted to the Chinchew merchants had been thrown up by them. So again the prospect of the settlement", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206526, "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-1972", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "68\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nLondon. His official rank corresponded with that of a Lieutenant-Governor, so that he received a salute of only fifteen guns compared with the seventeen of first-class Crown-Colony Governors, such as that of Hong Kong. But, as R.F. Johnston pointed out: 'his actual powers, though exercised in a more limited sphere, are greater than those of most Crown-Colony Governors, for he is not controlled by a (Legislative) Council.'33 Lockhart's official duties, which of course kept him extremely busy, were nevertheless limited in nature, and the tempo of life in the Territory did not change dramatically during his tenure of office, for after the lease was signed, little was done with the Territory. At first, it was thought that the port could be transformed into a fortified naval base like Hong Kong, but to do so would have been extremely costly and would have involved the construction of a long breakwater and extensive dredging work in the harbour. In fact, the port was never utilised as a strategic naval base; it became merely a naval rest centre and a place where the British China Squadron lay at anchor when it paid its annual summer visit to North China. A few visitors also arrived from time to time and stayed at its European-style hotel, and an English school34 attracted boys from China, Japan, and Hong Kong.\n\nLockhart was administering a mainly agricultural region, equivalent in area to a small-sized Chinese district magistracy (hsien). The leased Territory, with its population composed principally of fairly well-to-do peasant farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and artisans, was in composition like that of the New Territories which he had left. Lockhart did not feel called upon to alter drastically the life of this old, settled community, nor indeed was it the intention of the Colonial Office that he should. The Order-in-Council under which British rule in Weihaiwei was inaugurated stated: 'In civil cases between natives, the Court should be guided by Chinese or other native law and custom, so far as any such law or custom is not repugnant to justice and morality.'\n\nLockhart attempted, then, to preserve as much of the fabric of Chinese society as was possible. In his report for 1902, he wrote: \"With the policing of the territory at Hong Kong as a guide, it might have been thought that this question (the maintenance of peace and good order) was one easy of solution; but it required no long residence here to reveal that the conditions existing in the new territory of Hong Kong and those of Wei-Hai-Wei are widely different. In the former case, the natives had lived for about half a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209676, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n311\n\nfrom 5 million\n\nShanghai, despite its recent prolific growth to 1 million in recent years straddling along the banks of the Huangpu river is, for the visitor, the oldest Treaty Port of China. The tourist does not see and probably is not particularly interested in seeing the ring of satellite suburbs around the commercial city of the 1930's.\n\nShanghai is, for the traveller, the mile long Bund with the famous landmark of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building, the former Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel), the British consular gardens and the famous Shanghai Club (now the Dong Feng Hotel whose notorious long bar room is now used for wedding receptions).\n\nAnd, even though the Nanking Road does not exactly convey the excitement of the heady decadent atmosphere of the night club haunts of the champagne-swilling, déraciné White Russian dance hostesses of the Bubbling Well Road of the 1930s; nevertheless, even today, one can still buy the cream cakes and coffee in the cafés and cake shops of the area houses of consumerism among the deserts of the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 departmental stores of the socialist regime.\n\nThe outstanding merit of this book is that it is much more than a guide to the tourist wishing to find the whereabouts of the old landmarks of Shanghai. In fact, it is a very attractive presentation of the well-known (e.g. the life of luxury) and of the lesser-known (e.g. the intellectual and political life) aspects of Shanghai's social history in the modern period. The style is simple and clear and the balance of the treatment of subjects is perfect. (Consider for instance, the account of Shanghai's contributors to the Chinese film industry. This gives an extra dimension to Laida's history of the Chinese cinema and its thesis of the silver screen as the projection of Chinese politics.)\n\nFinally, reading this nostalgic and informative re-creation of Old Shanghai makes me, at least, wish that the same kind of thing could be done for Hong Kong. But, probably, we shall have to wait till after 1997 for that suitable opportunity to recapture the essence of a city, when progress and change comes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211613, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "and a treadmill was in operation for punishment up until the early 1900s. Prisoners were escorted to Court, so it is believed, by a tunnel. Although the author went to Victoria Prison in the 1970s, on Justice of the Peace visits, he is unable to substantiate this.\n\nA few colonial-style buildings, such as the Helena May Institute (completed 1916) on Garden Road, and the old Supreme Court building (foundations laid 1903, completed 1912) in Central District, are still in use. The latter is now the Legislative Council Chambers, and has been described as \"Lutyens classical revival style adapted for the tropics\".\n\nIn spite of forceful protests by the Heritage Society which was wound up, despondently, in 1983 — and the Conservancy Association, the Repulse Bay Hotel, the previous Hong Kong Club building, and the old Kowloon Railway terminus (except for the tower2) have all succumbed to the wrecker's hammer. The average Hong Kong citizen, it seems, has limited interest in conservation. He or she believes that a building has an economic life span, and, after that, it should go. To be fair, the Government, advised by the Antiquities and Monuments Office and the Antiquities Advisory Board, has declared a number of structures, for instance the Stanley Police Station (1859)13 as Monuments under the Antiquities Ordinance. Other Monuments include the steps and gas lamps in Duddell Street, Central District; rock carvings and inscriptions; old villages, for example Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan; and the District Office, North, building at Tai Po in the New Territories.\n\nThe Territory also possesses a variety of other old structures, such as the fort and battery at Tung Chung and the fort at Tung Lung. There are also ancestral halls and study halls, like Shut Hing Shue Shan, at Ping Shan, and Chou Wong Yi Kung Shue Yuen, in Kam Tin.\n\nAmong other declared historical Monuments are Wan Chai Post Office (1915)1* in Queen's Road East, Western Market in Sheung Wan, and the Pathological Institute,1 in Caine Lane. As of 1990, such Monuments totalled 43. One of the most famous of Hong Kong's old buildings was Murray House (circa 1843).1 It was demolished carefully in 1982, and the parts were labelled, numbered and stored. The intention is to re-erect it on another site.\n\nIn 1935, the then new 66-metre high Hong Kong Bank (the third bank on that site) was fully air-conditioned (the first large building in Hong Kong).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212601, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Maymyo 1941 \n\nGUERILLA TRAINING* \n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE \n\n135 \n\nThe shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four.\n\nHongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”.\n\n*This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212867, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "161\n\nI have barely scratched the surface in this overview, but it gives the reader an idea of the vibrant state of the Jewish Community in Shanghai at its peak.\n\nJewish Vestiges in Shanghai in the 1980s\n\nThere were still some physical remains of the Jewish heritage in Shanghai visible during the 1980s.\n\nThe Cathay Hotel, also known as Sassoon House, at the junction of the Bund and Nanking Road, built by the Sassoon interests, still exists today (October 1991) as a hotel, but has been renamed the Peace Hotel. Its ballroom, venue of many elegant tea dances in the hotel's heyday, is now a restaurant serving Western food.\n\nThe Ohel Moshe Synagogue in Hongkew is now the isolation ward of the Shanghai Mental Hospital. A photograph taken in 1984 of the Beth Aharon Synagogue shows the dome of the house of worship intact but the Star of David covered by a coat of paint. The US government was asked to intercede to have this synagogue building preserved, but an article by Sam and Mona Kaplan in the Vancouver Bulletin reports that the building has been razed by a bulldozer.28\n\nThe Jewish Cemetery was demolished during the Cultural Revolution, but its chapel, as of September 1983, still stood, but as a tea house. Hardoon's Aili Garden became the Shanghai Agricultural Exhibition Hall. Kadoorie's Marble Hall has been transformed into the Children's Palace.\n\nNOTES\n\n2\n\nNew York Yeshiva University Press, 1976\n\nOn a recent trip to Shanghai in September 1991 Mr Bramsen found that his grandfather's home had been razed only the year before\n\nThere are still a number of former Jewish residents of Shanghai outside China, including Hong Kong. They are generous in sharing their memories, but they are advancing in years and more than a few of them are getting tired of being asked to recite the same things over and again. A PBS radio programme in Los Angeles featured a number of former residents of Shanghai recalling their life, but these were mostly German Jews who were there from the late 1930s to the early 1950s\n\nCarl T. Smith, Chinese Christians Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong Hong Kong, Oxford, New York Oxford University Press. 1985", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213218, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "19\n\nReichmann's application for the Grand Hotel was not granted as he was a German national. He applied again in 1915 but to no avail. Though he was unsuccessful, the application suggests he was not interned with his fellow countrymen. After peace returned, he again sought a decision on his application for naturalisation (CO129/455, p37, 11 July 1919).\n\nI have presented this material in what some might consider excessive detail because it relates a connected history of accommodation for travelling and resident Germans from 1859, when Petersen's German Tavern was opened, to 1931, when his daughter retired from the management of the Station Hotel in Kowloon and closed its doors.\n\nCafe Weissmann\n\nThe Cafe Weissmann opened in 1904. In 1914/15 the name was changed to Wiseman, a less Germanic spelling. Lane, Crawford and Co. had acquired a controlling interest in Weissmann Ltd, so its Cafe was not considered to be alien enemy property. The licence for spirits was transferred from Rembold Ekhardt, who had held it from 1909, to Ellen H.K. King,\n\nAccording to Jarrett, the author of the column \"Old Hong Kong\" in the South China Morning Post (23 Sept. 1933), Hans Weissmann was a ship's baker who began business near the Bowrington Canal. If this is accurate, he must have begun his Hong Kong career at the Hong Kong and China Bakery Co. It was a limited company with the controlling interest being held by Lane, Crawford and Co. Mr. Weissmann opened a restaurant in a small room in the Beaconsfield Arcade in 1904, but he soon moved to the south-east corner of Queen's Road and Wyndham Street. Here, in addition to his \"Refreshment Room\", he had a \"Tiffin Room\" at No. 1 Wyndham Street. At the same time, the business became a limited company (DP20, 27 Apr 1905). The management of the restaurant was taken over by Carl Fiedler in 1908. A year later, the business was moved to No. 14 Des Voeux Road Central. Mr. Fiedler was not long after replaced by Rembold Ekhardt, who conducted the business under various names until 1914.\n\nCafe Weissman became Cafe Wiseman in 1914. No. 14 Queen's Road was redeveloped in 1926 as the Exchange Building. Lane, Crawford and Co. had its store there and for several years Cafe Wiseman became the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215020, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "72\n\nThe Mairie is only open part-time and we again gained some useful advice and knowledge.\n\nThe Chateau de Fransu, the billet of Col. Fairfax, GHQ Adviser, CLC, is now a logis, mainly for families. During the Second World War it was the local German HQ. [see photograph]\n\nThe Chateau de Thesy in extensive grounds was the officers quarters and mess for the HQ, CLC. It is now being extensively renovated. It is privately owned. [see photograph]\n\nThe Hotel des Voyages, near the railway station, was the main café of the village and was patronised by British Labour Corps NCOs. It is now the Hotel Restaurant Bernard. [see photograph]\n\nWhen visiting, we stayed at the 16th century Auberge du Chateau de Nolette, about a mile from Noyelles-sur-Mer and within easy walking distance.\n\nOutside the church at Noyelles-sur-Mer there is a memorial to those from the village who were killed. We saw some young children playing around it and I was moved to think that those named on the memorial did not die in vain so that future generations may live in peace and freedom.\n\nOn a later visit, a few weeks later, this time accompanied by Keith Stevens, we managed to visit the grounds of both the Chateau de Fransu and the Chateau de Thesy and spoke with the owner of the former and the caretaker of the latter. We also visited the site where possibly the Chinese hospital, with subordinate and ancillary buildings and detention centre had been established. French residents of a lone newish house almost opposite pointed out where they understood the hospital and detention centre had been.\n\nAn unexpected, and to date unexplained, observation was the pair of small white stone Chinese lions concreted on to plinths at a main cross-roads within Nolette, very close to Noyelles-sur-Mer. The inscriptions, in Chinese and French, explain that they were donated to commemorate the twinning, in 1994, of the small village of Noyelles-sur-Mer with the fishing town of Tungkang [Donggang] some forty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]