[ { "id": 204682, "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-1963", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n147\n\ncome right out in favour of a Portuguese source. It is indeed very likely that this is a spelling etymology which might never have arisen if the modern Portuguese orthography lingua (with u = English w) had been used in Johnson's day. It is fairly certain that the o in the earlier spelling, lingoa, had the value of English w in eighteenth century Portuguese.\n\nOn the other hand, it may be that we should still look to a Portuguese etymology for lingo, but not an etymology drawn from the written standard language of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries but rather to the oversea Portuguese creole (and pidgin) dialects as recorded over the centuries. I have consulted the studies on the Indo-Portuguese dialects by Dalgado available in Hong Kong, including his valuable Glossário Luso-Asiático and find lingo as the form given for tongue, language, in the parts of India and Ceylon where varieties of Portuguese were and still are spoken. Elsewhere I find the form linga reported from the Cape Verde Islands.\n\nIn most cases this lingo should probably be pronounced lingu, more or less as in educated metropolitan Portuguese where the final may be voiced, unvoiced or even silent. The form used in Macao in the nineteenth century has been recorded as lingu and the pronunciation of this word by some of the older Portuguese people in Hong Kong at the present time could be so represented. Parallel development may be seen in the Cochinese, Javan, Malaccan, Cape Verdean and Macanese forms agoļagu vis à vis standard written água, and lego and tabu for légua and tábua respectively registered in several Luso-Asiatic dialects.\n\nThe earliest reference to lingo recorded in the OED is for 1660 in New Haven Col. Rec. (1858) II, 337: \"To wch the plant [= plaintiff] answered that he was not acquainted with the Dutch lingo.\" Various dictionaries note later references in Congreve and Sheridan: “Well, well, I shall understand your lingo one of these days, cousin; in the mean time I must answer in plain English.\" (Congreve, Way of the World, A. IV, sc. I); \"I have thoughts to learn something of your lingo before I cross the seas.\" (Congreve); \"He is a gentleman of words; he understands your foreign lingo.\" (Sheridan, St. Patrick's Day, I).\n\nWIRI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204745, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n37\n\nNOTES ON HUNTER'S JOURNAL\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG and Sir LINDSAY T. RIDE\n\n1 Snow. Peter Wanten Snow, Consul for the United States in Canton. He surrendered the opium in American possession as demanded by Commissioner Lin, and was ready to promise that Americans would cease importing opium, but refused to have anything to do with the bond as the penalties were too severe. (See also note 43, bond.) (L.T.R.)\n\n2 Mr. Forbes. Joined the American firm of Russell & Co. in Canton in October 1838, became a partner 1 January 1839 and eventually was made chief of the house. Robert Bennett Forbes (1804-1889), first arrived in China in 1817. After some years back in the States he returned to China in October 1838 and was admitted a partner of Russell & Co., China on 1 January 1839. He retired in 1844 but had an interest in the firm till 1857. (L.T.R.)\n\n3 Mr. Green. John C. Green of Trenton, New Jersey, first went to China as an agent of N.L. & G. Griswold. In 1834 he was admitted a partner of Russell & Co., China, and retired to New York on 31st December 1839. At the time of the disturbances he was Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce at Canton. He died in 1875. (L.T.R.)\n\n4 Mr. Delano. Warren Delano, Jr. of Fairhaven, Mass., came to China 1834 to join the house of Russell, Sturgis & Co., of Canton and Manila. He was a partner of Russell & Co., China for two terms, 1 January 1840 to 31 December 1846, and January 1861 to 31 December 1866. He was a great-uncle of ex-President F. D. Roosevelt. (L.T.R.)\n\n5 Mr. King.\n\nThis is most likely to be Edward King of Newport, R.I., who was taken into the firm of Russell & Co., as a clerk on his arrival at Canton in 1834 in the Silas Richards. On 1 July 1834 he became a partner and retired in 1842 to Newport where he died in 1876.\n\nThere was a Charles W. King of Olyphant & Co. in Canton at the time, but as this firm had nothing to do whatsoever with opium, he may not have been confined to the Factory. (L.T.R.)\n\n6 Mr. Low. Abiel Abbott Low (1811-1893) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and became a leading figure in both the New York and China shipping world. He first worked as a clerk in shipping firms in Salem and in New York and then went to China in 1833 as a clerk in Russell & Co. of which house his uncle, Wm. Henry Low, had been head for some years. He was made a partner in 1837, retired to New York where he founded the firm of A.A. Low & Brothers, famous for its clipper fleet. In 1863 he was President of the New York Chamber of Commerce. (L.T.R.)\n\n7 Spooner. Daniel Nicholson Spooner of Plymouth, Mass. was at this time a clerk in Russell & Co., Canton. He became a partner in January 1843 and retired to Boston on 31 December 1845. He returned to China again as a partner in January 1852, finally retiring in 1857. (L.T.R.)\n\n8 Gilman. Joseph Taylor Gilman of Exeter, New Hampshire, joined Russell & Co., Canton as a Clerk about the same time as Spooner. His dates of partnership and retirement were the same, too, as Spooner's. (L.T.R.)\n\n9 Mouqua. Also spelt Mowqua in pidgin English. His official name as Hong merchant was Lu Ch'i-kuang Lu Wen-wei✰✰ The suffix \"qua\" signifies \"an official\". (J.L.C.-B.) and his family name was (kuan in mandarin)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204748, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "40 \n\nW. C. HUNTER \n\nat Samarang where he served for 3 years. He died at Delft in 1863. (L.T.R.) \n\n32 Viceroy. The Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi at this time was Teng Ting-chen who held this post from early 1836 until early 1840. See Hummel, op. cit., II, 716. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n33 Hoppo. The Superintendent of Maritime Customs at Canton in 1839 was Yu (?). (J.L.C-B.) \n\n34 The Yum Chae. Cantonese pronunciation for the characters (mandarin Ch'in-ch'ai) meaning \"an Imperial Commissioner”. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n35 Innes, James Innes (1787-1841), the \"storm petrel\" of Canton was the 7th Chieftain of the Inneses of Dunkinty, Scotland. He came out to China about 1825 and operated as a Free Trader mostly on his own, but for a time in the firm of Innes, Fletcher & Co. His dealings in opium had not a little to do with precipitating the trouble in 1839. He died in July 1841 and was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery, Macao. (L.T.R.) \n\n36 Chaye Beale. Thomas Chaye Beale was a member of the firm of Magniac & Co. in Canton as early as 1826. He severed his connections with this firm in the early thirties, and operated on his own till 1845 when he set up a house of agency in Shanghai with Lancelot Dent under the name of Dent, Beale & Co. In 1851 he was Portuguese Consul and Vice-Consul for the Netherlands at Shanghai. (L.T.R.) \n\n37 Se-yin. This is probably a reference to the characters Ssu-ying, the officer in command of a ying which corresponded in some ways to a battalion. However, the rank of a ying commander corresponded more to the Western rank of captain or major. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n38 Ta-lao-yeh. The phrase ta-lao-yeh signifies \"revered elder”. (J.L.C-B.) \n\n39 The linguists. Linguists (t'ung shih) were supposed to be able to act as interpreters between the Canton officials and the foreign merchants when instructions needed to be conveyed. The foreigners, for their part, usually enlisted the help of the Hong merchants when they wanted a document translated into Chinese or they needed an interpreter at an important interview. They repeatedly declared that the linguists were useless when it came to linguistic matters. In fact, the linguists appear to have been rather low-grade men of not much education, and able to speak only pidgin English. However, by law a foreign merchant trading at Canton was bound to employ a linguist. Since it was forbidden by the statutes of the Ch'ing dynasty to teach the Chinese language to foreigners, it was reasonable that linguists should be licensed to cope with their language problems. However, in order that the foreigners should not learn much about affairs in the interior, the qualifications needed by a linguist were low and their pidgin vocabulary was restricted to matters of trade. This was part of a deliberate policy which grew up among the officials at Canton, and the linguists merely acted as another cog in the mechanism whereby communication between the foreign merchants and the officials, however minor, was prevented, and the foreigners dealt instead with a number of different unofficial functionaries such as the compradores and linguists. Thus, the foreign merchants were kept at an arm's length and also kept in ignorance. \n\nThe linguists and their servants mentioned in this journal appear to have acted as general clerks and messengers, as much as linguists. The prefix A or Ah (ya) signifies the status of servant. (J.L.C-B.)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n41\n\n40 Fan Kwais. Fan-kuei ₺ A foreign devil.\n\nforeign devil. The title of one of Hunter's books of reminiscences was The Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844, by an old Resident, London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1882; reprinted Shanghai 1911. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n41 blows them sky high. By a coincidence Eric Partridge in his interesting work A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 4th Ed. 1951 p. 68 defines to blow sky high as \"to scold or blame most vehemently\" and adds origin U.S. and anglicised ca. 1900. Here we have an American example of the use of the phrase \"to blow sky high\" in 1839. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n42 Hae yaw? Probably part of the common expression pronounced in Cantonese \"hac yao ch'i lei\" £À which means literally \"there is no such principle!\" So it comes to imply \"it can't be done”, (J.L.C-B)\n\n43 bond. The bond presented to the American Consul by Commissioner Lin \"stipulated that should any opium be found on an American vessel, the ship would be liable to confiscation and its entire crew liable to death. The Consul, moreover, was to be held responsible for his countrymen's behavior.\" Dulles, F. R., 1930, The Old China Trade, p. 157. (L.T.R.)\n\n44 Pankugua. Probably a reference to P'an Cheng-wei (pidgin Pwan-keikua). (See note 21.) (J.L.C-B)\n\n45 Chinchoo. Ch'üan-chou, a port in Fukien. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n46 the Governor of Macao. Don Adriao Accacio da Silverira Pinto who served as Governor from 1839 until 1843, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n47 16 foreigners. A list is given in the Blue Book, Correspondence Relating to China 1840, p. 403, which states \"Supposed names of the sixteen individuals, as given in the list appended to the Kwang Chou fu's letter to Capt. Elliot dated 4 May 1839.\" \"Supposed\" because J. R. Morrison in translating from the Chinese had to guess what names were meant by the sounds of the Chinese characters used for transliteration, The names listed were:\n\nDent, Henry, D. Matheson, Daniell, Inglis, Ilbery, Dadabhoy, A. Jardine, Heerjeebhoy, Stanford, Green, Franjee, A. Matheson, Matheson, Bomanjee, Goldsborough.\n\nThe 16 left Canton with Elliot on 24th May. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n48 the Chung Hup. This may refer to the two characters pronounced in Cantonese Chung Heep. This officer commanded a brigade. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n49 Snipe. She was a brig of tonnage reported variously as 176 to 196 tons, and registered sometimes as British, sometimes American. She was owned by Augustine Heard & Co., and for many years she was commanded by Capt. William Endicott of Boston, and was stationed at Woosung as an opium receiving ship. (L.T.R.)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205211, "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-1966", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n161\n\nprefix faan in Cantonese, I would like to offer alternative etymologies for some of the words which he discusses and to suggest that it is to Portuguese—often in its Asian dialectal forms that we should look rather than to Arabic for the immediate sources of several loans. The Arabs were certainly present in Canton from early times but so, since the middle sixteenth century, were the Portuguese, and the part played by them from the beginning in introducing the cultivation of new plants to China from other parts of the world has already been demonstrated in various works by Mr. Jack Braga of Hong Kong.\n\nNot only is it possible for certain Portuguese expressions to have entered the southern Chinese dialects through the dialect of Macao but also through the Portuguese lingua franca or pidgin, widely used on the coasts and amongst the islands of Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and through China coast pidgin English which had its hey-day towards the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth in Canton and Hong Kong as well as in the Treaty Ports and, for that matter, in Macao itself. Pidgin English, originally more Portuguese in aspect than in the period of its decline, bears the marks of Indo-Portuguese influence in forms such as amah (female servant), coolie (labourer), comprador (local agent or grocer), chop (stamp), chit (slip of paper), tiffin (luncheon).\n\nIn short, some Indo-Portuguese expressions may have been introduced to the Cantonese by the English and other foreigners rather than by the Portuguese or Macanese. Others, such as derivatives of leilão, (auction), must have entered several Chinese dialects at an earlier date.\n\nWhile agreeing that it is of importance to establish the date of the introduction to China of the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan in Cantonese, I cannot accept the statement that \"it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific.\" Three of the four plants with the faan prefix mentioned by the author almost certainly came from the West. They are the tomato, the guava, and the sweet potato. Of these three, the guava and the sweet potato were brought by the Spaniards to the Old World, and their very names in Spanish and English are from the Taino-Arawak dialect of the Greater Antilles. The tomato, a Mexican plant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205214, "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-1966", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "164\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nand transcribed in a variety of ways by native-speakers of Cantonese.\n\nThe origins of words such as amah are hidden in the obscure labyrinths of time but are still as fresh as a new-born babe. Such words contain the elements of English mammy, ma, French maman, Latin mater and so on, for they represent the infant mouth opening to bawl and sometimes the closing of the tiny lips over the mother's teat. Such words exist in all languages even as a rejecting, spitting series for the father: pater (in Latin), English daddy, Cantonese papa mimic the child's rejection of his father's milkless breasts.\n\nIt is unnecessary to derive Cantonese amah from an Arab source. Similar forms, demonstrably not of Semitic origin, occur in many languages; in those of the Iberian peninsula, ama may or may not be an Arabism. In India, it was one of the common Indo-Portuguese words for a children's nurse. It is this word which came to Canton either in the Portuguese lingua franca which preceded pidgin English as the jargon of the China coast or in pidgin English itself. The documents of the nineteenth century are rich in derivatives of this word and even today wash-amah and baby-amah are widely used expressions in Hong Kong. Chow-amah (wet-nurse) disappeared at the introduction of patent infant formulae.\n\nThe only problem is whether amah, which sounds as exotic in Cantonese as kowtowing once did in English, entered the dialect directly from a Portuguese dialect or was introduced by way of English. My understanding is that amah is seldom used by the Hong Kong Portuguese in the sense of servant and that the word, though Portuguese in origin, is an early English loan to Cantonese, the forerunner of pa-si (bus), mhodhang nreoezir (modern girl), bheazao (beer) and the hundred and one other loans found in the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong today.\n\nUntil more evidence is forthcoming, the derivation of sz tsai and sz tau will seem far-fetched. Nor is there enough proof to convince that fa wong is a calque (translation) of Urdu malik, even though the semantic extensions of wong and malik appear to coincide. I cannot tell which are the foreign words from which we are supposed to derive kwuntim, sz-naai and tai pan and have yet to be convinced that Cantonese natuk is in fact the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205215, "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-1966", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n165\n\nMalay title dato. As for Mo-lo-cha, an abusive expression for an Indian, I see the Portuguese element mouro, 'a Moor'. The slang term for Indian in Macanese is still moro- the area round Belilios Terrace in Hong Kong was once known as mato moros, 'hill of the Moors' because of the large number of Indians living in the district. This name was transformed by folk-etymology to the good old Christian matamoros ‘kill the Moors'. Santiago (or St. James) is nicknamed 'matamoros' in Spain to this day.\n\nMoreover the Indians in Malaysia are referred to by the Portuguese of Malacca as moros, whether they be Muslims or not. The Muslim Malays are never so named. In the Philippines the non-Christian inhabitants of Mindinao and other southern islands are also known as moros, a name given them by the Spaniards.\n\nThe old pidgin records collected by Leland in the nineteenth century also give moloman as the pidgin English word for Indian, so that there is no more reason to derive mo-lo-cha from Maharajah than to imagine that Hong Kong ever was a fragrant harbour.\n\nUniversity of the West Indies. St. Augustine, Trinidad.\n\nROBERT WALLACE THOMPSON\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Itcheong-U-Lam and Ian-Kuong-lam, Ou-Mun Kei-Leok (Monografia de Macau), Macao, 1950.\n\n2 Chang lu Lin and Yin Kuang Jen, Ao Men Chi Lüeh (Gazetteer of Macao), Canton, c. 1751.\n\nSee also Bawden C. R. \"An eighteenth century Chinese source for the Portuguese dialect of Macao\" in Silver Jubilee Volume of the Sinbun-Kagaku-Kenkyusyo, Kyoto, 1954, and Thompson, Robert Wallace, \"Two synchronic cross-sections in the Portuguese dialect of Macao\", Orbis, tome VIII, No. 1, Louvain, 1959,\n\nA NOTE ON LAND MEASUREMENT AND TENANT RENTALS IN HONG KONG.\n\nLand Measurement\n\nUnder the laws of the Colony of Hong Kong all land is Crown Land, albeit some of it is under lease. The right to resumption of leased lands for a public purpose is retained in all leases. The following notes on local Chinese custom have mostly been acquired during investigations for the purpose of presenting the Crown's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205325, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "80\n\nTHE CHINA COASTERS\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nJames Matheson sent his San Sebastian from Canton to ports in Fukien Province in 1820, to open up new markets for opium, and this is generally considered the pioneer voyage in the China coast trade. Although Matheson was Danish Consul at Canton at this time, and the San Sebastian sailed under Spanish colours, it is correct to describe this voyage as a British venture. The men who sailed the opium clippers, therefore, were the first 'China coasters', and since that time 'China coasters' have considered themselves a breed apart, distinct from the rest of the British Merchant Navy. The tradition of more liberal manning, of better pay, food, and conditions in general, pioneered by the opium clippers has continued to the present day.\n\nMany of the customs and practices of the lordly East Indiamen and of the Indian 'country ships' were inherited by the humbler 'China coasters'. The East Indiaman's captain could, and was expected to, make a fortune from carrying passengers and private cargo, in addition to the company's, and in self defence the latter stipulated a definite scale of perquisites for each member of the crew, from captain down to bosun and carpenter. Generous as this was, it was invariably exceeded. There was a much greater variety of 'pidgin' (=business) on the China coast, although it did not comprise such a high proportion of the China coaster's total earnings. As on the East India Company's ships, dabbling in certain types of 'pidgin' was considered legitimate and carried no moral stigma.\n\nThe most common and profitable pidgin came from deck passengers. It was on the emigrant runs to the Straits and Bangkok that this type of 'pidgin' was most prolific. I was introduced to this on my first ship on the coast, the Antung. The Antung was\n\nThe author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Two of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. \"European Navigation on the Yangtse\" in Vol. 3, 1963, and \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205326, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n81\n\na modern coaster, specially equipped for the emigrant trade, with space for almost two thousand deck passengers. She was employed on the Amoy, Swatow, and Singapore run, and when I joined her in 1928 the Malayan rubber boom was at its height, and the Antung was carrying a full complement of deck passengers south each monthly trip. On going below before leaving Swatow on my first trip, I came across many strange Chinese in the engine room and shaft tunnel, all industriously polishing hand rails and floor plates. Enquiry revealed these to be the Number One Fireman's 'pidgin'. The bosun, compradore, and chief steward each had their quotas hidden or working away in other parts of the ship.\n\nThe Antung had loaded her first few hundred deck passengers at Amoy and was completing her complement by loading another thousand or so at Swatow, where a medical inspection and tally was carried out by a doctor and member of the British Consul's staff at Swatow. On the China coast, the successful prosecution of the art of pidgin lay in knowing just how far to go without exciting undue comment. Had this 'smuggling' of passengers become too blatant, the Consul would have been compelled to take some action, or the authorities in Singapore been placed in an equally awkward position. Then, had the captain 'squeezed' the senior members of his Chinese crew too much for shutting his eyes at the appropriate times, they would have made life very awkward for him, and might well have \"blown the gaff\" themselves at either end of the passage.\n\nPrivate cargo was another source of 'pidgin', and on the Singapore and Bangkok runs this consisted of fish, fruit, vegetables, and other delicacies in great demand among the prosperous Chinese expatriates. Cabbages and mandarin oranges from Swatow made a very profitable deck cargo in the season, on voyages which rarely lasted more than ten days, and ships often left Swatow with their decks piled so high with cabbages and oranges that their lifeboats were completely immobilised. Some attempt was made to control this dangerous practice on British ships, but it continued on Chinese and foreign ships as long as the trade lasted. Large wooden tubs of live fish were also carried on deck, and the water aerated by relays of coolies working paddles, whose payment was a free passage. Much of the 'pidgin' cargo carried on the southern runs was of an edible nature, ministering to the home-sick palates of the overseas Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205327, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nAs I have said, stowaways and private cargo of this kind were considered legitimate 'pidgin'. Many snug villas on the south coast of England and the Clyde coast of Scotland owe their origin to legitimate 'pidgin' and 'squeeze'. Opium, drugs, and arms and ammunition came into a different category, however, and Europeans involved in this kind of 'pidgin' were usually acting under duress. Any unsolved murder, suicide, or disappearance of a European officer invariably gave rise to lurid rumours of entanglement with unscrupulous opium gangs.\n\nI once found a dozen or so small flat tins, like sardine cans, tucked away among some clothes in a rarely used drawer in my cabin. I was new on the coast at the time, and pleasantly thrilled when told that it was opium. I was advised that the best thing to do was to throw it over the side, and the outcome was that the messroom boy disappeared at the next port. My only other experience of opium was its sickly sweet smell, which I used to encounter when going along the 'tween decks at night. There were always a few groups of passengers there indulging in a mild session of opium smoking. Even today, some forty years later, any similar smell takes me back to the dimly lit 'tween decks of the Antung, Kwangtung, or Kiangsu, and revives all my old memories of the China coast.\n\n'China coasters' were run on the compradore system in those days, a maritime analogy to the system common in much of Sino-Western commerce ashore in the ports. Under this system the deck passenger accommodation was hired from the owners by a Chinese compradore, who carried his own staff to look after the deck passengers.\n\nThe compradore was also in charge of the cargo, for which in turn he was paid by the owners, and his staff which looked after the deck passengers when at sea acted as stevedores and tallymen in port. The compradore was responsible for stolen or damaged cargo, and insured himself against this, often through the owners acting in their capacity as insurance brokers. The chief steward and his staff looked after the captain, officers, and saloon passengers; while the bosun and Number One Fireman each catered for his own department. The compradore was a responsible Chinese business man, with influential connections at all the ports at which his ship called, and a great part of the ship's success depended on him. Harmonious relations between the captain and the compradore, therefore, were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205328, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "THE CHINA COASTERS\n\n83\n\nessential; although there was a point beyond which these could be detrimental to the owner.\n\nThe rent which the compradore paid to the owners for the deck passenger space depended on the number of passengers usually carried in that particular trade. It was adjusted periodically according to fluctuations in trade and other factors, and was the subject of keen bargaining between owners and compradore — the latter naturally putting a much lower evaluation on the ship's passenger potentiality than the owners. At irregular intervals the owners sent someone to travel on the ship, and check the number of passengers and the amount of cargo carried. These men were known as 'pidgin snatchers' and were very unpopular with the floating staff. If the captain and compradore were good friends and either knew in advance of the 'pidgin snatcher's' movements, the other was warned, and co-operative counter measures instituted in good time.\n\nMost China coasters called at their home port of Hong Kong or Shanghai at least once a month, so that their officers were in much closer touch with life ashore than their contemporaries on overseas ships. During the inter-war period, normal tours of service on the coast were five years, in the course of which officers would serve in several of their company's ships. Many senior officers were married, and had wives and families in Hong Kong or Shanghai, or in a few cases Hankow. Long home leave was granted after a five years tour, but the attractions of life on the coast made many officers and their wives reluctant to go on leave. Captains and mates on ships where 'pidgin' were plentiful, were afraid they might be posted to less profitable ships on their return; while wives were loath to exchange their smoothly-run homes for the doubtful comforts of furnished rooms or boarding houses in Britain. European homes in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or the treaty ports, were sparsely staffed by African or Indian standards, but run much more efficiently. A cook and house boy, sometimes only a cook boy, sufficed for a small house or flat, supplemented by a baby amah or gardener if circumstance warranted this. A similar establishment in India would have been indifferently served by a staff twice as large. Although the taipans of the big foreign companies and senior customs commissioners lived in considerable style, life on the coast was in general much less ostentatious than in India, and much more pleasant.\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205331, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "86 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nThe sailors' and firemen's cook's 'boy' was usually the grandson or grandnephew of the bosun and Number One, while the 'boy' in the pantry bore the same relationship to the Chief Steward. Chinese crews developed a strong sense of loyalty to their ship and owners, sometimes putting their European officers to shame in this respect. Payment for overtime was unheard of, and sailors and firemen would often work round the clock after a docking to have the ship spick and span for an early morning sailing; while bosuns and Number One Firemen would sometimes buy extra cleaning and polishing materials out of their own pockets. The compradore and his staff also spent many years on one ship and one service, resulting in efficient cargo handling and stowage. \n\nEach department of the Chinese crew of a prewar 'China coaster' usually came from a different part of the country. An average 2,500 ton coaster would have about 70 Chinese in its crew, and a common arrangement would be for the sailors to come from Tientsin, the firemen from Ningpo, and the stewards and compradores from Canton and Swatow. Pidgin English was invariably the only means of inter-departmental communication, but normally all worked together harmoniously under their European officers. Provincial rivalries and jealousies were, however, always latent, and their existence helped to ensure efficiency. \n\nThere were always ten applicants for any job. Wages for the Chinese crew on a coaster were small, but being assured and regular, a job on a coaster was highly prized. There was the additional attraction of 'pidgin' and 'squeeze', which had an extraordinary fascination. The prospect of an extra dollar or two from this source meant more to them than three or four times the amount in wages. The more 'pidgin', the happier and more contented the crew, and the more hard-working. Nothing was too small or insignificant to escape their attention, and there was always something to be bought at one port, which could be resold at a small profit a few days later further up or down the coast. I am sure that on a ship trading between the North and South Poles, the Chinese crew would soon organise a brisk trade in polar bears and penguins with the Eskimoes. \n\nOn the China coast, the distinction between the 'regular' and the 'outside' ships must always be remembered. The foregoing applied mainly to the 'regular' ships, that is to the ships of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205595, "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-1968", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "132 \n\nJ. NACKEN \n\nfollow their pattern sage. They pluck and eat their fruit when still unripe; this may be partly because they are afraid of thieves, and partly because the means of sending their produce to the market are so primitive and slow. \n\nOne of the most interesting aspects of street life presents itself at noon. Tables are set in convenient places shaded by a large umbrella, A bench for guests stands in front, whilst the busy cook stands behind. He cries out his delicacies and the price of them, which varies from 2 to 8 cash a bowl. Those of the Chinese who can afford it sit down to \"shik-án-chau.”* There are beef, mutton, fish, and shrimp-congee, macaroni, vermicelli, sago soup, etc. Those of the hawkers who have not yet earned so much capital as to have such a stall, offer cheaper delicacies on their perambulating tables. You may get several kinds of cooling gelatine or jelly with sugar for 3 cash a bowl, or a glass of lemon-water, or cake with meat or peanuts inside. Cakes vary according to seasons and festivals. \n\nIn the evening all the stalls and hawking tables are illuminated by paper lanterns, which, indeed, make the streets look lively and interesting. Besides the articles mentioned above you may hear cried out: Pickled, salted, or candied fruit, betel nut, almonds' milk, lotus-nut soup and a kind of whey made of milk. In winter the cooling dishes and drinks are exchanged for flour-balls and cakes boiled or cooked with oil. \n\nI think we have now listened long enough to street cries for selling articles of food, and I should not wonder if my friend ex-claimed, \"Dear me, I had no idea that the Chinese had such a variety of chow-chow.\" The fact is, I have not by any means exhausted my list of street cries of this nature. The Cantonese are gourmands and they pride themselves on their art of cooking. They have this saying:- \n\n\"Happy is he who is born in Soochow, who has his meals in Kwong-chow, and who dies in Laou-chow.”† \n\n* : to eat the noon meal; to take lunch. The last two characters have probably given rise to the pidgin-English chow-chow, to eat. \n\n† The Soochowites are envied by our orange-skinned Cantonese friends, being of a fair complexion; Laou-chow is said to have the best wood for coffins.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206096, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n171\n\nthe Portuguese suddenly arrived and increased in an unexpected way the problem of the Chinese authorities in coping with local disorders and foreign traders.\n\nThe first mention of their arrival is in Portuguese in the history of the Navigators by Barros, a contemporary, who states that in 1514 Jorge Alvares reached a place called Tamao in China and put up a monument to commemorate his discovery on which he engraved the arms of Portugal. His son, who had died on the voyage, was buried in the same place at the foot of the mountain. Tamao is undoubtedly T'un Mun but some difficulty in placing the exact locality is found owing to the frequent references by Portuguese historians to an island. For instance, one contemporary states: \"The island is three leagues from the coast and the Chinese call it Tamao while we call it the Ilha de Veniaga (Island of Trade, the last word being Portuguese pidgin from Malacca). From this place none may proceed to any of the places near the coast without the permission of the Council at Canton, which is a city 18 leagues away. Even when going there the ships do not enter but stay at the outskirts and there carry on trade.\" The Portuguese received a good welcome and were impressed with the extraordinary riches of China and with the possibilities of trade. Other voyages were made and the results reported to Alburquerque who was then at Malacca. Three years later an expedition commanded by Fernando d'Andrade arrived at T'un Mun with instructions to go to Canton and open negotiations for a trading treaty with China. Fernando d'Andrade very nearly succeeded in his work. He did not return the shots which were fired at his ships by a Chinese fleet, but succeeded in obtaining the permission of the official at Nam T'au they called Pio (whose full title was \"Pei Wo Tu Chih Hui” or local officer for defence against Japanese pirates) to sail as far as Canton and after a whole year of investigation and exploration his expedition returned safely to Malacca where they made a report. The next year, 1519, Simon Andrade, brother of Fernando, was sent to carry on the negotiations but as soon as he arrived at T'un Mun he began to terrorise the whole neighbourhood.\n\nIn justice to the Portuguese it must be remembered that they were continually being attacked by the Tanka and other pirates.\n\n27 Castanheda quoted in Tien Hsia, May 1939, by J. M. Braga.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206287, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "98\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nHong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company. In addition to his shipping interests he operated a bakery, imported cattle to the Colony and operated as a general merchant under the firm name of Fat Hing. In 1876 he was the third largest rate-payer in Hong Kong, and the first among the Chinese. He died in 1880 leaving an estate valued at $445,000. He was survived by seven sons. Two of them are listed among the twenty largest rate-payers in 1881, Kwok Ying Kai is number 8 and Kwok Ying Shew is number 14. Both of them became involved in the land speculation mania of 1881 and their property became subject to foreclosure.\n\nThe death notice of Kwok Acheong states that he was one of the original directors of Tung Wah Hospital and the year before his death was re-elected to that position. As he died in 1880, he must be the same as the Kwok Siu Chung alias Kwok Ching San of the Fat Hing firm listed as a Director in 1879 and in 1873. He was a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872 and signed almost all the lists and subscriptions. Government frequently consulted him regarding affairs which affected the Chinese community. His death warranted an extensive biographical notice in the English language papers. It characterized him as \"a man of remarkable intelligence and keenness in business, and of great cheerfulness and urbanity in his social relations. He was a liberal subscriber to all charities and behaved handsomely to those in his employ. His acquaintance with the English language never rose above respectable 'pidgin'; but he agreed well with and was much respected by foreigners, with whom he had constant intercourse and large transactions\". His funeral cortege was one of the largest Hong Kong had witnessed. It occupied one hour and thirteen minutes to pass one spot. One of its features were four tablets on poles with flowers surrounding the inscriptions of his purchased Chinese ranks.31\n\nThe Chairman of the organizing committee of Tung Wah was the compradore of Gibb, Livingston and Company named Leung On alias Leung Wan Hon alias Leung Hok Chau. He would seem to be the same as the Leong Po Wan named as Gibb, Livingston and Company's compradore on the 1852 list of contributions to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206518, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "60\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nproperty in Victoria, a smaller rate being levied in out-stations. This tax yields annually about $470,000, of which over $350,000 are contributed by the Chinese and the balance by all the other nationalities combined. The petitioners, who are not in some instances British, and who do not in many cases contribute directly to the taxes, claim \"the common right of Englishmen to manage the local affairs and control the expenditure of the Colony.\" They have, however, carefully omitted to point out that the local affairs include Chinese affairs of which, as has been stated, they are generally ignorant and which the Chinese have shown no desire that the British merchants and other residents should manage, and to indicate that to the expenditure of the Colony of which they desire the control they contribute a very small portion. Petitioners do not surely wish to maintain that Britishers have an inherent right to control all expenditure be their contributions to the revenue however small! It would be interesting to know in what period of our constitutional history such a right has been asserted to be allowed.\"4 Lockhart went on to state that there was one male adult Englishman to every 160 adult Chinese and that the British population in Hong Kong was by no means a permanent one: 'the number of persons to quote the petition \"who have passed large portions of their lives in the Colony\" is very small. Their object in coming to the Colony is to acquire wealth and to return to Great Britain as soon as they possibly can. The most telling point made by Lockhart was that it is not surprising that knowledge of Chinese, their customs and their peculiar requirements should be a sealed book to the British resident, whose intercourse with the Chinese is of the most limited nature, being almost exclusively confined to a discussion of markets, goods, and prices carried on a jargon called “pidgin” English.'16\n\nLockhart's main argument, which was endorsed by the Governor in a despatch to the Secretary of State, was that a small group of European businessmen could not be allowed to exercise control over a mainly Chinese population; that this would be both unjust and unacceptable to the Chinese themselves; and that the Hong Kong government had a moral obligation to safeguard the legitimate interests of a predominantly Chinese population. The petition was rejected.\n\nLockhart's rise in the colonial service, as I have stated, was rapid. In 1889 he was gazetted an official member of the Legislative", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206777, "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-1973", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "48\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nThe Forbes completed the last few days of her passage under sail, in order to reserve a few tons of coal for the river passage. When the Chinese pilot came on board to take her up to Lintin she was under steam with wind and tide against her. He showed no astonishment, however, and quietly gave the helmsman his orders as if everything was normal. At last the captain could stand his bland indifference no longer, and asked him if he had ever seen a steamship before. The pilot calmly replied that this mode of propulsion had once been common in many parts of China, but had fallen into disuse. He knew that everything was alright so long as black smoke came from the funnel, but as soon as white steam appeared he was uneasy. Chinese acquainted with 'pidgin English' came to call a paddle steamer like the Forbes \"outside walkee\", and a screw steamer \"inside walkee\".\n\nAlthough this attempt to beat the monsoon failed in terms of the charter, it was still considered a success. During the passage between Singapore and Lintin coal had been transhipped from the Jamesina to the Forbes three times, each transhipment taking 3 to 4 hours. It was thought that 2 or 3 days could have been saved by speedier bunkering at Singapore and speedier transhipment at sea. That the experiment was not repeated was due to several factors. One was the lack of suitable fuel at Canton; the Forbes burned wood on her return passage. Another was the prospect of objections from the Chinese authorities.\n\nThe most important factor, however, was the greatly improved sailing ships which were being built at that particular time. In 1829, just a year before the Forbes-Jamesina experiment, the first and most famous of the opium clippers, the Red Rover, appeared on the scene. In her maiden voyage the Red Rover made the round trip between Calcutta and Macao in 55 days, carrying 800 chests of opium. She had equally successful passages in the next two years, by which time she had at least three rivals on the run. From then no one thought of employing steamships against the north east monsoon in the South China Sea, and the success of the opium clippers kept steamships out of the opium trade for another twenty years. The Red Rover, like many of her successors and rivals was built in India, at the Howra Dock Company's yard. She was launched in September 1829, and for her first few years was owned by her captain, the famous Captain Clifton, in partnership with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207071, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "DO WORDS FROM EXTINCT PRE-CHINESE LANGUAGES SURVIVE IN HONG KONG PLACE-NAMES ?*\n\nBy K. M. A. BARNETT\n\nIntroduction\n\nAnybody whose work takes him into the rural parts of Hong Kong will soon be made aware of the badness of the maps. The errors in topographical detail I must leave to the cartographer to explain. The errors which concern me are those in the nomenclature. It is apparent after the most cursory check that a large proportion of the place-names are incorrect — either the wrong name, or the right name wrongly spelt, or the right name in the wrong place.\n\nPutting the right name in the wrong place is presumably due to the misreading of field notes. Wrong spellings are always to be excused in the absence of a generally accepted, scientific method of transliteration. And even the registration of a wrong name is not so easy to avoid as might be thought.\n\nIn the past, many field workers were entirely ignorant of the local languages and had to rely on interpreters. There are good interpreters in Hong Kong — in 24 years' service I have met four... but they are not available to accompany field survey parties. Field survey parties have to rely on less than the best interpreters, or even on pidgin English, with some amusing results in the early days. It was for this reason that the island of Ma Shi Chau1 is still marked on some maps as No Kot Choi — i.e. No got choy, pidgin English for 'No food to be had'.\n\nLater, the field workers themselves had some knowledge of Chinese, but even that had its pitfalls. For the Chinese they would know is Cantonese, either the Sai Kwan162 or the Pun Yue161 dialect. But the languages of the New Territories are Nam Tau156 Cantonese,\n\n*This article is reprinted, with some revisions and additions by the author, from pp. 1-13 of T. R. Tregear's Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong University Press, 1958). Mr. Barnett is well known to readers of this Journal. He served for 37 years in the Administrative Branch of the Hong Kong Civil Service from which he retired some years ago, his last post being Commissioner of Census and Statistics.\n\nSuperior figures refer to characters which can be found in the Notes and Character Index at pp. 157-159.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207348, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "108\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nsituations. Thus attitudes toward the lower orders were often ambivalent.\n\nBut a further reason should be advanced: working class Europeans were seen as lowering the prestige of the white man in the East. They were, by definition, poor; they lacked ton and breeding; too often they hobnobbed with—even lived with—Asians; they did not cultivate the unruffled ease and dignity of the Taipan. A journalist asserted: 'there is always an expensive necessity for maintaining foreign prestige. It makes for greater contentment and a good type of resident, and it is good for the Chinese in that it elevates economic standards by example'.33 The key words here are 'foreign prestige'. The European lower orders, it was thought, undermined this sought-after prestige and, by their presence in the East, helped weaken respect for the European merchant in Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports.\n\nRELATIONSHIPS WITH THE CHINESE\n\nH.E. Maude argues that in the South Seas beachcombers and castaways were emissaries of western culture and that 'the European came to be regarded for more practical reasons—as an economic and political asset';34 for example, he brought with him certain skills, such as the maintenance of small-arms and cannon, valued by the South Sea islander. In Hong Kong the situation differed: the beachcomber (there were no castaways) and other low status Europeans had little expertise to offer the Chinese; for the Cantonese, in particular, were skilled craftsmen in wood, metal, stone, ivory, and other materials. Working class Europeans could neither compete nor enter into competition with Chinese workers, artisans, and craftsmen. Hence, for this and other reasons, no true European proletariat ever established itself, apart from a class of mechanics employed in European-owned enterprises.\n\nAn obvious factor that inhibited interchange between Chinese and working class Europeans was the problem of language. Very few Europeans could speak colloquial Cantonese in the nineteenth century. This was true of most police, turnkeys, inspectors, and supervisors. Such communication as took place was through the medium of pidgin English, 'an extraordinary jargon', according to Samuel Couling, 'in use between native servants, shopmen, etc., on the one side, and foreigners who do not speak Chinese on the other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207351, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n111\n\nIt is exceedingly difficult to assess the cultural impact of working-class Europeans on the Chinese population; there were strong, but not completely impenetrable, barriers between the two; each despised the other, the underdog European particularly so. Although the latter usually lived in Chinese quarters of the town, spoke pidgin English or a little Cantonese, and often lived with a Chinese woman, this did not make him necessarily feel less British. He was, it can be inferred, as jingoistic as his counterpart in Liverpool or London, buoyed up at times by a sense of racial and national superiority. He did not belong to Chinese society and, it can be surmised, never wished to. He was more at ease with Portuguese and Eurasians; but his social contacts with them were often touchy, prickly, and patronising; for even the déclassé European knew he was a member of a dominant race.\n\nAt the end of the century, Taipan and pong-paân were residentially segregated. A writer concluded that ‘between those who reside at the summit (of the Peak) and those who live in the peninsula of Kowloon there is as wide a gulf as that which divided Dives and Lazarus'.39 This 'gulf' was more than an expression of traditional English class attitudes: the European working class in Hong Kong was an anomaly in a colonial setting, a curious transplant from a more settled society.\n\n## NOTES\n\n1 Sir James Cantlie, 'Hong Kong' in the British Empire Series, vol. i, 1906, p. 514.\n\n2 See, for example, 'Beachcombers and castaways' in H. E. Maude's Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 134-177.\n\n3 China Mail, June 8, 1888.\n\n4 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1898, vol. i, p. 279.\n\n5 For details about John Lee consult the Report of the Commission to Enquire into the Working of 'The Contagious Diseases Ordinance, 1867', Hong Kong, 1879.\n\n6 'Report on the Public Works Department', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1902, p. 51.\n\n7 Lt. Col. G. J. Wolseley, Narrative of the War with China in 1860, London, 1862, p. 3.\n\n8 John Stuart Thomson, The Chinese, London (1909), p. 30.\n\n9 George Woodcock, The British in the Far East, London, 1969, p. 21.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209259, "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-1981", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "148\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nholding the Co-hong responsible in cases of inability to pay on the part of the individual merchants. When Conseequa died bankrupt in 1822 owing 22,528 taels in unpaid duties to the Canton Customs, and 172,207 dollars to foreign merchants, Juan Yüan took action. Conseequa's property in Canton was confiscated and sold for 22,354 taels. Another 174 taels were underwritten by other hong merchants. This amount totalling 22,528 taels, was paid to the Canton customs. Although Conseequa's son was not held responsible for his father's business failures, he was nevertheless blamed for \"letting things deteriorate further after his father's death\". He should have made arrangements to settle his father's debts to the foreign merchants, thus avoiding the ensuing problems. He was, therefore, to forfeit all his property in his native province, Fukien, as well as the title and privileges his father had purchased for him in 1820 through the chian-na system. His debts to the foreign merchants were to be assumed by the other hong merchants who, in turn, were to take over the business of his hong. In making decisions to discipline the hong merchants, Juan Yüan sought to control the foreign traders at Canton.\n\n18\n\nThe working relationship between the hong merchants and the foreign traders at Canton was in general a cordial one. The language used in foreign trade was English. There were interpreters on both sides known as \"linguists\" to the foreigners. The best known foreign linguist was Dr. Robert Morrison. The hong merchants themselves tended to use \"pidgin\", a mixture of Chinese, English, Parsee and Portuguese. The foreigners thought that the hong merchants as a whole were “honorable and reliable in all their dealings, faithful to their contracts, and large [as opposed to narrow] minded\". As exemplified by the existence of the Consoo fund and advances in both directions, foreigners and the hong merchants worked well together under ordinary circumstances. Puiqua was especially known for his generosity. Despite being caught himself in cash shortage situations from time to time, at least once he tore up a 72,000 dollar promissory note signed by an American merchant who, because of the note, had been stranded in Canton. In cases of dispute between the foreign and hong merchants, settlements were usually made by arbitration.\n\nIt was in criminal cases that the hong merchants' position as intermediary between the foreigners and the Chinese government took on special significance. If the issue at hand involved jurisdiction over a foreigner who had caused the death of a Chinese, a crisis situation invari-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209265, "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-1981", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "154\n\nWEI PEH-T'I\n\nthe Chinese point of view, Juan Yuan reported Barrowcliff as the guilty party in his memorial to the Emperor dated 12 December 1820. It was at this time that he wrote the secret memorial proposing strong measures to control the British, and receiving in return instructions from the Emperor to hold to a more moderate line.**\n\nPerhaps Juan Yuan only displayed the willingness to make the best of a situation in the Barrowcliff case, the kind of co-operative spirit that led the British to refer to him as a “man of singular moderation and wisdom”35 only because no opium was involved. The next major crisis over jurisdiction took place not quite a year later. By then, the new Emperor had proclaimed a policy to strengthen the law prohibiting importation of opium and exportation of silver. In October 1821, Terranova, an Italian seaman serving on an American ship, the Emily, accidentally killed a Chinese boat woman. He was sacrificed to Chinese justice in order to prevent the Canton government from investigating further into the cargo of opium that was on various foreign ships in port at that time. This is a well-known case in the West and is often cited as an example of the barbarity of Chinese justice. Terranova, who had been turned over to Chinese officials, was strangled to death as punishment for having taken a life.\n\nThe incident arose when on 29 September, a boat woman, Kuo-Liang shih (surnamed Kao née Liang), who spoke \"pidgin\", sculled her sampan to the Emily, peddling fruit. Terranova, leaning against the railing of the ship above her, lowered her five copper cash in a basket. Not satisfied with the number of oranges and bananas he had been given by the woman, he negotiated further. Somehow, the argument became heated, ending with Terranova throwing a pottery jar at the woman, hitting her on the head, cracking her skull, causing her to fall into the water, and resulting in her death. This was a serious matter, for, in addition to murder, there were other violations. Terranova, as a foreigner, was buying goods from a Chinese directly without going through the regular channel of the hong merchants. The security merchant of the Emily was Exchin, but, as in other serious cases over jurisdiction, Puiqua, as head of the hong merchants, was also involved.\n\nJuan Yüan's investigations showed that the act of the jar striking Kuo-Liang shih on the head had been witnessed by another woman, Ch'en-Li shih, who had shouted for help. A worker for the Canton customs, Yeh Hsia, in a boat nearby, attempted a rescue, but failed. The body of the dead woman was not pulled out of the water until her husband arrived at the scene of the accident. The injury on the woman's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209501, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "136\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nOf the forty-eight Chinese sent to Europe in 1876 by the Foochow Arsenal in order to acquire knowledge of modern shipbuilding and allied skills, the majority went to Britain. Another party came in 1881 to study naval and military science and technology. Increasingly, numbers of privately-supported students started to arrive to further their education. In 1916, there were over 300 Chinese students in Britain, of whom approximately a quarter were financed by the Chinese Government and the rest private students. Favoured disciplines were medicine, law, and economics; engineering, mining, and chemistry were also popular. At the older British universities, Chinese students were no longer absent or rare but formed a normal component of the student population, together with Indians and Africans. They were still 'exotics' in the 1920s but their presence in small packets in various university towns must have convinced some that the gap between the races was not unbridgeable, that each had many points in common. Moreover, they spoke English (some imperfectly), but not pidgin English, the lingua franca of the coolie class. The changing composition of the Chinese population in Britain must have influenced, one surmises, English attitudes to Chinese, have weakened stereotypes to some degree, although this process of normalisation was to take several decades before it made a significant impact, in the post-1945 period.4\n\nMiao Chung-yi was neither a student in Britain nor did that country become his domicile; but he may be selected as representative of the student or educated class. Hong Kong Chinese, and Chinese from the former British possessions in South-East Asia, tended to study in Britain; those from Shanghai and especially northern China, where there were many America-supported universities and institutions, were likely to go to the United States (as Miao did). The number of Chinese studying abroad has grown greatly since the 1920s; the trend, until recent times, has been ever upward. According to Ng Kwee Choo, in 1968 there were about 45,000 overseas Chinese in Britain, of whom 30,000 (mainly from the New Territories) were immigrant workers, and the rest 15,000 mostly students or nurses, etc. (these figures do not include British-born Chinese; so the figure given by Ng greatly underestimates the number of people recognizably Chinese in Britain).50", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209505, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "140\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\n**Sax Rohmer, pseudonym of A.S. Ward (1886-1959). Rohmer's Chinese master-villain first appeared in Dr. Fu Manchu (1913), the start of a series of thrillers about Fu.\n\n27 His real name was Chang Wan but he was known as Brilliant Chang to police and public.\n\n**The Times for April 10 and 11, 1924. See also Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-end (London: Faber, 1941). One of Chang's clients was Brenda Dean Paul, a notorious upper-class drug-addict, daughter of Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, a former Lord Mayor of London.\n\n\"Some information about Miss Siu is given in the South China Morning Post on October 26, 1928. See also the Hongkong Telegraph for June 23, 1928.\n\n**Travers Humphreys, op. cit., p. 163.\n\n\"1 South China Morning Post, December 7, 1928.\n\nNecrophiliacs are rare but not unknown. The most famous was surely Sergent (Sergeant) Bertrand, whose activities are discussed in Marcel Montarron, Histoire des crimes sexuels (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1971) 113-13. Another extraordinary necrophiliac Henri Blot, 'Le vampire de Saint-Ouen'—is discussed in Daniel Riche, Histoires criminelles de Paris/Ile-de-France (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1980) 407-416.\n\n**The case is examined in Sir Travers Humphreys' A Book of Trials, op. cit. But see also Christmas Humphreys, Seven Murders (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946); E. Spencer Shew, A Companion to Murder (London: Cassell, 1960); and C.E. Bechhofer-Roberts, Sir Travers Humphreys: His Career and Cases (London: John Lane, 1936).\n\n*Sir Travers Humphreys (1867-1956). Called to the Bar, 1889. He was a distinguished criminal lawyer before becoming a Judge of the King's Bench Division of the High Court, 1928-1951.\n\n*Joseph Cooksey Jackson K.C. (1879-1938) of the Northern Circuit. **Criminal Appeal Reports, vol. 21, 1930.\n\n**Travers Humphreys, op. cit, 162-163.\n\n06\n\n18 Ibid. 167.\n\n*Ibid, 168.\n\n40 J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese; or, Notes Connected With China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1925, fifth edition). Dyer Ball writes: \"The Chinese are not only remote from us as regards position on the globe, but they are our opposites in almost every action and thought\" (668).\n\n\"The late Victorians were much amused by Pidgin English. See Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-Song; or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect (London: Trubner, 1876).\n\n42 Op. cit., 164.\n\n\"Herbert John Bennett was accused of strangling his wife on Yarmouth Beach. The body was left in such a position as to suggest attempted rape. See Julian Symons, A Reasonable Doubt (London: Cresset Press, 1962).\n\n**Op. cit., 168.\n\n*A son and a daughter (Wai-sheung) were born to his primary wife. His other wives produced over ten children, two of whom were later returned students from the United States. See the South China Morning Post, June 25, 1928.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209602, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "237\n\nAnd then a good old China Hand you'll Be.\n\nSuch references brought drama down to the daily life of the theatre goer in Hong Kong.\n\nHOME GROWN PLAYWRIGHTS\n\nThe Hong Kong Daily Press in 1894 published a play by Henry E. Pollick entitled \"Soso: A Drama of the Day\". It does not seem to have been staged in Hong Kong.\n\n\"The Cook: an Idyll of the Peak\" was produced at the Theatre Royal in 1912. It was written by R.M. Crosse, of the Royal Artillery. The plot revolved around a search for a cook when a mess of the 445th Regiment, comfortably stationed at the Peak, had to replace their competent cook who had disappeared a few days before the expected arrival of the Brigadier General.\n\nTwo years later Mr. Crosse wrote another more ambitious piece which he characterized as \"a musical stunt in two acts\" entitled \"The Idol's Eye\". The first act was set in England at a garden party. The second act's setting was the How Kwik monastery in the Province of Kwangtung. One of the principal characters Lai On is the \"boy\" of an official in the Chinese Maritime Customs. He penetrated into the monastery to secure the Idol's jade eye by the pretext of becoming a novice. In case any should have been put off from attending by the problem of the language a Chinese character might use, they were informed that “Lai On speaks both grammatical and ‘Pidgen' English during the piece. Grammatical English is used where Lai On would naturally talk and think in Chinese. 'Pidgen' is reserved for his conversation with foreigners\". The How Kwik monastery scene enabled Mr. Crosse to introduce Chinese religious ceremonies and temple music into the play.\n\nAt the time, the public was being captivated by musicals with an Oriental setting, and Mr. Crosse, who was soon to return to England, hoped to have his work produced there. I do not know if he was successful.\n\n† Pollick may not have been a resident of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209845, "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-1983", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "82\n\nat least for some sections of the language community, when it occurs in puns and other examples of wordplay. During a popular television show in the U.S. a chow dog which bites people but is quite timid is described as 'chicken chow mein'. The term wok has become so familiar that it has become a favourite item for puns.\n\nA fast food Chinese restaurant in Boston is called 'Wok In'. In San Francisco audiences watching a cooking programme are told to 'get wokking'. When someone had returned from a trip to Bangkok with some Thai silk ties, an expatriate colleague of ours was heard to make the following remark: 'Did the Thai tai tai tie your Thai tie? The noun lap sap from Cantonese laap saap ‘rubbish' is known to almost every English-speaker who has lived in Hong Kong for some time. Some people objected to the use of the word 'rubbish' as a verb in a slogan for the Clean Hong Kong Campaign launched by the Government recently: 'Don't rubbish your city' was felt to be bad English. The following letter to the editor of The South China Morning Post may be taken as evidence that lap sap and 'rubbish' are taken to be synonyms in the same language: 'To whoever gave us \"Don't rubbish your city”, a piece of advice. Don't lap-sap your language.' (South China Morning Post, 7/12/82).\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See M. Chan and H. Kwok, A Study of Lexical Borrowing from English in Hong Kong Chinese, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1982.\n\n+\n\nThe study is in the form of a monograph entitled Chinese Loan Words in English with Special Reference to English in Hong Kong has been accepted for publication by the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, and will appear by early 1985. The monograph will include an appendix giving a list of 105 loan words with notes on pronunciation, meaning and etymology.\n\n* Oxford, 1962, p. 143.\n\n* For example, A.J. Bliss, A Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, London, 1980, includes chopsticks, chopsuey, kowtow, kuomintang, sampan, tycoon.\n\nD. Carroll, Dictionary of Foreign Terms in the English Language, New York, 1973, has kowtow and sampan.\n\nA.H. Halt, Phrase and Word Origins, New York, revised 1961, has fairly lengthy explanations of pidgin terms and prevalent false etymologies, and includes references to chop chop, chow, kumquat, chau min.\n\nБ\n\nA.J. Bliss, op. cit.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209846, "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-1983", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "83\n\n* For example, Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, London, 1795.\n\nJames Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, 4th edn., Hong Kong 1903. John Barrow, Travels in China, London, 1806.\n\nJ.F. Davis, Chinese Miscellanies, London, 1865.\n\nC. Toogood Downing, The Fan-qui in China in 1836-1837, London, 1838. James Bromley Eames, The English in China, London, p. 82.\n\nMary Gertrude Mason, Western Concepts of China and the Chinese 1840-1876, New York, 1938.\n\n+ * See H. Kwok and M. Chan, \"Where the Twain Do Meet\", General Linguistics, Pennsylvania, Vol. 2, #2, 1972, pp. 63-82.\n\nK. Luke and J. Richards, \"The Role of English: Status and Function\", paper for RELC Conference held in Singapore, 1982.\n\nA survey on English Language Use in different fields is being undertaken in the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature by K. Luke and K. Bolton with the aid of a research grant from the University. Findings should be published shortly.\n\n* Charles F. Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics, New York, 1965, pp. 393-423.\n\nPartial Listing: David Bonavia, The Chinese, London, 1981.\n\nJ. Clavell, Taipan, London, Joseph, 1966.\n\nNoble House, London Hodder and Stoughton, 1981.\n\nEric Cumine, Ways and Byways, Hong Kong, 1981.\n\nR. Elegant, Dynasty, New York, Fawcett Crest, 1977. Manchu, New York, McGraw Hill, 1980.\n\nR. Hughes, Borrowed Time, Borrowed Place, London, Deutsch, 1968. Maxine Hong Kingston, China Man, London, PAN, 1981.\n\nWoman Warrior, New York, Knopf, 1976.\n\nT. Mo, The Monkey King, London, Deutsch, 1978.\n\nSour Sweet, London, Deutsch, 1981.\n\nIan Steward, The Peking Payoff, Middlesex, Hamlyn, 1978.\n\n10 In Webster we find this definition: 'enthusiastic, cooperative, enterprising, etc. in an unrestrained, often naive way.' Collins gives the definition: 'U.S. slang, excessively, or foolishly enthusiastic (c. 20th Century — pidgin English from Mandarin, Chinese kung work + ho together.)\n\nThe Chinese morphemes involved would seem to be [gung] 'work' and [ho] 'together'. The term may well be pidgin English, as Collins suggests, since the expression [gung ho] does not in fact occur in Chinese.\n\n11\n\n* K. Luke and J. Richards, op. cit.\n\n**L. Bloomfield, Language, New York, 1933, p. 461.\n\nThis is the O.E.D. spelling of the word derived from Chinese. In Hong Kong the word is usually written wui, reflecting the Cantonese pronunciation. Wu is used with this spelling as a technical term in the New Territories Ordinance.\n\n\"The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicized Words and Phrases, compiled by C.A.M. Fennell, C.U.P. 1982.\n\n15 A.J. Bliss, op. cit.\n\n16 R.W. Langacker, Language and Its Structure, Some Fundamental Linguistic Concepts, New York, 1968, pp. 177-194.\n\n17 Eric Cumine, Hong Kong Ways and Byways: A Miscellany of Trivia, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 177.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209982, "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-1983", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "219\n\nIt was beautiful out there, amid real pine-woods. Near the bungalow was a small monastery and the monks in their wisdom did not allow any wood-cutting on their property. The bungalow was clean and well kept by the caretaker. Chun was his name so far as I remember, a sinister-looking rogue with a squint, who rarely smiled. Perhaps it was the loneliness which made him morose and surly. He had no wife, at least, not officially, and the pay was so small that he could barely live on it, for it was expected that he would make a good deal of extra money from visitors. He brightened up when I ordered supper and told him I was staying for the night.\n\nThere were two big rooms, plainly but comfortably furnished, and the kitchen and scullery were outside. A number of good books were on the shelves and I found a lot of old visitors' books, some dating back to the early 'eighties. I had no idea the bungalow was so old, and I became so immersed in the books that I forgot everything else, until Chun came in with the supper.\n\nIt was October and getting chilly at night, so I told him to get a fire going in the big round stove, as I wanted to have a long, cosy browse afterwards.\n\nChun was becoming quite amiable, and started a long story in pidgin about a bewitched boar, a big fearsome brute, which no one could kill. I knew how superstitious the Chinese were and took the whole story with a pinch of salt, until he took out one of the visitors' books and showed me an account of a shoot written by a Mr. Currie, an old-timer no longer in the port. Chun must have memorised the place for he knew no written English, and it was clear that Mr. Currie—or \"Cullee\", as he called him—was Chun's great hero, and when Currie roamed the hills after pig that was the Golden Age for Chun. He got more and more excited: \"That time, Master, plenty man come shootee shootee pig. Every week four five piecee man come. My catchee plenty cumsha (tips). My velly solly Mista Cullee have go homeside.\"\n\nAfter he had cleared away the supper things I settled down with the visitors' book. There were some excellent accounts of pig-shoots by Currie and his companions, ranging over several years, and with all the usual ups and downs, failures and successes. It was clear that they were written by a man who loved the sport.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209991, "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-1983", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "228\n\np. 10. Kani, Hiroaki, A General Survey of the Boat People in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1967, p. 22.\n\np. 12. Leland, Charles G., Pidgin-English Sing-song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect, London, 1876, p. 4.\n\np. 14. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, London, 1936, p. 120.\n\n16. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol I, pp. 253-254.\n\np. 16. Lin Yutang, My Country, p. 121.\n\np. 17. Percell, Victor, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 2nd edn., London, 1965, pp. 17-18.\n\np. 18. Staunton, Sir George T., Ta Tsing Leu Lee: Being the Fundamental Laws, and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China, London, 1810, pp. 543-544.\n\np. 22. 'Notes and Queries', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XI, 1971, pp. 204-209.\n\np. 22. Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories for the Financial Year 1959-60, Hong Kong, 1960, p. 33.\n\np. 24. Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories for the Financial Year 1951-2, Hong Kong, 1952, pp. 5-6.\n\np. 25. Sayer, G. R., Hong Kong 1862-1919. Years of Discretion, Hong Kong, 1975, p. 97.\n\np. 26. Teng Ssu-yü 'Chinese influence on the Western Examination System', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol VII, 1943, p. 305.\n\np. 33. #AŢ✶ Shanghai, 1947, p. 1086.\n\np. 34. Yang, C. K., Religion in Chinese Society, California, 1961, p. 155.\n\np. 38. Backhouse, E. And Bland, J. O. P., Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking, London, 1914, p. 325.\n\np. 40. Williams, S. Wells, The Middle Kingdom, New York, 1913, Vol II, P. 435.\n\np. 41. Smith, Arthur H., Chinese Characteristics, London, 1900, pp. 234-235.\n\np. 42. Williams, S. Wells, Middle Kingdom, Vol II, p. 451.\n\np. 44. McAleavy, Henry, The Modern History of China, London, 1968, p. 87.\n\np. 44. Chow, Carl, Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom, London, 1941, p. 116.\n\np. 45. Werner, B. T. C., Myths and Legends of China, London, 1922, p. 162.\n\np. 46. De Groot, Religious System, Vol V, p. 532.\n\np. 58. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol I, pp. 268-269.\n\np. 58. Stevens, K. G., Chief Marshal T'ien', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XV, 1975, p. 305,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210876, "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-1986", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "210\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nIn the meantime the minister, the Rev. J. L. Poore, was concerned about the Chinese who had flocked to Australia in search of gold. What disturbed the Rev. Mr. Poore was the isolation of these people. He could communicate with them only through an interpreter or the strict limitations of pidgin English, neither very effective methods for introducing them to the Christian religion.\n\nHis evangelistic interest had already prompted him to send for copies of the New Testament from Hongkong.\n\nHaving received 2,000, he was in a quandary as to how they should be distributed. If he gave them out to the immigrants as they landed from the ships, they would not likely add them to the heavy packs they had to carry to the goldfields. As he pondered the best way to dispose of the Testaments, Poore chanced upon a shipping notice that two Chinese evangelists had arrived carrying letters of introduction addressed to him.\n\nAfter locating them, he found them of “undoubted piety, possessed of considerable literary attainments\". Ho A-low, particularly, was a scholar in his own language, able to translate from English to Chinese and vice versa, and a fluent and correct English speaker.\n\nHaving found them, he then did not know what to do with them. The problem was financial; that of knowing how to support two Chinese evangelistic workers. The Congregationalists were building a church and were already in debt. He decided upon a bold move. He wrote a statement of the needs of the Chinese, the opportunity suddenly presented to meet the needs and the duty of the Christian in this regard. He then sent his appeal to all Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Congregational and Baptist ministers in the area inviting them to meet and discuss the problem. There was a unanimous response.\n\nThe spirit of the meeting was exhilarating. “All were cordial and welcomed the young men with joy; all agreed that something must be done.” A provisional committee was named to arrange for a public meeting. Circulars were issued. The Mechanic's Institute, where the meeting was held, was packed to capacity with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211595, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "AGM for an approach for financial assistance to those leading “Hongs\" which support the parent body in London with its publishing expenses, a letter has now been sent to them to this end. We waited for publication of the new book and the latest Journal before taking action, so that they could see the results of our labours and (hopefully) feel more encouraged to help thereby. There is no doubt that the time has come to seek their assistance, given the difficulty in making ends meet and yet pursuing an energetic and rounded programme of activities in line with our remit.\n\nThe Programme\n\nThe past twelve months saw 9 lectures, 10 visits and one Chinese dinner, besides the usual dinner following the AGM. The visits were the largest number on record. This was due to a greater sharing of the load by members of the Activities Committee, which now includes Members of the Society as well as Councillors. Details are as follows:\n\n \n Dr. Maria Jaschok\n “Concubines and Bond Servants\"\n 18 April\n \n \n Dr. Tom Stanley\n **Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War'\n 12 May\n \n \n Professor Tong Kin-woon\n “Oracle Bones, the Key to Shang China\"\n 9 June\n \n \n Stephen and Anne Selby\n \"Pukka Pidgin\"\n 14 July\n \n \n Dr. Dea Birkett\n \"Women Travellers in Asia'\n 28 July\n \n \n \n Chinese Dinner in the City Hall Restaurant\n 25 September\n \n \n Dr. Lauren Pfister\n \"Clues to the Life and Academic Achievement of James Legge, 1815-1897”\n 20 October\n \n \n Professor John Hodgkiss\n **The Biology of Mangroves and the Role They Play in Hong Kong\"\n | December\n \n \n Professor Graham Johnson\n \"The Hong Kong Chinese in Canada: an Updating\"\n 5 January\n \n \n Rev. Carl Smith (with Elizabeth Sinn, Susanna Hoe, Maria Jaschok, Patrick Hase and James Hayes)\n \"The Ladies of Lyndhurst Terrace\"\n 23 February\n \n \n Dr. Mimi Chan\n \"Images of Chinese Women in Anglo-American Literature\"\n \n \n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211831, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "221\n\nPark Lanc?). The names of the actors mentioned in the advertisement must have been assumed ones.\n\nJune and July 1864\n\nConcerts by the Rhenish Band and the Band of the 67th Regiment.\n\nLoc.: The Bund\n\nR: NCH 28.5.1864, 2.7.1864\n\n2-9.1864\n\nH.J. BYRON: “Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp\"\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nC: Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company\n\nTh: N.N. (l)\n\nR: That the hope expressed in the Herald of 2.7. was not forlorn was proved by the full house for Aladdin in which \"numerous local hits and puns are introduced which took admirably, especially a parody pidgin English on the 'lost child' (see Survey). The dresses were excellent and the scenery well arranged\" (NCH 1.10.1864).\n\n24.9.-30.9.1864\n\nDuring the week a concert was given by Mr. Desvachez (violin) and two amateurs, TH NM.\n\nR: Another adventurous musician had come to enliven the Settlement's cultural scene. Mr. DESVACHEZ. His concert was \"fairly successful, but people here hardly care to sit for two hours to listen to a performance on the violin, however well the instrument may be handled. Some variety is required and although Mr. DESVACHEZ was assisted by an amateur on the violincello and a pianist this desideratum was hardly attained\". (NCH 1.10.1864).\n\n6.10.1864\n\nOpening night of Lewis Australian Drama Company.\n\nNo titles of plays recorded.\n\nTh: NẠN. (I\n\nR: The first night of an eight-week season by Lewis' Australian Drama Co. (see also Survey). In the Herald, no detailed reviews appeared, only short summaries. The opening pieces have not even been recorded (NCH 8.10.1864).\n\n8.10.-14.10.1864\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"The Maid and the Magpie\" (1858)\n\nT: Burlesque burletta (1 act)\n\nA.G. HARRIS: \"The Rose of Castille\" (1857)\n\nT: Opera (music by M.W. BALFE)\n\nJ.R. PLANCHE: \"Paint Heart Never Won Fair Lady\" (1839)\n\nT: Comedy (1 act)\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTh: Lyceum Theatre (l)\n\nR: It was reported that the company attracted \"olerably full houses\". Of the plays, Byron's The Maid and the Magpie was \"infinitely preferred; in it every actor is well up to his part and personates the character he represents with ludicrous fidelity\". (NCH 15.10.1864).\n\n£5, 10, 1864 (Sat)\n\nPerformance by the Portuguese Amateur Dramatic Corps.\n\nNo titles of plays mentioned.\n\nR: In their own theatre, the Portuguese actors were as usual well up in their parts and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212067, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "year as your President. Have we coped, you may ask? Well, I believe we have, and for this I need to thank my fellow councillors for the very loyal and hard work they have put into ensuring that the Society's affairs run in a smooth and on the whole organised way. In particular mention must be made of Elizabeth Sinn for arranging a varied programme of activities and lectures, Carl Smith, for his loyal and perceptive encouragement, Patrick Hase, for arranging interesting visits and editing the Journal (perhaps the most arduous duty), Robert Nield for keeping us on the right financial track, for our team of ladies, Evelyn Caldwell our Secretary, a post which really holds the Society together, Anita Wilson for doing the newsletter, and our Assistant Secretary, Sharon Bruce, also our Librarian Y.C. Wan, and all those other Council members and helpers who help to make this Society tick and move forward.\n\nSo what have we done and where do we stand? I will start with the Programme. During the year there were the following talks and visits:\n\nTalks:\n\nChang Tsong Zung\n\nPeter Leeds\n\nMichael Luk\n\nPeter Steyn\n\nJames Hayes\n\nWang Gungwu\n\nMiss May Wong\n\nAnne and Stephen Selby\n\nSister Beatrice Leung\n\nSusanna Hoe\n\nRichard Stott\n\nVisits\n\nHong Kong Art in the 80s\n\nHistory of Transport in Hong Kong\n\nThe Origins of Chinese Bolshevism\n\nMemories of India\n\nThe Libraries of the Royal Asiatic Societies in China\n\nWestern Scholarship, Asian Continuities\n\nChanging Lifestyle of Young Japanese Women\n\nPidgin English on the China Coast\n\nSino-Vatican Relations and the Recent Developments of the Chinese Catholic Church\n\nGin and Bridge All Day: Myths about Western Women in Hong Kong 1841-1941\n\nHong Kong Birds\n\nVisits were to Waglan Island, organized by Geoff Roper and Roger Perry, Wo Hang Mid-Autumn Festival visit organized by Dr. Patrick\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212484, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "18\n\nthe old Co-hong system at Canton.\" The appointment of Wu indicates the power of Cantonese merchants which had gradually become the most predominant group. The Kiangnan Arsenal which opened in 1865, with additions of more industrial projects as dockyards and guandu shangban enterprises, attracted numbers of Cantonese working class to Shanghai. For instance, in Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Work, Cantonese workers constituted the dominant group. They were experienced and most of them had worked formerly in foreign dockyards at Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nCantonese in the early development of Shanghai found themselves particularly at an advantage in foreign trade as against other groups of sojourners. First, they were more experienced and better connected. Canton had been opened to foreign trade for centuries, and Cantonese merchants were connected to foreign firms in Canton or Hong Kong, most foreign firms in Shanghai at that time were only branch offices. Second, Cantonese were linguistically better equipped to deal with foreigners. It is probable most, if not all, were able to speak English, at least Pidgin. Third, early compradors of major foreign firms at Shanghai as Jardine, Matheson & Co., Augustine Heard & Co., Dent & Co., and Russell & Co. were all recruited from either Canton or Hong Kong. Fourth, Cantonese were more skilled in western industries such as ship-building and ship-repairing since most of these modern industries started earlier in Canton and Hong Kong,\n\n22\n\nBecause of the turmoil of the late nineteenth century, employers had to recruit workers on the basis of personal ties so as to prevent desertion or betrayal, thus conflicts between local ethnic groups were obvious. Cantonese in Shanghai did not meet with no competition. Sojourners came from other regions near Shanghai. The Ningbo group was regarded as a great rival. Ningbo people, for instance, concentrated in the French concession and in the northern part of the South City (nanshi) along the Huangpu River; Cantonese mainly settled in Hongkou or along Guangdong Road, near the large shipyards where many were employed. Ethnic groups in Shanghai, such as Cantonese versus Ningbo men, competed with each other not only in commercial interests but also in the local government. Ningbo merchants like Yang Fang challenged the Cantonese by connecting his business in the silk trade with Jardine, Matheson & Co. Since Zhejiang was an important silk producing region and Zhejiang merchants strictly controlled the regional marketing system in the Lower Yangzi. Zhejiang compradors rose to break up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213411, "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-1995", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ......\n\nHON AUDITOR'S REPORT\n\nvii\n\nxxiv\n\nARTICLES:\n\nEdwin Haydon - Chinese Customary Law in Hong Kong's New Territories: some Legal Premises.... 1\n\nD.H. Liu - The Peking Opera 43\n\nAlfred Y.K. Lau - An Outline of the Urban Development of Sai Ying Pun in the Nineteenth Century 59\n\nDavid Faure - The Emperor in the Village: Representing the State in South China 75\n\nAnne and Stephen Selby - China Coast Pidgin English......... 113\n\nRichard Webb - the Use of Hill Land for Village Forestry and Fuel Gathering in the New Territories of Hong Kong 143\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nJohn Hodgkiss - Life on the Fringes: The Biology of Mangroves and the Role They Play in Hong Kong 155\n\nR.G. Horsnell - The MacIntosh Cathedrals 171\n\nKeith Stevens - Singapore's Disappearing Temples and The Decline and Apparent Demise of a Popular Religion Cult 181\n\nKeith Stevens - Two Groups of Chinese Deities Rarely Seen on Chinese Altars ........... 187\n\nDan Waters - The Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War: Labourers Buried in France 199\n\nPeter Vine - Experiences as a War Crimes Prosecutor in Hong Kong.\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nvi\n\n205\n\n217", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213548, "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-1995", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "113\n\nCHINA COAST PIDGIN ENGLISH\n\nANNE AND STEPHEN SELBY\n\nHundreds of millions of years ago, the dinosaurs ruled the earth. They were an efficient, diversified group admirably suited to their environment. Over a long period, they flourished and in their turn, they subtly affected the environment they lived in. During the period the dinosaurs roamed the earth, flowering plants as we know them today evolved.\n\nAgain over a long period, they died out. Their fossils give us clues about their appearance, their environment and their lifestyle. Some of their relatives have evolved into species which survive today.\n\nLooking at China Coast Pidgin English is like studying dinosaurs. Only the barest traces of Pidgin survive. Because the language is one of history's losers, it has, like the dinosaurs, been characterized as clumsy, outmoded and comical.\n\nWe should like to devote this article to looking at the bones, without preconceptions or prejudice and helping to reconstruct the animal for you, together with its environment, its origins and its demise.\n\n\"Pigeon English\", says Hobson Jobson, the Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases published in 1886 by Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, is \"the vile jargon which forms the means of communication at the Chinese ports between Englishmen who do not speak Chinese, and those Chinese with whom they are in the habit of communicating\n\nMiss Isabella Bird, whose book, \"The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither\" published in 1883 is cited in Hobson Jobson, wrote\n\n\"The Pidgin English is revolting, and the most dignified persons demean themselves by speaking it... How the whole English-speaking community, without the distinction of rank, has come to communicate with the Chinese in this baby-talk is extraordinary.\n\n1\n\nMany sources on Pidgin refer to it as \"baby talk.” Objective accounts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213549, "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-1995", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "114\n\nof it are hard to come by One of the best-known sources in English, whose descriptions I shall speak of later, is Charles G. Leland. In his book, \"Pidgin-English Sing-song\" published in 1876, Leland polishes off his introduction to the language with the words:\n\n\"There are, in all, not more than thirty altogether foreign or strange words in ordinary use, and a number of these are familiar to all persons of the least general information. What remains can present no difficulty to anyone who can understand negro minstrelsy or baby talk\"\n\nTo the modern person who has not lived in the Pacific Islands or Papua New Guinea, Pidgin English brings to mind partly apochryphal stories of Duke-of-Edinburgh worship and terms like \"mixmaster-bilong-Jesus\" (a helicopter) and \"big-man-box-you-bash-him-teeth-he-cry\" (a grand piano).\n\nWe have set the background to the article. Before we go further, let's just remind ourselves what China Coast Pidgin English spoken in the later part of the last century really did sound like. Listen carefully for the baby talk.\n\n\"O-lo dim Hongkong sai hab dou-mat-ji man tok-gi Ying-li-sı a-la sim mai. Je-sı naau no hap gat; a-la daat man go dai. Je-si naau mai ding-ki you no gen hi-ya wan pr-si Chee-na man tok-gi long daat o-lo dim man sim, fa-san.\n\n++\n\nHistorical background\n\nMacau was occupied by the Portuguese in 1557. They had previously been trading with south China for many years from a place called, in Portuguese, Lampacau\n\nDr Graciete Batalha, who has carried out extensive research on the Portuguese dialect of Macao (Glossario do Dialecto Macaense, Instituto Cultural de Macau. 1988 from original articles published from 1971-1977), has formed the opinion that during this early period of the development of the Macau \"patoa”, the formative influence was not so much the way that Chinese people learned to speak Portuguese, but the manner in which the Macau Portuguese formed the habit of speaking to the Chinese in the Portuguese language.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213552, "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-1995", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "117\n\nOnce in Canton, the foreign traders were in theory almost totally restricted to the Factories. There they ate, slept and worked. Women were not permitted, but Chinese servants and supporting staff were allowed to work at the factories. Of the 1760 rules, a significant one for our purposes was that the teaching of the Chinese language to foreigners was prohibited on pain of death by decapitation.\n\nWith a large volume of trade to be carried out between people with no common language, one party of whom were only permitted to remain for a few months each year, and the other party of whom faced the death penalty if they taught their own language to foreigners, clearly a certain compromise was required.\n\nI believe that Pidgin English was developed over a fairly short period of time by the young Chinese men who obtained work in the Factories. Hunter describes them.\n\n\"These servants were unequalled; at the same time, they never considered themselves menials, but as makee larm; that is to say, serving in order to become familiar with pigeon English, that in due time they could become pursers or clerks in Chinese hongs or shops trading with people of the Western Ocean. While in service with their foreign masters, they were considered and known by the appellation “se-tsai”, or business youths. They were usually relatives of the compradors who provided them with places and secured them.\"\n\nTo understand the motivation of these young men, you must also understand the position of the Hong merchants themselves, as described by Hunter —\n\n\"The position of Hong merchant was obtained through the payment of large sums of money at Pekin. I have heard of as much as 200,000 taels, say £70,000 sterling. If the licence they acquired was costly, it secured to them uninterrupted and extraordinary pecuniary advantages.\n\nMany of the young makee-larn were the close relatives of the Hong merchants. There were not uneducated villagers, but young men, highly motivated by material gain, who had received at least a good standard education, were literate, and stood a chance to become millionaires if...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213553, "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-1995", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "118\n\nonly they could communicate with and work for the foreign traders,\n\nA familiar story is emerging.\n\nIn the first of his series of articles in the China Mail of 1958 entitled \"Pidgin Languages\", Robert Wallace Thompson theorized: “In 'simplifying', most speakers tend to use the language one employs when speaking to a small child. Hence the superficial similarity of Pidgin speech and baby talk.\" I do not believe in this theory.\n\nThe point is, the young makee-larn had to learn quickly. Any note-taking was confined by necessity to Chinese characters. The sounds had to fit the writing system available as best they could, and there was simply no time for the extreme complexities of English morphology, much of which was rooted in phonetic differences that Chinese people could in any case not hear, or only reproduce with great difficulty.\n\nAs it was, the foreign traders were almost universally impressed by the calibre and honesty of their Chinese domestic and Factory staff. For a business season which lasted a few months a year, no-one was about to quibble over ropey English. The most that was required was to keep the vocabulary of daily life to a moderate base of general and domestic terms, not to make great demands on the use of complicated grammar, and accept whatever Chinesifications became current. How did consistent Chinese forms of English become current? Both Leland and Hunter have quoted the same answer, and it must be presumed to be broadly correct:\n\n—\n\n\"In the Canton Bookshops near the Factories was sold a small pamphlet called \"Devil's Talk\". On the cover was a drawing of a foreigner in the dress of the middle of the last century - three-cornered hat, coat with wide skirts, breeches and long stockings, shoes with buckles, lace sleeves, and in his hand a cane. I have now one of these pamphlets before me. It commences thus, \"yun\" and under is its \"barbarian\" definition, expressed in another Chinese word whose sound is \"man\". After many examples of this kind come words of two syllables-thus: \"kum-yat\", with their foreign meaning expressed by two other Chinese characters pronounced \"to-teay\" today-and so on to sentences, for which the construction of the language is peculiarly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213554, "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-1995", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "119\n\nadapted This pamphlet, costing a penny or two, was continually in the hands of servants, coolies and shopkeepers. The author was a Chinaman whose ingenuity should immortalize him. I have often wondered who the man was who first reduced the \"outlandish tongue\" to a current language. Red candles should be burnt on altars erected to his memory, and oblations of tea poured out before his image, placed among the wooden gods which in temples surround the shrine of a deified man of letters.\n\nF\n\nAccepting this widely-reported account of the \"Devil's Talk\" pamphlet to be correct, it is easy to understand how the vocabulary became established; after all, to the classically-trained Chinese mind, what appears in print becomes canon law. For fussy English-speakers to correct something which had been laid down in a Chinese textbook would have been no easy undertaking.\n\nBe quite clear on one point. Throughout the period of the Hong merchants and up to Treaty days, Pidgin English was not merely a means of communication between Europeans and their menials. It was a vital tool in a rapidly growing China trade in the southern Chinese ports. Hunter describes his discussions in Pidgin with the famous Hong merchants—How Qua, Ming Qua, and Pan Kei Qua—among the commercial elite of Canton. Hunter also describes one of the commanders of the Tai-Ping Rebels, Ho A-Luh, as speaking very good Pidgin English.\n\nBy the middle of the nineteenth century, China Coast Pidgin had become a well-established medium of communication. From the 1850s on, the restrictions to foreign trade and traders progressively broke down, so that the conditions which had made Pidgin's development a necessity disappeared. But the opportunities for contacts between European and Chinese people increased, and the conventions of the language were well enough engrained that it survived. The young makee-larns gradually progressed in their mastery of English, while the people with transient contacts—tradesmen and servants—picked up where they had left off. In his book “Rambles in Eastern Asia”, B. L. Ball records:\n\n“I saw a Chinaman who spoke good English, and appeared so polite that I stopped a while, and entered into conversation with him.\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213555, "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-1995", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "120\n\nHe told me his name was Ayou and that he had lived two years in Boston; that formerly he was a comprador to Mr. Cushing at Canton, and afterwards lived with him in America. Preferring his own country, he returned, and now has a large alum establishment, in which, he says, he is doing good business; he added that a Chinaman who speaks both English and Chinese can make \"plenty money\" in China.\n\nThe many critics of Pidgin have, I think, missed the point: Pidgin worked. It allowed people to communicate quite effectively in a situation where to learn or teach standard English would have been totally impractical. I believe that Pidgin had, in addition to the advantage of overcoming superficial communication problems, the subtle advantage of bringing together people from totally different socio-linguistic backgrounds to speak in a language that was native to neither—that was not a minefield of cultural conventions which could make normal communication break down.\n\nSources of Pidgin\n\nSome readers will, I am sure, have had personal experience of China Coast Pidgin. I am indebted to a number of old people who have told me anecdotes of Pidgin from before the Pacific War. Unfortunately, this anecdotal evidence is very limited. I have only been able to obtain it from Europeans: we have not yet come across a Chinese who still has a working knowledge of the language. What we have taken down from native English speakers has often been \"normalized\" towards standard English. We shall now take some time to cover some of the more important written sources available to us.\n\nThe most frequently cited sources for Pidgin are by native English speakers. W.C. Hunter's books, mentioned earlier on, quote extensively from conversations in Pidgin.\n\nHunter's quotations cover an early period (1806-1854) and are generally consistent in style. They are, however, part of two books written for the casual reader. All the spelling is normalized to standard English; but they form a useful source and I have found his quotations in Pidgin generally consistent with other, unrelated sources.\n\nAnother source with a quantity of quotations from Pidgin is B. L.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213556, "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-1995", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "121\n\nBall in his book “Rambles in Eastern Asia” (James French & Co. Boston 1855). It covers the years 1848-49. Like Hunter, his quotations are generally consistent with other accounts, although he has not adopted any system for spelling. But these people were travelogue writers, not philologists.\n\nWe now come to a renowned source which has been widely quoted: Charles G. Leland's book “Pidgin-English Sing-Song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect with a Vocabulary\" published by Trubner at London in 1876.\n\nThis little volume of 137 pages contains 22 \"ballads”, 10 stories and two parodies of English Romantic verse in China Coast Pidgin. At the end is a vocabulary of about 600 words and a list of Hongkong personal and place names. Leland mentions R. K. Douglas, H. A. Giles as well as Ng Choy in his introduction as having corrected the texts, and gives a basic description of the way Pidgin was spoken. Let me quote a short poem from Leland called “L'Oiseau”\n\nOne-tim two precee Flunsee walkee in Canton,\n\nLook-see one piecee culto-shop-first-chop nampa one.\n\nChinaman he show'um allo pukkha ting,\n\nBirdee paint top-sidee plate-makee fly with wing.\n\nFlunsee look-see birdee-Flunsee talk “oiseau;”\n\nChinaman he tinkee Flunsee ask \"Why so?\"\n\nHe no savvy Flunsee talk, so he makee tell\n\nTo 'um in he English-\"Why so? -makee sell.\"\n\nBy'mby on lacker-box all-same birdee playın',\n\nFlunsee-man look-see it, talk \"Oiseau” agam.\n\nChinaman he hear-lo-tink he savvy well,\n\nSo talkee all-same pidgin, \"why so?-makee sell.\"\n\nFlunsee tinkee sarıın he hab learnee word,\n\nTalk he flin r'hat maktsel be China for a bird.\n\nPidgin-English Sing-Song is a very amusing and enjoyable book. But although it contains much that is genuine Pidgin, both in vocabulary and in the manner of expression, it cannot be taken as a reliable source for a historical study.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213557, "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-1995", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "122\n\nFirst, the extracts in the Sing-Song are clearly artificial productions written as a literary joke. Given what we understand of the way Pidgin developed and how it was used, there is little chance that texts of the sort published by Leland would have circulated other than as an after-dinner entertainment among Western-educated people with a knowledge of Pidgin. We know from the writings of W.C. Hunter that this sort of entertainment did, in fact, take place.\n\nWe are not saying here that Pidgin-English Sing-Song is a hoax. Leland never claims that the texts are authentic, only that they have been judged plausible by western scholars of Chinese. The style and expressions used in the texts contain a variety of American slang and minstrelsy terms, and the overall internal evidence is, to my mind, that Leland wrote most of the texts himself.\n\nLeland was never a long-time resident of the Far East, I must therefore digress slightly to explain how he could perform the feat of writing a small book of prose and verse in a language which he could only have known slightly. It also gives me an excuse to introduce you to a colourful and talented character,\n\nCharles Godfrey Leland was born in Philadelphia on 15 August 1824. He was a voracious reader by the age of nine and studied at college in New Jersey from 1841 to 1845. Then he went to Germany via Italy and spent two years at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich.\n\nKnown as the \"Gentle Giant\", he had a gargantuan appetite for food, drink and tobacco. In 1848, he moved to the Sorbonne, and manned the barricades in the Paris Commune. Returning to Philadelphia, he studied law, then turned to journalism, authorship, politics and exploration of the Western US. He joined the Confederate cause and fought in the Civil War. He was an acknowledged master of literary journalism and in 1866, he became editor of the Philadelphia press.\n\nFrom 1869 to 1879, he stayed in London and became closely associated with the humanist thinker Walter Besant. Leland took a close interest in education in the industrial arts, as well as taking up research on Gypsies and the Romany language. He was a talented linguist and was particularly interested in slang and jargon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213558, "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-1995", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "123\n\nHis writing was prodigious and varied: he wrote translations of the poems of Heinrich Heine, dictionaries of slang, jargon and cant, he wrote on the English, Welsh and Irish Gypsies and their languages, the art of conversation, the development of memory and willpower, Etruscan Roman remains, the discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist monks in the fifth century; and he wrote textbooks on perfumes and cosmetics, pyrography and wood-roasting, bent iron and strip work, art drawing, and leather work.\n\nThis digression into the life of Charles G. Leland is to show that, as an acknowledged philologist and literary wit, the Pidgin-English Sing-Song was well within his powers and sphere of interest. With these doubts about the authenticity of the language of the Sing-song, we propose to leave the work aside.\n\nNext, I must mention Robert A. Hall Jr's article, \"Chinese Pidgin English Grammar and Texts\" (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 64, 1944). In this article, Hall analyses, after the manner of Jesperson, a body of China Coast Pidgin elicited from English speakers, reflecting late-19th to early 20th Century Pidgin.\n\nMuch effort was made by Hall to undertake a phonetic and syntactic analysis of his material. But given the well-known degree of variation among Pidgin speakers, we feel that most of the effort was misguided. It is well worth noting, however, the degree of consistency between what is reported by Hall and what is found in other sources.\n\nDo we have any sources for the way Pidgin appeared to the Chinese? Yes. First, there is the \"Devils' Talk” pamphlet described by a number of authors. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a surviving copy of this, although we suspect that there must be a number of them in the U.S., if only we could imagine how the National Library of Congress would catalogue them...\n\nBut the major source was published in Canton in 1862 by an individual from Kowloon, Tong Ting Kü. The \"Ying u tasp ts'ún\" or \"The Chinese and English Instructor\" consists of six volumes, organized in the Chinese style according to topics. It contains prefaces by the author as well as by the general in command of the Kowloon Walled City, Cheung Yue Tong (famous for his calligraphy).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213559, "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-1995", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "124\n\nThe book is laid out as follows (from top to bottom). A word or phrase is given in Chinese. The Chinese is in most cases the colloquial Cantonese of the time. To the right of the Chinese characters is the Cantonese pronunciation using the spelling convention of Dr Williams' Tonic Dictionary of the Canton Dialect (1856),\n\nBelow the romanized Chinese is the translation of the Chinese into standard English, and to the left of the English is a rendering of the standard English pronunciation using a syllabary based on colloquial Cantonese in Chinese characters. How Pidgin English fits into this, I shall come to later.\n\nWe want to convey to you that the phonetic transcription into Chinese characters of the English is rigorous and very effective. It is clear that the author is an un-sung hero of phonetic analysis, and ahead of his time in his observation. His transcription is based on three levels of refinement.\n\nFirst, where the standard Cantonese pronunciation of a Chinese syllable is close enough to the corresponding English syllable, the character is used. Where no suitable character is available, an ersatz syllable is created using the \"mouth\" radical and fan-qie method, according to the prevailing convention for reproducing colloquial Cantonese words which are not normally written down.\n\n#1\n\nHit\n\n年\n\nKeens\n\n#19\n\n候\n\n時令\n\nbe ling\n\nTeason\n\nhave - Time\n\n-\n\nYear\n\nYutsal Genvention\n\n夜晒上平看\n\n鄭拿染純\n\nHQ HH\n\nFig. 1. The lay-out of Tong Ting Shue's \"Ying Ü Tsap Ts'un\"\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213560, "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-1995", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "125\n\nFinally, for English sounds with no corresponding Chinese sound, diacritics are placed alongside the Chinese characters, based on the methods employed by Qian Long in his Manchu dictionaries of the Chinese minority languages.\n\nThe resulting transcription is as accurate and consistent as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Added to this, the translations of Chinese words and phrases are precise and accurate. The American source of Tong's English clearly shows through.\n\nMuch of the material is in the form of extended dialogues covering domestic and trade matters: thus the reader is in the position of being a \"fly on the wall\" during trade negotiations for teas and fabrics in the mid nineteenth century. This in itself is a valuable historical and linguistic resource. But in addition, obviously added as an afterthought, texts in small Chinese characters are included in whatever space is free on each page of dialogues. These texts are the Pidgin English equivalents.\n\nNow you can see what a goldmine this source is: we have extensive recordings of Pidgin dialogues set down by a rigorous and talented linguist, together with their colloquial English and Cantonese equivalents.\n\nThe Chinese Characters used to record the pidgin are not those used to transcribe the standard English. They are taken from a very limited stock of colloquial Cantonese characters: about one hundred are used altogether, as compared with well over five hundred characters and variants used in the main text. This reduced character stock may be the ones used in the original \"Devils' Talk\" pamphlets, which had attained the status of convention (which, as we shall illustrate they still do).\n\nThis is the source which we shall use for our general description of China Coast Pidgin.\n\nWe think it was the demise of employment of Chinese servants among European families which has made pidgin die out in Hong Kong. The Pacific war and the influx of Filipino immigrant labour have done for Pidgin what the mammals did for the dinosaurs. Reading the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213561, "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-1995", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "126\n\nHong Kong newspapers, stories and reports mentioning or quoting Pidgin (or Anglo-Chinese, as it came to be called) gradually disappear in the 1960s. The most recent book we have been able to obtain which teaches English in Pidgin pronunciation is \"English and Chinese Dialogues\" or \"Ying Yue Chi Nam\" by Wong Lui Hing, first published in 1927, and re-published continually until the 17th edition in 1974. The character set used to spell English in this publication are the same as those in Tong.\n\nWhat was China Coast Pidgin of the last century like?\n\nFirst, it was not pronounced in a consistent way by Chinese and English speakers, nor was it pronounced consistently among the Chinese themselves. When first learned by Chinese, words would be pronounced as their individual Chinese characters. As the speaker got more experience of speaking to foreigners, he would mould his pronunciation closer to the English, as far as he was able.\n\nTong's materials show that there was no contrast in Pidgin (as he spoke it) between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, even though such contrasts exist in both Chinese and English. Thus in the word for “price”, pou-laai-si and bou-laai-si were in free variation, “Proper” is rendered ba-lap-bu, pou-lap-ba or pa-lap-ba. The stock of consonants used in Tong are b/p, d/t, g/k, h, j/ch, l, m, n, r/l, s, v/f, and w. One of the innovations claimed for Tong's book was that he was the first to draw attention to the full range of proper English pronunciation, in contrast to the conventions of Pidgin.\n\nThe vowels are those of standard Cantonese. However, long and short vowels and diphthongs are not generally contrastive (although Tong points out on one occasion that the English word \"die\" should be pronounced daai in English but dai in Pidgin).\n\nWe believe this reflects quite accurately the perception by the average Cantonese speaker not frequently exposed to English: the timbre and energy used in distinguishing aspirated and unaspirated sounds in normal English is much less than that in Chinese. Lacking the reinforcement of the printed word, the distinction must have been largely lost on the learner. Likewise, long and short diphthongs are not contrastive in English, and it would have occurred correctly to Cantonese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213562, "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-1995", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "127\n\nspeakers that the difference was unimportant. As you can hear from the Chinese names for the Chartered Bank and Chater Road, (ja-da, je-da), English aspirated sounds normally came out as unaspirated in Chinese transcriptions.\n\nTurning to the vocabulary of Pidgin, it is clear that a very small base of common words filled a wealth of meanings. Where technical words were in everyday use, Pidgin used them. In other cases, an approximation of the meaning was assembled from a limited stock. For example, \"You have no occasion to fear, I have been a tea broker for ten years. I have never given any dissatisfaction to anyone,\" is rendered as \"You no gar-san mat-gi fer-ya. My hap dou di bou-luk-ga tan ya, mai nu gat wan dim mat-gi na ba-lap-ba bi-jin”\n\nThe vocabulary of book-keeping is resolved like this-\n\n“You mix up your accounts. Put all the receipts on one side; put all the payments on another side; deduct the payments from the receipts and you will know the balance in hand '\n\n“You mai-ki mik-si you gon-da, A-la mun-ni gam yin you but wan sai; mun-nı bai na-da man but na-da sai; mun-ni hap, git-ji so mar-ji tik-gi aap hap bat so mat-ji; you gen sa-bi hot ba-loen-sı.”\n\n門\n\n時沙\n\n巴倫時\n\n妖吽沙比喝\n\n巴味 治鴨梳捫\n\n文擱\n\n烟柽\n\n合ㄝ尼体尼\n\n天鐺\n\n拿跛\n\n梳結\n\n打韋\n\n品\n\n乜其治\n\n西打\n\n西甘\n\n妖米其竟士\n\n肤\n\n千米\n\n妖干打\n\n烟妖砵温西\n\n鑄捫尼甘\n\nFig. 2. The accounting example Pidgin in Chinese characters\n\ni", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213563, "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-1995", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "128\n\n你將\n\n你就\n\n知\n\n#\n\n来你\n\n支數上過一邊\n\n米皮上埋一邊\n\nFig. 3. The Accounting example in Chinese\n\nAs you can see, this is largely achieved in Pidgin with the verbs \"put\", \"get\", \"pay\" and \"take\". The technical terms \"gon-da\", an account, and \"ba-loen-sı\", balance are all that were needed. Indeed, in this context, the term ba-loen-sı is unusual, \"Di-fa-loen-sı\" is more commonly used.\n\nMuch of the syntactic structure of Pidgin follows that of Cantonese; however, a significant departure from Chinese syntax is the handling of time and place. In the Chinese sentence, the conventional order of words is: time, place, action. In Pidgin, however, English structure is adopted, so that you get sentences like.\n\nmai go si hi dou-ma-la (tomorrow) (I shall go and see him)\n\ntik-gi daat ka-gou but yin-sai gou-dang (take those goods into the godown)\n\nTong points out in a note that in standard English, there is a distinction between singular and plural noun forms, but that no such distinction exists in Pidgin. Nor was there any distinction in sentence structure between statements and questions. “hi hap go o-lit-dar” could be \"He has already gone.\" or \"Has he gone yet?\"\n\n此廣部打劑:\n\n培在一字一數\n\n分東媽\n\n十月1日厘亞音傳話\n\n别\n\n正士\n\n世話話如\n\nFig 4 Tong's explanation of the difference in singular & plural forms\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213564, "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-1995", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "說\n\n番人亦有\n\n如此之分\n\n番如稔失\n\n印則\n\n但更俱\n\n有三等之介\n\nBitt m\n\nFE\n\nE***S\n\n129\n\nFig. 5. Tong explains the pidgin form of comparison of adjectives\n\nThat is as far as we want to go in discussing the structure of Pidgin.\n\nAs a last topic, however, we want to say something about the etymology of Pidgin. Over the years, a lot of effort has gone into tracing the history of certain Pidgin words, especially where the words have entered standard English. The mass of fresh material in Tong's book lets us throw a little new light, although we have to admit that, as with most attempts at etymology, a lot of guesswork is involved.\n\nTong cites very many words derived from English, in which all syllables are represented quite fully, given the limitations of the language. To say, then, that the word \"pidgin\" itself originated just because that was the nearest that Chinese could get to pronouncing \"business\" is hard to accept. The same people who could say “di-fa-loen-si\" could presumably have said “bi-si-nei-st\", had they been so inclined.\n\nOur examination of the vocabulary in Tong brings us to believe that at the earliest stage there was a core of words derived not directly from English but from a variety of Portuguese, Malay, and English. These were then added to with a gradually more extensive vocabulary.\n\nWe consider that the following should be included in the early layer:\n\nbi-jin, kam-sha, de-lam, se-lam, but-lam, si-bui-lum, gi-lam, go-lam, ma-si-gi, gou-dang, ka-gou, tik-gı, get-ji, dim, gat-ji, dim, waan-sam, jaau-jaau, chin-chin, jo-si, hu-man, mai, ma-sa, ma-jin, mat-sa, jap-jap, gu-lei, mun-ni, bai, sa-bi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213565, "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-1995", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "130\n\nThere has been some speculation that the group of words ending in -um (de-lam, ki-lam, etc) represent a specific grammatical form. But in Tong, these words are given as a basic form and in nearly all cases are derived from English words which end in -l or -ll; si-bui-lam (spoil), de-lam (tell), go-lam (call), gi-lam (kill), bui-lam (boil), and se-lam (sell). It is worth noting that all these are verbs. I speculate that these were first introduced into Pidgin in their present participle form (-ing) and that through an East China dialect, the syllable in (lam in Cantonese) was used to represent -ing in English. Let's look at some other well-known Pidgin words with less obvious derivations.\n\nChop\n\nHobson Jobson and other major sources give as the origin the Hindi word, chhap, a word denoting an official stamp or the act of emprinting. Macau patoa: chapa - Documento oficial emanado das autoridades chinesas. Marca, selo, carimbo. (G. N. Batalha). Tong Ting Shue lists the word as a measure (chop) of tea. The character used is chaap, “to insert”.\n\nChop chop\n\nMost sources give as the origin of chop-chop a Chinese word with a similar sound. Hobson Jobson offers a number of dialect pronunciations of the word pronounced in Cantonese gap. None of these is particularly near to the sound chop.\n\nTong writes it as jap-jap, the characters for \"to pick up\". This does not help. We have searched a number of Chinese dialect vocabularies and failed, so far, to find any Chinese word in any dialect denoting “quick, fast” which sounds as if it could have been the origin of chop-chop.\n\nChop-sticks\n\nThe OED and all other major sources are persuaded by the argument that the word is connected to the Pidgin chop-chop, meaning quick. That is, the Chinese eat with sticks, the sticks enable them to eat fast, therefore they should be called \"fast-sticks\". The Macau patoa word is faichi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213567, "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-1995", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "132\n\nwith the Chinese word for \"to fry”. \n\nCumsha \n\nThis word denotes a payment, tip or alms \n\nA wealth of folklore has grown up around it. One stream has it that the word derives from the payment made to boat people to “come ashore\" from a ship at anchor. Another popular theory is that it derives from a Chinese dialectal word for “thank you”. \n\nDr Batalha describes a word in Patoa, cumesse (or camesso). She gives as the origin a Chinese term gam se, meaning a tip or present. Dr Batalha's explanation would be convincing if it could be shown that the Chinese word existed. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it ever did: we suspect that the word is apocryphal. The existence of a word corresponding to the Cantonese gam je, (to feel grateful), but in another dialect with a pronunciation like cumsha is more plausible. Unfortunately, I cannot discover what that dialect is. \n\nTong does not list Cumsha at all, but Hunter mentions that the Chinese wrote the Pidgin word with the characters for “gold sand”, so that it would have been pronounced “gam-sa”. \n\nThe following information in Hunter is, we think, significant; \n\n\"Before she (any ship) could open hatches, the formality of “Cumisha and Measurement\" had to be gone through. The first word signifies \"present\", and was a payment made by the earliest foreign vessels for the privilege of entering the port;\" \n\nIf this information is reliable, it indicates that the word was applied from early times (i.e. to the vessels of the Portuguese traders), and was considered - notwithstanding Hunter's definition of \"cumsha\" - an official levy - not just squeeze or a gratuity, \n\nIf this is so, then we think that the correct origin should be the Portuguese word, comissāo, which means \"commission, agency, percentage, gratification, recompense, brokerage, factorage.\" This covers its application in Pidgin admirably.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213568, "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-1995", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "133\n\nJoss\n\nThis word is supposed to be derived from the Portuguese Deos. The Anglicised written form, Joss, appears in many sources, and Tong does not have a Chinese form.\n\nTwo sources dated 1672 quoted in Hobson Jobson are intriguing.\n\n\"But the Devil (whom the Chinese commonly called Joosje) is a mighty and powerful Prince of the World..\", and\n\n\"In a four-cornered cabinet in their dwelling-rooms, they have, as it were, an altar, and therean an image. This they call Joss.\"\n\nWhat is striking is that the latter is clearly describing a household ancestral altar for the worship of ancestors. Moreover, the former quotation, which gives the word used by Dutch writers, joosje, is the pronunciation of “ancestors\" in the Wu dialects. There is a possibility, then, that Joss has a Chinese and not a Portuguese origin.\n\nMaskee\n\nThis word basically means \"whatever\", “never mind” or “perhaps\" in Pidgin. Tong gives it as maskee. Batalha lists a Patoa word, masqui, and says that in the meaning of \"all right” the word is commonly used in Creole. She concludes that there is no basis for some assertions that the word is derived from the Cantonese m sai.\n\nAPPENDIX I\n\nSelected Pidgin Dialogues Quoted in 19 C. Western Sources Bits of Old China. William C. Hunter. Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. London 1855.\n\nPage 5\n\nOlo flen. My savee you last voyagee My savee you two, te-lee voyagee.\n\nPage 6\n\nMake look see", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216099, "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": 398, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "332\n\nSir Robert had a wonderful funeral procession with 16 bands. In those days popular tunes at Chinese funerals were; Abide with me, Polly Wolly Doodle all the Day, and Yes, we have no Bananas! They were good, rousing tunes and most Chinese did not understand the words anyway. Bamboo ramps were a common sight in the 1950s to bring coffins and corpses down to street level. Ramps disappeared with traffic congestion and with the introduction of high-rise buildings, about 1960. Major Chinese festivals occur in the calendar when there are marked changes of seasons. People are then likely to feel \"under the weather.\" When the body is at a low ebb a sick person is more likely to die. In 1956, it was said that Sir Robert had “passed over\" Ching Ming and should be able to carry on at least to Dragon Boat Festival. However, it was not to be.\n\nIn March 1955 I had managed to obtain a government quarter at 56 Conduit Road. At the time it resembled a quiet country lane, gay with flowers, where you could occasionally hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. A few people were still carried up to Mid-Levels by sedan chairs which, until the end of the fifties, were parked at the bottom of Wyndham Street.\n\nI engaged a Chinese amah to whom I paid $130 a month. She spoke Pidgin English and talked of \"going topside” when she meant going upstairs. Indeed some of us old Hong Kong hands still use pidgin expressions. I, for example, still talk of a makee-learn, for someone learning a job, and I say small chow when I mean canapés which are provided at receptions. A Chinese colleague complained that, at $130, I was overpaying my amah. He gave his $70 a month. He also said that his amah had no time off. If she had anything important to do she would request a few hours off work. Several people had gold teeth in those days and the saying was that one should have enough gold in one's mouth to pay for one's funeral. The present-day, gold-coloured building, at Admiralty, is nicknamed the \"Amah's Tooth.\"\n\nWhen I first lived in Conduit Road there were a number of quite palatial mansions standing in their own grounds, often with tennis courts, in the Mid-levels. One example was the house on the site, at No.41, on which I live today. The old building was demolished in the mid-1960s. From 1951 to '61 it was occupied by the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC). The film, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, based on Han", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "42\n\nAbout a mile above Whampoa we called at \"Boston Jack's\" ... [He] is familiarly known to the European population as a kind of interpreter and furnisher of provisions for vessels, and a commissioner to provide servants, coolies, and to make purchases of various Chinese articles. He was formerly a pilot, and is still connected with that business, furnishing pilots, &c.; and is ready to do any kind of business between the foreigners and Chinese. He is said to be worth a hundred thousand dollars; treated us to beer, and gave us some to take on the way. He had much to say of his son who lives in New York, and was very polite, inviting us to call again, &c.53\n\nBoatmen and washerwomen\n\nThen there were the other indispensables to the work of Chinese linguists and compradors, and foreign merchants, captains and crews, alike.\n\nFirst were the boatmen, each one anxious and begging to obtain the employment of waiting upon the ship during her stay here. Then came the washer-women, some twenty or thirty, of all ages, each one clamorous for the privilege of washing the clothes for the men. All this constituted a bustling scene.34\n\nThere were also the boat-women traders who took their wares out to the ships in the anchorage, some of whom - it is hardly surprising to learn - spoke a form of 'pidgin' English that became fluent through practice.35\n\nIntermingled throughout were the minor functionaries of government, equally ready to oil wheels or to obstruct, according to perceived advantage, for the sake of personal profit.\n\nMorse provides us with the following succinct statement of the situation at Whampoa in pre-treaty port days:\n\nShe [the ship] was usually in this anchorage for three months, and, while there, continued to give a steady stream of profit to the interpreter [the linguist] and comprador, to the bumboatmen and other small fry, and to the minor officials from daily and monthly fees, and gratuities to facilitate her working and expedite her departure.56", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216339, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "47\n\nThere was a downside to this denial of access and more reliable information. For most Britons (as for most Europeans) China had been a country steeped in fantasy and misconception. The 18th century craze for \"Chinoiserie\" had left them with a vision of Cathay, rather than knowledge of the real China. But as time went on; in some curious way, a much less attractive hodgepodge of exotic notions about the country and its people had been assembled, and by the time of the Opium War, this seems to have displaced the benign willow-pattern, and the romantic tale which accompanied it, in the public mind.\n\nAn early Protestant missionary to China told his readers that when he went there in 1839 he carried with him the following notions in regard to what 'most people in the West entertain about the Chinese,' some of [which] elements may be said to be, \"odd manners, pig-tails, cramped feet, long nails, fans, paintings, rice-paper drawings, processions, concentric balls, lanterns, chopsticks, eating rats, mice, and bird's nest soup, popular infanticide, and an utter want of benevolence'.73 These were attributes which found visual expression in the comic illustrations provided by the artist John Leech for Thomas Henry Sealy's 1841 compilation, The Porcelain Tower, Nine Stories of China, a book purporting to provide more information on the country, but more likely intended as a great \"send-up\" of the entire Chinese nation.74\n\nNor, in retrospect (albeit there was little alternative, given the linguistic variations of the Chinese language and the more or less permanent ban against teaching it to Westerners) was the enforced adoption of “pidgin\" at Canton, as the lingua franca of commercial and social exchange, calculated to convey a fuller understanding or enhance mutual respect.75\n\nChinese disdain for the West\n\nThe half truths and misconceptions common to those Britons who bothered to think at all about China and the Chinese were only matched by the even greater ignorance exhibited by Chinese about the West, even by the governing classes. However erudite (they were largely scholar-officials) their mind set was cast in an entirely different mould. For them, China was the \"Middle Kingdom,\" the centre of the universe, and all outside its borders were barbarians who were only allowed a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216345, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "53 \n\n* Giles, Glossary, op.cit., p.57. \n\n44 Downing, C. Toogood (1838). The Stranger in China, or The Fanqui's Visit to The Celestial Empire in 1836-7. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 2 vols., Vol. I, pp.9-10. A diary kept on a French ship in 1779 tells of an \"outside\" pilot boat from Macau, whose five occupants spoke a kind of corrupt Portuguese. Charles de Constant (1939). Recit de Trois Voyages A la Chine 1779-1793. Passages chosen and annotated by Philippe de Vargas. Published by L'Ami, Revue Mensuelle, Yenching, Peking.. \n\n45 \n\n46 \n\nDavis, The Chinese, op.cit., (1836 edition, London, Charles Knight), Vol.II, p. 447.. \n\nDowning, The Stranger in China, op.cit., Vol.I, p.10. \n\n* Ibid., Vol. I, p.27. \n\n48 \n\nMorse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, op.cit., p.74 \n\nDavis, The Chinese, op. cit., (1836 edition, London, Charles Knight), Vol.II, p. 449. \n\n50 Ibid., Vol. II, pp.448-9. \n\n51 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, op.cit., p.74. \n\n32 \n\nChina and the English (1835). New York, p.73. Written for Abbott's Fireside Series. \n\n53 Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, op. cit., p.99. \n\n54 Abbott's Fireside Series, op.cit., p.73, \n\n55 \n\nA striking instance is given in Wei Peh T'I (1981). Juan Yuan's Management of Sino-British Relations in Canton 1817-1826, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (hereafter JHKBRAS), Vol. 21, pp.153-5. Pidgin English has been described succinctly as being 'a singular admixture of corrupted Portuguese, English, Hindustani, and other foreign words spoken largely in a Chinese syntax': Chang, Commissioner Lin, op.cit., pp.235-6, n47. For a recent detailed statement on Pidgin, see Selby, Anne and Stephen (1995)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216346, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "54 \n\nChina Coast Pidgin English in JHKBRAS, Vol.35, pp.113-141. See also note 75 below.\n\n56 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, p.75.\n\n57 cited in Parkinson, op.cit., p.341.\n\n58 See pp.179-180 of my The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside. Hampden, Conn., 1977.\n\n59 Chinese text at No.28 in Vol. 1 of the three volume set of Hong Kong's Historical Inscriptions published by the Hong Kong Urban Council in 1986.\n\n60 Inscribed tablet dated 11th lunar month of the 6th year of Daoguang (1826) at the \"New Temple\" near the Barrier gate at Macau, which refers back to an earlier tablet on the subject dated in early Jiaqing.\n\n61 China No.4 (1864) Commercial Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls in China for 1862, p.62.\n\n62 Ibid, p.39.\n\n63 Ibid., p.67.\n\n64 See Bodde, Derk, and Morris, Clarence (1967). Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases. University of Pennsylvania Press.\n\n65 Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.263-9\n\n66 Ibid., Vol.IV, pp.281-3.\n\n67 The journal kept during his imprisonment was later published. See 'Edited by a Barrister', Journals kept by Mr. Gully and Capt. Denham during a captivity in China in the Year 1842. London, Chapman and Hall, 1844. This episode, and the much worse one involving the nearly 300 passengers and crew of a military transport from India, the Nerbudda, are also mentioned by Ouchterlony, pp. 499-509).\n\n68 Journals, op.cit., pp. 3-4.\n\n69 Gutzlaff, Sketch of Chinese History, op.cit., p.42.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]