[ { "id": 206660, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTin Valley is characterized today by the everywhere existent, superbly thriving garden beds.\n\nThe development of intense vegetable farming in the traditional society of China seems to have been linked to the proximity of urban central places with great agglomerations of people. Urban marketing has, so it seems, been a prerequisite for a one-sided specialization on vegetable production. The geographic distribution of horticulture has been limited by one particular cultural barrier. Chinese palate calls for very fresh market goods, and every tendency in the marketed products to perish will considerably decrease the saleable price. Thus transportation to the city markets must be short or rapid. As a consequence, the urban areas were often surrounded by limited zones of intense horticulture.\n\nDuring the latter half of the 19th century, the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon emerged as a result of foreign intervention and planning. Their growth was related to the attraction the new Colony had on a countryside impoverished under the strain of a fast-increasing population. The appearance of the new urban districts stimulated the interest in the surrounding rural areas, which later were to become New Kowloon and the New Territories, for the cultivation of cash crops. This was within a sector with reasonably good communications to connect with the city markets. According to available information, the start was made on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, where the old villages seem to have taken advantage of the new development quite early. The continuous spread of the network of transportation, initiated after the British territorial expansion to the New Territories in 1898, when new roads were constructed and the Canton-Kowloon railway was laid out through the district, gave rise to new opportunities and the possibility to expand the zone of intense vegetable cultivation beyond the Kowloon Foothills. The Sha Tin valley is located just behind this range of mountains, but, contrary to what one might expect, vegetable farming was not to become important there until recently, in the post-Pacific War period. The obstacle against a switch over to horticulture may be found on the managerial side of production, but this by no means accounts for everything. An important barrier to change may be found in the social values and knowledge of the village population.\n\nIn the Sha Tin valley, paddy fields are still to be seen scattered around in the area. The New Territories are situated in the double-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210317, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "267\n\ntend to sink to the bottom of the containers, thus leading to a poorer quality of tea in the early spring, when the end of the previous year's harvest is being drunk, than in the summer. For this reason some good quality tea is usually reserved for the New Year festivities when good tea would otherwise be difficult to find.\n\nThe tea trees owned and used by the villagers are not given much attention apart from the annual stripping away of creepers. The trees are allowed to grow naturally for ten years or so until they are fifteen feet or more tall and no longer easy to strip the leaves off. By this stage, too, the regular stripping off of the leaves tends to make the tree spindly and unproductive. Old, tall trees of this sort are then cut down and replaced with newly planted trees. Usually the new trees are just branches cut off old trees and placed in the ground: careful families plant half-a-dozen such branches each year to ensure that at least one or two new trees are successfully established each season.\n\nWhile most tea trees are owned by individual families or village trusts, a few stands are not privately owned, but available to anyone who wishes to use them. These clumps of “wild” trees are often of very tall old trees, with thick trunks and much larger, coarser leaves than the young trees in active use by the villagers. These stands of wild trees are used by the villagers as sources of branches for transplanting, as the wild trees are considered to be particularly strong and vigorous, and the leaves of young trees grown in this way from wild stocks are believed to give a particularly fine tea.\n\nTea prepared by New Territories villagers in the traditional way described above has a delicate, light taste and a slightly astringent quality, and is easy to drink and pleasing to the palate. It is locally known as “Hill Tea” (山茶), and tea of this type is still purchasable in the New Territories Market Towns, although most now available in Hong Kong is produced from villages just across the border.\n\nAt present the Mau Tso Ngam villagers, as also those other New Territories villagers still preparing their own tea, prepare only enough for their own family use. Four or five days' work by a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211173, "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-1987", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "209\n\nburden\" to bring enlightenment and civilisation to the dark and backward corners of the world was a serious obligation.\n\nBehind the justifying idealistic philosophy for imperialism were hard economic facts. Expanding industrial production demanded larger markets. The world must be opened up both as a source of raw materials and as an outlet for the manufactured product. If this meant subjection of weaker powers, so be it. It was all in the high cause of progress and civilisation.\n\nToday we are critical of these attitudes and practices of Western powers toward African and Asian peoples. In that day British imperialism was in its heyday. Britannia ruled the waves; the sun never set on the Union Jack. The triumphant posturing of the British lion was acclaimed with enthusiasm.\n\nThese attitudes lay behind the words of the speakers at the public meeting.\n\nIn his introductory remarks the chairman, the Chief Justice Sir George Phillippo, spoke of the high regard in which Her Majesty Queen Victoria was held by the whole world.\n\nIn making his remarks he followed a well-known practice of speakers, to state it is unnecessary to say what they then proceed to elaborate on at length. So he begins: “It is unnecessary for me to dilate at length upon the many virtues Her Majesty possesses, and that she has shown both in her public and private life.”\n\nHe then proceeded to speak of her worldwide reputation as a virtuous woman and sovereign: \"They are well known to you as they are to every member of the British community and to nearly every member of the civilised world (applause).”\n\nOther matters he said he would not mention, but proceeded to do so, were, \"that during the whole of these 50 years during which Great Britain has advanced in the most remarkable way, Her Majesty has been at the heart of affairs, and that during the whole of that time she has shown herself from girlhood upwards to be one whose virtue we must all admire, as a loving daughter, as a most\n\n: \n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212145, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "64\n\nit reminded its readers, in two delicately separated allusions, that the Christian general I-ssu had helped the emperor Su-tsung keep his throne in the traumatic An Lu-shan rebellion, but decently avoided an explicit statement to that effect. A well-educated Chinese reader would have gone away with the impression that there was probably something to the 'brilliant teaching', and that, in terms of social acceptability, it had solid credentials.\n\nOne very obvious feature of Adams' style in the Sian tablet inscription is the care which he took to express his meaning in straightforward Chinese wherever he could, and his distaste for transliteration from Syriac. His skill can be better appreciated now that other Nestorian works in Chinese have been found at Tunhuang. The Book of Jesus the Messiah, admittedly written very shortly after the Nestorians arrived in China, and apparently by a man with an imperfect command of Chinese, contains a large number of unattractive transliterations of proper names. Obviously names had to be found for Jesus, Mary, John, Pilate, and other major characters in the Christian story, but meaningless transliterations of obscure names such as Golgotha could easily have been avoided, and a Chinese name found to represent the name's meaning (the 'place of the skull'). Adam never fell into the trap of using a Syriac expression because he was too lazy to invent a better Chinese term. Indeed, he seems to have standardised, simplified, and improved the Chinese translations of uniquely Christian terms wherever he could. He discarded unsatisfactory seventh-century names for God in favour of A-lo-he. This term, to be sure, resembled the Syriac Eloi, but it was probably chosen by Adam because it had for many years been used by the Buddhists in China to translate their own term for God, Arbhar, and therefore had respectable associations for a Chinese reader. He used the expression 'pure wind' (ching feng) for the Holy Spirit, in preference to the not particularly apt 'cool wind' (liang feng), found in seventh-century Nestorian documents. Finally, he abandoned transliterations of the proper name 'Jesus', common in the seventh century, and used only the term Mi-shi-he, 'Messiah', which had by the 780s established itself as a convenient term for Christ.\n\nWe are now in a position to draw some conclusions about Adam and his personality. His collaboration in a translation of a Buddhist scripture into Chinese demonstrates that he was reasonably fluent in Chinese, but perhaps overconfident in his linguistic ability;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212232, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "151\n\na mark or two on my hand one morning, but they proved mere pimples arising from the heat.\n\nAs regards the vegetation, I must say that although taken altogether the island is not so well supplied with vegetation as some parts of England, yet what there is, has been so judiciously taken care of, and propagated, that in a few years it will become well wooded, in all the habitable parts. No pains are spared in planting and rearing trees, and nature assists the efforts of man, by a rapid and luxuriant growth. But even now, all parts that are inhabited are surrounded by trees, the quantity and size depending only upon the time since the houses were built. There is the Asiatic pine, found through Central Asia to the Himalehs. The rocks and table lands in Hong Kong are well planted with it, making it look very like the Scotch pine or fir in England. The bamboo looks well, and its luxuriant and rapid growth, together with the graceful appearance of its foliage, has caused its prevalent use. The apple, pommaloc, laichis (Chinese plum), willow, oak, mulberry, appear the chief. There are several fine trees of which I can only get the Chinese name in our shrubbery. Nearly all the vegetable food comes from the mainland. It is tolerably reasonable in price. A fine pine-apple costs about —/4o. Plantains 1\" to 2a a pound. In a few weeks fruit will be plentiful. Potatoes about 2a a pound. Rice ditto. Bread 5o per pound. Ginger grows fine here; and the green ginger preserved is delicious. There is a nice fruit, just out of season, called Wong-pay, and another whose name means “dragon's eyes\" is not pleasant to my palate. Fish is very dear; a little fish for breakfast costs 5 or more.\n\nThe town of Victoria is a long street running nearly parallel with the shore of the bay. Branching off from this street are the many hills, covered with English villas for a good way up. The eastern end of the town is mostly occupied by large merchants' offices, warehouses, etc....... and beyond are many fine English houses. The Chinese streets are very curious to a stranger. The Chinese shops are likewise interesting. Some however are in English style. An English shop is a different thing here to what it is in England, and more resembles a warehouse. There are, however, a few fine milliner's shops, hotels, dispensary, and club room. At the Eastern extremity are the Barracks, the parade ground, and market; and about a mile on, is a beautifully wooded hill, where the Colonial Chaplain, the Rev. J. Irwin, resides. Then passing through a ravine you open upon Happy Valley. A Chinese villa is quite a curiosity. Here and there you see one perched upon some eminence; but it does", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 270, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "238 \n\nToday, globalisation is going full steam ahead. Who could have forecast in the 1960s, that most of the little compradors' shops on street corners, with their delicious kum wah hams hanging from ceilings, would be nudged out by mighty supermarkets?\n\nWho could have guessed that, with globalisation of palate, McDonald's would become 'haute cuisine' for young Chinese many of who are now overweight?\n\nOf course things were cheaper then and, at my Chinese wedding banquet on the Queen's Birthday in 1960, at the old Sun Ya restaurant on Nathan Road, the cost was an exorbitant HK$130 for each circular table of 12 guests. We tipped $10 a table. That was the going rate. On the afternoon of our wedding day my wife and I were invited to the garden party on the lawn at Government House. In those days people were proud to receive an invitation from His Excellency just as, more recently if they care to admit it, they are proud to receive an invite to the reception on China's National Day.\n\nBut wages for old one hundred names (the man in the street) were low and there was little in the way of social amenities. My Chinese amah was paid $160 a month with half a day off a week. She was lucky. Many received far less and no time off unless they specially requested it. People did not complain. They knew things were much worse in China where famine raged after the failure of the 'Great Leap Forward.' Hong Kong citizens queued up at the post office, in the early 1960s, to send food parcels to relatives on the Mainland. Later Hong Kong changed and, after the 'Star Ferry Riots' of 1966 and the protracted riots of 1967 (an overspill of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), Hong Kong became richer and conditions for the man on a tram began to improve.\n\nCorruption was rampant in those early years before the setting up of the ICAC, although, in my over 26 years of government service working in education, I personally was never once solicited. It was more common in departments such as the Police, Public Works and New Territories Administration. The receiving of presents, however, had to be watched. After the riots, a watershed in many ways, Hong Kong became richer with, more recently, a higher GDP than that of Britain. A large Chinese middle-class formed.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]