[ { "id": 204354, "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-1961", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch \n\nRASHKB and author \n\n118 \n\nVol. 1 (1961) \n\nISSN 1991-7295 \n\ndaughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren) are often dressed in the traditional mourning colour of white, usually in a costume provided by the funeral parlour and consisting, for women, of a white skirt and an upper garment resembling half a sack with one corner placed over the head. Men tend to wear white gowns, with a white band tied round the forehead. A thin surcoat of sack-cloth (haaù ma pò) may be worn over the white mourning clothes by a widow, daughter and daughter-in-law of the deceased; a son may wear a smaller square of sack-cloth over his head.\n\nFriends and relatives will pay their respects to the deceased by bowing towards the coffin three times and once towards the chief mourners, who are usually ranged to one side and may be kneeling with their heads towards the ground. For this public lying in state, the deceased is sometimes placed in a special coffin that leaves the upper portion of the body temporarily exposed. Before burial, the missing portion of the coffin lid will be replaced. The farewell room throughout the vigil and lying in state may be lit with candles and incense sticks, often making the atmosphere uncomfortably heavy and oppressive. In the past, it was customary to bang gongs throughout the vigil, to keep away the evil spirits, but this practice is now prohibited to avoid nuisance to neighbours. It is also customary amongst the less well-to-do for the female relatives of the deceased, particularly a widow, to give a public demonstration of grief in the form of wailing, weeping and loud cries. Mute grief would neither satisfy custom nor perhaps offer adequate incentive to the spirit of the deceased to exercise a benevolent influence on his descendants.\n\nIn practice, the last rites at a funeral parlour usually continue till midday, for the practical reason that it may take the whole morning to complete formalities such as registering the death and making arrangements with the relevant authorities for burial or cremation. The body is then taken by motor hearse to the cemetery or crematorium, accompanied by relatives. Friends may also accompany the hearse if they wish, but there is no objection to their departing earlier after the last rites have been performed. For a particularly large funeral, the journey to the cemetery may be preceded by a ceremonial procession in the neighbourhood, with funeral bands, mourners on foot, the hearse with the coffin, and large wicker framework plaques covered in silver and blue paper describing the deceased. The writer once saw a one-quarter mile procession, with no less than sixteen separate bands, complete an entire circuit of the Happy Valley race course before departing for the cemetery. Some of the funeral bands may be hired by the descendants of the deceased; other bands may be hired by friends wishing to offer condolences.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204398, "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-1962", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n21\n\nNestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith.\n\nThe scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.\n\nMarco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan.\n\nThese facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19\n\nIV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA\n\nWith the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared.\n\n17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.\n\n18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.\n\n19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204498, "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-1962", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "115\n\nBRITAIN AND CHINA'\n\nReviewed by COLINA LUPTON, M.A.2\n\nChina is and will probably continue for some time to be the most unpredictable element in world affairs. With the passage of time she becomes more, not less so; her motives grow more obscure, her economic development more problematical, her political life—within the echelons of the Communist Party—more a matter for conjecture. On the face which she turns to the world there is little sign of the stresses and strains which she is undergoing; the information which China publishes about herself is remarkable only for the lack of knowledge it conveys. Unhappily—in view of our ignorance China is likely by sheer weight of numbers to be the dominant influence in the world in perhaps twenty years' time, and how this unleashed dragon will deal then with other nations largely depends on the kind of handling she receives now.\n\nHence any book which sheds light on Chinese thought processes, in particular relating present policies to past treatment, is a valuable one. Mr. Luard has gone one better and conjectured the course of the future. His book sets out a sane and lucid account of relations with China since the first British ships reached her shores in 1637, and describes both what he expects to see and what he would like to see happen in the next few years. In what really amounts to a series of essays on the historical background, on the Kuomintang, the Communists and the Korean war, on missionaries and merchants, Hong Kong and Taiwan—he neatly discusses, without a superfluity of chronological detail, the past, the present, and the future. This method necessitates a little overlapping between the chapters, but it is worth this since it saves a lot of narration inessential to the point of the book. For the author is trying to discuss sentiments and policies as much as facts, and this kind of pattern gives him the scope to do so. This is certainly not to say that he has ignored facts; though the historical background is compressed, the account of Britain's dealings with the Mao Tse-tung regime is very fully treated.\n\nBy Evan Luard. Chatto and Windus, 1962. 25/-.\n\n* The writer was formerly a research assistant in the Far East Department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She has been living in Hong Kong since the end of 1960, and is Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204605, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n75\n\nWilkinson's book is a gay account of student life with work and play nicely balanced. He mentions many things which must have been familiar to generations of inmates of the Foreign Legations at Peking, such as paying calls on the European residents, buying a pony, choosing a reliable 'boy', the continual battle against 'squeeze', the danger of theft and so on. For pleasure not only was there the bowling alley, which provided the chief amusement inside the Legation during the winter, there was also skating on an improvised rink nearby. Three of the students once skated down the canal to Tungchow, a distance of about twelve miles. There was also the usual entertaining. \"Balls and concerts were given at some of the Legations and at the Inspectorate-General of Customs (where a number of young European men were employed). Dinners everywhere. But the pleasantest of all, perhaps, were the carpet dances (with the carpet up) at two or three houses. We shared the misfortune of most European communities in the East: an undue preponderance of the male. Dancing men were at a discount.\" At Chinese New Year the students generally put on a pantomime or a Christy Minstrel Concert. By this time there was a weekly arrival of mail throughout the summer, and a monthly one during the winter. In the spring and autumn the Peking race meetings were held at a place a mile or so from the western wall of the city. The race-course boasted a tiny grand-stand but Wilkinson is careful to state that these were pretty amateur races; they were picnics first and race meetings second. In summer there was tennis on the Legation lawn, and in the grounds of the residence of the young European employees of the China Maritime Customs, as well as garden parties at the American Legation. The courts in the British Legation lay east and west, and since it was too hot to play until sundown one of the players had to perform with the sun full in his eyes which made play somewhat erratic. For summer dress the students wore a patrol jacket of white drill with trousers to match. In July and August they usually moved to a temple in the Western Hills where they could go for rambles. The main disadvantage of this life came from rain and rats. One summer it rained prodigiously and they were almost washed out of their temple. As for rats an ingenious student subdued them by training four owls which he had bought. They spent the day roosting one on each post of his bed, but at night went into action", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204832, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nthe mainland. In this latter passage, up which the Jackall had to sail so slowly, there are vicious back-eddies along both shores and there is often no appreciable period of slack water at the turn of the tide. After heavy rains in the Pearl River, the ebb tide from west to east along this channel is particularly strong27. The coasts in general shelve steeply, with few good landing places and often with cliffs plunging straight down to the sea. The only large coastal plain which Parish saw during this survey was at Tung Chung, on the west coast of Lantao behind Chek Lap Kok island (Shatlapko on Parish's chart see note 9) but weather and timetable combined to prevent him from getting a close look at it. There is a general absence of good anchorages, except in the shallow waters between Chek Lap Kok and the coast of Lantao, and there is an 8-foot tidal range. The steep hillsides produce fluky gusts of wind in all but the calmest weather. It is surprising that Parish made such detailed observations in the face of these navigational hazards.\n\nParish's comments on Ma Wan itself are also a fair summary of its geographical limitations. The island is geologically complex, with an interesting variety of soils. The underlying rocks, however, are not sufficiently porous to hold large supplies of ground water, and the size of the island (less than a square mile) is too small to form an effective catchment. Any trading post established on Ma Wan would have been severely restricted in size by this problem. The two small settlements on the island have probably not grown appreciably since Parish's visit28. Perhaps it was fortunate that impressions of Ma Wan were coloured by his attempt to land at the most difficult and dangerous point on the coast.\n\nThe general elevation of Ma Wan is much lower than the hills of North Lantao or of the mainland opposite, and the island is so badly overlooked as to be indefensible. Parish was quite right in rejecting it as a potential site for a large trading settlement, and it is a pity that his orders did not permit him to stay longer on the coast of North Lantao. It is invidious to speculate on the course of history, but if the weather had been better his initial impression of the suitability of the west coast of North Lantao for settlement would no doubt have been confirmed. Possibly the first British trading post would have grown up on Lantao instead of on Hong Kong Island, and the city of Victoria would have looked out over the Pearl River estuary.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205136, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n87\n\ntemples, they were treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness. For example, in 1850 an eminent abbot near Hangchow recommended to a missionary visitor that he use an adjoining piece of land to build a Christian church. He made the recommendation, he said, despite his experience with other missionaries who, as he gently suggested, ought to \"show greater tolerance for the customs of other religions.\"39\n\nAlas! tolerance was not their outstanding trait, nor was it outstanding among the foreign tourists and businessmen, who found it increasingly fashionable to regard all things Chinese as inferior and absurd → particularly the \"bonzes.\" Since they also found that the loveliest spots in China had been utilized by the \"bonzes\" to build their monasteries, which were often the only places to stay on travels or holidays, the result was friction.\n\nThe chances for friction were less if all or part of a monastery at a low ebb had been rented outright, as was common in the Western hills outside Peking, at the foot of Omei Shan in Szechwan, and sometimes on the southeast coast. The few monks involved either vacated the premises entirely or moved to a rear building where, being grateful for tenants, they were ready to put up with whatever they had to.\n\nBut when foreign visitors stayed as guests at a prosperous monastery with a full complement of monks, friction was more likely. In 1924, for example, a doughty Philadelphian, Harry A. Franck, visited Omei Shan. Despite the prohibition on the import of meat, of which he was fully aware, he brought along several cans of it, as well as two live chickens for slaughter on the very top of the sacred mountain. As soon as he arrived, he began to bargain over the price of accommodations, thus degrading the monastery to the status of a hotel. (He should, of course, have waited until he was about to leave and then made an unsolicited gift.) Since he felt that he was being overcharged for the charcoal on which to cook his chickens, he took pleasure in making the abbot “lose face by coming himself late in the evening and pretending to verify the weighing.\"\n\nThe next day Mr. Franck professed surprise at the “half-hostile attitude towards foreigners... [of] the fat, lazy monks.” Elsewhere he calls them \"cynical-looking young loafers.\" Yet he complains that (in spite of their laziness and cynicism) they had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205271, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "26\n\nJEN YU-WEN\n\nout and the local people made facsimiles of the originals and preserved them from generation to generation in order to commemorate the glory of their ancestors. Moreover, in the Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th month) every year since then, they have placed the parasols on the racing boats, called huang-chou1 (Imperial boats). Before the boat race started, the gentry and elders of the villages used to kneel and kow-tow to the royal gifts to pay respect to the Sung Emperor. Sung Hsueh-p'eng says that the custom was perpetuated for many years.10 Less than a month after the landing of the royal party, the Dragon Boat Festival was observed. It can be imagined what a delightful day the boy Emperor Tuan Tsung (Shih) and his small brother Wei Wang (Ping) had in watching the races, along with the Queen Mother and many dignitaries, generals, and ministers, and, of course, the local people who were particularly happy to have such distinguished guests participating in their annual festival.\n\nIV. SUNG WONG TOI (Sung Huang Tai-Man)\n\nThe most important site which furnishes the key to our study of the Kuan-fu Travelling Palace of Southern Sung is a small mound near the seashore, north of Ma-tau-kok. It can be definitely located and is recorded in the Hsin-an Gazetteer, other literature, and maps. Besides, there were three Chinese characters engraved on one of the great rocks there, which many of us have seen with our own eyes.\n\nThe small mound was called Sacred Hill1 (see map). This name was probably given to it by the Hong Kong Government when it took over the territory in 1858, as no Chinese literature recorded such a name, and even Hong Kong people of the older generation, including Sung Hsueh-p'eng, did not know of it. On the top of the mound were two large rocks, one on the northern side, the other on the southern. The characters Sung Wong Toi1 were engraved on the western face of the northern rock in the Yuan Dynasty, long after the royal party departed from Kowloon and after the Mongols conquered the Southern Sung.\n\nThe characters were horizontally inscribed, being uniformly 20 inches in width and respectively 26, 22½, and 27 inches in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205531, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "68\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\neast side of the inscribed rock. Here it bends at an obtuse angle and reaches a large boulder east of the rock, thus providing flanking fire in support of the defenders of the bank to south (see Plate 4). Beyond the boulder its course is less easy to follow, but it probably runs north-west about 30 metres, and then north again, past the inscribed boulder, and following the steep edge of the hill, for some 70 metres. Here it bends west at a right angle and becomes a large earth rampart, with a front face to north about 5 metres high protected by a ditch, now partly silted up, about 1 metre deep at its outer edge, where the counterscarp rises; the throw-out from the ditch forms a short glacis in front merging into the hill slope.\n\nThe rampart and ditch run about 55 metres across the north declivity of the hill ridge, cut at two points by modern paths (see Plate 6). At intervals of 20 metres behind it two smaller banks, parallel to it, cross the hill, both ending where the slope steepens to west: the more northern one has a short length of bank running north and south at its west end, which represents the only discoverable trace of the hill's western defences, for field terraces of later date appear to have destroyed the rest of them.\n\nThe Inscriptions*\n\n1. The well-known principal inscription on the hill, today standing in the Sung Wong T'oi park, needs no further notice here, as Professor Lo has dealt with it.\n\n2. On a small stone on the north side of the hill crest is an almost illegible inscription of seven, possibly more, characters, which the writer copied as follows:\n\n宋(or本)\n\n£\n\n?\n\n公\n\n??\n\n+\n\nIt may be conjectured that this was part of an earlier commemorative inscription.\n\n3. On a squared pillar of local granite standing on the west side of the hill, facing a rocky hill a mile away, about 85 metres high;\n\n泰山石敢當\n\nThis was probably put up by someone in an effort to correct the Fung Shui of a grave.\n\nThe next three inscriptions noted are certainly grave inscriptions, showing the hill was used for burials up to recent times.\n\n*The approximate whereabouts of each inscription is shown by its number on the sketch plan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205575, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "112\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\na table.\" In case one might raise the question of the Mongol experience, as perhaps a singular exception, Sun elsewhere explicitly affirmed that they too were absorbed by the Chinese, thanks to the fact that \"the character of the Chinese race was higher than that of other races.\" In making this point Sun incidentally raises a further historical question when he says that the Ming dynasty \"fell twice\" to the Manchus.*\n\nOf course, one might surmise that some of Sun's historical distortions are generalizations intended for forensic effect. The exaggerated assimilation concept may be in this category, as well as such claims as \"Everyone in China, beginning with emperors and kings, and ending with the common people, even robbers and pirates, all have been able to value and delight in literature as an art.\"5\n\n6\n\nBut such observations by Sun, as well as the stress on China's erstwhile moral power for absorption, are also part of a more general idealized appreciation of the past in which history and mythology blend indistinguishably together. As a matter of fact, history seems to be, for Sun, an almost dimensionless pastiche to which reference might be made indiscriminately. Thus the manifold allusions to the legendary emperors and to other historical personalities and folk heroes, without the slightest demonstrated concern for accuracy or authenticity. The \"Emperor Fu-Shi\" wrote the \"Eight Diagrams,\" thus initiating the Chinese written language. Of all the emperors throughout Chinese history only “Yao, Shun, Yu, T'ang, Wen Wang and Wu Wang\" were the ones \"who shouldered the responsibility of government for the welfare and happiness of the people.\" The statement \"you have all read a good deal of Chinese history; I am sure almost everyone here has read particularly The Story of the Three Kingdoms,\" with striking ingenuousness prefaces a brief story illustrating Chu-kuo Liang's \"splendid character,\" but neglects to suggest the difference between evidence provided by historical documentation and the imaginative renditions of fictional literature. Recounting the contributions of the legendary figures of Sui Jen Shih, Shen Nung, Hsien Yuan and Yu Ch'ao Shih, respectively the alleged inventors of cooking, medicine, clothing and housing. Sun declared: \"So in Chinese history we find not only those could fight becoming king; anyone with marked ability, who had made new discoveries or who had achieved great things for mankind, could become king and organize the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205579, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "116\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nspeaks of its use by the secret societies. He said that since the secret societies saw \"the impossibility of overthrowing the Tai-Tsings, they seized then on the idea of nationalism and began preaching it, handing it down from generation to generation. Their main object in organizing the Hung-Men societies was the overthrow of the Tai-Tsing dynasty and the restoration of the Ming dynasty. The idea of nationalism was for them auxiliary.\"16 Perhaps this is but a reflection of the obvious fact that his own nationalistic spirit along racial lines had been artificially wrought. Sun, after all, had not initially been anti-Manchu. His memorial of 1894 to Li Hung-chang, suggesting reforms, contained no such references. Yet, characteristically, Sun would bury this fact in the recounting of his own personal history, for ignoring the memorial to Li Hung-chang altogether, he said in his Memoirs that his anti-Manchu revolutionary course had begun in 1885, nine years earlier.17\n\nAnd so, Sun's use of history, when it is an effect of nationalism or is influenced by it, must necessarily reflect his unusual and uncertain appreciation of nationalism itself. Sun the iconoclastic revolutionary was not as Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao, for example, alienated from a tradition he had personally and deeply known.18 He did not, therefore, feel as intensely the lingering emotional tie to it. He was consequently less disposed to an indulgence in too heavy a dose of cultural nationalism, in trying to preserve a semblance of identity for China in the face of extensive borrowing from the modern West.\n\nBut of course, Sun did feel the need to make some prideful assertions regarding what he believed to be superior features of China's past. We see in this a certain amount of cultural nationalism, but Sun's purpose as often as not had a practical political purpose in mind. He asserted, for example, the superiority of China's ancient virtues. “Loyalty, Filial Devotion, Kindness, Love, Faithfulness, and such are in their very nature superior to foreign virtues, but in the moral quality of Peace we will further surpass the people of other lands.\"19 Such is the source of the old moral power by means of which China could absorb the barbarians of the past. Likewise in politics, Sun declared that China had “a specimen of political philosophy so systematic and so clear that nothing has been discovered or spoken by foreign statesmen to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205752, "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-1969", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "52\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nthe configuration of the country favoured cover and our casualties were few.\" But, \"had this advance not been conducted with great care the loss to our troops must have been heavy.\"69 After fierce fighting the militia withdrew from the valley, leaving it by way of the saddle which gives access to the Pat Heung district. The soldiers followed and, having lost touch with the Chinese, bivouacked for the night at Sheung Tsuen, on the foothills overlooking the Pat Heung valley.\n\nThe next afternoon a large force (subsequently estimated at 2,600 men), was seen approaching from a distance. It consisted of men from Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Castle Peak and from four villages in adjacent Chinese territory, including Pan Tin. The British force took up positions and stood watching the militia, deployed in three lines, \"advance across the open in excellent skirmishing order.70 The British Officer Commanding later conceded that it was \"distinctly a determined advance for Chinamen.”71 The militia began firing at long range and their rifle and jingal fire shortly became almost continuous. When the distance had been reduced to 500 yards the British tried a few ranging shots, moved forward under cover of a dry water course, and advanced into the open toward the on-coming militia. In the face of such a determined response, which now became a general advance accompanied by heavy fire, the militia broke and ran.\n\nThis battle marked the end of organized resistance within the New Territory. The next weeks were spent in establishing the civil administration and in persuading villagers to return to their normal occupations. The Governor, in attempting to explain what had happened to a remote Colonial Office, drew upon another Celtic parallel. The resistance, he said, revealed \"a state of clan feeling and power of combination not unlike that of the Scottish Highlands two centuries ago . . .\"72\n\nThe Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath-- May to September, 1899.\n\nThus far, operations had been confined to the newly leased territory. Early in May, however, reports reached the Hong Kong Government of an impending attack from across the Sham Chun river. Police informers said that 140 ‘bare-sticks' from Tung-kuan Hsien had assembled in secrecy at Sha Tau, on Deep Bay. They were to form the nucleus of a force which was to be augmented by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205837, "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-1969", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# THE MAPPING OF HONG KONG\n\n137\n\nFollowing completion of each block of four sheets at the 1/10,000 scale, one sheet at 1/25,000 scale, covering the same area, will be produced by direct photographic reduction. An extra colour, green, is introduced in the 1/25,000 series. The place-names are printed separately for each series. As a result of the 24 times reduction, the size of each sheet at the 1/25,000 scale is smaller (map face 20″×17″) and 20 sheets will cover the whole Colony. The diagram at Plate 14 shows the relationship between the two series.\n\nOnce again, the ground-control for the photogrammetric plotting was supplied by Survey Branch. Of course, many fewer points were required, since fewer stereoscopic \"models\" were required at the smaller scale than at the large scale. The low-level photography of January 1963 required over 4,000 air photographs to give stereoscopic cover of the Colony, whereas at 12,500 ft., only 346 photographs cover the same area.\n\nAn \"instrument plot\" of each 1/10,000 sheet is sent to Hong Kong for field completion by Survey Branch. On this, the field parties check and complete all detail, and annotate roads, villages, towns, etc. The completed and annotated sheet is then returned to Britain, together with a names overlay and names list, for fair drawing and printing.\n\nAt the end of 1968, some 18 sheets had been published and another 26 had been plotted, field-checked, and were at the fair-drawing stage. The first sheet at the 1/25,000 scale had been drawn, and a coloured proof has been forwarded to Hong Kong for comments. The first 12 sheets of the 1/10,000 series are already on sale at Kelly & Walsh Ltd. and Swindon Book Co., Ltd.\n\nIt is expected that the 1/10,000 series will be completed by early 1971 and the 1/25,000 series by the end of that year. It is hoped to produce future revised editions of the maps in Hong Kong. Revision of the first sheets to be published will be commenced early in 1969.\n\nIt is also planned to produce locally a Chinese-language edition of the new maps, although full details are not yet finalised, and much will depend on the availability of specialised printing equipment.\n\nAn old series of maps which is still quite popular is the 8″ to 1 mile set of the urban areas. These are revised annually and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205933, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "and last Monday's lecture by Dr. Hu on Flowering Trees. The most popular activities each year are the annual symposia held under the Chairmanship of Dr. Topley and the occasional excursions, such as the tour of Old Shau Kei Wan organised last year by Mr. J. W. Hayes. These tours, as well as being studies in the history and social life of Hong Kong, are popular and prove of great service in bringing members together, giving them an opportunity of knowing each other and welding them into one Society of common interest and purpose. In accord with the objects of the parent society and the principles enunciated by Sir John Davis, we have tried to direct attention to practical projects and to natural history as well as to literary pursuits. Thus, a week-end symposium was organised in 1968 under Professor Dwyer of the University of Hong Kong on the subject of The Changing Face of Hong Kong, and recently another week-end symposium was organised by Professor Thrower, as mentioned above. A record of these studies is being edited and will in due course be published by the Society and so make a valuable contribution to the natural history of the Colony.\n\nThe Journal of the Society maintains its high academic standard and interest under the Editorship of Mr. J. W. Hayes. The tenth volume is in the press and will be out later this year. Vol. I, which had long been out of print, has now been reprinted and is now available to meet the increasing demand of members and of scholars and readers overseas for a complete set of the Society's publications, which are now becoming very valuable and much sought after by libraries and learned institutions as well as by individual readers all over the world.\n\nOur greatest problem is our library, and our great sorrow is that our resources do not enable us to rent a room to house our books, let alone to pay a librarian. The original society in Hong Kong had been granted by Sir George Bonham a room in the old Supreme Court to hold its meetings and to house its library. When the Society ran into difficulties in 1858, it handed over its valuable library of 400 books on trust to the Morrison Education Society, which also kept its library in the Old Court House, and in 1869 the Morrison Society presented its own library and that of the Royal Asiatic Society to the City Hall Library. I feel, therefore, that the Government is not without obligation to the Society in respect of the housing of its present library. In Shanghai", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205970, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "J\n\nHONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n45\n\nThe recruitment of cadets changed the nature of administration in early colonial Hong Kong. The cadets were professionals, unlike the earlier officials who were a mixed lot from variegated backgrounds. They spent their working lives—20 to 30 years on average—in one or other of the Eastern colonies, for some of course transferred from, or to, Hong Kong. Since their profession was administration, and the government of Hong Kong was mainly a matter in those days of running a municipality—between 1886 and 1939 only four new departments were established, the District Office New Territories after 1899, the Kowloon-Canton Railway in 1906, and air services and broadcasting in 1929—they soon introduced routines and procedures, organised the files, and set the administrative machine into grooves, along which it ran, on the whole, smoothly and uneventfully for many years. Several governors evinced surprise at the little work they were called upon to do, for ways of doing things had soon become fixed and immutable, and colonial officials were reluctant to change well-tried methods. Sir George Bowen, Governor 1883-1885, declared that the routine and absolutely necessary work of Hong Kong administration \"seemed to me from the first to be much lighter than that of any Crown Colony which I had previously governed\";40 and Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor 1907-1912, of the same opinion, was amused by the bland efficiency and meticulousness of his able Colonial Secretary, Francis May. In Lugard's day, as Margery Perham writes, the officials \"were certainly efficient; the place was small and administration was conducted according to a system which had been seventy years in the making\". Of course, before 1941, most of the problems dealt with by administrators in Hong Kong tended to be workaday ones, and dramatic solutions were hardly called for until the post-1945 period, when massive immigration changed the face of things.\n\nWith regard to administration, then, Sir Hercules Robinson's scheme had worked. It also produced results in another respect, interpretation. Eitel wrote in 1878: \"There are now very few departments where there is not someone who can read a Chinese petition for himself and efficiently check the oral interpretation of the native clerks acting as interpreter. The Coroner's Courts, the Registration Office, and Chinese Protectorate, even the Colonial Secretary's Office, are well provided with a sufficient check on...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206198, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "# HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1970\n\nThe Accounts now before you have again been kindly audited by Messrs. Wong, Tan & Co.\n\nIn my report last year I predicted that the Society would make a deficit due to forthcoming printing charges. As you can see from the Income and Expenditure Account this has been the case where a surplus of $5,691 in 1969 has been turned into a deficit of $6,529 in the current year. This is entirely due to the increased expenditure, the heaviest since the Society was revived eleven years ago. This increase can be seen in the expenditure incurred in the very successful Peking Opera, which the Society sponsored, and in the amount spent on printing Journals. The latter falls into three categories, the reprinting of Volume I, the printing of the symposium \"The Changing Face of Hong Kong\" and the 1970 Journal. The 1970 volume which you are just about to receive if you have not already done so, is a splendid work, but it has cost almost 50% more to print, due to rising costs, the increased size and not least the reproduction of coloured photographs. Members will recall that they receive this free and there is no doubt that it is exceptionally good value for money. However your Council has recently endorsed the proposal that in view of the exceptional expense, the price of this particular Journal to non-members and to members, should they wish for more than one copy, should be raised to $18 from the present $12.\n\nOn the Income side you will notice that this is more or less the same as in the previous year. Annual Memberships do not cover, and never have covered, the expenditure. It is of course important that the Society should increase its membership, not only to enable it to become wider known, but also to increase its income: this is the one positive way in which all members can contribute, by asking their friends to become members. At present, income from this source is fairly static (in 1968 it was $11,380; in 1969, $10,559; in 1970, $10,853 and in 1971 it looks as if the amount will still be under $11,000). I would therefore urge you to help in increasing our membership so that the Society can afford to produce more publications like the 1970 Journal and sponsor other activities such as the Peking Opera.\n\nPage 15\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206268, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n79\n\nauthority and its geographical location made it a base for pirates. One of the stories about the origin of the name of the Tai Ping Shan District on Hong Kong Island is that a pirate named Cheung Po-chai used it as his headquarters. He finally went over to the authorities and left the island. In relief the local population named the mountain side on which he had dwelt \"Great Peace Mountain\". Since it was easy to slip away by boat if government officials came to check on inhabitants, the islands on the edge of San On District were popular haunts for outlaws and the criminal element.\n\nAt the time of the establishment of the British claim to the island, The Canton Register under date of 23 February, 1841, predicted that under British jurisdiction the island would become even more popular with these classes: \"Hongkong will be the resort and rendezvous of all the Chinese smugglers. Opium smoking shops and gambling-houses will soon spread; to those haunts will flock all the discontented and bad spirits of the empire.\" Future developments substantiated this forecast.\n\nFACTORS WHICH IMPEDED THE EMERGENCE OF RESPONSIBLE LEADERS IN THE CHINESE COMMUNITY.\n\nSamuel Fearon, the Census and Registration Officer, in his report dated 24 June 1845, describes the origin of the first settlers of Hong Kong.\n\nThe arrival of the British fleet in the harbour speedily attracted a considerable boat population, and the profits accruing from the supply of provisions and necessaries at once raised many from poverty and infamy to considerable wealth. The shelter and protection afforded by the presence of the fleet soon made our shores the resort of outlaws, opium smugglers, and indeed, of all persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the Chinese laws, and had the means of escaping hither. In course of time the demands for labour, for the public and other works, drew some thousands to the island, the majority of whom were Hakkas or gypsies; people whose habits, character and language mark them as a distinct race. Careless of the ties of home and of those moral obligations, the observance of which is deemed absolutely necessary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206320, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee \n\n131 \n\ntoo sharply between them all. High government officials, such as the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and the Colonial Secretary, were likely to meet this cluster of Chinese constantly, if not at formal meetings, then socially, ceremonially, ritually. It follows that before the war Hong Kong had an oligarchical political structure in that a small number of entrenched and established Chinese shared political control over a largely immigrant and migratory population together with a small number of officials and taipans.\n\nThe pre-war European community in Hong Kong had no official committees of its own, although Europeans tended to predominate on certain committees such as the Labour Advisory Board and the Licensing Board60. Thus Europeans lacked the equivalent of the eleven officially recognised all-Chinese committees, the names of which were enshrined annually in the Civil Service List. The government felt no need either to sponsor or promote a system of counter-balancing European committees because of course the administration was controlled at the top by European colonial civil servants and only a few thousand Europeans were resident in Hong Kong.\n\nBut it is of some significance that in the face of growing Chinese working-class intransigence in the 1920s, illustrated by the spate of strikes, beginning with the mechanics' strike of 1920 (the first major industrial strike in Hong Kong) and culminating with the great strike and boycott of 1925-26, Europeans set up their own 'district' associations. The Kowloon Residents' Association was formed in 1922 and the Peak dwellers, the leading European residents, formed theirs a little later in the same year like the European residents on Cheung Chau, a favourite summer station with missionaries; and in 1925 the Mid Levels residents also formed an association. None, understandably, was given statutory or official recognition by government. Such associations were unnecessary for the District Watch Committee was hyper-active during these turbulent years and as keen to protect the European minority and thus help sustain the economy as were Europeans themselves. The Committee worked hard to bring the general strike and boycott to an end by mediation with strike leaders and holding talks with interested parties in Hong Kong and Canton, the strikers' base; and the District Watchmen were active in preventing intimidation of shopkeepers, fokis, artisans", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206404, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nin frames hung on the walls. A portrait of Sir Robert Ho Tung's mother and a photograph of his wife appear in the older of these two memorial halls. \n\nThe Tam Kung Temple at Happy Valley \n\nThis temple, which seems to have been removed here about 1900, was formerly located at Wong Nei Chung Village and was the local village temple. The village of Wong Nei Chung was one of the main villages of Hong Kong Island and its existence pre-dated the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. It was eventually removed in the 1920s to make way for the present development of Wong Nei Chung and Blue Pool Road. The present race course was formerly the paddy fields belonging to this village. \n\nThis temple is in fact dedicated to two gods, Pak Tai, (11) the god of the north and Tam Kung, (342) a Kwangtung worthy. Other gods worshipped in the temple include the Goddess of Mercy (left of the main altar) and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother (right of the altar). Up some steps and behind the main building is another altar in which there is an image of Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven. To the right of this altar are some memorial tablets which have been put there by relatives of dead persons for regular worshipping rites to be carried out in return for a small initial sum. You will note that one of these contains bone ashes in a small porcelain jar. \n\nTin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay \n\nThis is by far the oldest of the three temples we shall visit today. The structure, apart from some later repairs, dates mainly from a last major reconstruction in 1868, and the bell is dated 1747. There are various items of temple furniture inside and outside the temple bearing dates in the Tao Kwong (1821-51) and Tung Chi (1862-74) periods, including a very good pair of large stone lions dated 1845. Inside the temple the major items of interest are the carved granite altars which date from the 1860s and are worthy of close inspection. \n\nThe temple is dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and has long been famous for attracting large numbers of boat people on this goddess' festival in the fourth moon. Unlike most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206731, "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": 8, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "Publications\n\nOur publications are now known throughout the world of Far Eastern scholarship. Currently we have exchange arrangements with twenty-four other societies and institutions to which we send a copy of each volume of our Journal when published. At present we have standing orders for a further eighty-two copies of the Journal, nearly all of which go overseas. It is also interesting to note that many orders are now for complete sets of the Journal, or several of the earlier volumes purchasers require to complete their sets.\n\nIt might be worth comparing figures for purchases of publications other than on exchange or by standing order, over the past two years. In 1971 we sold forty-three copies of the Journal compared with 131 in 1972. In 1971 we sold 108 copies of symposia brochures compared with eighty-two in 1972. The high figure for 1971, however, was due to our sale of the 1969 symposium brochure The Changing Face of Hong Kong, edited by Professor D. Dwyer of the Department of Geography and Geology, University of Hong Kong, who organised the symposium itself. After publication in 1971 there were immediate heavy sales—eighty-five through local book-shops—and the value of this brochure for students has been recognised by many educational institutions in the Colony. During 1971 we sold sixty-four reprints of articles, and the figure for 1972 sales was sixty-eight.\n\nMembership\n\nLike many societies in Hong Kong, we have our fluctuations in membership arising from the mobility of residents. It was recently suggested to me that in addition to the many societies named after saints in the Colony, there should be a St. Pancras Society! At the last Annual General Meeting our membership stood at 525. During the financial year we have had our inevitable losses from departures. Altogether we lost thirty-eight members, only one through death. However, six members left without any forwarding address, and nine did not respond to the notice about membership renewal, and I might take this opportunity of pointing out the benefits of bankers' orders in handling membership both to yourselves and to our busy Honorary Treasurer. Life membership, of course, would give you the benefit of not having to think about renewing at all.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206902, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n173\n\na fish-scale design all over the dress. But neither points out that the shiny most bluish satin simulates the metal of the armour and the scales simulate the plates of the armour. The back-flap is cut into strips and they obviously look and are arranged like tail feathers; feather-strips are hanging down from various parts of the costume. The generals bristle and ruffle their feathers with every movement, and while fighting they look like an enormous flustered phoenix in attack.\n\nMost opera costumes have so-called water-sleeves of white thin silk attached to the actual sleeve. They are like cuffs, open at the seam, and when they hang down, they almost reach the floor. These sleeves play a very important part in the technique of acting. Miss Halson only describes a few sleeve-movements like: using the sleeves to hide in embarrassment, or thrown up in bewilderment, that they are used as a muff in winter and as a fan in summer. Scott explains 100 different sleeve-movements and tells by which character they are used: e.g. in T'ou hsiu the two sleeves are flung out together, to the right, whilst the face looks left, which symbolizes making a decision or anger and is only performed by the Ching I or demure young woman. I would like to add that these sleeves are found in Chinese costumes already as far back as the Han dynasty about 2,000 years ago. The cuff was not added to the sleeve, but the sleeve itself was very long. It can still be seen in the blouses worn by Tibetans. In the art of Chinese dancing, the flowing of the sleeves are such an important part, that movements are often only directed to produce the desired flow. It expresses the Chinese love for flowing lines, very well known from their brush-strokes. Actually in both books I feel the absence of linking the descriptions of the appearance with its cultural background.\n\nAll faces are made up in Peking Opera. Older people and middle-aged ones have a natural make up, young men and women have the middle of their face powdered white, cheeks and eye-lids are deep magenta. But the most striking are the multi-coloured painted faces. They are only for male parts: warriors, generals, ministers and officials. Miss Halson suggests an origin for these: branded criminals tattooed their scars to disguise the marks. This is very far fetched. Her second explanation is that the actors wanted their faces to stand out. Any make up is of course to this end; but she did not hit the simple truth. Masks were used before the great step forward was taken when, recognizing the disadvantages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207006, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\n71\n\nbe under the left or the right foot with the coiled snake under the other foot. It could be entwined by the snake or the snake could even be stretched across the god's outstretched arms with the god standing or seated on the tortoise. There was no controversy over the bare feet, but the pointed finger and the unkempt hair were also long disputed. One daring apprentice was quickly squashed by his vexed master when he suggested that as the Northern Emperor is also called the Emperor of the Black Heavens perhaps his face should be black. This only highlighted how easily individual interpretations can develop into an accepted recognition feature.\n\nThe decoration of the robes is usually a personal choice of the carver unless it is part of a particular identification feature. Images of soldiers are depicted wearing armour with coloured robes showing underneath. Images of officials varied considerably, many wearing scholar's robes and hats rather than official's robes bearing their badge of rank. During Imperial times as it was not permitted for images to be depicted wearing genuine badges of rank, blurred outlines were painted on their chests, and even to this day in the decoration of the images the carvers still do not depict the old Ch'ing mandarin-square chest and back badges of birds for civil officials and animals for the military.\n\nIt must be remembered that to Chinese the attitudes of stylized form is the important part of the image. The faces and dress, more often than not, are irrelevant and most images are dressed in official court dress of past centuries. A few images, typically Taoist, are garbed in the gown of a priest, with a top knot of coiled hair which supports a very small coronet or crown.\n\nMany wooden images are carved from one piece of wood, excluding of course the sword and other similar final additions. Quite a few, however, have their throne carved separately and even more have the head and neck carved as one piece to be fitted later into a body which has been carved separately. Some images are required by custom to have articulated limbs (e.g., the Ch'ao Chou patron of street actors) and others consist only of marionette heads on stakes or skewers for use by spirit mediums for self-immolation.\n\nGod carvers not only produce images, they are also the carpenters who build the temple furnishings, the altar, side screens, etc., and also the ancestral tablets for both temples and homes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207329, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n89\n\nexplore the lives led by members of the European working class and to develop some ideas about the nature of social stratification among Europeans and Chinese in nineteenth century Hong Kong.\n\nThe documentation on working class Europeans in Hong Kong is not extensive. They were often barely literate. Even if they wrote well, they were not inclined to record on paper their thoughts and experiences for posterity. If they wrote letters home, such correspondence was not usually preserved (there are some exceptions) for future generations. It is extremely difficult, therefore, to obtain a clear picture of their social perceptions, of what they felt about Hong Kong. Most accounts of this class must come, inevitably, from middle-class Taipans, colonial civil servants, travellers, journalists, writers of one type or another, many of whom were class-ridden and decidedly unsympathetic to the European hoi polloi of the China coast.\n\nA great deal of information is to be found, of course, in the English language newspapers printed in Hong Kong; but much of it deals solely with court cases, providing only indirect clues to the problems facing working class Europeans and to the social attitudes of their superiors. We do not have much material on their social and private lives for they were not clubmen or members of prestigious associations. Consequently, their everyday activities are not recorded normally in the social columns of local newspapers. Only intermittently, when they acquired local notoriety for delinquent or deviant behaviour, were their lives memorialised in the annals of the press.\n\nScarcity of primary source material and lack of documentation should not stultify all efforts to write about the European working class in Hong Kong, for questions raised by its existence are important sociologically and some attempt must be made to answer them. For example, members of the European uniformed supervisory staff—those whom Cantonese call pong-paân (help-manage)* - had frequent face-to-face contacts with ordinary Chinese and often lived cheek by jowl with them in Chinese residential areas; this fact would suggest that Chinese stereotypes of the European may have derived from, or been heavily influenced by, such contacts. Such a question directs the sociologist to a further problem,\n\n* For this term, and for the maai-paån or managers see Marjorie Topley's definition at p. 105 below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207448, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "208\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nIf I had known I would not have named him to the Japanese. They carried out their own searches and interrogations, accompanied by tying up to water pipes or other suitable tethering posts those they wanted to interview. All were well slapped but the thief was never discovered. Two of our orderlies and one R.A.M.C. man were removed to P.O.W. camp though.\n\nOn another note, soon after I took charge an electric bulb was stolen from the perimeter lighting system, no doubt by one of our people who needed one. The elementary error was made of not replacing the filched good bulb with a worn-out one. This was a useful lesson to me personally from which I profited, but on the occasion of which I am writing I was summoned and formally told that while a bulb was a small matter stealing it was an insult to the Imperial Army and I was warned that if I wanted trouble I could be sure of getting it by allowing such offences.\n\nThe best story about trading, a true one, concerned a patient who was negotiating a deal with a sentry. Much experience had shown that some sentries were less governed by strong principles of honesty in business dealings than others, and often enough no confidence whatsoever was shown between the parties concerned. On this occasion the sentry wanted to take the article away for valuing before making an offer, but our patient was not prepared to allow this. Eventually a compromise was reached and the sentry left his loaded rifle with the patient as a surety while he took the article away for valuation. The patient kept the rifle in his bed and in due course the sentry returned and a bargain was struck.\n\nIn the earlier days a number of sentries came to our nursing orderlies suffering from venereal disease being for some reason reluctant to report sick with such a complaint to their own people. They knew the value of the sulpha drugs and they knew that we possessed some of these. At first I was tempted to allow our men to treat them in the hope that we might thereby enjoy some advantages, in the form at least of their forbearance to be unduly zealous in their dealings with us. I soon came to see that we were likely to gain nothing from this practice and set my face firmly against it. Our small stocks of sulpha drugs were so extremely valuable to us that I myself controlled their issue to wards, a special case having to be made to me on each occasion by the doctor in charge. I would not however assert that some of our men did not supply", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207505, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n265\n\nAt this time I took part in some discussions on any action to be taken to report on the conduct of individuals while prisoners and I took the view that adverse reports should only be made in cases of the grossest neglect of duty and I made no report of this kind. Our staff and patients, apart from an occasional minor misdemeanour by one or two, conducted themselves splendidly.\n\nOn 4 September the large Empress of Australia arrived. I took two R.A.F. doctors to the Central British School where they saw something of the population of bugs and very understandably wanted to occupy apartments in nearby flats. By now the R.A.F. had brought 3000 troops into the Colony and they needed hospital services for their sick. There was, as might be expected, some confusion in the various administrations. Some people were moving too fast with too little thought, while others thought too long before moving.\n\nOn 5 September I went off to the Empress of Australia early and later found that Surgeon-Captain George Abercrombie was now Fleet P.M.O. in the battleship H.M.S. Anson. Abercrombie was later to be a founder member and in due course a distinguished President of the College of General Practitioners (later a Royal College), and I had the pleasure of meeting him quite frequently in London later. He kindly invited me to lunch in the Anson one day. Long voyages in warships in wartime conditions had left him looking rather pale, while of course I was pretty thin by that time. The main dish at lunch was a mutton stew in which the mutton was extremely fat and the watery part of the stew was laden with fat globules. I well remember the look of horror on his face as he watched me dispose of what to him must have been a repulsive dish.\n\nAt this time I learned that Colonel Lindsay Ride was replacing Field as senior officer in the army in Hong Kong. Ride had commanded our Field Ambulance during the fighting in Hong Kong. He was a professor in the University and his Chinese students helped him to escape as soon as we surrendered to Mainland China, where he set up an organisation to keep in touch with events in Hong Kong and which helped people to escape from the Colony. I believe that it was through his thoughtfulness that my wife learned that I was still alive after hostilities ended but none of the messages I sent off from Hong Kong after our release ever arrived. Ride was later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and knighted for his services to the Colony.\n\nThe R.A.F. hospital moved into the Central British School", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207655, "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-1976", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "28\n\nDOUGLAS W. SPARKS\n\nmay be more or less unknown to the latter or they may be included in a larger category with no internal divisions. For example, a brief analysis of ethnic stereotypes in the Castle Peak Bay area in the New Territories (Anderson, 1967:98-99) mentions certain groups (particularly Cantonese boat people) which are not significant to the Teochiu that I studied in a housing estate. With regard, however, to very positively or negatively stigmatized categories, members of which are found throughout the Colony, considerable similarity in attributed characteristics is found. This is particularly true of stereotypes of Teochiu. For example, according to the Castle Peak stereotypes, Teochiu are dishonest, rascals, and involved in triads (Anderson, 1967:98). Almost all non-Teochiu that I have spoken to concerning their conceptions of Teochiu, regardless of their educational levels, have verbalized a mostly negative stereotype. The key elements of this stereotype seem to be the conservativeness of Teochiu; their clannishness or tendency to stick together, particularly in the face of adversity (this aspect is invariably given an implied negative connotation); their proclivity for involvement in crime and narcotics; their religious and non-religious superstitions, proven by their commitment to certain rituals, particularly the Hungry Ghost Festival; their violent, aggressive and pushy personality which leads to conflict with others in the market or factory. These elements are causally inter-linked in the minds of non-Teochiu. Teochiu, of course, are well aware of the stereotype and have counter-explanations or rationalizations for each element. The origin of the various elements can be explained in terms of recent patterns of interethnic interaction following the immigration of large numbers of Teochiu after 1949; that is, in the way that non-Teochiu reacted to this group which initially could not speak Cantonese, and in the manner that Teochiu in turn solidified ethnic boundaries and separated themselves. It is therefore important to consider Teochiu conceptions of themselves and other ethnic groups.\n\nThe data presented here is largely drawn from a questionnaire which was administered to Teochiu in a resettlement estate whose residents included former squatters and refugees from mainland China, Teochiu living in other localities, and non-Teochiu from various localities. Probability survey methods were found to be impractical in application and questionnaires were administered to people I met during the research. The questionnaire contains questions concerning ethnic stereotypes and rank ordering of ethnic", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207834, "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-1976", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 207\n\npromote among themselves morality, education, social solidarity, and mutual aid. The plan seems to have enjoyed some vogue in the Ming dynasty, but the early Ch'ing rulers took over the term to give it a new meaning: 'hsiang-yüeh' became a public lecture system by means of which the masses were to be indoctrinated with the political ethics of Confucianism. Yet by the nineteenth century 'hsiang-yüeh' had once again undergone a transformation, a lecture system developing into a framework of state control to the point where 'hsiang-yüeh' was sometimes taken to be synonymous with 'pao-chia' and 'li-chia', the state organisations for security and taxation. On the other hand, a contrary process of evolution was also at work moving ‘hsiang-yüeh' back towards the kind of self-government which had been originally conceived under its name. It is on record that in places in Kwangtung the heads of 'hsiang-yüeh' assumed roles of local leadership in such a way as to take command of local affairs. In addition, 'hsiang-yüeh' were used as a setting for organising ‘regiment and drill corps' ('t'uan-lien') for local defence, and it is an interesting speculation that just as the 'ke yüeh hsiang-yung', the village braves of the several yeuk, rallied to the defence of Canton against the British in 1842, so we might find on closer inspection that some of the armed resistance to the first British in the New Territories was bound up with the Ts'at Yeuk and other yeuk-complexes. (There are of course many sources, both Western and Chinese, for the history of 'hsiang-yüeh'. The best and most convenient is Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960, pp. 184, 205).\n\n28. My tentative view of the matter is that, while early Ch'ing policy may have popularised the term heung yeuk in the course of spreading the public lecture system, at the time we are concerned with, at least in our part of Kwangtung, yeuk were looked upon by the people who engaged in them as instruments of local control independent of state supervision. They might be used for treating with the state, as seems to have been the case especially with the three yeuk-complexes oriented to Kowloon City, and might have allied themselves with officialdom in the face of banditry or attack by outsiders, but they were far removed from being mere instruments of state control. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, whose home was in an area of Kwangtung which may be regarded as being in many ways comparable to San On, laid stress on the heung yeuk as a basis for a high degree of local independence and self-government in his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207875, "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-1976", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "248\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ncommon ownership. How do such systems work? What economic consequences follow from the building up and breaking down of common properties? It would appear, for example, that a shift to new uses of land must often wait upon the dissolution of the tso which holds it, and there are sometimes long drawn-out disputes over the manner in which the division is to be made—as when the tso consists of two or more branches of unequal size such that a per stirpes distribution would benefit some people and a per capita one others. Again, detailed field studies would be able to show not simply how much land in a given area is being rented out to tenants, but also the different classes of tenancy and their rules, implicit as well as explicit. In this connexion, I may refer once more to the uncertainty which appears to surround the terms governing short tenancies by vegetable-growers.\n\n86. There is, of course, a larger land matter at stake in the New Territories. Recent development has done more than merely put pressure on common holdings and convert paddies to vegetable gardens; it has created an urban market for country land and encouraged the idea that it is the landowner's right to convert his property to non-agricultural uses. No modern government can allow country land to be turned haphazardly into building sites, and it is not to be wondered at that, in their desire to put their land to new uses, New Territories people have had to face an official land policy which sometimes appears to them to be perverse. And a disinterested outsider might well comment that in this difference, the government appears to be the guardian of a rural integrity which the country people themselves are content to see disappear. Many small landowners would prefer to stop being peasants and either sell what they have to a dealer or develop it themselves by putting up accommodation for rent. The situation breeds misunderstandings. I recall, to take an example from official restrictions on housing—how, at the beginning of my work, I had great difficulty in extracting from what I was told the small kernel of truth about government policy. The fact that village houses up to a certain height and area are exempt from certain burdensome requirements becomes distorted into the belief that a limit is being imposed on the dimensions of houses; and complaints are heard about the lack of freedom to design houses according to the wishes of the inhabitants. It is certainly not easy to see how the Administration can overcome the difficulties arising from misunderstanding, but a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207904, "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-1976", "page_number": 292, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n277\n\nIn the face of criticism one of the items discussed at a public meeting held at Tung Wah in 1875 was the question was it \"advisable to have a Kung Soh or Town Hall built so as to separate the functions of the Committee from that of the General Community in order to avoid further criticism\". There was no consensus of agreement on this question at this meeting. Two years earlier the Registrar General had asked the Committee to select two men from each District of Hong Kong to serve as Headmen of the District Watchmen. The Committee had demurred stating that they would like to see a separation of their duties as the Committee of the Hospital and the leaders of the Kai-fong. The Governor agreed that it would be desirable for such a separation -- the occasion was the introduction of the new Hospital Committee to the Governor in July, 1873. So the relation between the Hospital Committee and the Kai-fong leaders had been under discussion for some time, but no definite action was taken. One of the factors seemed to be that for the Kai-fong to function adequately as a separate body from the Tung Wah Committee it needed a proper meeting hall.\n\nAt the time of the discussion concerning separation of the two groups in 1875, a petition was submitted to the Government for the grant of a site at Possession Point on which the Chinese community might build such a Meeting Hall. When the 1876 Committee called on the Governor as was the custom shortly after its election, he said the matter was under consideration. The Chairman of the founding Committee, Mr. Leong On said that they had been obliged to resort to the Hospital as a place of meeting. This had given rise to adverse criticism in the foreign newspaper and they wished to have a meeting house in order to avoid future complaint. However, though the matter was \"under consideration\" by the Government nothing resulted.\n\nAs we have noted one newspaper editor almost from the foundation of the Hospital had grave doubts about the role the Tung Wah Hospital Committee would play as a representative of the Chinese community and its relation to the colonial administration. These misgivings on the part of a segment of the foreign community were not abated by the course of events. An ever growing outcry against the quasi-political activities of the Hospital Committee appeared in the editorials and the correspondence columns of Hong Kong newspapers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208151, "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-1977", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "174\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAbbot of a local monastery to a rock which so took his fancy that he had these characters carried upon its face. yet another old scholarly tradition, of course.*\n\n17. Most famous mountains have inspired countless paintings over the ages, and many painters have chosen the name of a mountain as one of their literary or artistic names. Whilst it seems unlikely that Tai Mo Shan has not been a source of inspiration, I have not yet been able to look into the history of local painting to ascertain whether its name has been used by artists from the district and whether there have been paintings of the mountain scenery. Certainly Tai Mo Shan is as mysterious and beautiful as others during periods of spring mist and sunshine.\n\nGeomancy and the Mountain\n\n18. Another aspect of Chinese mountains is their deep, close and long connection with geomancy, especially since they are specially favoured for the construction of graves. It must be remembered that all land for graves as for houses must be selected by a geomancer who will also advise on a propitious day before any ground is turned. To do so, without making the necessary checks and precautions, would be to invite disaster for descendants and, in the case of houses, for their residents. Therefore, when we look at the mountain, we must keep in our minds this intensive preoccupation with present safety and the future well-being of the humans who inhabit it, dead or alive, and the great efforts made to ensure them.\n\n19. Graves in particular are chosen with great care. Geomancers often stake their reputation by securing (or perhaps through their clients' insisting on) mention on the grave tablet, by name and home district, under the label tei shih (f) or ‘Expert in Land'. It often happens that the geomancer prepares for his client a plan of the ground relating to its surrounding hillside, fields and streams. These plans are often included into the clan record and remain for after generations to see and check with other geomancers if family fortunes appear to be worsening.†\n\n* Abbot Mou Fung (X) of the Tung Po To.\n\n†The Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library in the University of Hong Kong has a large collection of such records. I have also collected a few detailed statements accompanying such plans, prepared for the client family by the geomancer. There is much useful material on the Fung Shui of graves, ancestral halls and houses in Henry 1882: 166-176.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208293, "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-1978", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "EDITORIAL\n\nWith this Journal, No. 18 in the series, our printer and member, Mr. Lam Yung-fai, has completed eighteen years of sterling work for the Society. In my twelve years as Hon. Editor and to my knowledge before that, Mr. Lam has always treated the Journal as a special job, something dear to his heart and therefore the subject of his special attention. I have not been the best of the editors because my official duties leave little time and less energy for other pursuits, and in consequence Mr. Lam and his staff have had to accept papers as and when I was able to deal with them and often \"bad copy\" in my poor hand. It is largely owing to Mr. Lam's tolerance, patience, and his affection for the Society that a satisfactory Journal is produced each year. For this, we are indeed most grateful. It is therefore with great pleasure that I record here the Council's decision to appoint him an Honorary Member of the Society in recognition of his services to the Branch.\n\nIt is eleven years since I penned an editorial. During that time and since its inception, the Journal has provided a useful, indeed major, outlet for work on Hong Kong. The result is, by now, a large body of material on the subject that is of value to the Hong Kong community and of use to many persons seeking background to their own studies and literary work of all kinds. Perhaps the greatest compliment paid was the extensive and acknowledged use of material from the Journal in P.H.M. Jones' Golden Guide to Hong Kong published by the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1968; though of course, much more has appeared in these pages since then, thanks to the interest in Hong Kong and China that draws so many researchers here for academic work.\n\nMuch of the material provided is historical. This is important in a period of sweeping change when, otherwise, much of value that would provide essential background to the current, ever-changing scene, is swept aside and lost forever unless recorded. Some of it relates to the contemporary, equally threatened by the rapid pace and face of change. Most is sociologically-based. Here, I renew the thought expressed in 1967, and earlier by our first Hon. Editor, Professor Cranmer-Byng: that since ethnography is a particular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208342, "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-1978", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "50\n\nMARGARET N. NG\n\nThis view is probably quite common. People who are alien to a Chinese society in which both li and face prevail usually find it difficult to see any distinction between the two. On the other hand, people who are born into the system find the distinction obvious and so impossible to explain. There is, of course, the fact that the verbal expressions for 'loss of face' and 'loss of li' are not interchangeable, but this has little to do with the real unease felt by the modern native Chinese who finds confusion between the two incredible and irritating. To them, the most fundamental, the 'gut' difference between face and li is that the concern for li is honorable, the concern for face is dishonorable. It is no loss of face to admit to foreigners that the Chinese are preoccupied with li; indeed, it is a source of pride that China is the 'Country of Li and Yi (righteousness)'; it is a loss of face to admit to foreigners that the Chinese are preoccupied with face. Li is obviously Good, and face is obviously Bad.\n\n2\n\nWithout making too much of the verbal difference between face and li, and without attempting to probe into the psychology or sociology of the modern native Chinese, I suggest their 'gut feelings' that li is honorable and face not, be taken into account and explained, if only as illusory or a mistake. On the other hand, the great weakness of simply dismissing the confusion made by Agassi and Jarvie between li and face as an accidental error, excusable in foreigners, is that we thereby lose the opportunity to study a very interesting question, what has face to do with li and the general teachings of Confucius? So far as I know, few people have raised this question, let alone considered answers to it. The theory of Agassi and Jarvie that face is the same as li is the closest to an answer to it, and a very bold one. In my opinion, their mistake is a very interesting one, and needs far more than the obvious to explain it. For, there is a very deep connection between face and li.\n\nFace and Li are Not the Same\n\nThe fact that both Confucianism and face reflect their context of a pride-shame3 society and support it makes it easy to confuse li and face. However, once we understand that shame is not always an external sanction, as is suggested in early anthropological studies, but can be internal, we can see clearly that the two reflect and support different parts of the pride-shame society. To confuse face", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208346, "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-1978", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "54\n\nMARGARET N. NG\n\nHowever, face aims at preserving harmony on the surface by preventing conflicts from becoming open; whereas li aims at achieving social harmony through the individual's efforts of self-discipline to conform to a common social ideal in which no conflict could arise.\n\nThe resemblance between face and li, and the prevalence of the concern with face and the dominance of Confucianism in traditional Chinese society, are not accidental. They are both reflections of the aspirations of a pride-shame culture. I suggest, in answer to the question, how are face and li related, that li is the ideal, and face is a subterfuge due to the severe demands of that ideal, and the delay of the realization of that ideal which may, of course, never be completely realizable. The ideal is the social harmony and stability and the individual's perfect adjustment in society so well expressed in Confucianism. In the Confucian aspiration, personal or material interest is never allowed precedence over social stability and harmony, and Confucianism is prepared to sacrifice anything to maintain that. It teaches that material comfort is not as valuable as contentment, that it is right and fitting for the learned man to 'roll up his talents like a painting scroll' should the times or the prince be adverse to making proper use of them.19 It teaches that without self-discipline there is no internal harmony for the individual, and without internal harmony of the individual there is no harmony and orderliness in society and state. And so one must watch out for the social aspect of one's every act; no action is entirely a private matter, and every sin a public offence.\n\nThe concern with face stems from the same anxiety for social harmony and preservation of a smooth-running stream of social transactions. But face tries to evade the sacrifices considered by Confucianism to be necessary to bring about that state of affairs. It is precisely to rescue some material progress that face takes the place of li, not to block it completely as Agassi and Jarvie think. Face is cunning and impromptu as li is planned and principled. Face only comes up when suddenly something becomes public; it is forever concerned with patchwork remedies. Face is compatible with greed and selfishness; the person who is concerned about face does not sacrifice opportunities for material gain because he fears to lose face by it; he tries to look for ways to get his gain and preserve his face by some means or other, and the system of face allows plenty of devices for such occasions. Face is adaptable and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208349, "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-1978", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "IS FACE THE SAME AS LI?\n\n57\n\nsible. The fact is, the Chinese cultural superiority lies in the loyalty to li; and if I am right that li is not the same as face, and li is deeper than face, and the Chinese will shamefacedly admit the silliness of face but will be shocked to attack li, then the optimistic thesis of the authors is mistaken. It would be, moreover, amply clear that to argue the Chinese into relinquishing their sense of cultural superiority, we do not so much need a critical examination of face, as a critical examination of li\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Joseph Agassi and I. C. Jarvie, 'A Study in Westernization', in Hong Kong, A Society in Transition, edited by I. C. Jarvie in consultation with Joseph Agassi, Routledge, Praeger, London and New York, 1969, pp. 129-163.\n\n2 There is of course no consensus among the Chinese about face or even Confucianism. There was a time when the concern for face was open and considered unquestionably proper even though nothing lofty; the more old-fashioned still think there is something to be said about face, though they do not say it. There was a generation, in the early 1900's, during which Confucianism was fiercely attacked as obstruction to progress. 'Revolutionary' China still keeps the practice. Meantime, face as an art or even an expression is quite lost to the present younger generation of Chinese in Hong Kong, and Confucianism is no longer mentioned one way or the other. But the feelings for face and li, the cultural superiority, are there just beneath the surface, and emerges at scratch.\n\n3 I prefer the fuller expression of 'pride-shame' to just 'shame' culture, as pride is often as prominent as, if not more so than, shame in a so-called shame culture. This is originally suggested by Margaret Mead in 'Guilt, Ritual, and Culture', in Roger W. Smith (ed.), Guilt, Man and Society, A Doubleday Anchor Original, 1970, pp. 117-134. Correspondingly I use 'guilt-saintliness' rather than just 'guilt' culture.\n\n4 Margaret Mead, Co-operation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, New York, McGraw Hill, 1937, pp. 493-494. Ruth Benedict believes, in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, London, Secker & Warburg, 1947, p.223, that shame is 'a reaction to other people's criticism'.\n\n5 Analects, III, 3, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 16, A Concordance to the Analects of Confucius, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Peiping, 1940. Translations of quotations n. 5-19 are my own.\n\n Ibid., III, 4. 林放問禮之本。子曰:大哉問,禮與其奢也,寧儉;喪,與其易也,寧戚。\n\n Ibid., III, 8, 予夏問曰:巧笑倩兮,美目盼兮,素以為绱兮,何謂也?子曰:繪事後素。曰:禮後乎。子曰:起予者商也。始可與言詩已矣。\n\n Ibid., XII, 1. 子曰:非禮勿視,非禮勿聽,非禮勿言,非禮勿動。\n\n9 Ibid., XIV, 30.\n\n10 Ibid., XIV, 7.\n\n11 Ibid., XII, 23, 24. 子貢問友。子曰:忠告而善道之,不可則止,毋自辱焉。", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208408, "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-1978", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "116\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nMuch of the urgency for a thorough study of the historical form of village government rests upon the fact that in the near future changes are certain to come. In some cases the trend is already evident. This metamorphosis, which at present is only starting, the writer had planned to make the subject of a special chapter. For lack of enough reliable information, however, this plan had to be abandoned. Instead, those facts which could be ascertained have been incorporated into the body of the first four chapters and plainly indicated.\n\nThe final chapter of this essay deals, in a general way, with the historical evolution of village government in China.1 In this section the writer has merely attempted to plot the course of this social institution throughout the history of the developing race. Even this preparatory and inadequate survey of a single institution indicates how fruitful a field for research the social history of the Chinese people might be.\n\nThe appendix includes a bibliography of those Western sources which have been found useful in this study, and a bibliography of recent investigations into rural condition written in Chinese. For this latter the author is indebted to Mr. T. L. Yuan, acting director of the National Library of Peiping.\n\n(Chapter 1) THE FAMILY\n\nThe basic nature of the traditional family system to all social and political institutions in China has often been pointed out. It should be emphasized that in this chapter only those elements of the family system which seem most to have influenced, if not indeed produced, the Chinese mode of village government will be examined. No attempt is made at a complete analysis.2 In connection with this description two important cultural phenomena will be considered, namely, mutual responsibility and the filial piety-ancestor worship pattern. These phenomena form a psychological background both for the family system and for village government, reinforcing and being reinforced by them.\n\n1 Not printed here\n\n* For a fairly complete, if not thoroughly critical study of the family system in China see Su, Sing Ging; The Chinese Family System, which also has a good bibliography of Chinese and Western sources. The work which was of most value for this paper is Kulp's Country Life in South China, Vol. I: Phenix Village, which is a survey of actual conditions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208424, "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-1978", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "C. MARTIN WILBUR\n\ncriminal, is in their hands since they are responsible in no small measure to those above them for the behavior of all the members of the sib. It is their duty constantly to keep the mores of the clan foremost in the minds of every individual. When breaches of conduct involving the mores of the clan occur the offender will be speedily called to account and social pressure will be brought to bear to compel him to make amends. While force may be used, a more powerful means of pressure, and one more in line with familist procedure generally, is that involved in \"face\". The psychology of \"face\" is extremely interesting. It is one of the strongest agents in Chinese life for preserving the accepted standards of behavior. Every individual from the most important to the meanest is constantly alert to the necessity of protecting his name from ridicule. Few are willing to \"lose face\" with the members of the kin group by flouting one of the clan mores. If the misdemeanant can be subjected to enough public ridicule he is quite likely to be brought to terms, and this sort of pressure is more effective as a deterrent than the threat of corporal punishment.\n\nIn case of a quarrel between two members of the sib the leaders act both as judge and jury to settle the matter. If possible the affair is kept in the hands of the clan, for to go into the courts is an expensive and dangerous matter for all concerned. The chief object of the \"trial\" is to find, if possible, a middle ground on which the parties to the quarrel may meet. The feeling for compromise is very deeply a part of the social consciousness of the Chinese. In case the dispute can be peacefully settled the affair may be culminated by a feast for the whole clan.\n\nCrimes against individuals or against society are likely to be considered the concern of the whole clan and therefore especially of the leaders. During the course of clan experience certain definite forms of penalty or punishment have been worked out by the leaders to fit the more common misdemeanors. The people understand and accept these penalties as part of the mores of the clan. Custom is in many ways superior to law as a check against crime, for law is both abstract and remote from the consciousness of rural folk, while its intricacies make it vague. Custom, on the other hand, is concrete, close and simple, and has the advantage of being constantly reinforced by the people themselves.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208873, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n7\n\nA shrine and two Chaozhou squatter temples on a hillside at Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island were removed during 1979 to permit road widening and the building of new housing estates. Temples, seemingly built to last forever, also disappear. A long destroyed and unidentified Cantonese traditional temple depicted in an old photograph in a published collection of photographs of old Hong Kong, may well be the temple which used to stand in Wong Nei Chong village approximately in the area of the present day King Kwong Street.13\n\nThe population explosion in Hong Kong has surrounded on all sides some of the originally relatively isolated temples by high-rise blocks of flats. Some recently opened temples have even been established in shop houses, in ordinary flats in the high-rise blocks, and in flats and huts in resettlement areas.14 Geomantically such accommodation may be adequate for their purpose, but for ideal conditions the exact orientation of all temple buildings should be determined by geomancy and the feng shui expert's calculations. Traditional temples are often on the best feng shui sites in the vicinity.\n\nAccording to Chinese laymen, temples should, as far as possible, face south. This south-facing orientation would mean that the main god or gods on the altar would also face the \"geomantic South\" which approximates to due south, and thus places the auspicious Yang on the east, and Yin on the west. However, even a casual examination of the temples in both Hong Kong and Macau shows that they can and do face in all directions. The two immediately obvious criteria in the siting of traditional temples, as can be seen from any large-scale map, are that either they back onto a hill (presumably having a powerful and beneficial geomantic influence), or face the sea. Many, of course, do both.\n\nTemples and monasteries are open from around 8 am to 8 pm, the exception being for those individuals whose need is great, and they may call at a monastery at any hour.\n\nBuddhist temples\n\nThere are some one hundred and thirty-five Buddhist temples or monasteries in Hong Kong built or funded by individual monks or nuns, or by individual devotees or groups. In addition to Buddhist temples, there are organizations and services in Hong Kong which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208936, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SILK AND SILVER: MACAU, MANILA AND TRADE IN THE CHINA SEAS IN THE\n\nSIXTEENTH CENTURY\n\n(A lecture delivered to the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society at the Hong Kong Club. 10 June 1980.)\n\nJOHN VILLIERS*\n\nIn the second half of the 16th century there developed a pattern of trade in the China Seas and the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos of which the two chief entrepôts were Portuguese Macau and Spanish Manila. Other centres were also involved, notably Japan in the north, Malacca, Timor and the Moluccas in the south and Mexico on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. All these places played a role in the development of a vast and complex trading network that depended primarily on supplying Macau and Manila with two commodities — silk and silver — which neither produced.\n\nThere was of course a highly developed trading system in the China Seas long before the Europeans arrived, but it so happened that they came on the scene just at a time when Chinese naval and commercial power was waning and Japan was in the midst of a period of feudal anarchy. It was therefore relatively easy for them to penetrate this system, and even at some points and for a limited period to dominate it. By the mid-15th century Chinese seapower had greatly declined and the famous mission of the eunuch-admiral Cheng Ho had no successors. The reasons for this decline are complex and need not detain us here. Suffice it to say that in 1420 the Ming navy consisted of some 3800 vessels. By the end of the century it had almost disappeared. By 1500, death was, at least in theory, the penalty for building a three-masted sea-going junk and in 1551 it was decreed that all communications with foreigners overseas would be treated as espionage.\n\nPrivate trading by the eunuchs and others continued during this period, but in the face of increasing official hostility, and Chinese merchants trading in South East Asian ports had to conduct their\n\n* Mr Villiers is Director of the British Institute in South-east Asia (Singapore),", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209022, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn addition to the renewal of these seven pots, a small ceremony was held at one other location. There were prayers and burnt offerings, and a tall bamboo frond with a charm attached was set up, but there was no incense pot at the site. This spot was thus symbolically included in protective rites, but at the same time it was not granted full inclusion, and it is indeed a spot about which Fung Yuen villagers feel some ambivalence. One of the lineages was approached a few years ago by an urban clan association of the same surname, thus claiming descent from a common ancestor long ago, which was seeking a place with good fung seui to erect a clan association hall; Fung Yuen was just such a place. The local lineage is small and poor, and evidently realized some financial gain by making some land available to their urban tuhng sing. The widow of the former village representative, the man who was apparently instrumental in the deal, is the caretaker of the new clan hall, and burns incense there regularly. But I have heard other members of the local group speak disdainfully of the hall. Moreover, it was built directly in front of the ancestral hall of one of the other lineages, and there has been a dispute about the geomantic effects of its orientation on the older hall. Nonetheless, it is a place of religious significance which, theoretically at least, embraces one of the local lineages. For that reason, it seems, it cannot be left out completely when rites of propitiation and protection for the valley and its inhabitants are conducted. So, the clan hall was given half a ceremony - better than none at all, but stopping decidedly short of granting it full inclusion in the valley community.\n\nA final observation I would like to mention in passing relates to the continuing strength of the multilineage alliance in the face of social change and emigration. Though four lineages are resident in the valley, and were brought under the protection of the tun fu ceremonies I observed, men of only two surnames participated (and of course, no women at all; this was \"men's business\"). The other two groups have few adult men currently living in the village, and of those few, some are elderly and too ill to spend the afternoon walking all over the valley, while their sons were working that day as usual in other parts of the colony; many others are living and working in Europe. Nonetheless, the same attention was given to the third hamlet and the third ancestral hall, and to the new house of a family currently in Europe, that the residential and ritual places of the actual participants received. This expression of con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209127, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "STEPHEN MORRIS \n\nliving space of the man he has attacked; and it is the task of the elders, the guardians of the adat, to exact material compensation for the attack and expiation in the form of symbolic gifts, usually of gold and iron, graded according to the rank of the injured party. So also spirits, with the help of human intermediaries who have special knowledge can be made to see the offence they have committed in attacking a human and made to understand that they must co-operate in putting matters right, thus restoring proper order.\n\nHere I have to confess a difficulty that faces me; my knowledge of illnesses and the western medical classification of them is exceedingly poor. The Melanau themselves used a limited number of terms to describe the symptoms of being ill. My notes are full of words which I translated as wounds, sores, pains in the belly sharp or small, pains in the head, in the chest, in the eyes, and so on. People were feverish, hot, cold, confused, ‘felt bad', had a ‘dark face', a leg or an abdomen was swollen, and so on. Children cried incessantly and dribbled, people sweated beyond reason. To bring some order into the subject I once set a student, who was a state registered nurse, to try and classify the long list of symptoms I had collected in a way that perhaps made sense to her and that might correlate with illnesses as we understand them. She ended in very confused condition and I put her on to another project.\n\nIn 1950 one of the Medical Officers in Sarawak came to the village I was then working in, and with my help took a hundred blood samples for analysis. At my request he made a quick medical diagnosis of twenty-five of the people he saw. For what it is worth his results showed 6 people to have had syphilis or gonorrhea, 6 more, mostly women, were suffering from anemia; 6 were suffering severely from tuberculosis; 3 showed active signs of malaria; 2 had glaucoma; 1 had epilepsy; 1 had rheumatoid arthritis; and 1 showed signs of beri-beri. In other words, the doctor's classification and that of the Melanau were rather different; and though both the doctor and the villagers were agreed that in most of the cases all was far from well, their ways of arriving at that conclusion and their views on what to do about it were rather different. Both looked at a syndrome of symptoms and diagnosed a cause for the imbalance in the bodily economy; and on the basis of a theory about that economy both prescribed a course of action to set things right. For certain kinds of illness the doctor was, on the whole, more successful than the Melanau.\n\nBoth the Melanau and westerners have techniques for avoiding\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209245, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "134\n\nTA ACTON\n\n\"home village associations\", which are formed by all members of particular villages in China who have migrated to Hong Kong. The clubs are the home village associations of two little fishing villages left behind not in distance, but in time, engulfed by technological change and urban sprawl. The villages still exist, surrounded by or transmuted into flats, but their former inhabitants are as much spiritual exiles as most other Hong Kong Chinese.\n\nThat these clubs are not primarily economic in aim does not mean, however, that they cannot be used for economic advantage, of course. The members do help each other. Members of the clubs, for example, had managed to secure most of the life-guard jobs at the new Chai Wan public swimming pool.\n\nThe fishermen's club on Lamma Island was founded by a business-man who had been active in trade with China since the 1930s, Jonathan Gray. It is similar to those of Chai Wan and Stanley, but has been prepared to be more militant and public in its pressure group activity to gain compensation for fishermen when their best fishing areas off Lamma were being 'reclaimed'.\n\nThese three clubs, confined to a small area in the south of the territory, are the only instances that even approach an ethnic mobilisation of the Shui-sheung-yan,\n\nThe True Jesus Church\n\nThe True Jesus Church was founded in Peking in 1917, and is evidently part of the world-wide Pentecostal revival of the early years of this century. It is distinctive in that, as well as being charismatic, it is \"Seventh Day\" — that is, it holds the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday, not Sunday. It also holds that believers' baptism should be carried out by total immersion with the face facing downwards, and should be followed by the washing of feet. Otherwise, it is fairly orthodox in its evangelicalism. It describes itself as \"a revived apostolic church”, preaching \"a full gospel of salvation based on the truth in the Bible, accompanied by signs and miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit\".\n\nThe membership of this church remained almost wholly Chinese as it spread to South-East Asia, apart from some missionary work in Nigeria. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, a lady fish merchant belonging to the church came to Hong Kong from Malaya to buy seafood. She began to preach to her Shui-sheung-yan suppliers, and to pray for healing for their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209294, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BRO. TSUNG LAI SHUN IN MASSACHUSETTS\n\n183\n\nrobe. Their headgear was particularly ill-adapted to our winters, and after a while they were forced to make application to their rulers in China for permission to adopt hats which would give them better protection. In due time the permission came and in consequence, a few days later, the Lai-Sun women appeared on the streets waving masses of Chinese clothes crowned by the very latest creations of the up-to-date American milliner. And the combinations were often startling.\n\n+\n\nThe family were punctilious in the discharge of their social obligations, in this respect, too, living up to their Chinese customs. It seems that the social customs of China demand that the ordinary \"call\" be repaid as soon as possible. The Lai-Suns were very particular about this matter. They usually returned a call on the following day, and commonly the entire family participated in this function. Persons who received these visitations describe them as decidedly novel and interesting. And the appearance at the door of a house of the eight smiling Celestials was a spectacle whose general significance strongly suggested the sallying forth of the famous Peterkin family—\"Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin, Elizabeth Eliza, Solomon John and the two little boys in their India-rubber boots.\"\n\nDuring the latter part of their residence in this city the Lai-Suns lived in a house on Bay street, Mr. Lai-Sun having at that time returned to China. The exact reason for his return was not made public at that time, but the general explanation was that the conservative element in the Chinese government had succeeded in discrediting the policy that had sent the Chinese young men to this country. And so Mr. Lai-Sun went back to China, and in the course of a year or so his family followed him.\n\n[The first page of the following article is missing]\n\nCHINESE STUDENTS FAMOUS AT HOME\n\n(continued From First Page)\n\nsilk rustling, they made an imposing procession. Mr. Lai-Sun had impressive dignity and the family were punctilious in the extreme regarding their social obligations, there never being any neglect of the proper etiquette, if the Lai-Suns were able to ascertain precisely what the occasion demanded.\n\nThe Lai-Suns spoke English fluently and were evidently people of means. The daughters of the family were amiable and attractive and made a remarkable record of marrying out of their race. One, Annie,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209318, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nHong Kong, Then and Now (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 1981)\n\nSeveral years ago the SCMP published on Sundays the 'Then & Now' series. Each article shows an old view of Hong Kong and a recent shot taken from the same viewpoint, if ascertainable. This juxtaposition dramatically shows the gross physical changes which had taken place at certain well-known localities.\n\nHowever, even with supplementary historical notes, which were not noted for their accuracy, this method was rather crude. In my opinion, it did not adequately reveal the detailed changes – vertical and horizontal – which constitute the change in the impact of the street scene upon the passer-by, as for example, along Queen's Road Central.\n\nOf course, change in urban Hong Kong is so rapid and the transitory results so compressed in scale that it is extremely difficult by the photographic medium to illustrate these changes in the street scene.\n\nThere is another dimension, too, to this historical conundrum: the modern face of Hong Kong is perpetually being projected upwards from the sea; in other words, by reclamation. In fact, this is a process of change which began in the 1840's with the building and draining of Causeway Bay, right up to the present time when the New Territories, New Towns are coming into being. (Even with the aid of aerial photographs, it is extremely difficult to locate former well-known spots which have either been submerged by the flow of concrete or have disappeared completely. Try, for instance, finding the old floating fish stalls at Sam Shing, Tuen Mun.)\n\nAnd, of course, it would be extremely instructive if the historical geographer could trace the physical development of different districts of Hong Kong by means of photographs of different periods.\n\nBut Then & Now is not this, although, quite possibly the original compiler of this book, Dee Gibney (not acknowledged as the author of the historical introduction to these pictures) might have hoped it would turn out so.\n\nUnfortunately, this project was incomplete when she left and, with consequent delay, and with continuing change, even the original 'Now' photographs were outdated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209601, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "236\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nAfter nine years a lying-underground\n\nThat wants unveiling; is it the Duke of Connaught? I fear we cannot hold him tho' we ought,\n\nHas Chater found his long-last C.M.G.\n\nOr is the new club† opened by the sea?\n\nEven the Kowloon-Canton Railway is referred to a dozen or so years before it became a fact.†† Fra Diavolo comments on reading a newspaper:\n\nNext comes the news China is awaking Railways in all directions she is making. Fancy from Kowloon city setting forth,\n\n'Change here for Shanghai, Peking, and the North\".\n\nOne of the lyrics gave tips for cutting a figure during the pre-race season:\n\nIf you want to know the way to be a genuine Hong Kong sport,\n\nListen to me.\n\nA griffin* you must have of course, no matter of what sort. At five o'clock in the morning you must trudge to the course;\n\nA stop watch in your pocket is the game;\n\nAnd though you need not know a job about a horse\n\nThey may think you Morny Cannon all the same.\n\nCome along with me, come along with me.\n\nWith boots and breeches spick and span,\n\nThe latest pattern from Ah Man.**\n\n† Sir Paul Chater, Hong Kong merchant and philanthropist. Made Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George 1897.\n\nThe Hong Kong Club moved from Queen's Road and Wyndham Street to its new building on the Praya (now Connaught Road) 26 July 1897.\n\n††† William Danby, Civil Engineer, was requested by Chinese authorities to make a survey of a railway line from Canton to Kowloon (Daily Press 30 Aug. 1884). In 1888 a group of Chinese capitalists in Hong Kong revived a scheme to build the railroad. They received permission to proceed from the Peking Government in 1890,\n\nA survey team began work in July 1890 (Daily Press 12, 18 June, 17 July 1890). The project fell through. One of its promoters, Lo Hok-pang, formed another syndicate at Canton in 1892, but again the proposal had to be dropped. (Hong Kong Telegraph 28 Oct. 1892).\n\n* One of the China ponies sent from North China to Shanghai and then to Hong Kong.\n\n** A Chinese tailor.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209663, "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "298\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsubstantial amount, outside the offended party's door or, in the case of a whole lineage, its ancestral hall, and at the expense of the other. Justice was not only to be done but was to be seen (and heard!) to be done. As one informant has said, \"The act was intended to give back face, and so was done at the home of the wronged party but paid for by the other\". It thereby entailed an acknowledgement of guilt by the offender, and since houses and ancestral halls were set in the midst of each village, and the dispute was of course common knowledge, the shame and vexation of the party having to make such an atonement was complete. I suspect that this made settlements much more difficult where the aggrieved party insisted on his rights to fire-crackers perhaps to such an extent that sensible people would not insist on it, and the mediating elders would do their best to persuade parties to forego the provision, wherever possible.\n\nThis practice first came to my attention in 1957, when I was District Officer South. Two lineages in the villages of Tseng Lan Shue and Ho Chung were in dispute over damage to or interference with a grave belonging to the former, and its village representative (who was also an elder of the lineage in question) was demanding that the Ho Chung people should make due payment and, in addition, pay for ten thousand strings of fire-crackers to be let off at his clan's ancestral hall to show atonement and satisfactorily (for him) conclude the case. He was a difficult and determined person, and I was inexperienced and thought his claim extravagant. As the case was somehow settled or at any rate did not come up to me again, I thought no more about it, not realizing that the demand for firecrackers as part of the settlement was in line with old custom in the area.\n\nSince that time, the old rural society and its economic base have been changed out of all recognition, but my discussions with elders in different parts of the old Southern District, comprising the present Islands, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan administrative districts, at various times over the past twenty-five years have confirmed the practice in their areas in former days, and its time-honoured place in the settlement of disputes.\n\nFinding this practice to be an interesting, not to say intriguing, part of local custom, but being unable to spend time in gathering", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209751, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "of the charitable work done by the Kadoorie family in this field. A cheque for $500 was sent in appreciation to Mr. Horace Kadoorie on behalf of the Society.\n\nK\n\n26th November 1983 about 35 members took part in a visit to the Soo Kon Poo district of Hong Kong Island where we visited the Buddhist Memorial to victims of the Race Course fire in 1918, the Tung Wah Eastern Hospital and the Confucian Middle School.\n\nDecember 1983 and March 1984 - two separate groups of members visited the Narcotics Museum of the Narcotics Bureau, RHKP, in Police Headquarters, Arsenal Street, under the kind arrangements of Mr. K. W. J. Lloyd, Chief Inspector of Police.\n\n28th January 1984 about 70 members went by boat to the Ch'ing Dynasty fort on Tung Lung Island, and passed by the Tin Hau Temple at Fat Tong Mun and the former Chinese customs station at Junk Island on the return journey.\n\nLectures\n\n29th March 1983 Mr. Nigel Cameron, the author and art critic, gave an interesting illustrated talk on \"Hong Kong Art: the Quiet Revolution\".\n\n14th April 1983 — Ms Elizabeth Sinn of the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong spoke about \"The Strike and Riot, Hong Kong 1884\", an interesting local side effect of the Sino-French war over Vietnam.\n\n25th April 1983 Professor Daffyd Evans, Head of the Department of Law, University of Hong Kong, spoke about the wills made by some Chinese in early British Hong Kong in an interesting talk entitled \"Fearing Verbal Words, or Chinese Testaments in British Hong Kong\".\n\n25th May 1983 Professor Daniel Kwok, professor of History at the University of Hawaii and visiting professor, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, gave a stimulating talk entitled \"Confucianism and Modernization: Reflections of Antipathies and Sympathies\". This dealt with\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209771, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "There are at the present time:\n\n(a) So Kon Po Cottage Resettlement Area — this comprises Wesley Village (Methodist Church of Hong Kong with the Hong Kong Government's Housing Department) and other adjoining areas under the sole charge of Housing Department. Already housing 1,700 persons in 1955, at their peak (1966) the authorized population of these areas was around 3,000 persons. Wesley Village, built in 1954, now has only 52 houses with about 240 residents.\n\nThe Cottage Areas mostly dated from the early 1950s and preceded the multi-storey resettlement estates that, in turn, have been superseded by the modern, comprehensively planned low-cost public housing estate complexes. Religious and community bodies assisted with the provision of cottages and amenities. Wesley Village is one of the last remaining examples.\n\n(b) The Confucian Middle School a privately funded establishment exemplifying the Confucian ethic with its emphasis on human relationships and the preservation of a strong ethical (moral) element in education and social conduct. The school stands in the grounds of the Confucius Hall of Hong Kong (1935). Interesting and valuable information on the background and history of this and related Confucian organisations in Hong Kong is contained at pp 10-13 of The Journal of Confucius, Vol. 2, October 1983.\n\n(c) The Race Course Fire Victims' Memorial — a granite-built terrace with two pavilions and a large memorial, exemplifying the Buddhist concern with easing life in purgatory and the hereafter through commemoration and the performance of rites to ease unquiet spirits of persons who had died in accidental circumstances. This Memorial is built in an area still called \"Coffee Gardens\" (咖啡園), after a nineteenth-century coffee plantation on the site.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209773, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "10\n\nOccupation 1941-45 due to a desire to avoid political exploitation and incorporated in May 1959.\n\n—\n\nThis school, together with another Buddhist school in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, take it in turns to provide Buddhist services for the souls of the dead at the Race Course Fire Victims' Memorial Pavilion (c above). Known as ta chiu (打醮) these rites are performed at Ching Ming (March-April) and last 7 days.\n\nAccording to Holmes Welch, writing on Hong Kong's Buddhist institutions in Vol. I of the RAS Journal, Hong Kong Branch, the principal religious role of Buddhist organizations in Hong Kong is \"to provide funeral ceremonies and care for the souls of the dead”. The annual service at the Race Course Fire Victims' Memorial mentioned above is not the only one performed. \"In January 1960, the Hong Kong Jockey Club after a series of mishaps during the racing season, in the last of which a prominent jockey had been killed (the fourth since the war), invited the Buddhist Association to arrange for appropriate rites of exorcism. For three days and four nights some 68 monks and 44 nuns performed elaborate ceremonies at altars set up on the Club's premises. They prayed continuously in teams, not only for the repose of the souls of the jockeys, but also for those of the 2,000 persons [actually 600] who lost their lives in the grandstand fire of 1918, and for any other souls whose welfare was brought to their attention by relatives. According to the local press, some 40,000 persons attended.\" In addition, there is an annual public service for the souls of the (general) dead every Remembrance Day at the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, founded by Lady Clara Ho Tung at Happy Valley in 1935,\n\n(g) The Shing Kwong Church of the Church of Christ in China\n\n(h) St. Mary's Anglican Church", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209778, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "shopkeeper, land speculator, auctioneer and entrepreneur; William Tarrant, Land Office clerk and later editor and proprietor of the newspaper Friend of China, Charles Markwick, auctioneer for the Government; Hugh Mackay, shopkeeper his lot No. 4 was resumed in 1859 for nonpayment of Crown Rent; and Wong Ah Hoy, one of the original So Kon Po cultivators.\n\nWong sold his lot in 1852 to Chang On Kee, a merchant trading at Hong Kong, who in turn sold it to George Duddell in 1857. Duddell had already bought in 1851 the lots of Markwick and Tarrant. Thus all the arable land of the valley was in his possession, except the lot of Mackay which reverted to the Government shortly after. Duddell added to his holdings by purchase from the Government in 1853 of Farm Lot 13. This was between his valley lots and So Kon Po village.\n\nIt was probably in the 1850's that Duddell experimented with growing coffee plants in the valley. Evidence of the project was still to be seen in 1878. The Hong Kong Daily Press in that year published a series of articles on places of interest around Hong Kong. The issue of 17 December 1878 gave directions for a walk to the \"Coffee Plantation\". The hiker was directed to proceed to the Race Course, passing the Obelisk and keeping straight on over a bridge to the gardener's cottage. There he was to turn to the right for one hundred yards, with the race course on his right and a densely wooded hill on the left, and follow the footpath up the hill through the trees. On descending the hill on the other side, he would find himself near some huts occupied by Chinese quarry-men or stone-masons and on the path leading to the coffee plantation. The writer noted, however, that \"the coffee shrubs are now neglected\".\n\nGeorge Duddell, having retired from Hong Kong some years previously, sold his So Kon Po land to William Keswick, of Jardines, in 1884. The lots, whose twenty-one lease had been extended to seventy-five years, were regranted to Keswick as Inland Lots 955, 1018, 1019, 1020 and 1021. Keswick transferred the present site of St. Paul's Convent and Hospital to a Jardine enterprise, the Hong Kong Cotton Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing Company. This was in 1898. The property was bounded to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210163, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "113\n\nproduce from the sea near the present Aberdeen Country Club. Some villagers operated stake nets lowered by windlass into the sea from a rocky headland, and others used lines catching fish like nai mang (鯺鏝) to make a sweet congee. The old lady's mother, born about 1860, planted hemp and made it into string used for tying and mending clothes until she was sixty years of age. The village people also grew a kind of rush (cheung po) (菖蒲) when she was young, using it as a charm to hang over their doorways, especially in the fifth moon, in the manner reported in old works on China.2\n\n25\n\n-\n\nThe stake nets were an especially favoured form of fishing in local waters. One can see a few surviving sites round the southern coast of Hong Kong island to this day. In the Tangs' time as sub-soil owners\n\nsee below they may have leased sites to local persons, as they were doing in the New Territories in 1899. It is also of interest that no less than 13 sites on the south side of Hong Kong island were leased out by another absentee landlord family of scholar gentry, the Wongs (王) of Nam Tau (南頭) and Cheung Chau, as shown in maps in their printed genealogy issued in the 1860s. People walked far to secure a livelihood in those days. One of the persons interviewed in the investigations into the murder of two British officers near Stanley in 1849, was a villager of Little Hong Kong who had a hut and operated a stakenet on the point where Stanley Fort now stands.\n\n26\n\n27\n\nHowever, farming was the principal occupation. The Little Hong Kong fields can be seen on the Hong Kong Government's first survey sheet for the area, whilst the extent of the Wong Nai Chung fields can be gauged by the race course at Happy Valley which was built over them.28 Rice was favoured because there was a plentiful supply of stream water available that only required damming, leading and terracing, albeit by dint of hard labour, to provide fertile land that would support two crops of rice yearly. An account of harvest time in one of the Hong Kong villages appeared in one of the numbers of the Illustrated London News for 1858.\n\n\"On the 1st of November (1857) I took a walk with a friend into the interior of Hong Kong and saw the process of rice-harvesting, beneath a bright, hot sun, the entire village popu-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210431, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "19\n\nmade an ornament and not a disfigurement”. He thought it not proper that the Colonial Chaplain had been turning his ponies loose to graze in the cemetery, though he had no complaint about the grounds-keeper, Mr. Donaldson, who kept things in order, reduced \"over luxuriant foliage”, and in bare places planted trees and shrubs. He suggested that for a trifling cost the bare blank walls along the road could be made more ornamental. The south end of the cemetery, however, was unenclosed and, as far as he knew, unconsecrated. He suggested this portion, \"rising in a rapid slope, could be greatly improved if it were grassed and flowering shrubs planted”. Even at the date covetous eyes were cast towards the proceeds from the races. \"Could not the Race Committee spare a few dollars that flew so plentifully into its coffers, for the purpose of improving the appearance of the site of their annual sports. We have more than once suggested that the centre of the race course should be laid out and planted, but we should rather see the cemetery beautified and cared for\".\n\nColonial Cemetery Ordinances the problem of Japanese and Chinese burials\n\nThe Public Health and Buildings Ordinance (No. 1 of 1903) included an article setting aside separate sections of the cemetery for special groups: naval and military commissioned officer, civil servants, residents of more than twenty-one years standing, residents of more than seven years standing, children and destitutes.\n\nSeveral conditions remained that created dissatisfaction in sections of the community. One was the burning of joss sticks and the firing of crackers at graves of non-Christians. The other was the absence of what were considered proper sites for the burial of wealthy Chinese with resulting periodic requests for burial of such in the Colonial Cemetery. These issues came before the Sanitary Board in 1908-1909, and resulted in the Christian Cemetery Ordinance of 1909.\n\nThe joss stick and cracker problem was principally related to Japanese burials. The first Japanese burials were on terraces where their graves were intermingled with Christians. Later a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210532, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "120 \n\nJOHN KARL EVANS \n\nThe lettering suggests that this inscription should be dated to the second century A.D. This was, however, a century of notorious religiosity. In the course of his sixth satire, a prolonged diatribe against married women published in or shortly after A.D. 116, Juvenal vividly describes how penitent followers of the goddess Isis atoned for their transgressions by plunging into the freezing waters of the Tiber and then crawling across Rome on blood-stained knees (Juv. 6.522-541). Some fifty years later, in A.D. 177, there occurred at Lyons one of the most terrible of the Christian persecutions, recounted at length by Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica. One brief excerpt will serve to give a sense of the whole:\n\n7 \n\nThen Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attalus were brought forth to face the beasts brought forth for a public exhibition of the inhumanity of the heathen, since the day for combat with wild animals had been specially set aside for our people. There in the amphitheatre, Maturus and Sanctus once again passed through every conceivable torture just as if they had suffered nothing at all before, or rather as if, having already overcome their opponent in the several preliminary bouts, they were now competing for the victor's crown. Once more they ran the gauntlet of the whips, in accordance with the local custom; once more they were mauled by the beasts; once more they suffered everything which the maddened populace, seated on one side or the other, howled for and cheered on, culminating with the iron chair that roasted their bodies and suffocated them with the stench. Even at this point their tormentors did not cease, but became more and more frenzied in their desire to overcome their resistance. Nevertheless, they heard nothing from Sanctus beyond the confession of faith that he had been accustomed to make from the outset (5.1.37-39).\n\nA large body of comparable evidence for the heterogeneous religious attitudes to be found within the Roman Empire could be amassed without difficulty, but it would be pointless to do so. These few examples should serve to demonstrate just how wide the parameters of belief really were. Whether in Rome or a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "128\n\n'JOHN KARL EVANS\n\ndescends to the underworld, where a series of terrible punishments depicted on the scrolls that Taoist priests bring to funerals awaits the person adjudged guilty of such serious crimes as murder, theft, and unfilial behavior; a second takes up permanent residence in the ancestral tablet, and a third at the grave.35 In her recent field work in the Taiwanese village of Ch'i-nan, Emily Ahern discovered much the same thing, which reminds us that, at least in Taiwan and the New Territories, the ancient beliefs persist even in the face of rapid industrialization and contact with the outside world.\"\n\nUnlike the Romans, the Chinese rarely deify the spirits of their deceased; nevertheless, the latter demand and receive the same attention as their Roman counterparts. The details of the funerary ceremony vary, of course, from one locality to the next, but what occurs in Ch'i-nan may be taken as representative, particularly with regard to the vision of the afterlife that supports the entire ritual. Here, as elsewhere, the living initially intercede for the dead on the evening of the funeral itself, at an elaborate Taoist ceremony called the kung-te. In the course of this ritual, the earth god t'u-ti-kung is bribed to assist the deceased across the treacherous bridge leading to the underworld, and the drama closes with the burning of a great pile of mock paper money, which the soul needs to purchase food and protection. Seven days later, a prolonged transition period begins with the first in a series of seven offerings, spaced at weekly intervals. These consist in part of food, but also include paper replicas of an imposing array of luxuries and necessities, ranging from a house, car, and servants to televisions, an electric rice pot, and lawn furniture. Somewhere during these 49 days, at the moment which a professional geomancer deems most propitious, the new spirit is formally installed in this otherworldly domain. The transition period comes to a formal conclusion when the paper house and the other amenities are finally consigned to the flames and thereby transferred to the underworld.38\n\nThe sole purpose of this elaborate ceremonial is to ensure the comfort and well-being of the deceased, and it is obvious that this takes a purely materialistic form. It naturally follows, therefore, that additional offerings of paper money and food will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "214\n\nMuch later in 1958, Foulden learned of the Victoria Cross and the brave deeds of one of its sons, who had been born in a caravan, and who had become legend. However nothing appears to exist in writing in the village, and his name is not on the war memorial. Few people remember him. Nevertheless Mr. B.W. Billman, who was born in 1901 and is the oldest inhabitant, was proud to tell me:\n\n\"Of course I remember him! We sat in the same class. But I did not realise, at the time, he was so 'special'. He was just a quiet, likeable, country boy...\"\n\nWarrant Officer Osborn was officially listed as \"missing\" and there is no known grave.\n\nHis name does, however, appear on the memorial at Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery in Hong Kong. Also, on November 5th, 1981, a statue of a World War I soldier, which had formerly stood in the grounds of Eucliffe Castle, at Repulse Bay, the site of a brutal massacre of British and Canadian soldiers, in World War II, by the Japanese invaders, was unveiled in \"Osborn Barracks\" in Kowloon Tong. These barracks are named after Hong Kong's only recipient of the Victoria Cross.\n\nThe statue was donated by the Eu family, and the plaque, which was unveiled by Mr. Allen Kilpatrick, past Canadian High Commissioner, reads:\n\n\"Erected here in memory of WOII John Robert Osborn VC, Winnipeg Grenadiers, and through him all those men and women, service and civilian, and of every race, colour and creed, whose secret acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice in the defence of Hong Kong, December 1941, went unnoticed and unrecorded\".\n\nOf the Canadians I spoke to in early December 1985, who had returned to the scene of the battle, probably ex-Sergeant Robert (Bob) Manchester remembers Osborn best.\n\n\"He was a determined man and an experienced soldier.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210978, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "15\n\nhistory. His famous essay, 'The Century of Louis the Fourteenth', concludes — and this was a logical step — not with an assessment of the state of French affairs, but with a chapter which had apparently nothing to do with France, a chapter entirely devoted to the Manchu Emperor Kangxi, whose reign almost exactly corresponds in China to the equally long years of Louis XIV in France. Long before UNESCO, Voltaire compiled under the misleading title Essai sur les Moeurs — an essay on human manners and ways\n\na long and detailed comparative history of the world as it was known to him, making a point of keeping a proper balance between the chapters dealing with Europe, the Arab civilisations, India and of course China.\n\nChina had enabled the French Philosophe to approach the problems of mankind at the highest possible level, and in most general terms. China had indeed been the occasion of a major intellectual advance, but probably at the expense of China itself. One should wonder whether the Westerner ever gave up this attitude, namely dealing with China as an abstraction, almost as Utopia. The French eighteenth-century intellectuals may well have a responsibility for this major incapacity of ours, even today, to face China as a more complex and more concrete reality, not an abstract construction.\n\n8\n\nFor French intellectuals, China was indeed a philosophical abstraction. But it was also a cultural fashion, almost a cultural gadget. Chinoiseries were very popular, through tapestries, lacquers and silks, porcelains and ceramics. Pagodas were built in many aristocratic gardens and parks. China was a popular theme for aquatint engravings. The success of the rococo style in architecture and decoration had a distinct Chinese flavour, the shady and gracefully vanishing colours and shapes of Watteau's landscapes displayed a remote but definite Chinese influence. China was everywhere, even on the stage with a play by Voltaire, L'Orphelin de la Chine. The monarchy itself had engaged in the Chinese fashions. The ageing Louis XIV celebrated the first New Year of the eighteenth century with refined, if fake, Chinese-style festivities. Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress and a declared supporter of Voltaire and Diderot, was keen to give the Chinese touch to her banquets, feasts and dances à la chinoise. This Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211021, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "58\n\nFurthermore, Mok himself does refer to his participation in the pupil teacher scheme of 1885. This is particularly interesting on a number of grounds. First of all, there must be some doubt about the precise veracity of Mok Man Cheung's 1906 entry in Who's Who in the Far East. His name does not appear in the Hong Kong Government's Blue Book of 1885 as one of the pupil teachers, but it does appear in that year's Blue Book as Third Assistant Chinese Master.26 In the 1884 Blue Book, Mok Man Cheung is recorded as \"Fourth Assistant” in the Central School, appointed on 23rd September, 1884. It appears certain, therefore, that, having completed Class 1 at the Central School in 1884, he was appointed directly to the staff of the school, rather than to the pupil-teacher scheme. He may well have taken a Class 1 examination in Pupil-Teacher's Method and his monitorial duties may have included the supervision of some of the junior classes. The records indicate, however, that he was not formally appointed as a Pupil-Teacher at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885 and that the normal length of a Pupil-Teacher course was three years.\n\n27\n\nThe pupil-teacher scheme is itself of considerable interest and an association with it may have been regarded by Mok Man Cheung in 1906 as face-enhancing. A slight diversion from the personal snapshot may, therefore, be justified in order to consider the provisions for teacher education in Hong Kong in the latter part of the nineteenth century.\n\n28\n\nThe first provision of formal teacher education in Hong Kong was similar to the \"Monitorial System\" of Bell and Lancaster in Great Britain. In the early days, however, Frederick Stewart, the first Headmaster of the Central School, who, for many years, doubled as the Inspector of Government Schools, became discouraged by the way pupils who were trained in school to become teachers \"cashed in\" their improved fluency in English by leaving school and taking up employment as interpreters, translators, or other types of middlemen in commercial undertakings or in government service.29 In 1881, an experiment with a discrete teacher education establishment was launched in Hong Kong, thanks to the enthusiasm of the new Inspector of Schools, Dr. E.J. Eitel, and the forceful, but controversial Governor of the time, Sir John", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211185, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "221\n\nBy the summer of 1845, the work was almost finished.\n\nFor each acre the villagers received a sum which amounted to the profit they would have made from ten years' labour on it. In many cases the cash in hand resulted in idleness and eventual impoverishment. Their traditional occupation and source of income was gone forever.\n\nWhat proved to be a disaster for the village was a boon to the expatriate sportsman.\n\nThe foreign community in China had a tradition of avid interest in racing. When the centre of trade was Canton and Macau was the place to go during the off-trade period, a race course had been set up in the Portuguese settlement, not, however, without strong protest from the Chinese who objected to graves being removed or desecrated when the track was laid out.\n\nFor the first few years after the British moved to Hong Kong, the merchants went annually to the Macau races. Though it was a pleasant excursion, it had many drawbacks and there was increasing pressure for Hong Kong to have its own track.\n\nWhere else but the Wong Nei Chong Valley? Here, alone, there was sufficient level open space.\n\nFrom a notice to be quoted, it appears that the community took advantage of the improvements to the valley to hold a meeting in the autumn of 1845.\n\nThe following announcement which appears in the China Mail in October 1846, suggests conditions were not entirely satisfactory and additional improvements needed to be made: \"Meeting of members of the Hong Kong Club and of Naval and Military Gentlemen at the Hong Kong Club to make arrangements for Races to come off about a month hence at Wong Nei Chung Valley, for which, no doubt, permission will be at once obtained.\n\n\"In order to render the course safer and better than on the previous occasion, it is proposed, besides constructing drains, to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211186, "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "222\n\nerect bridges at the crossing of the brook, for these purposes the surplus funds of the meeting will probably suffice.”\n\nFrom the beginning Hongkong races were a paying proposition.\n\nSome forty years later at the time of the Queen's Jubilee there seemed an excellent chance that again marked improvements would take place in the Valley, enhancing the setting for the annual race meeting.\n\nFailure to take into account the interests of the whole community, particularly the Chinese, however, defeated the effort.\n\nWHY THE CHINESE OPPOSED VICTORIA PARK\n\nWhen Mr. Chater rose at a public meeting in March 1887, to propose that as a permanent memorial of the Queen's Golden Jubilee a park be formed at Happy Valley, he spoke confidently of its advantages. Nonetheless, he may have had some qualms about its popularity as it had already provoked strong opposition since he first mentioned it at a Legislative Council meeting in February.\n\nIn affirming his confidence in the proposal, he said: “I feel sure if this park be carried out and completed it will be a source of great pleasure to the European community of Hongkong; it will be a very agreeable drive and a pleasant lounge in the afternoon.”\n\nUnfortunately those of the community who owned horses or carriages for a drive or had the leisure to \"lounge\" in the afternoon were a small proportion of the total population. These were activities seldom indulged in by the Chinese.\n\nMr. Chater admitted they might not view the project in the same way as Europeans. But in justification he said: “I am equally sure the Chinese community will also approve of and appreciate it in the course of time.”\n\nFollowing Mr. Chater's remarks on his resolution and the seconding speech by the acting Attorney General, Dr. Ho Kai rose to speak. His views may be regarded as those of the Chinese community.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211201, "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": 262, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "237\n\njoining in our manly games might as well hope to see them reducing themselves to the grade of the despised 'Tanka' or boating population by indulging in rowing; or forfeiting all claim to the calm dignity of a Chinese gentleman by masquerading in jockey costume in a horse race; or outraging all sense of Celestial propriety and decency by whirling in the sensuous waltz clasping the tender waist of some sweet thing of the opposite sex.'\n\nThe first signs of a change, however, were taking place. Around the time these views on the aversion of the Chinese to European sports were being written, a Hongkong Chinese youth was being awarded the first prize at the English Public Schools gymnastic competition at Aldershot.\n\nThe recipient Wei On was a student at Cheltenham College. His picture and an account of the event appeared in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News with the comment: \"We do not know how it will strike the modern gymnast that a native of the Celestial Empire is able to take the tuck of all public school forms, but there is no getting away from the fact that he is a wonderfully strong and finished worker, and thoroughly well earned the silver medal.\"\n\nIt seems the young student had not only adopted new forms of exercise but also had a new hair-style for a Chinese of his day. It was said that from the sketch in the magazine: “Wei On does not appear to wear the queue.\"\n\nAfter finishing his course at Cheltenham, the young athlete went on to study at Christ Church College, Oxford, and then in 1897 qualified to practise as a solicitor. He returned to Hongkong and was with the firm of Messrs. Johnson, Stokes and Master. He died in 1907. His brother, Sir Poshan Wei (Wei Yuk), served on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1914.\n\nThe next generation of the Wei family also produced a noted athlete. Wei Wing-lok, son of Sir Poshan and a St. Stephen's Old Boy, won the world doubles tennis championship at Forest Hills, New York.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211227, "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "263\n\nThis old lady said \"Well, if you want my history, I can sit down here and talk for days and days—but I am not giving it to you\". Of course, you know very well, the moment she said it, that she means she wants a listener. She doesn't want us to get information too easily. So you hang on and stay there, and learn to be fairly thick-skinned. Presently, she began a fascinating story of what happened to her during the Second World War. What happened also illustrates what happened in the family.\n\nI won't go into details; but just to give you a clue, she married the youngest and least important son of a very unimportant family in the village. To make things worse, she was a refugee from China at the beginning of the war, and her family was so poor (I can always remember the line she gave me) that she had to go up to her future husband's family to ask for the other five dollars that they owed her as part of the “bride price”. You can imagine the loss of 'face' that was associated with a woman coming up to the door of her future husband to ask for the last five dollars! Worse still, her husband was taken away by the Japanese and she was there on her own ever after. It is one of these very very sorrowful stories you hear when tears actually flowed; and I think not only from her but also from some of the people who were with me.\n\nWe called our project the ‘Oral History Project', as we began thinking that we would rely primarily on interviews. Of course we couldn't use a detailed questionnaire with people of this kind, so I drew up a list of topics we would need to get information on, such as the outline history of the area. We supplemented those with other things which we could ask people as we got to know them better. Very soon, it was clear that village festivals were important events from which much could be learned about village organisation and history, and I began to make a point of going to them. It was not always possible to adhere to a plan of working only within a designated district. At times, you get to be told of a contact elsewhere who is willing to be interviewed; and if he is 85, you don't want to wait another five years before you go to him! You take whatever opportunity that comes up, and that often takes you out of your way. And so before very long, we were doing three lines of research work at the same time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211768, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "158\n\nTHALIA AND TERPSICHORE ON THE YANGTZE A SURVEY OF FOREIGN THEATRE AND MUSIC IN SHANGHAI 1850-1865\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\n\"Thanks for the merry laugh that cheered our hearts\n\nFor loud applause that bade us top our parts. For mirth, that taking all things for the best\n\nMade even a blunder seem a clever jest'.\"*\n\nThus an epilogue to an evening of theatrical entertainment in 1852 that was given for the foreign community of Shanghai, and it sums up nicely the attitude with which generally speaking the efforts of the local amateurs were greeted. What happened on the stage in this outpost of Western civilisation may not have been very exciting or very daring but still it seems interesting enough to go into in more detail than has been done before now.2\n\n1. Some notes on foreign life in Shanghai\n\nUntil the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, foreigners were severely limited in China. In fact only one port, Canton, was open for external trade and merchants had to reside part of the year in the so-called foreign factories. After the war several treaties were concluded with Western nations (England, France, United States) in which the right of foreigners to settle themselves in a number of cities on the China Coast was granted.\n\nAmong these cities was Shanghai, and it was not long before a predominantly British community came into being. A Foreign Settlement was delimited, Land Regulations (a kind of constitution) were issued in 1845 and 1854, a Municipal Council of foreign merchants was formed as early as 1846,3 houses in colonial style were built, roads and a race course laid out, a drainage scheme begun and a home-like church erected. To the south of the Settlement the French had their own Concession, while to the north an American settlement gradually developed. Problems abounded, sometimes caused by the obstructions of foreign residents;\n\nOrdinary reference notes are indicated thus: (1); notes in which additional information is supplied thus: (1x).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211794, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "184\n\nstyle which distinguished it from the hongs by which it was surrounded. Finally there was a musical evening at the Town Hall of the neighbouring French Concession in early February 1865. The \"Hôtel Municipal” was erected in 1864 and stood at the Rue du Consulat, between the Rue de l'Administration and the Rue du Nord.\n\n117\n\nPlaybills were used to advertise the performances in the Settlement (of Calendar, 23.4.1857). Early this century there still existed such a bill dating from 1853, but I have never seen one. They were printed at one of the printing offices in Shanghai. The main ones were those of the North China Herald (Custom House Road - Hankow Road) and of the London Missionary Society which had a large compound on Temple Road (Shantung Road). The printing press of the latter of course mainly turned out religious publications in Chinese, but though the missionaries may not have been regular patrons of the theatre, one source states that playbills for their performances had been printed at \"the Missionaries' house\"\n\nVI. The Audience\n\n**119\n\n120\n\nThe subject of the audience has already been touched upon several times and it is clear that the public, on the whole, liked what it saw and saw that it liked. This did not mean that all entertainments drew heavy crowds. Usually the dramatic companies had a full house, but the interest in music was decidedly less. Whereas Thalia enjoyed at times so many ardent admirers that some were obliged to stand the whole evening, her colleague often had to content herself with the cream of society. But there was always an excuse, or so it seems, for the small numbers in the concert hall; either it was the \"wretchedly wet state of the weather' or the heat:\n\n122\n\nor maybe parsimony prevented people from going, for when M. & Mme Simonsen (violin and singing) gave a recital in May 1865 they failed to draw a large public, but when the admission price was reduced to $3 a full audience was presented. 12 This brings to mind a story of a much later period when the famous Scottish comedian Sir Harry Lauder had the audacity to raise the by then apparently immutable prices of $3-5 by a dollar and had to face a near empty auditorium.\n\n124\n\n121\n\nBearing in mind the population structure in the Settlement the audience, of course, consisted for the greater part of men. This, however, was all the more reason to note the attendance of the ladies. Time and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211811, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "201\n\n+\n\nhimself uncomfortable, with one of the nicest looking creatures for a wife imaginable. (...) Mr. BRUSHWOOD did the 'green eyed monster' admirably and the character suited him well—we mean of course artistically. By a skilful arrangement the warmth of a kiss was made to be followed by Cool as a Cucumber. Did the manager intend this to impart a deeper meaning than is conveyed on the face of the \"play-bill\"? We have an esteem for him and hope not: for although a kiss is, sometimes, but the prelude of a coolness that surpasses even that of a cucumber, we would not have Mr PROTEUS openly hint as much\". This piece called forth all the powers of the manager himself, and so perfectly was the coolness of Mr. Plumper exhibited, whether as regards the criticism of Mr. Barkins' face or his sherry, that, had he stepped from the neighbouring ice-house directly upon the stage, he could not have looked cooler (this was a reference to the Commercial Hotel; see note 94) What a desirable companion he would make, we thought, for the hot weather, but Mr. Proteus must be so, indeed, in any weather. The playing was well sustained throughout and Mr. BRUSHWOOD did his best — and that was not a little — to fret and fume as ‘Old Barkins' — but we can scarcely say that he looked a heavy father\" (the heavy father was one of the specialist roles in a stock company). A Conjugal Lesson was \"decidedly the crowning piece of the evening and was performed with an amount of case and artistic ability which elicited loud and well merited applause\". And as the critic had evidently taken a fancy to \"Mrs. NESBIT” he continued that she “looked more fascinating and piquant than ever and quite won the hearts of the bachelor portion of the audience who were altogether at a loss to understand the bad taste of Mr. Lullaby who could stay away from such an attraction till three in the morning!” (NCH 28.3.1857).\n\n23.4.1857 (Thur)\n\nT. TAYLOR: \"Still Waters Run Deep\" (1856)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: “A Capital Match” (1852)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: N.N. (C\n\n—\n\nR: That other favourite of the reviewer, Peter PROTEUS, had resigned and so the evening had to do without him. In the introduction to his report, the \"Man on the Bund\" referred to the playbill which informed him \"in capitals of vermillion that Still Waters Run Deep and of other matters besides in the like flaming manner”. About the piece he was not at all content: \"Muddy waters, however, as well as still, they turned out to be. This piece is one of those incongruous mixtures of French novel morality and English domestic life, which is as offensive and preposterous, as it is ludicrous. London milliners may persist in imitating the extravagances of French crinoline and superabundant circumference: they dress up our wives and sisters until they have destroyed every graceful curve they may have and make them look like balloons endowed with feminine heads and shoulders; and with a growl we may submit to this perversion of taste and whim of fashion. But when our playwrights, in their dearth of invention, ransack the repertories of the minor Parisian theatres for something new, which they themselves cannot originate, and stumbling upon the old and stale subject of Parisian conjugal infidelity, try to fit it into English social life, especially that of the middle class, the attempt excites at once our scorn and laughter, and ought, like monstrous bandorgans and other nuisances, to be put a stop to\". Small wonder then that in it \"there was much good acting thrown away. Mr. CLAY performed, throughout, the part he had undertaken, admirably. His conception of his character was good and was given with fidelity and ability. It was just how a blunt, honest Englishman might have been expected to act when, by some extraordinary chance, his domestic privacy is invaded by such a frenchified monstrosity as Captain Hawkesley. Mr. ROLLER too did the lean and slippered Pantaloon most successfully. His ease of manner on the stage and finished...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211816, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "206\n\n(...) Our first favourite was Captain Copp. This is a glorious character and was performed faultlessly [by Benjamin BLUSTER-JH]. From the first moment we made his acquaintance until we took a reluctant leave of him, our heart was kept in a continuous glow by his honest face, his blunt, sea-faring manner; his rugged but kindly touches of feeling, harmonically blended together as they were by his ceremonial bursts of good humoured jollity. Every time he broke out with his favourite stave\n\n'In the time of the Dump\n\nWhen Old Admiral Trump'\n\nwe felt a strong inclination to hear more of it and were scarcely pleased with Mary for stopping it so abruptly. (...) Mary's taste in the choice of a lover was unexceptionable - a compliment which cannot be said with truth, of pretty girls generally. The page who was the favoured suitor deserved his good fortune: he played well and sung sweetly. It is some time indeed since we heard on the stage or elsewhere a song given with so much taste and expression (...). No wonder the pretty Mary melted under the influence of the mellow tones of such a music master\". And Mary? She was played of course by Mrs NESBIT who \"as usual placed before us a lively picture of the piquant and coquettish, but withal modest and pretty niece of the host of the 'Grand Admiral'; and she looked so enticing as to make some of those who were present and near us wish that they too were actors provided there was plenty of kissing in the play and such a delightful subject as herself to practice upon”. (NCH 20.3.1858). Again it should be stressed that all female characters were portrayed by men, which, paradoxically, probably allowed the critic to write in such a vein!\n\n5.5.1858 (Wedn)\n\nJ. COURTNEY: \"Time Tries All\" (1848)\n\nT: Drama (2 acts)\n\nJ.S. COYNE: “Urgent Private Affairs\" (1856) T: Farce (1 act)\n\nW.B. RHODES: \"Bombastes Furioso\" (1810) T: Burlesque tragic opera (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Music by the band of H.M.S. Highflyer\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (C)\n\nN: Third and final performance of the season\n\nR: For a house that was \"crowded to the doors\" the curtain rose on a new drop scene **of a light and pretty character\". Once more Mrs. NESBIT could be admired, in Time Tries All, as Laura Leeson and \"too much credit could not be extended on her for the manner in which she brought before us the wilful, pettish but withal warm-hearted woman\". As her husband, Mr. Leeson, \"Mr. ROLLER was most successful; he has made for himself a 'spécialité' in this line of characters which it would be difficult to surpass or to replace. Mr. PICKWICK played the role of Matthew Bates and by **his judicious, quiet acting gained considerable and well-merited applause\". Mr. TINTINNABULUM (who also sung a \"pretty Irish ballad\") as the Hon Mr. Yawn \"was capital and exercised the propensity with which his cognomen so plainly gifts him with such arts as to make many of the audience strenuously follow his example\"; whereas Miss Fact and Mr. Tact found fit representatives in Miss WALTERS and Mr. BRUSWOOD. Some of the actors again appeared in the closing piece; Bombastes Furioso when Mr. Beverley NEWCOME impersonated General Bombastes, “a creditable performance, but the role was evidently not so well suited to the powers of that gentleman as other parts in which we have seen him\". King Artaxominous was taken by Mr. PICKWICK, Furbos by Mr. TINTINNABULUM and Destafina by Mrs. NESBIT. Concluding, the reviewer was \"especially pleased with the scenery of this and other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211818, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "208\n\n12.10.1858 (Tue)\n\nConcert by Mr. Martin Simonsen\n\nN: No review was published.\n\nMr. Simonsen had also visited Hong Kong; there he had given his last recital on September 20, 1858 (CM 23.9.1858).\n\n16.2.1859 (Wedn)\n\nT: Comedy (2 acts)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: \"Whitebait at Greenwich\" (1853)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Music by the band of H.M.S. Highflyer\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (E)\n\nR: For the first night of the amateur season \"a very numerous audience was collected and the presence of nearly all the beauty and fashion (we allude to the eccentricities [what may these have been? - JH] of masculine as well as to the elegancies of feminine costumes) of Shanghai imparted to the front benches a very brilliant appearance, which was further enlivened by the smiling faces of two or three laughing cherubs whom we detected nestling under the maternal wing\". For the occasion the drop pictured \"a very faithful (our travels in Italy enable us to state) representation of a most romantic spot on the banks of the Lago Maggiore\". Sink or Swim was found to be a \"dull plagiarism upon our old favourite 'Used Up'\" but it passed off with the utmost special due to the talents and exertions of the actors\", among whom \"Mr. PETREL's Mr. Scampley struck us as well conceived, a swindling roué's impertinence dashed by a sense of uneasiness\", Mr. FARREN (again a stage name after a London actor: William Farren, 1786-1861) sustained Lord Yawnley \"admirably\" and Mr. PICKWICK displayed as Adam Stirling all \"the quaint humour of his immortal ancestor\". Miss WALTERS, however, was thought to have been less fit for the part of Mrs. Stirling. She did not upon all occasions evince that grave decorum which usually characterises the British matron\". Morton's Whitebait at Greenwich was, as on January 23, 1856, a hit. This time Mr. PICKWICK took the part of Benjamin Buzzard in a \"quiet and most natural style of acting\". Mr. Phunago BRUSHWOOD - \"an actor of the Keeley-Robinson school, possessing a racy humour of his own\" played John Small and it was \"a gem of low comedy\". Of course there was Mrs. NESBIT, as well as Miss WALTERS whose portrayal of the servant maid came off much better than her Mrs. Stirling: \"we do not wonder at Mr. Buzzard's having been caught by her saucy face and bright complexion\" (NCH 19.2.1859). (Robert Keeley, 1793-1869, and Frederick Robson, 1821-1864, were both well known low comedians in Britain).\n\n22.2.1859 (Tue)\n\nConcert by Prof. Shonbrun, piano, and some local amateurs.\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (E)\n\n+\n\nR: The concert was given in the (New) Theatre Royal of the amateur dramatic corps, but acoustically it was not very satisfactory. No wonder that many of Mr. SHONBRUN's best efforts and most brilliant passages did not fully reach the audience\", an audience which was not very numerous in the first place, which too has its influence on the sound. For the following concert it was foreseen that \"a small scene will be erected and the wings closed in\".\n\nFor the time being the critic refrained from any strictures on the soloist, except that he hoped that \"on the next occasion Mr. Shonbrun will lead us to a higher class of pianoforte music than that put forward on Tuesday last\". It will come as no surprise that there was a eulogy on the amateurs who participated: \"the tenor solos were given with taste and genuine voice and the recall with which he was unanimously favoured was well merited\". (NCH 26.2.1859).\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211854, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "art \n\nof \n\nFrench \n\nconcession \n\nYANG KIM PANG \n\nGATE \n\nSTREET \n\nRace course \n\nTEMPLE \n\nBARRIER \n\nCHURCH \n\nNOISSIW \n\nROAD \n\n244 \n\nROAD \n\nROAD \n\nROADE \n\nROAL \n\nNORTH \n\nBRIDGE \n\nTHE \n\nSTREET \n\nᄆᄆᄆ \n\nBUND Shanghai Club \n\nWONG \n\n- \n\nPOO \n\nAVENUE \n\nS \n\nCONSULATÉ \n\nOf \n\nBRIDGE \n\nSTRECT \n\nKIRK \n\nROAD \n\nCHURCH \n\nROAD \n\nSOD CHOW \n\nAmerican \n\nROAD \n\nCREEK \n\nVoĮsseɔuo; \n\nAIVER \n\nTHE \n\nb Theatre Royal \n\nTae-ming Theatre \n\nOlympic Theatre \n\nd \n\nLyceum Theatre \n\nAppendix I!! \n\nPlan of Shanghai \n\nBUND \n\nPart \n\nStar \n\nHouse \n\nHotel", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211872, "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": 287, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "262\n\nToday I saw some porpoises floundering about in the water, and soon we may expect to see some flying fish. I am now getting into pretty near regular habits, and am thriving uncommonly well. The provisions are the best of everything. As much wine, spirits, etc. as I could drink, if I were one of that description of person. There is no mistake about living well; but of course one cannot expect it to last all the voyage. I have more than recovered what I had lost by the seasickness, and I shall soon, I hope, begin to look stout and hearty. I am on very friendly terms with everybody on board, and manage to hold a corner with the captain once in a way, although of course I cannot feel at home and friendly with people who live in a manner so opposed to all my notions of right and wrong. Three weeks ago I left home. What a long, long, three weeks it has been.\n\nThursday, April 4th\n\nAnother very fine day it has been, and nearly all the time I have been on deck sitting and reading or thinking in my easy chair. The time has passed very rapidly and pleasantly. Some hours have I spent in thinking of home, and all that I have left behind. The more I think of it, the more hard it seems; but I console myself with thinking there is a \"need be\" for it. Often, too, I am looking forward to my arrival, if spared, at Hong Kong. There will be not one there to look up to, since the chaplain has left, and I have not a letter of introduction to anyone there. It is rather a strange predicament to be in, but I must try and make the best of it.\n\nFor nearly a week we have had nothing but foul winds, so that we are not yet come to Madeira, after 25 days sailing. It is very poor work since we ought to have done it in one half of the time. It quite disheartens the captain and everyone else to be knocking about so long, and doing nothing, hardly, after all. The sun is now getting powerful; today it was quite hot, and has regularly browned my face for me.\n\nSince Sunday I was rather unwell, with a bilious attack, I suppose through eating too much, for the sea air gives me a ravenous appetite. I took some homeopathy last night, and today it has put me about right.\n\nI am beginning to learn a good many of the nautical terms, which at first seemed quite like Greek to me. I hope soon to know the names of all the parts of the ship. Our new steward answers very well, and I believe gives everybody satisfaction.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211899, "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "289\n\nEvery few yards you see people bathing. Women come down and go out into the middle of the water up to their shoulders, and then dip and scrub the little brown youngsters and teach them to swim. In places the water is quite alive with them, men, women and children altogether. It is quite disgusting to see such scenes of indecency, but people there seem to think nothing of it.\n\nOn the second day of my walk, I went into town and found a French watchmaker, and got him to put me a new glass, in place of the one I broke in the Channel. I had to pay three rupees, (5/-) for it. Nobody there charges less, and they never do any job to a watch under five rupees. I had a good chat with the old fellow, and got him to repair the hands into the bargain. In his shop I found a young German who could speak almost every European language.\n\nDuring the time I was at Batavia the horse races came off. The plain in front of the Hotel was the race course. Although of course I had nothing to do with the races, I amused myself by looking at the people from the verandah. There was a motley throng of people dressed in their gay holiday clothes. The Malays of all descriptions were dressed in pink cotton clothes. The Chinese in white coats, light blue trousers and straw hats. The Armenians in long flowing robes of yellow or blue, the Arabs somewhat similar, with large turbans. The half-caste and Europeans were dressed as is the universal custom in white. Consequently there was a mixture of colours, as well in dress as in countenance. The fruit sellers were very busy, and seemed to be making a deal of money. The Chinese, with their usual carefulness and forethought, each brought a little bundle of fruit with them so that they might not have to pay through the nose for it. Of the races I can say nothing since I saw nothing; only it pleased me to see a tremendous shower come on in the middle day of the three, and put a stop to the day's fun.\n\nOne day I bought some clothes of the men who infest the place, viz. two kobias, a kind of loose white jacket to sleep in, and wear in the morning, and two pairs of perjaumers, or native loose trousers for the same purpose. Of course people here never think of using bed clothes, and these sleeping clothes are as thin as possible. I also bought a light silk coat, and a pair of white jean trousers.\n\nDuring our stay Captain Moate, unknown to me, got two quart bottles of gin, and got dead drunk. I could not have thought it of him,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211901, "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": 316, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "291\n\nout at church, and would be back before long, as the service began at nine o'clock. They only have one service, and get it over by eleven in time for breakfast. I was much disappointed, but of course it could not be helped.\n\nI took a long walk one afternoon with Mr Phillips, and posted my two letters. He took me through some parts I had never seen before. He had to call on business, so I came home alone. I passed the barracks, where I heard some native music, which to my ears was rather discordant.\n\nIn addition to their horses, the Malays use bullocks for drawing water casks etc. These bullocks are great thick clumsy brutes, with monstrous horns, and a great hump on their back. They have scarcely any hair, and go along at about two miles an hour. There is a strange breed of dogs and cats. There are plenty of snakes; one was shown me about three yards long, but with a very thin body, and covered with beautiful green and yellow marks. The frugivorous bats are very large, and as one walks about under the trees in the dark they almost flap their wings in one's face.\n\nAt last on Wednesday night we came off to the ship and once more took up our abode within its dreary sides. Everything seemed so dull and dreary, but I consoled myself with the thought that a fortnight ought to bring us to our journey's end. I brought with me a stock of pomeloes. They are a species of orange which grow larger than one's head, and are so healthy a fruit that one cannot eat too much of them. I got fourteen for two rupees. I have felt the benefit of eating them freely. In fact, they are such a cure for the bile that I have not been in the least troubled with it since eating them.\n\nI managed to catch two butterflies and a moth, all of them very large, compared with any to be seen in England. There are some very fine ones which seem to be very common there. The birds have the most brilliant plumage, of all colours; one kind of dove, which is wild, naturally keeps up a most curious noise which can be heard a long way off. Its note is rather long, and has a peculiar sound when heard in the stillness of the night. Indeed, Java abounds with everything that is lovely and enchanting. There is a perpetual summer. Everything is always in season, and the excessive fertility is the means of making the natives indolent and careless. They never work unless compelled to do so. Then having got a few cents, they live on it till it is gone, and only work again when they can go no further in debt. They creep about so slowly that one cannot help feeling tempted to help them to a kick. Even a small establishment", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212174, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "93\n\nthe British community to celebrate the event. H.M.S. \"Cornwall\", one of the 10,000 ton County class cruisers came up for the occasion. On Coronation morning, May 12th, a service was held on board. I had not previously seen those \"Chicago pianos\" which were supposed to be so effective an answer to the dive bomber. With their eight evil looking spouts, they looked formidable enough; but five years later they proved insufficient to save this fine ship from Japanese air attack off Ceylon.\n\nIn the evening there was to be a ball at the British Embassy. We went a bit of a splash for the occasion and gave a dinner party before going on to the ball. I remember in addition to some of our Chinese friends there were a couple from the American Embassy, a German officer and his wife, two officers from the British cruiser, the local manager of the Standard Oil Company, an Englishman with a Russian wife, and some visitors from Shanghai. Our cook, unknown to us, had decided he too would go a bit of a splash. For the fish course he produced a samli. In China the samli is considered the best of all fish, an opinion with which I disagree as it is too bony for my lazy nature. The cook's samli was a large fish, I suppose it must have weighed every bit of ten pounds. He served it whole and had excelled himself by inserting in each eye-socket a small electric bulb, connected to a battery concealed somewhere in the fish. To my wife's astonishment, as the chief guest helped herself, one eye gave a most suggestive wink, and the performance was repeated each time a portion was removed; a postmortem revealed that the winking was due to a short in the circuit and not to any humorous intention on the part of the cook.\n\nThe ball given by Sir Hughe and Lady Knatchbull-Hugessen at the Embassy was a brilliant affair. For weeks, of course, all the women had been talking clothes, Gay toilettes set off sparkling eyes; diplomatic, naval and military uniforms shone with gold lace, and the Ambassador's excellent champagne animated the conviviality. We did not know that within a few weeks he would be lying at death's door with a Japanese bullet through his back. In August when motoring from Nanking to Shanghai, the Ambassador's car, over which a large Union Jack was stretched, was attacked by Japanese aircraft and pierced by many machine-gun bullets. The Ambassador was shot through the back near the spine.\n\nIn the old days you could walk along the great wall of Nanking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212224, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "143\n\nto retire, as if no war were in progress and no shortage of manpower in prospect.\n\nThe price of rice had risen from 15 dollars per picul in 1939 to 110 dollars per picul, increasing the terrible hardship of the thousands of refugees, and requiring constant adjustment to the pay of Chinese employees. It also affected the finances of the Municipal Council, which found it would again have to advance rates and taxes to cover increased expenses. At the same time the continued pressure of the Japanese, who wished to seize control of the huge Municipal administrative machine, became more urgent. The Council worked out a compromise arrangement, under which it was hoped that the bulk of the foreign interests could be maintained pending conclusion of the Japanese war with China.\n\nA special meeting of the landrenters, to be held at the Race Club, was called for January 26th, 1941. The Norwegian Consul, in the Chair, the members of the Council, and the municipal secretaries, took their seats on a covered platform, erected opposite the racing stands, on which the landrenters were disposed. I had a seat facing the platform, and noticed that the Japanese landrenters were sitting in a crowd, several hundreds strong, at the far right. The British Chairman of the Council put forward the motion for the increased taxes; he was opposed by Mr. Hayashi, the Chairman of the Japanese Residents Association. The other foreign landrenters, by virtue of their much larger holdings of property, of course greatly outvoted the Japanese. When the motion was put to the vote, by a show of hands, the Norwegian Consul declared the motion carried. There was an immediate outcry from the Japanese and Mr. Hayashi approached the platform, as everyone thought to make another speech; but instead of moving to the rostrum on one side, he walked round behind the long table at which the Councillors sat, and suddenly pulled out a pistol. Mr. Okamoto, one of the Japanese Councillors noticed this, realised what was up, and very pluckily tried to grab the gun. He was in time to deflect the aim, but two shots were fired from which the Chairman of the Council received flesh wounds in the arm and side, while one of the bullets passed through Mr. Okamoto's hand. Pandemonium then broke out amongst the Japanese ratepayers; howling like a pack of wolves, they tried to rush the platform, to rescue Mr. Hayashi, who was being led away by the police. When the group on the platform moved beyond the screens to the rear,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212233, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "152\n\nnot do for a house to be very isolated, or it would be continually attacked by robbers. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is a fine building, and also the Governor's house. Just behind the College are some fine buildings.\n\nAnd now, after a glance at the island, I will go on to describe the inhabitants. Of course they are mostly Chinese; next come English, Parsees, Portuguese, Americans, Germans, French, and Arabs. Spaniards might also be mentioned. The Chinese are the working part of the population. Generally they are industrious and active. The lower classes however are dirty and degraded. The middle class are generally well informed and intellectual. Some hold very important situations. One striking feature in Chinese character is their don't care sort of feeling. If they can get out of doing anything they will, unless they see a chance of being well paid for it. Anything they do not want to understand, they pretend great ignorance of. In fact unless money is in the way, one would take them for a race of idiots. Never can you tell if they are pleased or angry. They are the most cold-hearted race that can be imagined. The men agree well together; never do I hear any quarrelling among them. They do not take wine or beer, and a drunken Chinese is as uncommon a thing here as a really honest one. One needs be very sharp to deal with them.\n\nI went to buy some earthenware, and it was as much as I could do to keep the fellows civil. A crowd always collects in a shop when they see an Englishman. I should have lost my watch, purse and umbrella twenty times over if I had not kept my eyes open. As pickpockets they beat London all to nothing. I had to keep my eye on the whole lot of them. They will even cut off the tail of one's coat and quietly walk off with it; and a few coat tails makes them a suit of clothes.\" One has to be all bluster, and to keep a walking stick or umbrella continually in motion, to keep pace with them. I being a stranger, perhaps they wanted to try my patience over what I was buying. It seems a favour for them to let you buy of them. In fact they never speak of the English but as fan-kwai, i.e. foreign devils. They are very hypocritical. There is no knowing their thoughts or intentions. In fact a Chinaman in Hongkong is quite a riddle.\n\nThey generally dress in white. All wear a sort of coat, and very full knee breeches and gaiters. Their shoes always look very neat, although the soles are above an inch thick. They are slippers in appearance rather than shoes. They never wear a hat except when they wish to keep off the sun, when they use one as big as an umbrella. A Chinaman ordinarily dressed, with his long pig-tail hanging down behind, does not look so bad after one is used to it. Some of the wealthy ones stalk about in the evening with all the dignity imaginable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212254, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "173\n\nThe legend of the Deity of Fortune is known. It is understandable that the deity is incorporated in the ritual as he has the power to eliminate disaster and bring fortune. In the modern performance of the ritual, the deity's magical weapons are represented by a wooden staff and a chain. Troupe members often call the deity hak min (black face).\n\nStage Setting and Preparation\n\nA wooden table and chair are placed in the middle back portion of the frontstage. Another wooden chair is put on its side at the edge of the stage left. Occasionally, additional wooden chairs are put in front of the accompanying musicians who sit at stage right.\n\nA better understanding of the ritual enables one to discover the different functions of these pieces of furniture. The wooden table and chair together symbolize a high mountain, and the chair facilitates the actor's climbing to the top. The other chair that is put on its side at the stage edge has a piece of raw pork hung from one of its legs, so as to facilitate the White Tiger's consumption of the pork. The chairs placed in front of the musicians function to protect them from the possible harm caused by the White Tiger. Ward has mentioned that a row of chairs had been seen at the edge of the stage to protect the audience (1979:31). However, the use of these chairs has not been noticed during the several White Tiger rituals observed by the present writer.\n\nThe accompaniment to the ritual is provided by three percussionists: the gong and cymbal players, and their leader who is responsible for the wood blocks and the zin gwu \"kök (battle drum). Such players usually set their instruments ready one to two hours before the ritual and then stay away from the stage until shortly before the time assigned to hold the ritual comes.\n\nAccording to several experienced actors, traditionally the White Tiger ritual should be held immediately before the evening's operatic items start, which is approximately 8 to 9 p.m. In modern Hong Kong, as many troupe owners find it extremely inconvenient to maintain the taboo, they prefer to hold the ritual in the afternoon, usually at around 3 p.m. on the day that the series of performances begin.\n\nWithin the whole course of preparatory work for the offering, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212358, "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": 300, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "Kwu Ling, for instance,\" and official action is not remembered in the fighting between Tsuen Wan and Shing Mun, or in that between Tai Wai and Cheung Sha Wan, at about the same dates. Between 1850 and 1880 it would seem that the policy of the District Magistrate was to turn a blind eye to inter-village disputes unless this was impossible.\n\nKrone, in his 1858 \"Notice of the Sanon District\"2 speaks at some length on inter-village warfare in the area and the ineffectiveness of the District Magistrate in responding to it. The District was \"troubled and insecure... internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages, and these wars ... are often long-continued and sanguinary. The people are of a quarrelsome nature, and fond of rapine [and, in the sub-mandarin's view,] depraved and so drowned in all manner of wickedness as to have lost their human nature. ... The Mandarins have very little power.\n\nThe people do not allow the Mandarins to interfere with their own local government. Law suits, differences and offences are seldom brought before the Mandarins. The disputes between villages and clans are settled by the gentry. If they cannot come to an agreement, all connection is broken off, and without any declaration of hostilities, the disputants commence a predatory war on each other; in these quarrels, many a bloody battle is fought, hundreds of men perish, and whole villages are destroyed. Men of neutral villages or clans are generally well distinguished, and their rights respected.... etc'. Krone notes particularly a long-fought inter-village war at Sha Tsing (7 JP, Shajing). Here, the District Magistrate eventually came with 1,000 soldiers to make peace (this was probably in 1852 or 1853), and was not only ignored, but threatened by both combatants; intervention by neutral clans allowed the Magistrate to retreat with his \"face\" intact, but his intervention had no effect on the course of the dispute.\n\nThe Basel Missionaries also had a low opinion of the District Magistrate in this period. One said, in 1861, “The San On Magistrate is a miserable, dirty fraud and hypocrite. He demands outward respect, but does no justice. Hence differences, by being denied a hearing, grow to quarrels, then to blows, then to war, while he sits at home and does nothing”.13\n\nThis ineffectiveness may not have been the normal situation of the district. The military posts which Krone found empty and ruinous\n\nPage 300\n\nPage 301", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212606, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "140\n\ninhabitants got to know us better; they accepted our lack of dinner jackets, our effect on the drink stock at the Club, our — regrettable — neglect of the traffic signals, and our other little mannerisms, and treated us right royally.\n\nThere were two seasons in Maymyo, the second and briefer one, lasting several weeks, towards the end of the rains in October. The Club, a long rambling creeper-covered building, became gay with visitors. It looked out over a pleasance, cleared from the jungle, and spreading a mile towards the reservoir dam, built by Turkish prisoners in the last war. It goes without saying that a race course and golf links were laid out over the meadowland, very pleasant to behold. But here we were next door to India. The plumbing in the gentlemen's cloak room, consisted of a row of rusty and battered enamel utensils, set out at more or less even intervals on a long low shelf. Without the door, a shadow hovered, poised to dash in the moment he heard the rattle of a utensil returned to the board. No Americans visited Maymyo while I was there. It would have been interesting to hear their first reactions to these Arcadian simplicities.\n\nAfter all Burma was a rich enough country; it was not any lack of money that left it a Victorian remnant. Amongst the Burmese there is no caste, nor is there any desire to work. The house servants everywhere are Indians, of whom there were over a million in the country. Of the annual increase of 5,000,000 in India, a substantial proportion must be of the sweeper caste. Amidst a population with so abnormal a rate of procreation, the border line between a sufficiency and famine is a fine one, easily crossed; and any modernisation of sanitary installations would create serious unemployment: thus in India the vested interest in caste puts the brake, not only on plumbing, but on all progress; and Burma, until recently had been the backwater of India.\n\nI spent six months in Burma, but had little opportunity to learn much of the country. I saw very little of the Burmese, and never met one of those attractive country maids, who wait by the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking out to sea. Of the seventeen million inhabitants, only ten million are Burmans; besides the Indians, there are 300,000 Chinese, and the remainder are tribesmen from the hills.\n\nThe history of Burma is a bloody one; the country had seldom for long been united. The Chinese under Kublai Khan, the Mongol,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "117\n\nwithdrew partly into India and partly back into Yunnan. Kokang was left high and dry. Undaunted the Myosa from his own funds purchased what weapons he could from the retreating Chinese troops and the disbanded men of the Burma Rifles, who had been instructed to disperse to their villages with their weapons, which were to be retained for local protection until the British returned. He acquired several hundred rifles, a small stock of ammunition, and a few Bren guns, and organised his own force, the Kokang Defence Force. Fortunately the prowess of the force, which could scarcely have proved high in the face of the battle-trained troops of Japan, was not put to the test. The Japanese advance stopped at the Salween, a convenient barrier on which to consolidate their East Wall in Burma.\n\nThe Myosa, left thus in a most dangerous situation, in the front line, as it were, of the Allied positions, applied to the nearby ally, China, for assistance. The Chinese who were themselves receiving equipment from America for their forces in this part of the world, could spare him no equipment, but undertook to train officers for his force. The quality of the training so provided will grow evident as this story unfolds.\n\nIn 1943 the Myosa made the journey to Kun-ming to apply to the British authorities for assistance and it was at the British Consul General's* house in Kun-ming that I met him. I saw an alert slight figure, young looking and brisk for his 45 years, dressed in a western suit of Palm Beach cloth. He looked Chinese, but I believe there is also an admixture of tribal blood, possibly Shan; there is, of course, a good deal of intermingling throughout all that border country. The prince spoke Burmese and Chinese, but very little English: though his schooling on the border had probably been rough and ready, he possessed in a strong degree that charm, which goes with a courtesy so cultivated that it becomes natural and can conceal the aptitude for decision based on a habit of command. The prince was accompanied by his son, a capable young man in his early twenties, who had been educated at the Princes' School in Taungyi and spoke excellent English. The Myosa explained to us, his son serving as interpreter, the difficulties of his position, the trouble he was having with Chinese troops, a battalion of whom had been stationed in Southern Kokang, and the hope that we might be able to come to his support. We discussed the situation and the nature of the\n\n*Strangely, he had been the Consul at Kiu Kiang in 1927, from whose house we retired to the warships", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212998, "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-1993", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "45\n\nHonour is the most popular attribute of face reported in the sentences. It takes up 27 out of the 35 sentences. Also, there are two sentences which depict honour with influence, one sentence honour with deference. In contrast, only three sentences depict influence while only one is on deference alone. Influence and deference are reported simultaneously in only one sentence. Of interest here is, of course, the level at which these attributes belong to.\n\nEight sentences, not even one-fourth of the total, are about attributes of face at individual level. Seven of them are at delegation level. Four of them are reported to belong to people. The plurality, in contrast to the case in the factors of face, goes to the level of nation/country, taking up 13 from a total of 35. In short, while factors of face are largely the property of individual athletes or even the whole sports delegation, attributes of face are more often entitled to their country or nation.\n\nDelving into each of the sentences, it is not difficult to find that the factors of face at individual level or delegation level are often reported together with attributes of face at national level. It is also interesting to see that three sentences which report factors of face at individual or delegation level also report attributes of face in the “others” category, which includes phrases such as the Games, Asia, the world, and so on. That is to say, factors of face which belong to individuals or a delegation are often attributed to a country, or a very large collectivity's honour, influence, or deference. These sentences amount to 16 out of a total of 35 and are not insignificant in this selected sample.\n\nIt is interesting to see the contents which link these different categories and levels together. The central theme in this link seems to be rather political. Among them, the four modernizations, the spirit of the women volleyball team to strive to get honour for the country, the call for future obedience to errands assigned from the central authority because of the success in sports, are vivid examples.\n\nAlso of significance to the present study is the theme of these sentences. All of them, except one, are categorized as enhancing China; the exception is categorized as enhancing others. This seems to point out that more elaborate depictions of face in a sentence are usually seen in the form of enhancement. More so, this form of enhancement is for China rather than other countries, with a ratio of 34 to 1. Even when we look at the exceptional...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213025, "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-1993", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "72\n\nThe Role Of The Press\n\nHaving said that the concept of face stands midway between the alien spheres of activities (sports and politics) and the masses, the place of the press is at another level between the two. It is a means by which the concept of face could be transmitted to the masses. It is the medium by which the alien spheres of activities are presented in forms comprehensible and identifiable by the masses. The functions of the Chinese media have been studied by many scholars before. Those proposed by Godwin Chu included mobilization, information, power struggle, and ideological reform (G. Chu, 1979). Others have later added education, entertainment and so on (Robinson, 1981; Terrell, 1984).\n\nIt may be difficult to position the role of the press in relation to the concept of face in terms of the above functions listed. But through the present study and the findings, the press could be seen as performing at least two of the above functions: information and mobilization. First, it provided information about the performance of athletes in the Games, it provided information on the Games in general, it provided presentations of the face of Chinese, China and her counterparts in the Games.\n\nSecond, it mobilized people to work for the four modernizations by convincing them that they could be as successful as the athletes under the guidance of the communists. The strength of the argument and the mobilization power lies in the magnitude of face as presented in the press. Bigger face, better face of course would increase the convincing power the press in this respect. And it is very obvious from the findings that the press has created an enhancing image of the face of Chinese and the country under the Communist regime, and thereby the convincing power of the press in other related affairs.\n\nAlso against what has been discussed earlier, there seems to be ‘a resurgence of the importance of particularistic ties, distinguishing us from them (... “a difference between inner and outer”)’ (Gold, 1985: 664). This runs counter to the preachings of the party government and to the nationwide reforms in the four modernizations which emphasize collective efforts for the country. The press, in this respect, may need to project a big face of the country in order that this resurgence of attitude unfavourable to the four modernizations be forestalled.\n\nAt another level, the press could be said as performing the function of\n\n---", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213229, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "30 \n\nMrs. T.C. Meyrick of Fareham, Hants, England. He was educated at University College School, London, from where he went to Brasenose College, Oxford in 1900. He arrived in China in 1907 to join Arnhold, Karberg and Co. He was a keen supporter of racing with his brother Harry Arnhold. They ran a stable in Shanghai for many years under the nom-de-guerre of \"Winsome and Hasty\". He was the last Chairman of the Shanghai Race Club before the change of régime in China. At one time he was a member of the Shanghai Municipal Council and Vice Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai. He came to Hong Kong in 1949 and the head office was then transferred here. He had been interned at the Haiphong Road Internment Camp in Shanghai. He supported the British Orchestra and the Hong Kong Concert Orchestra. He was born in London in 1881.\n\nSince 1888 a member of the firm of Arnhold, Karberg and Co. had been on the Board of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank though, of course, after 1914 German firms were not represented. The firm also represented German financial interests in the negotiation of foreign loans to China. Its \"Teutonic thoroughness\" is shown by the number of offices the firm had in China in 1908 — Hong Kong, Shanghai, Canton, Hankow, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Wuhu, Kiukiang, Newchwang, Chungking, Mukden, Peking, Tsinanfu, Kirin etc. It had buying offices in London, New York and Berlin. Dr. Frank King in his history of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation designates the firm as an \"Anglo-German\" company. Like other large China-based German firms it found it advantageous to establish strong links with Britain. It was about the only German firm able to continue its trade after 1914, principally because the two Shanghai partners were born in England.\n\nBourjau, Hubener and Co.\n\nAdolph Bourjau and Carl Albert Hubener were authorised to sign for L.E. Lebert and Company at Canton in 1858 but by the next year they were in business in Hong Kong under their own name (FC 18 Mar. 1858, 31 May 1859). They are mentioned as emigrant agents in 1866 (DP 1 Nov. 1866). Mr. Bourjau continued as a senior partner until his death on 14 February 1873 (DP 5 Apr. 1873).\n\nArthur Booth was a partner in 1862/3 and Oscar Booth from 1866 to 1869. Ernest Behre was the managing partner at Shanghai in the 1860s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213267, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "69\n\nthe views expressed right at the start of this paper by Dr Ernest J. Eitel, sometimes titled Hong Kong's first historian and for some time a Hong Kong civil servant, were by no means unusual.\n\nToday, far more empathy is shown towards Chinese culture in general by Westerners. For instance, many Caucasian firms believe aquariums enrich the fung shu of an office. It is not just Chinese who can relax, Westerners will tell you, when they lie back and watch fish swimming. It gives everyone a special feeling and lowers their blood pressure by a few degrees.\n\nOf course, certain rules have to be followed. The number of fish kept is often six or nine. Three multiplied by three equals nine (a lucky number); and a homonym of three, in Cantonese, sounds similar to the character meaning 'lively'. Because of colour symbolism, one fish may be black (a Black Molly), another reddish (a goldfish), and the rest any other colour. Because the fish are supposed to act as a shield against bad fung shui, sometimes a fish dies. But better a dead fish than a dead customer.\n\nHigher up the hill above Central District, at the Albany in Albany Road, residents were concerned about the 70-storey, new, People's Republic Bank of China Building 'giving off vibes'. They feared the sharp edges of its structure with their negative forces would menace the abode of some of Hong Kong's rich and famous. In the West, the new Bank of China building would perhaps be described as 'ominous', 'overshadowing' or 'overpowering'. Many Chinese, however, liken the sharp edges of the Bank of China to a knife pointed at, or arrows cast at, Government House and Central Government Offices, namely, the heart of the British Colonial Administration. These 'weapons', together with the flyovers close to Government House, tie the decision-making hands of the British Governor and threaten the prosperity of Hong Kong. The fung shui 'dragon vein', with the dragon's head turned to face its ancestors, serpents down from Victoria Peak, close to the Albany, concealed by a carpet of vegetation. It passes close to the Albany apartments. The dragon thrusts and turns as the topography changes. The earth surges with natural energy. Chinese dragons are more serpent-like and sinuous than those in the West. And, as the vein gathers strength, it proceeds vigorously on to the 'dragon sites'\n\nsuch as the home of the Governor and down to the Hong Kong Bank. It then dips into the harbour, the 'dragon's lair'. Although now the slope up the Peak is largely obscured by high-rise buildings, on some hills and\n\n70", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213884, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "210\n\nKong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.”\n\nThe Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan:\n\n[The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years.\n\nTo help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was \"to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly\". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan.\n\nThe worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that:\n\nThey really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation...\n\nHe explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed:\n\nWhen the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214185, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "6\n\nlaughter to one person and a mere smile to another. Indeed to a third person, the joke may fall completely flat. People often do not agree about what they find funny. Why? Much is physiological and beyond the scope of this paper. Some people take the view that life is not funny and you need to be a philosopher to extract fun from it. Nevertheless, few men or women will confess to a total lack of humour. As Frank Moore Colby (1865-1925) the United States editor wrote:\n\nMen will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour? The British statesman, William Gladstone (1809-98), is one of the few who was said by his critics to have been entirely lacking in humour (Muir, 1990; XXXII).\n\nSidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) the French novelist wrote: Total absence of humour renders life impossible (one could add, this applies for both Chinese and Westerners).\n\nNevertheless humour is probably not unique to the human race and many canine lovers will tell you can sometimes spot a grin on the face of a dog.\n\nWestern senses of humour\n\nThe brand of humour common in the United States, where people are not afraid to ‘debunk' anyone or anything, is, according to one middle-aged American woman living in Hong Kong, not always the most subtle. It can vary considerably compared to the humour, often based on behaviour or appearance, found in Britain where irony is frequently used and words portray the opposite of what is actually meant. Of course an Englishman may be unable to laugh at a Chinese joke because he has insufficient command of the language.\n\nFor instance, a European and a Cantonese were arguing how America was discovered. The European said Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492, together with soldiers and missionaries. Columbus landed, kissed the ground, and declared the name of the new land 'America'. The Chinese disagreed saying that Fa-Xian (AD 337-422), a Buddhist monk, landed there in a Chinese junk. As he walked up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214186, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "beach with his Chinese cook carrying a wok (Chinese frying pan) under his arm, he proclaimed 'Mat ye lei ga? (†1) (meaning \"What is this?'). But to a Cantonese it sounds very much like the word 'America'.\n\nAgain, regarding the appreciation of someone else's humour, a Chinese who has never lived outside China may be unable to laugh at a joke because he has limited knowledge outside his own country. For instance the ideal world has jokingly been said, by Asians, to be an English stately home, Chinese food, an American salary and a Japanese wife. But then another Asian pipes up, \"If you had a Japanese house, English food, a Chinese salary and an American wife you'd be in real trouble!\"\n\nOf course general knowledge, background and nuances often play an important part. For instance if you say in English, 'She's no chicken,' you mean a woman is not young. But in Cantonese it means she is not a prostitute.\n\nChinese and Westerners may face various obstacles before they can laugh at each other's jokes. Nevertheless, as Ezra Pound (1885-1972) the American poet and translator wrote: The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. Although there is much fine Chinese literature there have been few Chinese Nobel Prize winners. It is unfortunate that many of the finest passages of Chinese writing lose their sparkle when translated into western languages (Ball 1903; 358).\n\nIn a similar way the English language is not always easy for foreigners to appreciate. Tsim Tak-lung, at one time in charge of the Hong Kong Chinese University Press, once said that when enquiring after someone the English reply, ‘As well as can be expected.' 'What on earth does it mean?' asked confused Tsim.\n\nAgain he tells the tale of when he asked someone in a railway carriage in England whether a certain train went to Blanktown. He expected a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Instead he received the reply: 'I should be very surprised if it doesn't!' When the train pulled up at the platform", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214193, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "cially as it involved the only 'foreign devil' present, thoroughly enjoyed it even though the joke has been repeated countless times throughout the ages. Many jokes, both in the East and the West, are of course repeated over and over again over a period of years. Although possibly rather feeble by today's standards, the author remembers a riddle being repeated to him when he was a child in England. The question was: 'When is a door not a door?' The answer was, 'When it's a jar (ajar)!' This was told countless times and seemed to have been passed down from generation to generation as many jokes in many countries are.\n\nIn the case of a Chinese example of an oft repeated joke there is the saying, Ah Yee Leng Tong (-). This really means \"gone to the Second Wife's to drink lovely soup.' Up to October 1971, Chinese men in Hong Kong could legally take concubines. The principal wife, generally, knew her position and was pretty secure, but the concubine, so it was said, needed to prepare tasty soup (and other things) to please her husband to make sure her position also was secure. There is a restaurant named Ah Yee Leng Tong in Causeway Bay, on Hong Kong Island, and whenever the name is mentioned it always raises a smile.\n\nHaving said that, however, Chinese tend not to laugh out loud so much as Westerners, but, in Hong Kong, said Reuben M, an American part-time comedian who has lived in the Territory for a number of years, even Westerners are inclined to be more subdued than people living in the West. Nevertheless, it was pointed out by the same comedian that, if Chinese don't like a show and they are bored, they can be a noisy, distracting audience.\n\nLaughter can certainly help break down barriers, including pricking bubbles of solemnity at meetings, and there are few occasions when some degree of hilarity does not serve a useful purpose. Certainly humour is an important key to the happiness and well-being of us all, irrespective of race, just as anger and depression have the opposite effect. Norman Cousins was stricken with a seemingly incurable disease. He decided to keep himself occupied with a diet of humour and, as he lay on his sick-bed, he watched old silent movies of Laurel and Hardy and read anything that would make him laugh (Cousins, 1979; 39). He recounts he made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anaesthetic effect that gave him at least two hours of pain-free sleep. Gradually he began to recover. A good bout of laugh-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214201, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "22\n\nconsider the first character to be partly made up of the character for ghost.' This was thus seen by many as a ghost knocking at the door of Hong Kong. It was certainly not auspicious. The second 'Ngai' can be seen by wary Chinese as representing the Chinese character for 'danger' Consequently, on his return in 1987, to solve the problem Sir David's name was changed to Wai Yik-shun. This means, 'to defend and protect with faith and trust.' All this changing of names, although generally regarded with some amusement by many Westerners, is taken very seriously by most Chinese. Changing given names is by no means uncommon among Chinese although they do not normally change surnames (Jones, 1997;73).\n\nMore of humour\n\nIt has been said, if you want to educate a person in the culture and customs of a country you must start with his or her grandmother. Yet Raybon Kan, an ethnic Chinese who performs under the title of Comedy Fu, was born and grew up north of Wellington, New Zealand (Green, 1998). He works as a stand-up, Chinese 'Kiwi' comedian. This lawyer turned funnyman speaks fluent, colloquial Cantonese, but only with his parents who understand limited English and run a take-away. It is something to come on stage in a White community, with a Chinese face in a classic, rural white-bloke tradition, with an act where about one-quarter focuses on his native origins, racial stereotypes, and being an 'underdog' and a 'victim' (Little, 1998). Humour can of course be 'learned.' In fact in one month, in rugby-loving New Zealand, more went to see Comedy Fu perform than watched the Auckland Warriors in action.\n\nAnother act was put on by Pui-fan Lee (note surname and given names reversed in western fashion), a stand-up comic in Short, Fat, Ugly and Chinese, at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong, in 1994. As a Chinese girl born in Birmingham, her performance consisted of immigrant Chinese culture and indigenous British values intertwined, interlarded with farcical growing-up encounters in England. And when she lapsed into a broad Brum accent the Birmingham folk who were there loved it. The key is pronunciation. He or she who speaks with a foreign accent is a foreigner. The audience did not care what colour their peer was. The important point was that she spoke broad Brum. Accent conveys acceptance. She was one of them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214202, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "23\n\nYet mime performer, Philip Fok Tat-chiu, who worked for the Hong Kong Government before emigrating to Australia as recently as 1992, although a relative newcomer, seems to have made a success of his life 'Down Under.' The greats in the field of mime include Sid Caesar, the contemporary French master Marcel Marceau and, of course, Charlie Chaplin himself (Lee, 1999).\n\nAnother form of entertainment, Chinese 'cross-talking' (‘double voice' as it is known in Cantonese,) is much like American vaudeville. It needs one serious performer with a deadpan face and one comic to deliver the punchline. Acting out 'sketches,' like those performed by Ho Bo-man and Chou Chi-hung in Guangzhou, using every-day hilarious situations with rapid-fire exchange, amount very much to the art of language and repartee (Cheung, 1996:5). Slang is important. Jokes can be about portable telephones, which no self-respecting person-about-town can manage without, or about climbing up the beam of a torch (flashlight) in the dark. Isn't it slippery and dangerous? What happens when I switch the torch off?! Maybe the banter is stupid, but gags like these can serve a useful purpose. They can help motivate people,' says comedian Harry Wong of Metro Radio. 'Something useful can come out of such jokes.'\n\nAfter the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) ended the 'Gang of Four' was a popular target for 'quick-fire twosome' acts in China, although many tried (and still try) to steer clear of politics. But unless one possesses an extremely good knowledge of Cantonese there is limited chance of a European understanding a great deal of this rapid-fire talk. In fact at a Chinese banquet, with one European and the remainder Chinese, when the conversation is in rapid-fire Cantonese interlaced with slang, if the gwailo appreciates six out of 10 jokes he or she is not doing at all badly.\n\nOf course there are jokes which people of most nationalities, if they can grasp the language, can laugh at. Like the chap in northern China who always ate at a government canteen.\n\n'All the time cabbage!' he nagged, 'cabbage, cabbage, cabbage! 'Can't you give us a choice?'\n\n'Of course you can have a choice,' came the chef's reply.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214208, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "29\n\nXiaoping.' The second said, 'I'm here because I opposed Deng Xiaoping.' The two turned to the third who piped up, 'I am Deng Xiaoping.' Deng was, of course, incarcerated for a spell during the Cultural Revolution.\n\nGenerations of Chinese have endured hard lives and they frequently surprise Westerners by laughing at things which are construed in the West as horrible and cruel (Bonavia, 1980:59). 'Blood and guts' at the cinema are examples, although a nervous giggle is perhaps a better description than an outright laugh. Use of this 'safety valve' not only rejuvenates the mind and body but also diffuses anger. Humour and laughter help relieve stress and tension and the immune functions which they bring into being can sometimes help one get out of a trying, embarrassing or difficult situation.\n\nYou will sometimes see a Chinese who has been jaywalking, and has had a close shave with a car, or someone who drops his camera, grinning, or even giving a mild laugh. This reaction provides an escape mechanism. A giggle can make the serious seem ‘unserious' and bring about counterproductive results. Vittachi, the Hong Kong comic, has pointed out to the author that it is by no means confined to Chinese. Other Asians, such as Vietnamese, use 'laughter' to express embarrassment. One not infrequently sees bafflement (or even anger) on the face of a Westerner who tells the Hanoi custom officer that his ticket has been stolen, only to see the officer break into a nervous giggle.\n\nIn fact, the practice is not even purely Asian. The author recalls during World War Two when even British conscripts learned to laugh at the 'horrific' in order to adjust to the situation. If you could go into battle singing the song, 'Hurrah for the Next Man to Die!' you were better able to shrug off death and less likely to go 'shell happy.' Humour acts as a kind of release and can be borne out of pain. Sigmund Freud wrote a dull paper entitled, 'Jokes and their relation to the unconscious,' in which he stated that humorous laughter was a kind of catharsis, a release of tension that returns the body and mind to a state of homeostasis or equilibrium after stress (Freud, 1960).\n\nThe fact that humour can be born out of pain gives rise to the saying: 'I have migraine at the moment and everything seems funny in a peculiar (mirthless) sort of way.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214212, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "33\n\nThen there is another tale which goes as follows (Giles, 1925: Joke64): A Chinese chess player was proud of his ability, although on one occasion he lost three games in a row. The next day a friend asked him how he got on. 'I didn't win the first game,' he replied, and my opponent didn't lose the second.' 'As to the last game, I asked him to agree to a draw but he wouldn't.' Many Westerners talk as if face, which really amounts to 'worth' in the eyes of others, is only important to Asians. U Thant, the Burmese diplomat who was made Permanent Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1962, was fond of saying: 'Face is very important to Europeans.' While the author does not disagree, it would appear Asians place even more emphasis on it than do Westerners.\n\nMuch has been made recently by the media about senior civil servants not being tolerant of Radio Television Hong Kong's political satire when the foolishness of the establishment has been highlighted in an amusing way (Yeung, 1998a). It amounts to what is accepted (especially in the West) as good clean fun being taken seriously by some Hong Kong government servants (Yeung, 1998b). It largely boils down to the fact that, when the joke is on them and they lose face, civil servants are unable to accept it in good heart.\n\nAlthough a bit of a struggle at first, many Japanese politicians have now, apparently, learned more recently to accept criticism, passing it off by describing it as a form of 'art' and saying the attention he receives shows that he must be popular.10 'After all, we do not criticise those who we do not think much of, but we do criticise those who we love and esteem.'\n\nWhen China's President, Jiang Zemin, visited Hong Kong in 1998, a photograph in the Hong Kong Standard, on July 1, showed him travelling in the back of a car with his seat-belt unbuckled. Most Europeans (and some more westernised Chinese too) took this as good, mischievous fun. A letter in the same newspaper, on July 5 from a Chinese living in the United States, however, asked whether, if during colonial days a member of the British Royal Family who was visiting Hong Kong, or a British governor were caught not wearing a seat-belt, whether it would have been publicised (and by implication made fun of) in a similar way. This Overseas Chinese felt it was wrong to publish the photograph of Jiang Zemin in the Standard. In fairness, of course, until", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214213, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "34\n\ncomparatively recently it was unbecoming to make fun of the British Royal Family in public in Britain.\n\nVittachi, in his letter to the author, says that although stories which pour scorn on leaders are loved by Westerners, Asian audiences sometimes appear a little scared when he does this. As Lee Kuan Yew recounted, by and large an Asian leader is not expected to accept gibes to his face. In Lee's own words, regarding how his political party acted (and largely acts) when governing Singapore: We argued and thrashed out our differences in private. In public we never contradicted each other (Minchin, 1986:343). It can be added that an Asian leader is likely, nevertheless, to receive a few well-aimed jabs behind his back, although, really to enjoy a joke, many will argue there has to be a 'victim.'\n\nAlthough the pointed joke and the sardonic barb can bring a great deal of trouble (Matthews, 1983:368), Western comedians are fond of using sarcasm with contemptuous language that is intended, in the extreme, to mock, insult or convey scorn. But in Hong Kong (and even more so on the People's Republic Mainland), it is so easy to cross the line and show disrespect (so that the person loses face). The Hong Kong film star and comedian Michael Hui Kwoon-man, a Hong Kong Chinese University graduate, explained to the author that he heard a western comedian in the United States say during a performance: 'What me? I'm so fat and healthy how could I possibly have AIDS?' 'Only people like Michael Jackson, who is skinny and ugly, have AIDS.' The Michael Jackson club in America, consisting mainly of young people, really enjoyed the joke about their idol and roared with glee.\n\nLater, Michael Hui returned to Hong Kong and tried the same joke out at the Anita Mui Fan Club. It fell completely flat. Members sat there looking glum, according to Hui. To be fair however, not all Westerners, especially the more sedate and elderly, would consider this joke funny. Also, of course, the fact that Michael Hui was joking about Anita Mui, a woman, made a difference.\n\nConclusions\n\nAfter researching and preparing this paper it is still not possible to decide positively whether there really are cognitive differences between", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214289, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "110\n\ndying which already barricaded the street. The head of the column fell literally \"like the Moor's swath at the close of day.\"\n\n# 11\n\nThe form of cannon termed a howitzer was intended for firing its projectiles in a high trajectory. In effect it is a compromised mortar, mounted on a carriage so as to be more easily transported. Because this lessened the effectiveness of shot or grape they were mainly used with shell, which they could lob over defensive walls.\n\nIn order to be effective it was, of course, necessary to correctly aim the cannon. The cannon barrel was mounted on a carriage that could be slewed sideways, but the larger pieces mounted on board ships were quite cumbersome, and were mainly aligned with the ship. Guns were elevated with a screw jack or wedges, to give the correct range. The aiming, or 'laying' of a gun was a skilled task, as indeed was the whole operation of a gun. This had led to artillery men being formed into the separate regiments of the Royal Artillery. Troops or batteries of artillery were then attached to infantry forces.\n\nFinally the European troops had Congreve rockets. These carried a cast hollow head allowing bursting charges and a fuse to be inserted, thus being a type of shell. They were relatively inaccurate as they had a tendency to veer off line, and many officers at the time considered them to be of doubtful use. However, they certainly had a psychological effect against unsophisticated natives in some of the Victorian wars, and there is no doubt that they did inflict casualties. There is one spectacular example of a rocket finding the magazine of a junk and blowing it up.12\n\n12\n\nAs for the Chinese, on the face of it their guns were similar to those of the European forces. They were muzzle loaders and smooth bored, however, the quality of the guns themselves was not good. The Chinese method of casting cannon was with the muzzle down. This meant that the quality of the metal at the breech was suspect and in spite of using more metal, the guns were more likely to burst.13 The extra metal also made them very heavy,14 and this would make them difficult to aim.\n\nMost of the Chinese guns were mounted in shore batteries, al-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214332, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "154\n\nMany of the illustrations tended now to concentrate on showing the human side of the Chinese, and the related narratives discuss their subjects in terms which would have been particularly welcome to the British reader, who would for example have approved the love of animals spoken of in relation to the illustration, \"Peking Cab.\" \"It is astonishing how the Chinese manage their animals by kindness. Refractory mules which could not be persuaded to go into the shafts by threats from Indians are as obedient as dogs at a word from a Chinese carter, a stranger to them. The Pekinites are very fond of horses.\n\n>> 31\n\nThere is further evidence of rapprochement in the fact that there is now a degree of westernisation in the delineation of Chinese features, particularly in \"A Group of Chinese.\"52\n\nAs a whole, the illustrations and related narratives now seek to create a sense of fellow-feeling, and to win a recognition by the British Public that the Chinese people as a whole are fellow-dwellers on Planet Earth. The description of Chinese boys on the ice is a good example of this. \"The Peiho ... is frozen over, and the ponds from Pekin to Taku are solid blocks of ice, on which numerous boys disport themselves much in the same way that small boys do in other parts of the world. There is, however, one dodge I never saw before. A kind of skates, made of Indian corn stalks, are placed, not fixed, under the feet, and the boys, grasping poles, shove themselves along at a glorious pace. Of course, now and then they meet with a fall but up they get again, laughing heartily at their little accidents, and begin life afresh. Nothing can be more glorious than this steady frost, with the cloudless, clear skies, the sun shining all day, the moon all night, making the ice sparkle like diamonds, and producing a most exhilarating effect in the human frame.\"53\n\nComparatively few of the illustrations, now, return to the topics of domination, retribution and punishment. Those there are may be represented by a spirited portrait of Lord Elgin on horseback,54 and by illustrations entitled, \"Weighing the Compensation Money Exacted from the Chinese for the Released British Prisoners and for the Families of those who were Murdered,\" \"Arrival at Tien-Tsin of a portion of the Chinese Indemnity Money, Escorted by Chinese Troops,\"55 and \"French Spoils From China Recently Exhibited at the Palace of the Tuileries.\"57 In keeping with this, the focus here returns briefly to those who had suffered at Chinese hands. The Editor glances at the financial generos-\n\n56", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 272, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "238 \n\nment you will undoubtedly form a mental picture of the appearance of the mountain in time to come. The Chinese of course never dreamt, in 1842, when, by the Treaty of Nanking, they ceded to the English this barren rock, instead of the flourishing island of Chusan, what the red headed barbarians would turn it into. Even less likely were they to have dreamt that they, the Chinese, would with their own hands, be heaving these stones, laying walls, building parapets, mounting cannons... and round their own necks to boot.\n\nAll this has been done. True, the city of Victoria consists of one street but there are almost no houses on it; I erroneously said houses earlier: these are all palaces whose foundations bathe in the bay. The balconies of these palaces face the sea and are shaded by those scraggy bananas and palms which are visible from the searoad and which have the same effect on the landscape, as a forced smile on a sad face.\n\nI didn't go ashore for about three days: I wasn't feeling well and it wasn't inviting. There was no freshness or freedom in the air. Finally on the fourth day P. and I took the ship's boat, first going alongside the Chinese quarter, consisting of two sections of population: one section lives on boats, the other in little houses which are all clustered together and cling to the very shore and some of which are fixed on piles in the water. The boats, with families on board, stand in rows in the one place, or move about the harbour, engaging in fishing, trading and if not that, then transporting people from ship to shore and back. They all have cabin-like awnings. One sees family scenes everywhere: eating, stitching, a mother breast-feeding a baby.\n\nWe pulled in to one of the numerous piers in the European quarter and through some sort of merchant house, through a crowd of Chinese, vendors and porters (coolies), through all manner of odours, we squeezed our way to the street, thinking we would be able to breathe freely there. But on drawing breath, we seemed to be swallowing hot steam and then after only a few steps we had to think about a refuge where we could shelter in real, cool shade and not that which lay along one side of the splendid street. The sun burns here, even in the shade. We ran to some shop where bales of all kinds of goods lay heaped on the floor and, incidentally, with pharmaceutical items on the shelves. For some reason they also sold soda water and aerated lemonade. Here too the English drink it with a touch of brandy, that is, cognac, ostensi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214790, "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "170\n\nplace, with a hearty lack of nostalgic longings for ancestral roots - yet the sentimental or strategic nostalgia of overseas Chinese for their ancestral homes in China has also been well documented and described.1\n\nNostalgia is of course now commodified, fragmented and eclectic, as befits a late capitalist era in which global capital determines shifting allocations of labour. Nostalgia, and pastiche of the past, is almost commonplace, and through what was called the 'post-modern' eclectically mixes emblems of diverse eras of the past to provoke a momentary pang. The irony of Flagstaff House's transformation from a military site to a tea museum, noted by Abbas (1997), is a good example of this post-modern bricolage of meanings and historical ironies typified by Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans (Harvey 1989), which we can find too in the toothless attendants and bright paints of restored Colonial Williamsburg (Lowenthal 1985), or the imaginary nostalgia of Disneyland disguising the unreality of America itself (Baudrillard 1994). But here I should like to draw attention to the importance of nostalgia as, if you like, a strategic resource for knitting together communities which have become dispersed and fragmented.\n\nWhile nostalgia adopts a temporal form (nostalgia for the past), it essentially implies the sense of belonging to a place (nostalgia for a place), as in its etymological roots. Can there be nostalgia for a taste, a face, an experience of abandon, a vanished emotion or capacity? Of course there can, but these experiences are all associated with a particular locus, a particular time and place (in the past). That place may never have existed, as writers from Lowenthal and Lovell to Mitchell remark, or not have existed for those who pine for it; the remembered, longed-for experience may be purely fictive and imaginative. Then again, it may have been very much a reality the loss of which is regretted; it was a real, living community we mourn the passage of. In any case, through the power of memory and recollection, that experience, that community, that place, can hardly be recollected exactly as it was, so that there is an inevitably imaginative, fictive quality to the faculty or power of nostalgia.\n\nIn one sense, it may not matter very much whether the lost object was, or was not, a reality, since that reality will have been transformed through the nostalgic recollection of it. Yet, in another sense, it does matter that not all nostalgia is necessarily imaginary; that real separations, real partings, may be what are being mourned.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214796, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "176\n\nimaginings of more global others. The imaginary China which is depicted in writings and videos made by overseas Hmong is of course quite different from the China of actuality which some of them may visit, and yet these imagined recreations of place and locality are in some cases supported and reproduced through the cultural productions of local artistes and performers within China, as Schein (2000) has recently shown.\n\nI should like to present these kinds of returns as importantly powered by a nostalgia born in general from separation (a kind of metaphysics of place, rather than a metaphysics of absence), and these reconstructions of an often idyllic past as part of an attempt to re-appropriate, to forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place; a kind of resistance, if you like. And, as communities have dispersed, and become transnational and cosmopolitan, so anthropology has had to change, from the older near-exclusive focus on local communities, to a discipline concerned with the wide-reaching effects of global capitalism, international tourism, and the production of media images which travel far and fast across cultural boundaries.\n\nMy own very first work on the Hmong was concerned with the rapid adoption by Hmong resettled as refugees in the United States of long-distance telephone calls to keep in touch with lineage relatives, and the recourse to telephone directories to find lineage members of the same surname with whom they could stay and from whom traditional lineage hospitality could be expected when they visited other cities. I saw this very rapid adoption of modern communications technology by a people who were still largely without writing skills (although they could read surnames in telephone directories!) as a striking instance of the power of a lineage society to reconstitute itself in a new global setting (a little like the Man lineage of Hong Kong did), and of the capacity of the still largely oral traditions of the Hmong to leapfrog entirely the stage of literacy which Marshall McLuhan had seen as the inevitable precursor to a new age of oral and visual communications (Tapp 1982).\n\nAnthropologists, and social scientists in general, can perhaps be criticised for being totally unable to provide any simple or easy answers to questions about whether the use of modern telecommunications is necessarily liberating and empowering for the individual, or", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214857, "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": 272, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "240\n\ncommittees. As was common in an earlier age, he addressed many people by their surnames, such as 'Hayes', as James sometimes likes to remind me. Nevertheless J R Jones was not a snob.\n\nHe made old bones and the last trumpet call sounded in January 1976, when he was 88. He was lucky to be buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery (previously called the Colonial Cemetery), in Happy Valley. It was already just about full at the time.\n\nOn his tombstone are two lines of Welsh, which are supposed to mean so I am informed: An affectionate son who loved life (literal translation, 'who loved the world'). I have been informed by a Welsh scholar, however, who teaches at the University of Wales, that there are mistakes in this Welsh inscription. This is a pity but fortunately, hardly anyone notices it. Few people in Hong Kong can read Welsh.\n\nI could, of course, name many other interesting people who have been members of our Branch, many of whom I knew personally. Unfortunately, time will not permit. There was the late John Romer, the 'snake king' (ser wong), who later established the Natural History Society. There was 'big,' in every sense of the word, Ken Barnett who had a splendid command of various Chinese dialects. Governor Sir Samuel Bonham (1848 to 1854) believed that studying Chinese addled the brain. But it did not apply in Ken's case. He had a prodigious intellect. In prison camp, according to Dr Solomon Bard a past RAS member, they used to play mental chess. But no one could keep pace with Ken Barnett.\n\nAims of this conference\n\nWhy are we here?\n\nAs with many of the contributors to our Journal you will find that our speakers here today, while they may not be full-time academics, have lived through or had access to important periods of local history. For instance Mr Tim Ko, who will be speaking this afternoon. His family came to Hong Kong around 1850. The male members worked as stonecutters and masons. They came here because business was brisk. Five generations of Tim's family have lived in Hong Kong. If anyone can describe himself as a true 'Hongkonger' it is Tim Ko.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214959, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "10\n\nLin Zexu and the Conflict\n\nLin Zexu is not the subject of this paper. However, since he is the central figure of the Symposium, it seems appropriate to devote some little space to this extraordinary man, who no doubt cast a giant shadow on Anglo-Chinese relations.\n\nEmperor Qianlong, great emperor though he was, apart from issuing prohibitive edicts seems to have done little to stop the opium trade. Jiaqing (1796-1820) who followed was equally ineffectual. His successor Daoguang (1821-1850), however, was a man of a different mettle. In 1836, Imperial edicts having failed to check the opium trade, the problem was hotly debated in Beijing. There was one faction that favoured legalizing opium importation and so turning it to public profit. To this Emperor Daoguang replied: 'It is true, I cannot prevent the introduction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people,\" noble words by a great monarch. In 1839, deciding to take forceful action, the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as his Commissioner charged with total eradication of the infamous trade. Commissioner Lin journeyed to Guangzhou and immediately ordered all commerce in opium to be stopped. He further demanded that merchants should surrender all stocks and sign a bond to cease importing, in effect laying the factories to siege. This much is well documented as well as the ensuing course of events which led to the 1st Opium War.\n\nLin Zexu presents an interesting character study of contrasting portraits. For many years the British sources had portrayed him as 'fierce, unscrupulous, and fanatical.'\" Most of the known paintings of him show a fierce, pugnacious countenance. It is, therefore, gratifying to include in this paper a reproduction of a rare painting depicting him as a handsome man with a dignified yet kind expression on his face.** Gradually the picture has changed and Lin is being recognized as an intelligent and learned man, a capable and resolute official, a competent administrator, and a fair and just dispenser of the law; most importantly, he was incorruptible. A modern, progressive man, he observed, however, all the Chinese ceremonies, made sacrifices at temples, and made offerings to the spirits of his ancestors. He liked poetry, which he practised for his own leisure. A man who, at the height of the opium", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215167, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "223\n\nA Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\ndates. Also, with the introduction of the Apprenticeship Act and the Designated Trades Act, part-time day-release courses built up rapidly.\n\nBut in those days, although useful as guides, there was a tendency to put too much faith in the Government Labour Department manpower surveys. For example, if a survey showed that 129 tool and die makers were required, some planners seemed to believe that this exact number could be trained in a technical institute, and, from then on, it was just a question of slotting them into vacancies when they completed their course. Insufficient thought was often given to broad-based technical education to suit the rapid pace of change. After all, Hong Kong now has little manufacturing.\n\nBut retracing our steps yet again back to the latter half of the 1960s, a proposal was made that the old Technical College should be upgraded to become a Polytechnic. This proposal really emanated from Britain in the wake of the Polytechnic Act which had then been introduced there. Not everyone agreed with the proposal. Some would have preferred that the Technical College in Hong Kong remained as such and a new polytechnic be built on an entirely new campus.\n\nWhat happened is now history. The Technical College was upgraded to Polytechnic status in 1972 and, during the 1970s, in spite of some growing pains, the rate of expansion has been equalled in few parts of the world. Today the Polytechnic University, as it became in 1994, is one of the best examples you can find anywhere of ‘academic drift', starting life as a humble trade school. It has much to be proud of.\n\nFinal Thoughts\n\nIn recent months, especially since the Handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, education - including technical education - has been under the microscope. Today it is fashionable to denigrate Hong Kong's past education", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215472, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "198\n\nand rock falls. We saw one such team, hard at it, with a pot-bellied sergeant doing the important job of watching them.\n\nA dignified repast\n\nOn the far side of Haa we took the road up the valley to inspect a small village, Nagyel - we were even able to go inside one of the houses and poke around. Everything was, of course, wooden and very solid. But at 9,000 feet we were a bit puffed and in need of lunch - and so headed back down the valley again. Very soon we realised that we ourselves were the visiting dignitaries for whom the large table and chairs had been set up. We had not up to now realised, but in addition to our two minibuses and the smaller one for our baggage, there was yet another. This fourth vehicle contained the catering crew of three, who had gone ahead and prepared a splendid al fresco buffet lunch. What a treat! An excellent spread and served most professionally. And not over the top at all, now we realised who the diners were to be.\n\nThe second night's accommodation was waiting for us in the capital city, Thimpu. As that was four hours away we had no time to hang around, but we were able to stop for a treat along the way. This was the Napchong Hadang Monastery, where we found we were just in time for a puja for the water god. This ritual, dating from the 17th century, lasts for three days, the third day involving a long procession through the nearby villages. We were there on the first day, and were lucky enough to enter the temple and see two lines of red-robed monks, sitting cross-legged on the floor facing each other and eating rice from their bowls. At the head of the lines was the master. When he started chanting the rice bowls disappeared under the robes pretty sharpish as all were expected to join in. The older monks, sitting nearer the master, had drums whilst the younger ones had enough to do to try not to stare at 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society. To one side were two, as it were, oboists and to the other were two, as it might have been, bass horn players. The whole ensemble was absolutely magical, something I had never seen nor heard except on the National Geographic Channel.\n\nThe three further hours to Thimpu were spent in happy conversation on the bus, the subjects ranging from Tung Chi Wah's chances of a second term to African insects that lay their eggs under your toenails. I don't know how I did it in the face of such intellectual challenge, but I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215475, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 252, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "201\n\nus and welcomed us, at the same time giving a brief background history of his library. With very limited resources, he has made good use of his previous 20 years experience with the National Museum to bring order and inspiration to his new project. There are a great many books in the Bhutanese language, mainly on Buddhist issues, and an increasing number of books in English and other foreign languages. We increased this number further by presenting the library with a full set of HKBRAS Journals.\n\nLunch was in the delightfully named Plum's Café, including a slice of their famous apple pie. As shopping never seemed to be far from the thoughts of us Honkies, a visit to Choki Handicrafts and then the National Handicrafts Emporium sated the appetite sufficiently to face the next leg of the journey.\n\nThis was to be an enormous climb up to the Dochu-la pass (10,140 feet), being the gateway to the Wangdiphodrang Valley. The weather had been fine on the trip so far, but coming to the top of the pass the clouds descended, and with them came snow. However, as luck would have it, just as the army of RAS photographers took up their positions the clouds lifted, a rainbow appeared and we were offered enormous vistas of Himalayan peaks stretching off to the west. Thereafter the weather became (and stayed) clear as a bell.\n\nThat bell rings a name\n\nDid I say bell? Was that a yak approaching? No. In one of the handicraft shops in Thimpu, Brian had bought himself a brass bell. We were to hear that bell a lot in the coming days. It was to become his method of signalling to his unruly brood that it was time to board the buses and move on. So effective was it that when a “real” bell sounded in one of the temples, it had the effect of causing a stampede to the transport by all of us - except, of course, Brian.\n\nFrom the heights of the pass it was a very long and bouncy ride down to the hotel in Punakha at 4,300 feet. Thankfully, it was an early dinner and early to bed. Orders had already been issued for a 6:15 a.m. wake-up the following day. Even though the guide told us that we were in a sub-tropical climate zone, I had to break open my Chinese Emporium silk long johns before climbing in to bed. (Any man thinking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "204\n\nlast leg of the day's journey, to Bumthang.\n\nWe were now passing into Central Bhutan. The country gets more remote and primitive the further east one goes. The road by now resembled a quarry, thanks to the ambitious road-widening project that has been under way since late 2000. Until then, road vehicles were required to cross into Indian Assam in order to get to the east of Bhutan. This route became less favoured when some Indian militants shot a Bhutanese bus driver in order to prove a point. (Brian did not mention that in the briefing notes!) To compensate for the road, the trees had become particularly impressive. We were now driving through gigantic pine trees, just like in the Hundred Acre Wood. I could easily imagine Pooh Bear falling out of one, had he been there.\n\nAbout half-an-hour short of Jakar, the capital of Bumthang province, two or three woollen goods shops formed the nucleus of a knitting and weaving industry, so of course we had to stop and boost the local economy. I saw a scarf I particularly liked. The young lady in the shop told me it was 300 ngultrum (about HK$50), I have never really learned the art of bargaining, and so I offered her 250 and a large hopeful smile. She smiled back, but the smile quickly faded. 'Excuse me' she said, 'there's 50 missing.' I was so flustered that I tried to pretend that it was all my fault and I quickly gave her the missing note. I hung around a bit to listen to how the hardened shoppers managed to bring the price down, but I had to bow out in the face of such expertise and experience.\n\nWe reached the hotel at dusk and found it to be rather like a ski lodge - fresh and inviting on the outside and warm and toasty on the inside, with pine-clad walls. Welcoming tea and bickies were laid out in the communal sitting area of the dining room. The bedroom was also toasty, almost a sauna. The source of the heat was a wood-burning stove. This gave off a terrific amount of heat, but burnt through its contents very quickly. When I returned to the bedroom after dinner it was like stepping into a fridge, so quickly had the heat disappeared. As the electricity supply was rather intermittent, each room was provided with a candle. ‘Ah-ha' I thought, ‘salvation.' I lit the candle and held it against a thinnish piece of pine for no less than fifteen shivering minutes, but the blighter wouldn't light. So I had to climb into bed, wondering about such news headlines as: ‘Careless cigarette\n\nPage 205\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215517, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 294, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "244\n\nin the Happy Valley.'\" The year of 1845 is referred to as the year when the Colonial Cemetery was opened, in a number of official records.24 This was also suggested by a contemporary local historian.25\n\nThe new site for the Catholic cemetery, later to be named St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery and adjacent to the Colonial Cemetery, was granted on 7th January 1848.26 At the same time, it was requested that the use of the old burial ground should be discontinued:\n\nHis Excellency the Governor in Council has been pleased to grant the Ground next to and North of the English Burial Ground in the Valley of Wong-nei-chong, for the purpose of a place of Burial for Roman Catholics, provided you distinctly agree to discontinue for the future all internments whatever in your present burial ground.27\n\nDeath and suffering continued to trouble the troops into the 1850s. A British soldier who was posted to Hong Kong between 1850 and 1854 had recorded not only the sorrowful condition, but also commented about the location of the race-course:\n\nDuring July, August and September [1850], we buried about 300 men. I never seen or heard anything like the epidemic that got amongst the men and every one, native and European has this sickness... Every day at this time July and August three dead bodies into the hearse at once off to the Happy Valley (grave yard named)... At this time October 1850 the remnants of the 59th were about 250 and 150 of these were either in hospital on shore or on board the Minden Hospital Ship across the harbour, so many men dying...\n\nEvery year we had the races at the Happy Valley Course. On the main road running around the Race Course in Happy Valley opposite the Grand Stand was the burying ground where so many of our comrades lay buried... I always considered the Race Course was in the wrong place, as the sight of the grave yard generally dampened my spirits and took all pleasure away at these races...\n\nBy the mid 1850s, it was thought that the Colonial Cemetery had already been nearly full, and it became a subject of discussion in a local newspaper:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215535, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 312, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "262\n\nCemetery.\n\nTsun Wan Christian Cemetery\n\nTsuen Wan\n\n1912\n\nHau Pui Loong Cemetery\n\nMa Tau Wat\n\n1913\n\nRemoval of last graves was\n\nordered 1948.\n\n*Chinese Permanent Cemetery\n\nAp Lei Chau Cemetery\n\nAberdeen\n\nAp Lei Chau\n\n1913\n\n1014\n\nRemoval of all urns was\n\nordered 1949.\n\nChinese Christian Cemetery\n\nNew Kowloon\n\n1919\n\nInland Lot No. 5\n\nLocation not known.\n\nKowloon Cemeteries\n\nHo Man Tin\n\n1921\n\nCemeteries were split into\n\n*Race Course Fire Memorial and\n\nCemetery\n\nSo Kon Po\n\nfour 1930.\n\nCompleted 1922.\n\nChristian Chinese Cemetery\n\nStanley\n\n1924\n\n*New Kowloon Cemetery No. 2\n\nNgau Chi Wan\n\n1928\n\nErected for the Little Sisters\n\nof the Poor.\n\n*Castle Peak Christian Cemetery\n\nCastle Peak\n\nEarliest graves: 1928\n\nRoman Catholic Cemetery\n\nKowloon Cemetery No. I\n\nHo Man Tin\n\n1930\n\nHo Man Tin\n\n1930\n\nErected for European\n\nProtestants.\n\nKowloon Cemetery No. 2\n\nHo Man Tin\n\n1930\n\nErected for Chinese.\n\nKowloon Cemetery No. 3\n\n*New Kowloon Cemetery No. 5\n\n*Song Him Tong\n\nSung Chan Wui Kei Tuk Kau Fan Cheung\n\nHo Man Tin\n\n1930\n\nErected for Muslims.\n\nDiamond Hill\n\n1931\n\nFan Ling\n\n1931\n\n*Cheung Chau Chinese Christian\n\nCemetery\n\nCheung Chau\n\n1931\n\n*Tao Fung Shan Christian Cemetery\n\nSha Tin\n\nEarliest graves: 1931\n\n*Tai O Cemetery\n\nTai O\n\n1932\n\nNew Stanley Cemetery\n\nStanley\n\n1933\n\nNew Kowloon Cemetery No. 6\n\nShek Kip Mei\n\n1933\n\nIntended for European\n\nProtestants, details not known.\n\n*Sai Kung Catholic Cemetery\n\n*Chinese Permanent Cemetery\n\n*New Kowloon Cemetery No. 7\n\nSai Kung\n\nTsuen Wan\n\nHammer Hill\n\n1934\n\n1935\n\n1935\n\nExtension was approved 1941,\n\nExtension might have been renamed\n\n*Hammer Hill Urn Cemetery\n\nHammer Hill\n\n1938\n\nNew Kowloon Cemetery No. 8\n\nlater.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215839, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "71\n\nthe fact that this could, and certainly did, happen!\n\nInvitation cards\n\nInvitation cards were the very bedrock of formality. The event, place and time, would of course be stated, together with the names of the principal officiating guests (government officials, prominent persons and local dignitaries); and if an association was the host, the cards might list the names of members of the organizing or current committees.\n\nLet me describe one of these productions, the invitation card received for the Ta Chiu held at Kam Tin in the Yuen Long District of the New Territories in 1975. Typical of the genre, the card consists of a double sheet of glossy red paper, printed in gold characters on all four sides, but with the recipient's name and office on Sheet 1, the front face, brushed in black ink. Sheet 1 also provided the sender's details, and the address of the invitee, since invitations were usually sent by post. Sheet 2 was the formal notification of the event, Sheet 3 contained the details of the opening ceremony, and Sheet 4, the back face, gave details of the organizing committee and elders. The wording followed the polite literary phraseology long in use for such occasions. The separate items of the opening ceremony, which would all be announced in sequence by a 'master of ceremonies' on the day, ran as follows:\n\n1. Congregate (at the ceremonial site)\n\n2. Invited guests to take their seats\n\n3. Ribbon cutting by the presiding official guest\n\n4. Chairman's speech\n\n5. Speech by presiding official\n\n6. Presentation of commemorative banners etc.\n\n7. Speech of thanks (to individuals and organizations)\n\n8. Photographs\n\n9. Ceremony declared over\n\n10. Lion and unicorn dances\n\n11. Vegetarian repast [no meat was to be eaten over the ritual period]\n\nThough not stated on this invitation card, it was usual in events of this sort, in which the deities were being asked to protect and bless the local community, for the managers and principal guests to pay their combined respects through placing incense sticks at one of the temporary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216100, "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": 399, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "333\n\nSuyin's autobiographical novel, A Many Splendoured Thing, was partly shot there in the mid-1950s. In real life the boyfriend, a war correspondent killed in Korea, was British. In the film he miraculously became an American.\n\nI frequently walked past the FCC on Saturday nights when riotous parties were in full swing. The old number 41, \"Fairview,\" was the first private residence in the territory to have a lift. This came right up from road level. The house depended on water from a watercourse, on Po Shan Road, for flushing toilets. There is an artist's embellished painting of the old \"Fairview\" in the Hong Kong Museum of Art's collection at Tsim Sha Tsui.\n\nRemaining from the days when it was occupied by a private family, the master bedroom had four bell-pulls. These were connected to the bedrooms of his four concubines. In fact, during his lifetime he was said to have had eight (some say nine) concubines. This was by no means unusual. When a rich Hong Kong man went to the United States in the 1930s, a headline in a newspaper read, 'Here comes the man with 20 wives!'\n\nA Chinese could legally take a concubine up until October 1971, just as up until the 1960s most weddings were customary Chinese marriages. Some concubines taken before October 1971 remain legal secondary wives to this day. There was, of course, a customary ceremony for concubines too and they had their place in the hierarchy of the family. I did know families however where, when the principal wife found out the old man had “another woman,” she was brought in to live with the family. There, the principal wife could keep an eye on her. She was not infrequently made by the first wife to live and eat with the servants. Later, if the first wife died, the concubine, who was usually quite a bit younger, sometimes took her place as a “fill the room” (t' in fong) as a succeeding main wife is known.\n\nAnother important event, in October 1971, was the legislation that came into force making it compulsory for everyone to have at least one day's holiday a week. Up until then, certainly in the 1950s, there would be no problem with crowds on beaches. But no, it was not all work and no play and I swam in the Cross-harbour Race in 1955 and took part in the 42 mile 'Round the Island Walkathon' the following year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216102, "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": 401, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "335\n\nOther Ranks Coloured\n\nAT'S (Auxiliary Territorial Service - women)\n\nBut of course race was not just something for westerners. It was not so dissimilar for some Chinese. I have a friend who said to her daughter, ‘All right, you can go to Britain to study. But you must promise you will never marry a westerner.' Such views are still not so uncommon. There is an obituary in the HKBRAS Journal, Vol. 27, 1987, page 5, for RAS member KMA Barnett OBE. The writer suggested that Barnett's 'occasional sourness could be traced to a resentment that his (most happy) marriage to a Chinese had blocked his promotion.' The writer also said that Barnett was inclined to believe that AIDS was a divine (or nature's) deserved punishment for societies which tolerated, even glamorised, “deviants.”\n\nIn the case of my own Anglo-Chinese wedding, although I did receive a certain amount of ostracism from a few colleagues in the early days, most accepted my marriage without too much difficulty. Certainly I received no objections from my employer, the Hong Kong Government. In my case I was married in the morning and, in the afternoon, my Chinese wife and I were invited to the Governor's garden party on the lawn at Government House. This was held annually, on the Queen's Birthday, 21 April, which was then a public holiday. We held a Chinese dinner that evening, in the old Sun Ya Restaurant on Nathan Road. The cost was $130 per Chinese table each seating 12 persons.\n\nMany people, certainly pre-World War Two, took the view that stratification was correct and necessary as lifestyles of the Chinese and westerners differed so considerably. The Chinese, at least outwardly, were not too disturbed by racial discrimination. They took it all quite stoically. After all, they knew who was really superior. Was not their country the Middle Kingdom, with a complex culture and a continuous civilisation going back 5,000 years? They did not want to live on the Peak anyway, it was far too humid up there. Yes, like the British, at heart the Chinese knew who the superior beings really were. Today, while there is still some class distinction and snobbery in the Territory, both among Europeans and Chinese, the old days of racial discrimination have fortunately largely gone. Mixed marriages make the world go round.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216147, "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": 446, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "380\n\nFinally, there was a synopsis of the book and of Han Suyin to write and the whole thing then went off for printing. This was a nail-biting period because I know, from personal experience, that even perfect texts can somehow get mangled during the printing process. However, Henry duly produced \"Job 1,\" which I, in turn, mailed off to Teresa. All was quiet for several days until an e-mail arrived from Teresa saying that the book was perfect! There were celebrations in both Katowice and Hong Kong that day.\n\nAnother 999 copies were produced and sent to Teresa by ship and have now been distributed or sold widely. Almost unbelievably, the book was in the Polish bestseller list for a while towards the end of 2002.\n\nThis venture, on the part of HKBRAS, coincided with a decision by Council to put HKBRAS more on the world map, a process which continues. As a member of Council subsequently remarked: 'And, of course, Poland was the obvious place to start!'\n\nI have had a profoundly fulfilling life but my life goals never, obviously enough, included publishing a book for a Polish professor of chemistry. What an amazing world it is!\n\nBy way of a postscript, Teresa and the author finally met, face-to-face, on 14 November 2002, in Katowice.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216238, "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": 537, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "471\n\n8 months of their occupation, and their view of their role here, and putting this into a satisfying chronological framework, while at the same time casting light on the internal politics and disputes within the Japanese administration. While not attempting an analysis in depth of the internal bureaucratic structures in place under the Japanese, the book in fact gives a great deal of information on this as well, incidentally showing why the Japanese administration was so grossly ineffective and inefficient in almost everything it undertook. It is also of great value in clarifying the involved and tangled politics among the various parties involved in the restoration of British rule - the Nationalist and Communist Chinese, the British, the Americans, and the Japanese. For the first time, a book puts flesh on the major figures of the Japanese period, especially Governor Isogai, so that they cease to appear as the cardboard cut-outs they have normally been seen as, and can be seen as real people. Much the same goes for the book's excellent delineation of the major Chinese elite figures and the role they played under the Japanese, especially Sir Robert Kotewall and Sir Shouson Chow. Also of the greatest value and interest is the careful discussion of the role and changing attitudes of the Chinese elite to the Japanese and the British (although this could, perhaps, have been still more nuanced than it is), and the detailed, and very satisfying, analysis of exactly how the period of the Japanese Occupation shaped and changed British attitudes to Hong Kong and its citizens in the post-War period. Fascinating stuff, and all of it immensely useful and valuable.\n\nThat is not, however, to say that the book is without flaws. Unfortunately, the first half of the first chapter, and most of the concluding Epilogue chapter, are caricatures. These sections cover Hong Kong in the 1930s, and after 1947. These give a sketch of the British in Hong Kong as lethargic, \"troglodytic,\" stupid, third-rate, racist, status-seeking, arrogant, selfish and self-centred - colonialists in the comic-book tradition, in other words - and assume that, having said so much, little else requires to be said. The account of Governor Grantham and his administration in particular cannot be said to be in any way a well-rounded portrait. Snow seems to have taken the \"Gin and Bridge all day\" description of 1930s Hong Kong at face value, which is a very great pity. There is, of course, some truth in this sketch of the British, as there is in all good caricature, but it is not the truth, but a distortion of the truth. For this reviewer, reading the first Chapter almost led me to give up reading the rest, fearing that the book would be throughout", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216326, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "34\n\nthe City, it had long been associated with the Old China Trade.\n\nIt was one of the places approved for recreational visits by the foreign merchants in the Factories, under long-standing regulations imposed by the Chinese authorities which had otherwise confined them to their own residences save on certain days of the month and to certain places\n\n20\n\nR\n\nThese locations included the famous Honam Temple, the Sea Banner Monastery, which dated from around 1600 and was one of the most celebrated temples of Canton. There was also a suburb named Fa Tei (Flower Ground), where several of the Co-hong merchants had homes and extensive gardens.21\n\nThe people in contact with foreigners\n\nThese comprised a wide range, from Manchu and Chinese high officials and their entourages, to the Canton-domiciled merchants of the Co-hong through whom the foreign merchants had to transact their business, and the many minor functionaries and underlings of civil office who were mostly locals, as well as the boat people, a race apart, who supplied essential transportation services and pilots. Most of the naval and military forces also comprised natives of the province.\n\nI shall first say something in general about the Cantonese, and then the boat people, who, between them, constituted the great majority of the persons with whom the foreigners came into contact, in the course of time spent in Canton and the Delta.\n\nThe Cantonese\n\nThe Cantonese were the principal inhabitants of Canton and indeed the province. They are to be distinguished from the Hakka and other long-established residents. They style themselves \"men of Tang,\" as opposed to \"men of Han\" on account of their having come into the South during that dynasty.22\n\nThis self-identification brings out the differences between the local inhabitants of north and south China, reminding us, also, of the well-known antipathies between the two groups and of the disparaging", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216437, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "146\n\nA contemporary comment in a western journal explained that ‘the Concert of Powers, that powerful instrument which Lord Salisbury compared to a steamroller, gravely assented to the theory of China's neutrality in principle, and did nothing else in practice. Japan's reply to the Russian charges was to cite a number of flagrant breaches of neutrality which the Russians themselves had committed. Japan, too, gravely warned China, and entered various solemn protests. These were not without effect, for by this stage of the war the Chinese were beginning, perhaps more alertly than most western nations, to be awake to the fact that the Japanese were the coming race.\"\n\nOne of Japan's protests to China was that ammunition for the Russian Army at Mukden was being transported there by way of Tientsin (Tianjin), and in one instance as many as three and a half million rounds were seized by Tientsin Customs while awaiting shipment. Peking took the only course open to it in telegraphing to local Chinese authorities that they must end these practices.\n\nA Russian breach of neutrality\n\nOn 4th October 1904 a body of Russian infantry of the 3rd Regiment of Sharpshooters, all wearing Chinese uniforms, attacked the Japanese on the road to Mukden. 'There had been a number of reports of Russian soldiers dressed in Chinese uniforms having approached Japanese troops and even attempted surprise attacks. It was also reported that the Russian Army was continuing to purchase an enormous number of Chinese uniforms. This was not only contrary to the rules of war but exposed innocent Chinese to danger owing to the impossibility of distinguishing at a distance between Russian soldiers and the real Chinese. As the Hague Convention stipulated that unlawful use of uniforms of the enemy, and the Chinese were not the enemy, the Russians deemed it a legal stratagem xüli\n\nAnother major breach of China's neutrality occurred in early January 1905 when Russian General Mistchenko determined to violate Chinese neutrality to get his army to Newchwang without danger to himself. A British correspondent’s description reads:\n\nThe Russians had no intention of playing the game fairly; the rules had been made for the Japanese and not for their own observance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216497, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "207\n\nTHE MIDDLESEX (“TYNDAREUS”) STONE\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nFor those of you who can picture Hong Kong's Victoria Peak, on the small, flat, grassy, sitting-out area in the saddle between High West and Victoria Peak, there used to lie a Boulder. This sitting out area complete with pavilion is close to where Lugard Road joins Harlech Road. The Boulder used to lie just above where Hatton Road joins Harlech Road. A ring of small stones roughly three metres in diameter, partially overgrown with grass, still marks the position. The Boulder is in its natural state except for one side which was flattened to take the original plaque. As far as can be measured the Stone is 110cms x 130cms x 71cms and it is estimated to weigh a little less than one tonne.\n\nThen suddenly one afternoon I spotted it was missing. While trying to find out what had happened to it, over the next week or so two letters appeared in the South China Morning Post. Both writers expressed concern. One letter, dated 8 April 1994, from the late Martin Booth the well-known author who spent time in Hong Kong as a child - but in later years lived in England - was headed, 'An outrage.' He said the Stone also celebrated, by association, those men of the Middlesex Regiment who so valiantly defended Hong Kong in 1941 against the Japanese. Booth went on to say that the monument was also of interest because it was erected by Lieutenant Colonel John Ward \"whose prompt action, military efficiency and strong sense of humanity saved many during the disastrous Happy Valley Race Course fire. This took place in February 1918 and has been well documented. Booth states the death toll in the fire was 570. 'That [the \"Middlesex Boulder\"] has disappeared is an outrage to local history and an insult to those it commemorates. A patch of newly seeded grass is all that remains.'\n\nThe two letters were followed by another from R I Goodwin, Director of Public Relations HQ British Forces Hong Kong, dated 18 April 1994. He stated he wished to reassure Mr Booth that the Middlesex Stone was in good hands and that it was en route back to the Regiment's safe keeping in the United Kingdom. Goodwin then went on to mix up the whole issue. He took the figure of 570 lives lost in the Hong Kong Racecourse Fire in 1918 (as quoted by Booth) and quotes this as the number of lives lost when the troopship Tyndareus was mined off South", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]