[
    {
        "id": 206960,
        "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": 31,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "The Paper Chase\n\n25\n\nSo far, we have received transfers of records from 27 different government offices, the whole now occupying nearly 6,000 feet of shelving. We have therefore passed the storage capacity of our present premises and have had to resort to additional temporary accommodation on the old naval dockyard site.\n\nWhen I came to Hong Kong I was told that practically all of the government's pre-war records had perished during the Japanese occupation. It is true that pitifully little remains of the very large accumulations which must have been in government offices in 1941, and what records did survive, with a few notable exceptions, tend to be fragmentary and unrelated to one another in time or content.\n\nNevertheless the dearth is not as great as is sometimes supposed. The Rating and Valuation Department's Rates Collection Book series, which we now hold, is practically complete from 1858 to 1952, and several large and exceedingly valuable series of 19th and pre-war 20th century Land Office records have been transferred to us from the Registrar-General's Department. These include series of correspondence files dating from 1866 to 1940, Crown and Village Rent Rolls from 1843 to 1958 and 1856 to 1960 respectively and some 90-100,000 Surrendered Title Deeds, many of which date from the middle of the 19th century, and possibly earlier.\n\nOther pre-war records have reached us from the Prisons Department, Audit, the Supreme Court, the Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers), and the Official Receiver's Office and they are still coming. Only a few days ago some twelve volumes of Judicial Department correspondence dating from 1844 to 1903 were unearthed from a great pile of lumber and rubbish in a government record store and as my staff are still quarrying in it I have no doubt that more of them will come to light.\n\nThere is no knowing what treasures may lie in the many dungeons of government's archival limbo. Some of them are so cluttered as to be virtually inaccessible, except by emptying them, and it will be years before we have prospected them all—that is, if we succeed in finding them all. Twelve years ago a very large crate of mid-19th century records was discovered quite by accident in the roof of the Supreme Court.\n\nThe loss of Hong Kong's pre-war records is regrettable but the situation is not entirely irretrievable. As many of you know, a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213263,
        "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": 85,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "65\n\nan extra $4 million because of an extension of time granted to a contractor when residents complained the district's fung shui was being disturbed. During the 1980s, amounts paid out annually by the Government varied between $500,000 and $950,000. From 1989 to 1991, ex-gratia payouts of nearly $2 million were made. The dilemma is always that if the Administration pays out on unproven claims, it will be accused of wasting taxpayers' money, and, if it does not pay, others will say the Government does not respect Chinese culture,\n\nBut as one retired Scottish civil servant explained, there are two kinds of fung shui. There is the one that villagers will accept money for to have it overridden. But nothing will compensate for actually severing the main \"dragon's vein\".\n\n'Money cannot buy good fung shui,' Tang clansmen told the Government when they turned down an offer of $1.7 million for agreeing to a 200-year-old ancestral grave being removed at Nim Wan, in the Deep Bay area, so that a landfill project could proceed. The Clan did, however, say that it would consider allowing the grave to be moved for a fung shui 'swap' scheme, and if Government demolished a police station at Ping Shan. They claim the station has for years 'crushed' good fung shui. In retaliation, the Tang Clan closed an ancient study hall and an ancestral hall along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail. At the time of writing, the dispute had still not been settled.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government has also tacitly accepted certain aspects of Chinese folk religion. Some Government offices have had Earth God shrines (82) erected outside them. An example was Murray House (near where the new Bank of China now stands), which was demolished in 1982. It had a reputation among Rating and Valuation Department staff, who worked there, of being haunted. Other Government offices which have had shrines outside them include the office of the project manager at Empire House, while it was being built in 1991, in Tsim Sha Tsui East. Also, various government project managers' offices in the New Territories have had small shrines erected outside them. Who actually paid to have these shrines set up is not clear. Again, on countless occasions, the ceremonial carving of a suckling pig, on an appropriate day, has appeared to civil servants to be well worth the expense in that it allayed concerns of staff and, afterwards, members worked better.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]