[ { "id": 204727, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n21\n\nOur greatest fear is that the boats from the shipping at Whampoa where there is a force of eight or ten hundred men may attempt to force their way to Canton to relieve us, in which case the Chinese would probably fall upon and massacre us. It is to be hoped, however, that all the foreigners there are too well aware of the imminent danger in which we would be placed by attempting to come up while matters remain in so very ticklish a position. We also expect the daily arrival of our two vessels of war, the Columbia and John Adams, and hope they will not do any act or aggression outside or at the Bogue,\n\nApril 3\n\nCaptain Elliot issued a circular today which I refer you to. Johnston, the Second Superintendant, and Thom are to accompany Pwankeikua and Saoqua to Macao and from thence to the shipping to attend to the delivery of the opium to the Chinese officer who also goes down as a special messenger from the Commissioner to receive it. They are to start at 4 p.m. in Chop boats.\n\nAt one after five Thom and Johnston, attended by Alantsae, the linguist, one of the Houqua's servants, and a Malay and a Chinese servant left the point in front of the Creek Hong in Houqua's boat and were taken to a large Chop waiting for them at anchor in front of the Factories, when they immediately got under way for Macao.\n\nFriday 5\n\nStill prisoners and hostages for the delivery of the 20,282 chests of opium surrendered by Captain Elliot to the Commissioner. We are promised that the servants shall be restored when one fourth is delivered, the passage boats be allowed to leave when one half's delivered and our guard to be removed, and that when three fourths is delivered the trade shall be commenced, and matters shall resume their former course when all is delivered. My present intention is to leave Canton so soon as the first 1,000 chests are delivered, for if there is any difficulty in completing the entire delivery we may be retained as prisoners yet a long time, and there are doubts of the entire quantity being at hand to deliver.\n\nOur breakfast and dinner is now prepared at Old Tom the linguist's house, and brought to us by coolies in covered boxes. Captain Elliot sent a letter to Macao today. Old Tom who\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204732, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "26\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nFriday 12th\n\n1* at\n\nAt nine this morning received a letter from Macao dated the 8th, in answer to mine of the 5th; all quiet there but everyone ready to be off the moment any trouble was at hand. Delano received, enclosed in mine, a chit from Russell Sturgis which contained much news. The Hercules and Austen left for the Bogue on Tuesday last to deliver their opium and were to be followed by the Jane and Aeriel. The Chinese would only let two vessels come up at a time. The Good Success left Macao on the 9th for Madras, with despatches to the British admiral on the India Station, and the Rob Roy was to leave today for Calcutta. The Exchange sailed for Manila on the 8th; the Nar† Naples, Roza and Benuo Successo and Poppy had also sailed for Manila but the letter does not say if they took opium or not.\n\nMr. Inness was on board the Hercules with Alex. Matthews and Chay. Beal36. The Hercules and Austen had in all over 5,000 chests.\n\nGave two bottles of beer to the Se-Ying37 or lieutenants on guard in the second line of boats in front of the Factories. Had a long chat with several of the officers belonging to Name Hoe's guard relative to matters in dispute. They appear exceedingly friendly but take no interest whatever in what is going on,\n\nSaturday, 13, 1839\n\nLast night at 12 o'clock Captain Elliot received a communication from the Commissioner, dated in the morning from the Bogue, in which he requests that the opium ships might be ordered to come up and anchor close to Chinn-up to deliver the opium, instead of Lankeel where there was much inconvenience owing to rough water. He also said that the compradores and cooks were ordered to return but they have not come yet. However it will take some time for the order to be generally promulgated.\n\nMidnight I have just returned from a chat of three hours duration held at the Hoppo House or \"Custom-House Station\" at the water's edge opposite our Factory between two officers, one equal to a captain and the other to a lieutenant, the Custom-House Officer and myself. The Captain, who wore a crystal button, was\n\n*Two words illegible.\n\n† Part of ship's name illegible.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204786, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n77\n\nsettlement is given below and it is sufficient to say that at first they owned little beyond their houses22 and seem to have been closely involved in fishing, at any rate in the second half of the century. When their senior elder Mr. CHUNG Fat ## (born 1876) was a boy of fifteen years old, his grandfather owned nine fishing boats of the Hoklo type. These rowing boats were manned with the help of other Hakkas, their friends and clansmen from the Tsuen Wan-Shing Mun-Pat Heung area of the present New Territories. They fished by day or night according to the season, using thread nets made in the shape of a basket and sold to them by Hoklo people. The boats were often out overnight, depending on the distance to which they went to fish and the nature of the catch. They often fished all round the Lantau coast and into Deep Bay, which is a long way for a rowing boat, though anyone who has seen the speed with which the rowers propel these craft off Cheung Chau will not be surprised at this. In 1896 Mr. CHUNG's uncle returned from Sandakan in Borneo, and took him there to work for three years, after which he came back, was married, and together with his uncles and cousins again made the sea his business. This time he did not do the fishing, but with two small sailing boats operated as a fish collector. On behalf of a shop, which was owned by a Punti of San Wui †† extraction then resident on Peng Chau, he went out to the Tanka boats fishing the neighbouring waters and bought their catch, for which he received a commission. At a later stage (1916-46) he worked two boats with which, in the summer months, he collected grass bought from the Lantau villagers opposite Peng Chau. He dried the grass and sold it the following year to fishermen for caulking their boats on a piece of land which he had bought for the purpose. By 1899 the CHUNGs had taken a lot of mortgaged land from the LUI family,23 and all this activity connected with the sea was in addition to farming paddy and vegetable fields, which was mainly carried on by the womenfolk.\n\nThese paragraphs illustrate the diversity of activities in a small coastal settlement like Peng Chau and the danger of assigning one group to its traditional role and no other. It exemplifies what, in 1840, the famous Commissioner LIN of Opium War fame reported as being a local Kwangtung saying, “Seven go to fishing, three go to the plough”, and again “Three parts mountain,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204972, "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-1965", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204976, "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-1965", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n75\n\npirate fleets appeared. The Hong Kong press was very critical of both the Navy and the Hong Kong Government, claiming that the latter was criminally careless in granting convoy and gunpowder licenses, and pointing out that scarcely a pirate junk was captured without having Hong Kong men in its crew and that many pirate junks were fitted out in Hong Kong. They omitted, however, to point out the connection between the opium trade and piracy. Opium was highly prized, and on one occasion in 1851 one hundred and fifty chests were seized from a Jardine opium clipper, and two of their European employees taken prisoner.\n\nThe steamship, more than the Royal Navy, was responsible for the decline in the old-fashioned style of piracy, in which a fleet of junks had an overwhelming advantage over a sailing ship becalmed in coastal waters. Steamships appeared on the coast in increasing numbers in the years between the two China Wars, and by the end of the Second War most of the foreign coasters were steamships. A steam hose was more effective against pirates than joss sticks, and the comparative immunity of foreign steamships from piracy was another powerful inducement for Chinese merchants to patronize them, thus weighting the balance more heavily in their favour.\n\nAn action in which the Peninsular and Oriental river steamer Canton was involved displayed other advantages which steamers brought to anti-piracy operations. The Canton was on her way from Canton to Hong Kong when she met H.M.S. Columbine, a sailing ship, engaged with a fleet of pirate junks. When the Canton arrived on the scene the wind had fallen, and the junks were using their oars and sweeps to get out of range of the Columbine's guns. The Canton took the Columbine in tow, enabling her to sink a number of the junks before they got clear. Two years later another river steamer called Canton, belonging in this case to the Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company, captured a pirate junk in the river.\n\nIn these actions, in which dozens or hundreds of junks were involved, it would probably be more accurate to describe the Chinese as bandits or rebels, than as pirates. Such fleets attacked towns and villages as often as they attacked ships, and like the Japanese pirates of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, plundered", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205330, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n85\n\nwere very small, but had very powerful engines and steering gears. Only the high passenger and freight charges enabled them to run at a profit. One of the most important cargoes from the Upper Yangtse was tung oil, which was latterly carried in bulk. This oil was used in the manufacture of high quality paints and lacquers, and was so valuable that the privilege of cleaning out the cargo pumps after discharge was one of the most highly prized perquisites of the engine room staff. The Upper Yangtse was too dangerous for night navigation, so that the Gorge boats anchored each night at dusk, and set off again at dawn. Officers on these ships were paid a special bonus after a season on the Upper River, and also given local leave.\n\nBecause they operated in inland waters, the Yangtse riverboats were exempt from certain of the manning regulations which applied to deep sea British ships. Certificated masters and chief mates were always carried, but sometimes the second mates had no British qualifications, and were either White Russians or Chinese. During the inter-war years these White Russians were often former officers of the Imperial Russian Navy, and without exception were very capable and efficient. On the engine room side the chief and second engineers had British qualifications, but sometimes Chinese third engineers were employed,\n\nThe opium clipper tradition inherited by the 'China coasters' resulted in smart and well run ships, a credit to the owners and crews concerned. The pre-war 'China coasters' were probably the smartest ships in Britain's Merchant Navy, and their bright paintwork, gleaming brass work, and smart red-sashed quartermasters would have gladdened the heart of old Admiral Benbow. Their closest rivals under the Red Ensign were the coasters of the Straits Steamship Company which were based on Singapore, and which traded round Malaya and the East Indies. 'China coasters', apart from officers, had all Chinese crews, while the Straits coasters and their Dutch K.L.M. rivals had Malays on deck and Chinese down below, a good combination in pre-Sukarno days. Sailors and firemen sometimes spent a lifetime on one ship, and often the bosun and Number One Fireman would have started their careers on the same ship twenty-five years earlier. The Arab and Indian practice of the bosun and Number One being responsible for their department was followed on the China coast, and each department was very much a family and clan affair.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205795, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n95\n\nSiamese were willing to have a treaty which would open up trade and increase Western influence. They had some anxiety, however, about what the Cochin-Chinese, the Vietnamese would think about the treaty. Would they conclude that the Siamese had surrendered to the British? King Mongkut asked Bowring time and again to go to Cochin-China to make a similar treaty. The King was also anxious about the kind of man who would be chosen as British Consul, if this article of the treaty were accepted. Would he be as much a gentleman as Sir John? Bowring assured him that only the best man would be appointed and that he hoped to go to Cochin-China.\n\nThe whole business for this momentous treaty was transacted in the most felicitous manner. King Mongkut and his equally intelligent Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, understood the issues at stake; these were not merely the details of imports and exports, the appointment of Consuls and the rights of foreigners, they were no less than the independence of Siam and the beginning of her modernization. It was much to Bowring's credit (and to Harry Parkes and young Bowring) that he was able to gain the confidence of the King, to allay his fears, and to assure the Siamese that the new policy that the treaty was launching was greatly to their own as well as to the British advantage.\n\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed on 18th April, 1855, less than a month after the arrival of the mission. Its first article pledged perpetual peace and friendship and the protection of the two nations' subjects in each other's countries. Article 2 provided for the appointment of a British Consul at Bangkok who would have jurisdiction over British subjects in Siam. The third article was an extension of the second, requiring that Siamese offenders should be given up to Siamese justice and British offenders to British justice, that is, the Consul. This was the system of extra-territorial rights which had recently been obtained from the Chinese after the Opium War. It was an infringement of Siam's sovereignty but it gave assurance to British subjects that they would not be exposed to the severity of Siamese justice and encouraged the setting up of business houses. This right was given up in 1909, long before its withdrawal in China, in return for the independence of Kedah and the other northern Malay States from Siam. The next three articles of the treaty were all concerned with the rights of British subjects. They could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205796, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "96 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nlive in Bangkok and buy or rent property there, and within a distance from the capital measured by how far a local boat could travel within twenty-four hours. Beyond that the Siamese could not undertake to ensure their safe protection. British subjects, who must register with their Consul and carry identity documents, could observe their own religion and build churches. This provision was scarcely necessary when we recall Mongkut's welcome to the missionaries. The treaty also specified that British subjects could employ Siamese servants. \n\nBritish ships-of-war were allowed to sail up the Menam as far as Paknam about twenty miles from Bangkok - but no further without special permission. If an ambassador were to arrive he could sail all the way to the capital in his warship. \n\nThen followed the commercial articles. The monopolies of the King and his nobles were abolished and trade was made free. British merchants might buy from the producer direct and sell their imports to anyone without interference. The duties levied on ships according to their size were abolished, and all imports were to be subject to a tax of three per cent. Exports were to be taxed once only; the amount of the duty being specified in a schedule attached to the treaty. Opium was to be admitted without duty and sold to a single merchant. The export of rice was now permitted for the first time, but the treaty provided for a ban on its export and on the export of salt and fish - in times of scarcity. Permission was given to British companies to build ships in Siam. Article 10 was a \"most favoured nation\" clause: Bowring had the foresight to expect that other countries would follow the British example and he insisted that the terms they obtained would never be better than those he had just secured. Lastly, there was provision for the revision of the treaty in ten \n\nyears. \n\nEveryone was happy and especially King Mongkut. Bowring was received in Royal audience formally and for several hours in private. He visited the Second King, Mongkut's equally gifted younger brother, who held this peculiarly Siamese post of deputy monarch. Mongkut wrote a personal letter to Queen Victoria and entrusted it to Parkes who was to take back the text of the treaty to London for ratification. Elaborate gifts were collected for the Queen. The King was in excellent spirits, delighting in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206280, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n91\n\nas the American Trading Company of Borneo, with the intention of developing the concession the Sultan of Brunei had granted to an American, Charles Lee Moses. The Chinese partners supplied most of the capital. The Company established a settlement, but after a few years of ship-building, experimental planting, and trade the project was abandoned. The company did not have sufficient capital to finance the undertaking properly.24 This drain of capital may have been the primary cause of the bankruptcy of Pang Wah Ping in 1866. He had acquired his original capital from profits of trade in unprepared opium, and during his years of prosperity his name appears on the various documents used as criteria for élite status.\n\nThe Li family, however, was more firmly established and survived the failure of the American Trading Company of Borneo. Its interests were diversified. It had large real estate holdings in Hong Kong which regularly brought in rental income. It was perhaps the largest broker for coolie labor and charterer of ships for these emigrants. In 1868 gambling was legalized in Hong Kong and the monopoly was bought up by the Li family firm. They also had interests in the opium monopoly.\n\nTheir financial investment in Hong Kong appears to have led them to identify their interests with the British at the time of the Second Opium War, and a Chinese source states that they \"gave contributions to foreigners to the extent of over a lakh of ready money and recruited native braves who went to the front at Tientsin. When peace was declared they shared in the War Indemnity as well as in the Imperial effects and curios of the Yuen-ming-yuen (Summer Palaces)\".25 They were accused of supporting France in its efforts to gain control of Annam. The Chinese authorities of their home district tried to derive some benefit from the fortunes of the family, by requesting large contributions for the reclamation of waste land. When the family seemed somewhat hesitant to meet the full demands of the authorities, they sought to provoke generosity by seizing a member of the family who happened to have returned to his home district, imprisoning him, and eventually putting him on trial.\n\nThis account of the troubles the family encountered in its relations with Chinese officialdom illustrates the predicament the wealthy merchants and compradores found themselves in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206285, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "96\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nWong Shing, newspaper editor and manager of the London Mission press; and Cheung Achew, a wealthy carpenter.29 The Rev. Ho Fuk Tong and his family lived at the nearby compound of the London Mission Society. In time this area around Peel, Graham, Gage Streets and Hollywood Road became a centre for Parsee and Indian merchants, as well as European brothels. Some of the old families stayed on, but the opening up of the area bounded by Wyndham, Wellington and Pottinger Streets by the Dents provided a needed location for the houses of the better Chinese. After the Peak was developed in the 1870s and 1880s, the wealthy Chinese moved up to Mid-levels occupying the mansions of the Europeans who moved to the Peak.\n\nOf the individuals who had their family residence in the former Middle Bazaar area were two who were on the organizing committee of Tung Wah Hospital, Wong Shing and Ho Asek alias Ho Fai Yin #alias Ho In Kee. Ho Asek first appears in Hong Kong records in 1849 when he purchased a lot in Tai Ping Shan. At the time he was compradore of the opium firm of Lyall, Still and Company. It failed in 1867 and Ho Asek embarked upon his own business ventures under the firm name of Kin Nam. According to a newspaper account, he was subject to a $2,000 “squeeze” from the mandarins during the second Sino-British War.30 He traded extensively in opium as well as rice, and in 1871 held the gambling monopoly from which within a year he realized a $28,000 profit. In an action brought against him in 1871, he testified that he operated with a capital of $200,000.31 In 1868 two of his employees were brought before the court on a charge of extortion. In the evidence presented it was stated that about September 1866, some influential Chinese started a system of subscription or unofficial taxation to support district watchmen. The city had been divided into two sections, East and West. The West District was superintended by Tam Achoy and Ho Asek, \"a most respectable and honest trader”. A shopkeeper resisted the pressure put upon him to contribute and brought the charge of extortion against two of Asek's employees who had been collecting for the scheme. The court gave judgment in favour of the defendants.32 Ho Asek was still a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872. He died in Pang Po (likely Ping Po+), Shun Tak District in 1877. His wife was granted letters of administration on his estate, but she being blind, gave her power", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206433, "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": 250, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "224\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nthe familiar background of the disasters — natural and man-made which afflicted China from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards.\n\nThe author, a retired Naval Officer, himself with a first-hand knowledge of the China Station and with some apparent experience of the military and political intelligence work supporting the diplomatic moves described in this book, weaves his story from the letter books of the Great and Ancient House, Taikoo. The period covered by these extracts and quotations is from the Sino-French war of 1883-5 through to the so-called Great Boycott of 1925. There are appended a number of short notes, some by the author, others contributed to the book, on topics ranging from \"The origin of Tribute Rice and of Lao mei\" to \"Treaty Port Racing\". Several of these are probably not to be taken as serious studies of these subjects; for example, the two devoted to \"Opium\" and \"The Eunuchs of the Empress\" are mere fragments not embodied in the main text.\n\nThere is undoubtedly a wealth — even an overflowing — of rich historical material in this volume; so much so, that the author, unwilling to sacrifice any scraps of illustrative comment from these business records, ends up by creating a confused picture of events. The significant fact throwing particular light on the business activities on the China Coast, is circumscribed by coils of superfluous trivia. From a naval writer, one might have expected a direct, economical style of exposition; and of course, the impact on the reader would have been much more effective. It is, indeed, painfully obvious throughout the book that despite the authorship of a considerable number of publications, the writer is an amateur. The book is written in a mixture of styles compounded from the Boys' Own and official memoranda; it is ridden with clichés and undigested wedges of administrative gobbledy-gook.\n\nFor the historian who would like to use this book as a compilation of source material, there are also the difficulties that the extracts are frequently not dated nor ascribed to a writer or only vaguely so. For example, there is the telegram from the Admiralty to the Commodore Hong Kong — one wonders how this came to be with the B & S records, if in fact it is extracted from them. The exercise would have been much more useful if the range of extracts had been more carefully selected, given full documentation, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206780, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n51\n\nthe Chinese more than all the rest of the British warships put together,\n\nChinese opposition to steamships was overborne after the First China War, and in the years between then and the Second China War 1857-1858, steam navigation in China was established on a secure foundation. During the first two decades of steam, American ships were as prominent as British on the Canton River and on the coast, and sometimes more technically efficient. This was largely because the Americans made good use of their experience on the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers, and also because their early steamships were designed specially for coastal and river conditions. Many of the early British steamships were merely sailing ships equipped with engines.\n\nThe earliest American steamers were associated with Russell and Company, and Robert Benet Forbes was the man mainly responsible for bringing most of these early steamships to China. The first was the Midas, built at East Boston in 1844, which was the first American steamship to round the Cape of Good Hope, as well as being the first to be seen in China. The Midas arrived at Hong Kong on 21st May 1845, and was put on a twice weekly service between Hong Kong and Canton, the first regular steamship service in China. She also engaged in towing and salvage work, which was usually more profitable than carrying passengers or cargo; so that the advertised regular sailings were often more honoured in the breach than in the observance.\n\nThe Midas was followed by the wooden screw bark Edith, also built at East Boston, which arrived at Macao on 2nd September 1845 and Hong Kong a few days later. The Edith was originally intended to run in the opium trade between India and China, but plans were changed and she was loaded with general cargo for Shanghai. Bad weather and engine trouble foiled two attempts to make this passage, and the Edith was eventually sent back to Boston via Rio de Janeiro, reconditioned at Boston and then chartered to the United States War Department.\n\nIn 1846 Forbes sent the small 20 ton screw steamer Firefly on another ship to Hong Kong, and put her in service between Hong Kong and Whampoa until 1849, usually making two trips daily. She was withdrawn in 1849 and sent to California by sailing ship.\n\nIn 1846 Jardines were successful in inaugurating the first British steamship service on the river, with the Corsair between Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210999, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "35 \n\nKong except for a short interval between 1867 and 1871, was a major attraction of Kowloon City.” Gambling houses fronting the beach offered free launch services and carried on a thriving business. This caused so much consternation in Hong Kong that, after a series of stunning embezzlement cases and a connection with the gambling \"hells” of Kowloon had been established, the Hong Kong government passed an ordinance making it an offence for civil servants to visit Kowloon for the purpose of gambling. Under pressure from the Hong Kong government in the late 1890s, Chinese officials actually suppressed gambling. Ironically, it was under “British rule” in the twentieth century that gambling was re-introduced. But it was only after the Second World War, when Hong Kong prohibited brothels and opium that the Walled City was transformed into the squalid enclave of vice for which it later became notorious.\n\n36 \n\nThe City had other attractions. Both the Walled City and the fort had been frequently visited by foreigners since the 1850s. It was the terminal point of several interesting walks on the mainland popular with European residents. They were not required to produce passes or go through other kinds of formalities normally required in a garrison town. Often at the end of an excursion, visitors took a quick walk around the wall, snapped a few pictures of \"this curious and particularly dirty town\", and left for the Island by launch from the Lung-chin jetty.\n\nThe great change came in 1899. In the previous year, the Convention of Peking had been signed between China and Britain leasing territory south of the Shumchun river to Britain. However, in face of strong Chinese insistence on retaining jurisdiction in the Kowloon Walled City, the British agreed to include a clause that \"within the city of Kowloon the Chinese officials now stationed there shall continue to exercise jurisdiction except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirement to the defence of Hong Kong.\" This reservation of Chinese jurisdiction upset many sectors of British interest, not least of all, foreign residents in Hong Kong, all seeing this Chinese enclave in the midst of a British administered territory a security risk.\n\nThe matter came to a head in 1899. The Hong Kong govern-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211086, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "122\n\norder the suspension of the ordinance. When the crisis passed the measures it provided to control the Chinese population would no longer be needed, however, they would remain on the statute books to be reintroduced by the Governor in Council if a future situation warranted it. Once enacted, however, they were never officially suspended. Instead they came to be regarded as a way of reducing crime at night, though for long periods there was great laxity over its enforcement.\n\nThe introduction of the rule that the Chinese must carry lights and passes at night was the result of the outbreak of the Sino-British conflict, sometimes referred to as the Second Opium War.\n\nThe spark which set fire to the smouldering tensions created by the frustration of the foreigner in his desire to force open China to unrestricted trade was the seizure at Canton in October 1856 of the crew of a Hongkong-registered vessel, the Arrow.\n\nThe Chinese authorities claimed the crew members were pirates. Their detention and the alleged hauling down of the British flag provoked an escalating series of demands, threats and incidents between the British and Chinese. These eventually climaxed in the looting and burning of the Imperial Summer Palace at Peking in 1860.\n\nThe Chinese would not meet the demands for an apology for \"the insult to the British flag\" nor the return of the crew in a manner satisfactory to the English. To force the issue, the British breached the walls of Canton, penetrated to the Viceroy's stronghold and then withdrew. They met no resistance. Then boats were seized, forts were shelled, troops marched back and forth.\n\nFor the British it all seemed like a military lark, with their superior power meeting no resistance from the Chinese, but only threatening proclamations issued by the Viceroy urging the destruction of the barbarians, with a price set upon the heads of certain prominent foreigners.\n\nAffairs took a more serious turn when the area along the river at Canton, where the foreigners lived and did their business, was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211146, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "182\n\nfor support in opposing the appointment.\n\nHo A-mei's advice to his countrymen was: “All Chinese merchants, who have any regard for themselves, should refuse to assist in the consummation of an act that is wrong. Let them be peaceful and law-abiding, but with enough pride as Chinese to stand for what was their nation's due.”\n\nThe letter evoked critical comment from \"Brownie,\" who wrote the newspaper column, \"Fragrant Waters Murmur.\" He questioned Ho A-mei's motives.\n\nAccording to him, a consul had always been A-mei's \"pet scheme.” In fact, Brownie said he was sometimes facetiously called the \"Chinese Consul\" because of his close relations with Chinese officials. He sometimes acted for them in an unofficial capacity.\n\nBrownie thought these connections should have made Ho A-mei fully aware of “the devious ways of Chinese officialdom.” Certainly he could not really believe that a consul would benefit Chinese residents.\n\nAn editor, commenting on A-mei's letter, implied that its author had himself had an unhappy experience with Chinese mandarins. He pointedly asked: \"Were you, Mr. Ho A-mei, ever fined a large sum of money for your temerity in presenting a work or despatch of yours to the Viceroy and did you think it fair treatment?\"\n\nUnder the caption, “How rich Hongkong residents are squeezed,\" the China Mail published a chapter from a work entitled: Chips from the workshop of a self-sacrificing officer. It related the difficulties the Li Sing family encountered at the time of the Second Opium War, when the Chinese Government put pressure on members of the family to make large \"contributions” to the Ch'ing Government. At the time, the family was accused of collaboration with the British against the Chinese.\n\nThe example was interesting inasmuch as Ho A-mei had a long", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211324, "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-1988", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "16\n\nNOT SO CALM AN ADMINISTRATION:\n\nTHE ANGLO-FRENCH OCCUPATION OF CANTON,\n\n1858-1861\n\nSTEVEN A. LEIBO*\n\nOne of the more persistent myths of early Sino-European relations is the calm which is said to have prevailed during the three year long Anglo-French occupation of Canton, 1858-1861. As described by one of the best recent histories of modern China:\n\nA few years later when Canton was occupied by the British in 1857, the Cantonese showed no sign of unruliness and foreigners could walk about unmolested, without the slightest sign of resistance or animosity.\n\nThe reality, though, was far different. The Cantonese, long resistant to British demands that they allow foreigners within the walls of their city, continued for quite some time to make life very difficult for the occupying forces. In fact, very considerable resistance was carried out against the foreign military establishment and the mixed units of Sino-European police which worked with them.\n\nThe purpose of this essay is to illustrate elements of the allied occupation, the administrative structure established for the city's governance and the various issues, among them the occupation itself, and the coolie trade, which at times made Allied control of Canton considerably more precarious than we have been led to believe.\n\nThe initial occupation\n\nThe origins of the Second Opium War, or Arrow War as it is often called, are well known and need no more than adumbration here. Certainly, the allied sense that the Opium War treaties, signed more than a decade before, needed revision, as well as long running difficulties between the British and the Cantonese over the right of the former to\n\n* Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Russell Sage College, New York.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211408, "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-1988", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "100\n\nUnfortunately Ngit Chiu, who went to Honolulu and worked as a carpenter, became addicted to opium. A burial permit dated 15 November 1924 states clearly that he had died of an overdose. Whenever he visited us, and that was not often, he would borrow from Father, who would give him only a few dollars since he disapproved of Ngit Chiu's drug habit. In 1919 when I visited his foster mother in the village, she inquired about him because she had not heard from him for many years, but I was forewarned not to tell her about his circumstances.\n\nJok King, the fifth son, also died in his 20s and left a daughter, Iu Dai, but no male issue. Likewise, Jok Sau ‘gave' another of his sons, Dai Geng, to this brother. Dai Geng did not live long and left a widow with several sons in Canton where he had been working in a bank. Jok King's widow and daughter remained in the village. They were both quite agitated the day Aunt Auyoung and I visited them, as they related how someone had tried to get into their home by ladder via a rear window. Aunt Auyoung did not seem to feel the incident really happened, tried to be very reassuring and told them no one would dare to harm them because First Uncle would not allow it. Iu Dai is said to be the first and only old maid in our village. Because her mother was so selective of a husband for her, when she reached 18, she was considered too old to be sought after. Even though she was a victim of an old culture, the village youths would tease her about it. During World War II when no one could send support to her, I heard that she had to go out to beg for food.\n\nAfter Great Grandfather's death, his business continued under Jok Jun, after whose death Grandfather took over. The business failed under his management, reportedly due to a bad loan to Grandmother's family for the operation of an oyster farm. This is the reason given why no photographs of grandmothers in our family were preserved – certainly misplaced hostility. Grandfather therefore decided to emigrate to Hawaii to seek a livelihood and hopefully to be able to return the depositors their money. According to Second Uncle's wife, when she was left in the village, she often had to hide from the creditors. Many years later, First Uncle paid these debts on a percentage basis.\n\nMy grandmother, surnamed Au, was born on 23 January 1846. She was a native of Joo Poo Tau Village, and was related to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211618, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "8\n\n00\n\n# HONG KONG, 26 JANUARY 1841: HOISTING THE FLAG REVISITED*\n\nK. J. P. Lowe\n\nThis article will attempt to investigate the circumstances surrounding the ceremony of the hoisting of the British flag on Hong Kong Island on 26 January 1841, following the cession of the island in the treaty of 20 January 1841. It will in the process shed light on some of the more immediate British reactions to the acquisition of the island. The first Opium War and the subsequent Chinese expedition of 1840-1 form the immediate background to this event, and these subjects are well covered in the contemporary China-coast English-language press, in quasi-governmental sources and in memoirs by those involved. Negotiations leading to the cession were carried out by Captain Charles Elliot1 for the British, and the Chinese commissioner Ch'i-shan. Yet the hoisting of the flag itself seems largely to have been ignored or played down at this stage, even though Hong Kong was taken by the British as a direct result of successful military action and the ceremony should have been an important gesture of victory. I wish to posit that although Elliot and J. Gordon Bremer, the naval commodore, were proud of the acquisition of Hong Kong (and steamed all round their island at the first opportunity2), most people were not, and considered it of little consequence. The downplaying of the formal possession ceremony in contemporary accounts reflects this, and it was only when the colony started to be a financial success and stable social entity in the 1870s that the ceremony of possession took on a new significance.3\n\n6\n\nReminiscences of the Chinese expedition by officers in the navy and the army are common. Good examples of this type of literature by naval officers are the books by Edward Belcher of HMS Sulphur,4 by John Elliot Bingham who had been first Lieutenant of HMS Modeste,5 and by William Bernard who had been on board the Nemesis. Of these three, unfortunately only Belcher was in Hong Kong on the requisite day to witness the ceremony because Elliot had commandeered the Nemesis to take him to the Second Bar for his meeting with Ch'i-shan (also on 26 January), and Elliot Bingham had fractured a leg during enemy action on 10 January and had been taken to Macao. Belcher\n\n* I should like to thank Jardine Matheson and Co. Ltd. for permission to use their archives, and Eugene McLaughlin for his help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211620, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "10\n\n16\n\nnot the temper to speak. He had the Chinese at his feet, and might have had what he wished; and what has he got? A few paltry dollars and a barren island... The Chinese are already chuckling, and say they have got the best of it. It makes me quite sick to think of it, and there are not half a dozen people on shore or afloat who are not quite furious'. The alleged sentiments of the Chinese in this letter are in direct contrast to those reported by James Matheson in a letter to William Jardine of 11 February: 'The cession of Hong Kong to the British is what most mortifies the Canton folks with Ki Shen's proceedings. They cannot bear to speak of it with composure'.\" It seems that a portion of the British community in the Pearl Delta area (the author of the letter wishes to appear to have as large a constituency as possible, not only within the merchant community) may have presupposed that their feelings of failure with regard to the acquisition of Hong Kong meant a corresponding sense of triumph for the Chinese.\n\nThe second letter to The Times was equally scathing as it claimed that the British negotiators had been tricked because 'Hong Kong was virtually ours, for it is the place which the opium ships have used as a rendezvous for years'. It was only to be expected therefore that the Chinese would choose to cede that island rather than any other.\n\n19\n\n18\n\nOf the acts of soldiers in the expeditionary force, it might have been expected that the formal taking of possession of Hong Kong would have been worthy of mention even if the author had not been present in person, but it seems that this is not the case. Neither Duncan McPherson nor W. W. Mundy refers to it. Nor did soldiers such as A. Cunynghame20 or Alexander Murray21 who became involved just after the cession of Hong Kong refer back to the ceremony. There is only one reference to the taking of Hong Kong in the official mouthpiece for the forces, The United Service Journal of 1841, and that was in a general article entitled 'The British colonies considered as military posts' written by Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkie. He complained in July 1841 that the rationale for his inclusion of Hong Kong in the article was threatened because arrangements between the British and the Chinese had collapsed, ‘and consequently it is more than doubtful whether I shall have any more authority for treating of this island as a British colony, beyond the simple fact that it has been formally taken possession of as such',22\n\nContemporary press notices of the event, again in direct contrast to news of the opium war and the expedition to the Bogue, are terse and rudimentary. The Chinese Repository of February 1841, edited by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212208, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "127\n\nThe Taoist temple, a centre of superstition, visited by the people of the village at certain seasons and particularly popular with the old women, is usually larger than the ancestral hall. It can be distinguished from the rarer and finer Buddhist temples by its walls of red. The Buddhist colour is yellow. Both Taoist and Buddhist temples prefer remote sites, often amidst the crags of tree-clad hills, but their colour apart are difficult to distinguish the one from the other. They are equally filled with images, from the fearsome spirits that guard the entrance hall, and the divers gods in the succeeding halls, to the Great Buddhas in the main hall, behind which there will be a very demoniacal representation of the Buddhist hell.\n\nThe temples to Confucius contain no images. They are to be found in the larger towns, amidst ancient trees and stately courtyards. They are now generally used to shelter government offices or schools. Wherever there are troops, the temples are their barracks; and they provide convenient cover for forlorn travellers.\n\nOn the second evening we reached Kanchow, the wealthy city in south Kiangsi, where the Generalissimo's elder son has been appointed Commissioner in charge of a group of magistracies. While in Russia, where he spent a number of years, he had married a blonde Russian wife. The two have set themselves to converting their district into a model area. No mercy is shown to opium smokers: they are executed. Dishonest officials are inexorably punished. Wealthy merchants, who have profited by holding stocks for a rise, are made to contribute heavily for the benefit of local services, and the sons of the influential are not allowed to dodge conscription. The dispensation is popular with the poorer classes, but not with the privileged. The Generalissimo is proud of his son's work, and one day sent a foreign reporter, who had been critical of Chinese administration, to investigate. He returned with a glowing report. Would that there were more districts in China, where honesty is the rule! Unfortunately, since 1937, there has been a relapse. The improvisations of war have left increasing spheres of administration in the hands of the military, and graft is again the order of the day. It is another of those Chinese anomalies that the Generalissimo, the relentless opponent of Communism, should be proud of a son who unquestionably is influenced by Russian ideology.\n\nConscription in China is not applied in our sense of the term. There\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212295, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "214\n\nlast in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages.\n\nThe breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world.\n\n1\n\nJames Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China\", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript.\n\n++\n\nGeorge Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864).\n\nThis monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856,\n\nHì\n\nWhile remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of \"stimulating the economy\". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105.\n\nTheodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854).\n\nJ7\n\n44\n\nAt the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's \"The Colony of Hong Kong\". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled \"Reminiscences\", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, \"Reminiscences\", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14.\n\n典\n\nIn his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212470, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages.\n\nFollowing the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia.\n\nThe Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212472, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "6\n\nCantonese Compradors\n\nCanton, the first Chinese city opened for foreign trade, has a long history of interacting with the West. The Co-hong which was set up by the Qing government, had created a system of hong merchants, linguists and compradors in response to the quest for foreign trade. As William Hunter mentions, the position of a comprador in a foreign mercantile house was important. Almost everything around the house, varying from examining silver, internal accounting, employing servants, cooks and coolies, to interpreting and even mediating with Chinese merchants were the responsibility of the comprador. Though the Co-hong system was terminated after the first Opium War, compradors still survived and started a new era of development. It was natural that Cantonese compradors formed a dominant group at the beginning of the Canton system, since most of the Chinese foreign trade was conducted in Canton. However, to account for the rise of Cantonese compradors in modern China, several factors should not be ignored. First, recruitment of new compradors by personal or regional ties, when compradors became private merchants. Before 1843, compradors had been licensed by the government and guaranteed under the officially dictated hong merchant hierarchy. Second, the disappearance of the limited trading system in Canton and opening of Hong Kong and other Chinese coastal cities accelerated the increase in the number of Western mercantile firms. Third, Western merchants, particularly the British, relied upon Chinese compradors in conducting business.\n\nGuarantorship\n\nHow did a person qualify as a comprador? First, proficiency in English was preferred but business connection was considered more important by the Western merchants. Personal trust was usually critical. The Nanjing Treaty privatized Chinese foreign trade. Compradors replaced the hong merchants as agents for foreign firms and as guarantors for Chinese merchants doing business with foreign merchants. After 1842 with the abolition of the Co-hong system, some of the former hong merchants engaged in private tea or silk business, and compradors became private agents for foreign firms rather than government-mandated agents. Former linguists, after leaving the hong merchants, served mostly as clerks of the new maritime customs or as customs brokers. As scholars pointed out, more than a mere recommendation from a former hong merchant or another Cantonese known to the agency house, personal guarantee\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212710, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "4\n\noff with a whole pound, 'the foundation of his fortune' which induced him to go to sea as a sailor. He then sailed away, at the age of 12, and in the course of the next six years visited various parts of the world including Australia, Africa and the Americas before finally settling in China in 1860 during the last days of the Arrow War [better known perhaps as the Second Opium War].\n\nMesny arrived in China at the start of the era known to the Chinese as the 'post-unequal treaties', an extraordinary period of readjustment in Chinese thinking. He arrived in a China whose rulers were an alien dynasty, the non-Chinese Manchus from Manchuria whose dynasty, the Ch'ing, ruled China between 1644-1911. Mesny's era covered the gradual collapse of the dynasty and its fall, followed by the first years of the Republic.\n\nWilliam Mesny spent a total of 59 years in China during which time he first, for some thirteen years, led a life of high adventure and, later, one which he lived to the full but at the same time one which appears to have fluctuated between the verge of success and pathetic failure. As it stands the later years of Mesny's life, following his short military career, fall into four periods; first, trekking across China, second, his life in Shanghai whilst still hoping to make his fortune; third, his time there when that hope had all but disappeared and finally, his last days, apparently alone in Hankow. The story contains elements which can only be guessed by reading between the lines in his Miscellanies, sadly without the help of other written or oral records.\n\nI have attempted to provide a chronology of Mesny's life from the multitude of snippets and asides he provided in his Miscellanies. This will be found at Appendix B. The great majority of the research in the UK has been carried out by Dr R G Tiedemann of SOAS in the University of London to whom I am also greatly indebted for both his advice and comments, as I am too to Miss Lucie Mesny of St Lawrence in Jersey, for her memories and photographs. However, any errors are mine alone.\n\nApart from the autobiographical portions of the Miscellany we have to rely upon the tiny smattering of family memory still available, two obituaries from Shanghai English language newspapers and what little has been written about Mesny by others who knew him in China. It is unfortunate that other living descendants of William Mesny have fought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213235, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "36\n\nPaul Ehlers opened an office in Macao in September 1858 as a general agent and commission merchant (FC 9 Sept. 1858). This was during the Second Opium War when foreign merchants who had been trading at Canton had to locate in Hong Kong or Macao. After the British forces occupied Canton, some of the merchants moved back; Paul Ehlers moved on 9 December 1858 (FC 9 Dec. 1858). In January 1859, he and Theodore Hesse entered into partnership as Hesse, Ehlers and Co. (GG 8 Jan. 1859). Mr. Ehlers returned to Europe in 1865 and withdrew from the firm. It continued under the name of Hesse and Co. (GG 18 Nov. 1865). Five years after his departure from China, Mr. Ehlers returned and began conducting business under his own name at Hong Kong (GG 14 May 1870). In 1872, Paul Ehlers and Carl Robert Meuser formed a partnership. Meuser had been doing business on his own account since October 1871 (CM 3 Jan., 20 Oct. 1872). The firm went into liquidation in 1874. The business was taken over by a former employee, Justus Peter Lembke of Hamburg (CM, 29 Sept. 1875). He continued doing business in Hong Kong as Justus Lembke and Co. until 1890, when he transferred the business and goodwill to the China Export and Import Bank Compagnie. Mr. Lembke was appointed the manager of the new Hong Kong office of the Hamburg-based firm, and Hermann Witte and Ernest Brubitz were authorised to sign for the firm (HKT 3 Mar. 1890). Since writing this article, I have received from Mr. Alfred Schmitt, of Hoechst China Ltd, a history of the firm entitled Die China Export-Import-und-Bank-Compagnie, undated but recently published. After the First World War, the company was re-established in Hong Kong with its head office in Shanghai and branches also at Canton, Tientsin, Osaka, and Tokyo.\n\nWhen Paul Ehlers returned to Europe in 1865, the business of Hesse, Ehlers and Co. was continued by Theodore Hesse under the name of Hesse and Co., with Herman Peter Hase in charge of the Canton office. Under his full name, Anton Hermann Peter Hase, he was admitted a partner in 1867 (GG 5 Jan. 1867). Six months later, Mr. Hesse withdrew, and it was continued under the same name by Mr. Hase. Hase died at Marseilles in December 1873. He named Hermann Stolterfoht, an assistant in his firm, as the executor of his will (PRO Will File No. 221 of 1874 [4/274]). Leonard Stael became a partner of Hesse and Co. in 1869 and retired in 1879 (GG 3 July 1869, DP 1 Jan. 1880).\n\nHermann Stolterfoht was admitted a partner in Hesse and Co. shortly after the death of the senior partner in 1873. Charles Joseph Hirst joined", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213242, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "43\n\n1863. By the year 1867 he was in partnership with N.G. Peter. Mr. Peter served as Vice-consul for France at Macao, but left when he retired from the firm in 1871 (Macau Boletim 1 July 1871). Mr. Ebell in 1877 transferred his business at Macao to C. Milish and joined the firm of Edward Herton of Swatow under the style Herton, Ebell and Co. At the same time the firm opened an office at Haiphong in Tonquin (DP 16 Jan, 8 Oct. 1877).\n\nKirchner, Boger and Co.\n\nJohn Alhed Kirchner, an assistant in Siemssen and Co., and Hemrich Boger, an assistant in Hesse, Ebelts and Co., entered into a partnership in 1866 to conduct business as merchants and commission agents under the name of Kirchner, Boger and Co. (GG 7 July 1866). They closed down in 1874 – Mr. Boger died about the year 1905 (PRO Hong Kong, Probate file 18/1905/1727 jacket for will of Heinrich Boger, but there is no document in the jacket).\n\nFirms established after 1880\n\nThere was a significant increase of German firms in Hong Kong during the 1860s. Partially this is attributable to the necessity of firms leaving Canton during the Second Opium War and relocating in Hong Kong and to a lesser extent in Macao. When foreigners could return to Canton not all firms which had been operating there chose to do so. Others did but retained their office in Hong Kong.\n\nI have found no records of the establishment of a German firm in Hong Kong in the 1870s. Bornemann and Co. opened an office in Hong Kong in 1888. The founder was Fred Bornemann. In 1914 the partners were Carl Brending and Sohn, Soltau, Germany, H. Schumacher, Shanghai and G. Binder. Gustav Wilhelm Binder began his business career in Hong Kong in 1897 as a clerk in Carlowitz and Co. The firm returned to Hong Kong after the Second World War. In 1929 the principals were Sum Pak-ming, F. Ordepp and H.A. Westphal.\n\nJebsen and Co., according to the list of companies in liquidation after 1914, was established in 1894. At the time of liquidation the partners were J. and H. Jebsen. Jacob Friedrich Christian Jebsen appears on the Hong Kong Jury lists from 1897 to 1901. Christian Witzke and Heinrich...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213384, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "194\n\nBaddeley, John Frederick (1854-1940) ed, Russia, Mongolia, China, London Macmillan, 1919 (NY B Franklin 1967 mostly memoirs of Russian envoys from beginning of 17th century to end of reign of Alexander I).\n\nBaikov, Feodor Isakovich, An Account of Two Voyages. First of Feodor Isakovitz Backhoff to China, Second Zachary Wagener, a Native of Dresden also in China, in Churchill, Awnsham, compilers, A Collection of Voyages and Travels. London, 1744, v 2, 474-478\n\nBall, Benjamin Lincoln, Rambles in Eastern Asia, Including China During Several Years' Residence (1848-1850), Boston J French, 1856.\n\nBarnett, Eugene Epperson. As I Look Back, Recollections of Growing Up and Twenty-six Years in Pre-Communist China 1888-1936, typescript\n\nBarr, Patricia Miriam, To China with Love, the Lives and Times of Protestant Missionaries in China 1860-1900, London Secker and Warburg, 1972\n\nBarrow, Sir John, Travels in China, London T Cadell and W Davis, 1806 (Listed in Yale University Library catalog as Some Account of the Public Life, and Selection from the Unpublished Writings, of the Earl of Macartney and the date of publication is given as 1807)\n\nBarzini, Luigi, Pekin to Paris, An Account of Prince Borghese's Journey Across Two Continents in a Motor-Car, translated from the Italian, London, 1907,\n\nBates, Lincoln Wallace Jr, The Russian Road to China, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1910.\n\nBeattie, Hilary J, Protestant Missions and Opium in China, 1858-1895, Papers on China, 22A 115-156 (1969)\n\nBecker, C H, et al, The Reorganization of Education in China, Paris. League of Nations, 1932\n\nBell, John, A Journey From St Petersburg to Pekin 1719-22, edited with an Introduction by J L Stevenson, Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press. (NY Barnes and Noble reprint 1966)\n\nBennett, Adrian A, John Fryer the Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1967\n\nBergeron, Marie Ina, Letters a Yeou-wen, Souvenirs de Chine, Tours Mame, 1973\n\nBerry-Hart, Alice, Ching-a-Ring-a-Ring-Ching or Three Victorian Sisters in Shanghai, London. Rex Collins, 1977)\n\nBillingsley, Phil, Bandits in Republican China, Stanford Stanford University Press, 1988", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214542, "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": 400, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "369\n\nANOTHER DILEMMA FOR TODAY'S YOUTH IN\n\nCHINA\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch\n\nDuring a recent RAS [HK BR] tour of the Museum of the Humen People's Resistance against the British in the Opium War [1840-1842] at Humen [Bocca Tigris], a small town about sixty miles south-east of Canton on the east coast of the Pearl River, we entered the old temple dedicated to the Northern Emperor [Bei Di] in the grounds of the Museum.\n\nThe main altars of the temple were not in any way unusual in that it had the central altar with the image of the Northern Emperor, Bei Di, and two flanking side altars, one dedicated to Lü Dongbin, the doctor in the group of the Eight Immortals and the second dedicated to Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. However, there were two further glass cabinets, identical with the form of the main altar, one on either side wall. Against the wall, stage left, was an image of Lin Zexu,\n\nthe Imperial Commissioner despatched by the Emperor to Guangdong province in 1839 with instructions to stamp out the opium trade. His destruction of the stocks of opium held by British, American and other foreign traders led to the so-called Opium War [in British parlance, the First China War].\n\nThe cabinet against the temple wall, stage right, contained three images of Chinese officials involved in the War. They were Admiral Guan; The Governor of the Two Guangs and a General Chen who, captured by the British, is now remembered as the prisoner taken by his captives, together with his loyal horse, to Hong Kong where he died. Before both side cabinets, which had baldachin and silken hangings in front of the altar tables bearing honorifics as do temple altars virtually everywhere, were altar tables with red spirit tablets bearing their honorific titles, as well as offerings of fruit, bottles of wine and incense pots.\n\nWhat proved so interesting was the indecision manifest amongst Chinese visitors who, having not hesitated to bow and offer incense before the images of the three main deities, Bei Di, Lü Dongbin and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214556, "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": 414, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "383\n\nMONUMENT\n\nTO THE WESTMORELAND REGIMENT THE 55TH REGIMENT OF FOOT\n\nIN\n\nDINGHAI CITY ON ZHOUSHAN ISLAND\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nIn October 1998 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society organised a visit for members to Ningbo [Ningpo] and Zhoushan Island [Chusan Island] off the East coast of China in the archipelago of the same name. The object of the visit to Dinghai, the county capital of the archipelago, was to try and follow the course of the British military campaign there during the First and Second China Wars, the First being the so-called Opium War of 1840-1842 and the Second, the Arrow War of 1856-1860, and see if any monuments to the British victory and subsequent occupation remained. In particular we were looking for the military cemetery and tombstones.\n\nThe Chinese guide who met us in Ningbo and who was to accompany us to Dinghai was most doubtful about our mission. We did not think she was even aware that the British Army had been on Zhoushan 150 years ago. However by the time our ferry docked at Dinghai, maps relating to the campaign, which had been brought along with us, had been studied in detail, together with an account by the Reverend Wright.\n\nIn Dinghai our first call was at the local museum where we collected the Curator. We were most fortunate in that he was interested in the China Wars, and not only knew the accounts - albeit from the Chinese point of view - but was able to lead us to the sites of action, and to the one remaining monument to the British.\n\nDuring the two China Wars Zhoushan had its moments of glory in history after which both conflicts gradually faded from both British national and Chinese local memories. Between the 5th of July 1840 when the city of Dinghai fell before a British attack for the first time, and the 5th of June 1846 when the British restored Zhoushan to the Chinese, the island was ruled twice by the British with its claim to fame as the first Chinese territory ever to be occupied and controlled", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214557, "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": 415, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "384\n\nby the British. By the turn of the century folk memory in Zhoushan itself of the battles and occupation by the British had disappeared much as it has today in Weihai in Shandong province, which had been a British naval base, with a colonial governor, leased at the same time as the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1898 and held until handed back to China in 1931,\n\nThe British captured and occupied Zhoushan on two separate occasions during the First Opium War. The first occupation was short and brutal, ending with an agreement ceding Hong Kong to the British, the reopening of Guangzhou (Canton) to foreigners for trade and an indemnity in exchange for the restoration to the Chinese of Zhoushan. Both sides promptly repudiated the agreement but not before Zhoushan had been handed back. The Chinese commissioner, Qi Shan was recalled to Beijing (Peking) in chains and charged with treason having surrendered Chinese soil.\n\nThe War restarted some six months after the first retrocession by the British and the city of Dinghai was once more taken. The second occupation of nearly four years was longer but much more amicable on both the British and Chinese sides. The British appear to have failed, intentionally or otherwise, to extend their control far beyond the city of Dinghai and were at the mercy of the local Chinese tradesmen who controlled the victuals required to maintain the British occupation forces. This, however, does not appear to have led to trouble as doubtless the local Chinese were comparatively well paid for their provisions.\n\nOnce the third and final British occupation ended, that is after the Second China War in 1860, there would appear to have been neither routine British consular presence on Zhoushan nor representatives of the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs on Zhoushan. These were stationed in Ningbo, the city on the mainland a mere couple of hours sailing away. However, there was a lighthouse on Zhoushan run by westerners of the Chinese Maritime Customs though this would seem again to have been directed from Ningbo, and at one stage there was a small American Christian missionary presence contrary to official agreements between the Chinese and Western nations, as well as a Lazarus Mission of Roman Catholics; in practice no Christian missionary presence on the archipelago had been authorised by official agreements.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214973, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "25\n\n“As you wish, madame.” He gave us a second-class cabin, looked at our son doubtfully. \"Tall for his age, isn't he? Only four and something, did you say?\"\n\nAnd another, equally persuasive fragment:\n\nIn Singapore we were refused a room at the English hotel, and the Chinese ones were very hot and uncomfortable; there was opium-smoking, prostitution and gambling all round us. Marguerite had prickly heat, and our son cried all night long. Our clothes were all too heavy for the damp, hot weather\n\nHaving returned home as a former engineering student from Belgium, Han Suyin's father was then employed by the Belgian company developing a railway network throughout the Chinese interior. There are many fragments in the pages of her books, referring to this period in her and her family's lives. A happy one is given already in Chapter One of The Crippled Tree:\n\nRailways meant a lot to my father, and they were also part of the climate of my growth since my childhood was spent in small or large railway stations. Even now, whenever I hear the siren hoot of an engine, my childhood comes cantering back to me.\n\nInequality between Western high school diplomas granted to the Chinese and to the whites was indisputable, self-evident and absolutely “natural,” and was thus quite impossible to argue against. The Chou family was confronted with this inequality right from their re-settlement to China. In Chapter Nineteen of The Crippled Tree, Han Suyin mentions:\n\nIt was in the yellow plains of Honan; not far from it, the Yellow River had burst its dykes and gone flooding once again, and there were many displaced peasants and also bandits and soldiers, the latter more than the former and more to be feared. The little station was safe, however. There the Big Engineer, whose name was spoken of with indrawn breath and a small pause of respect because he was a Belgian and had a large salary, stayed in a new brick house constructed specially for him on a small hill. Mama and Papa lived in a small Chinese house of earth walls on the other side of the railway, about two miles away", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215964, "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": 263, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "197\n\nPromises were made that other colporteurs would continue to stop by Poklo, and so Ch'ea left his Hong Kong connections to return to an uncertain future.\n\nPART THREE: Darkness outside, light within: Chinese cultural rejections of Ch'ea's Christian way\n\nNo further contact with Ch'ea occurred for nearly a year after he left for Poklo, partly because of changing circumstances in Hong Kong that prevented any more aggressive strategies from taking shape. Legge himself had already been living as a widower since October 1852, his wife Mary Isabella (1817-1852) succumbing to what was probably advancing tuberculosis during a burdensome delivery of a stillborn child.34 Longing to see his children who had been receiving their education in Scotland since 1853, but also anxious to show the first fruits of his plans for the Chinese Classics to the London Missionary Society Directors, Legge was predisposed to staying close to Hong Kong and not taking trips into the nearby mainland. The Arrow Lorcha affair in October 1856 heightened the political tensions over supposed conflicts in treaty provisions between the Qing and British empires, lending just enough reason for British officials to initiate full-scale war in December. Whatever plans there were for \"nurturing\" and \"supporting\" Ch'ea, the declaration of war made travel inside China for foreigners literally impossible.\n\n35\n\nIn the meantime, Ch'ea had to make his own way. Soon after he returned to Poklo he officially gave up his \"employment in the sacred temple [of Master Kong]\" and apparently devoted his free time to reading the books brought with him from Hong Kong. Family members charged him with following a foreigner's religion, suggesting that he had given up his allegiance to the Manchurian empire. Neighbours and others considered him either to be mad or possessed, the latter group throwing water on him (blessed in one of the Daoist temples?) to cast out the demons. What is significant, and may not be fully understood at first notice, is that these reactions occurred months before any outright military hostilities had begun (the so-called Second Opium War). \"Following", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215988, "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": 287, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "221\n\nresearch and cross-cultural studies on an international scale. There is much of lasting value which has been gained here. For the light of this story is full of mottled shades, helping to expose the cultural complexities of the second generation of missionaries and indigenous Christians among Protestants in China as well as highlighting the work of one of their most creative and unexpected indigenous missionaries. Furthermore, it reveals a purposefully hidden event in the very early era of the post-Opium War treaty situation which has been all but forgotten. Now there is even more evidence to consider, far more than has previously been available, to indicate how and why the interacting forces of foreign military, local mandarin, Hong Kong missionary and Chinese local populations struggled through this very murky period in modern Chinese history.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. Further details about Legge's missionary-scholar career can be culled from my two-volume work entitled Striving for \"The Whole Duty of Man”: James Legge and the Scottish Protestant Encounter with China (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), forthcoming in May or June 2003. Images of some of the other deaths surrounding Legge's later life while a professor in Chinese language and literature at Oxford can be culled from Norman J. Girardot's The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). An earlier version of this paper was read at the International Conference on James Legge held in the University of Aberdeen in April 1997.\n\n2. See George Legge, Lectures on Theology, Science, and Revelation, eds. James Legge and John Legge, with introduction by James Legge (London: 1863).\n\n3. In the five-volume set of William Canton's A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: John Murray, 1904-1910), only two pages are devoted to recounting the basic elements of Ch'ea's Christian life and martyrdom, all being completely dependent on previous published sources in English. While a full chapter is devoted to Ch'ea in Helen Edith Legge's James Legge: Missionary and Scholar (London: Religious Tract Society, 1905), her account suffers from a lack of chronological consistency, some misrepresentation of facts, and a lack of understanding of the broader circumstances influencing the events leading to his murder.\n\n4. An immense amount of literature in the general area of Protestant missionary studies, for example, and two monumental works on Legge's two distinct careers as a missionary for the London Missionary Society in Hong Kong and as the first professor of Chinese language and literature at Corpus Christi College in Oxford (by Pfister and Girardot respectively), have highlighted these matters. For those interested in the more general trends of missionary studies", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215998, "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": 297, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "231\n\nHenan province to Legge in Hong Kong. It is very unclear who that might be, since the London Missionary Society did not have regular workers in inland China, or even more north along the eastern coast of China, until after the settlement of the second Opium War in 1860. Nevertheless, the writer speaks about \"old Chow\" (lǎo Zhōu, accepted as an intimate expression between friends and not merely descriptive of age), an elder Chinese Christian in their church, who became so interested in the Poklo movement that he visited Ch'ëa independently in 1858 and found what had been said to be the case.\n\n54. For further comments on Hannah Mary Legge's life as a missionary wife and spouse of an Oxford University professor, see Lauren Pfister, Striving for the \"Whole Duty of Man\": James Legge and the Scottish Protestant Encounter with China (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, forthcoming 2003), vol. 2, chapters 5 and 6 in passim, and Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 55-56, 62, 84-87, 150-151, 194-196, 455-456, 506-509.\n\n55. Legge wrote, “Since his baptism in 1856, Ch'ëa has spent a large portion of his time in travelling, and making known the things which he believes, entirely without fee or reward. Our Church came to the conclusion that we ought, in accordance with the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire, to do something for him; and he has gone back home the Agent or Missionary of our Chinese brethren here, for a period of three months. At the end of that time we are to see him again, when it may be advisable to take measures to prosecute the work in Pok-lo on a larger scale than the small means of my people can attain to.\" EMMC/MM 24 (February 1860), p. 39.\n\n56. These statistics are summarized from the annual report of Legge and Chalmers written on January 14, 1861 (CWM/South China/Box 6/Jacket B/Folder 3) and Legge's \"Journey of a Missionary Tour\".\n\n57. The subtleties of translation here are also important. Did Ch'ea actually use a word for \"Papists,\" or was this derogatory term the European translators' replacement for a more neutral phrase for \"Catholics\" like Tiānzhǔjiào tú?\n\n58. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p. 207 for details. It should be mentioned, though it may be obvious to some, that the previously described persecutions of 1856 when Ch'ea self-consciously remained silent before his \"persecutors\" in the government was also an imitation of Christ's silence before the Sanhedrin.\n\n59. Selected from EMMC/MM (September 1857), p. 208.\n\n60. This scene and the subsequent information from Mr. Kot appear in the translation of the dictated account of his conversion published in EMMC/MM (September 1857), pp. 208-209.\n\n61. There are later examples of sermons dealing with the topic of providence, for example, which probably reflect earlier teachings at Union Chapel. For Legge's sermons touching themes of divine providence see \"The Review and Meaning of the Past\" (on Deuteronomy 8:2, dated January 1, 1871, found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 4), \"The Rationale of the Divine Judgments\" (on Psalm 119:75, dated September 17, 1871), and \"The Doctrine of a Particular Providence\" (on Psalm 37:38-40, dated January 28, 1872, both this and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]