[ { "id": 204541, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "PROTESTANT CEMETERY IN MACAO\n\n17\n\nTowards the far end of the terrace a number of children lie buried in a row and this is undoubtedly responsible for the oft repeated comment on the high infant mortality amongst the Europeans living in Macao in those days.\n\nThe two memorials at the far end of the central avenue are very conspicuous; the first is the altar-tomb of Sandwith Drinker, an American sea captain, business man and consul. The other is built into the wall at the end of the avenue, and carries only these two words: GEORGE CHINNERY. He was Macao's great canvas historian.\n\nHe is generally referred to as an Irish artist. If this is correct, it is not because of his place of birth. He was born in 1774 in Gough Square, Fleet Street, London, and not in Ireland. He went to Dublin when a young man, probably because a branch of the family had moved there from East Anglia a few generations previously. Nor is it certain that he was, as is usually claimed, a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy which was not founded till twenty-one years after Chinnery left Dublin.\n\nWhile in Dublin he formed two attachments which were mainly responsible for the pattern of his future life; one had political repercussions which led to his sudden departure from Ireland and eventually from England to India. The other attachment was a wife; after an all too short period of blissful happiness, he spent the rest of his life trying to evade her. In this he was finally successful, but only by eventually settling in Macao with its haven of refuge from females close at hand in nearby Canton.\n\nChinnery came to Macao in 1825 and died there in 1852. During that time he must have painted hundreds of portraits and pictures of local scenes. Practically no foreigner and certainly no ship's captain left Macao without at least one portrait of himself by Chinnery, and the number of these scattered throughout the world must be vast. Yet it used to be said that this part of the world possessed no examples of his art. However true that was, it is certainly not so now, for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, acting on the expert advice of our President, has built up a most valuable collection of his paintings. Although Chinnery never did like Hong Kong very much, many examples of his art certainly have a permanent home in our midst now. In the Lower Terrace there are 122 memorials and in our experience the most popular one amongst visitors is that of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204791, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "82 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nwas committed outside their shop. Fearing further complications, the brothers left their native village of Nam Ling Wai nearby, two of them going to Jamaica and the third to Peng Chau. The reason for his selecting Peng Chau is an interesting one. There had been difficulty in finding a bride with a suitable horoscope and a go-between in Yuen Long Market with contacts on Peng Chau had arranged his marriage with a girl of the LUI family. The family were not poor, and by the end of the century had secured a considerable area of fields on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau by giving mortgages to incautious or unlucky farmers. \n\nSome light on Peng Chau's development in the nineteenth century is given in the tablet commemorating the repairs made to the temple in 1878. Though the total number of subscribers is less than in the 1798 tablet — 181 instead of 218 — the number of shops is greater, and their locations specified. Fifty Peng Chau undertakings were listed, including one factory, though what manufacture it carried out is unknown. Some of the local shops listed on the tablet were quite large concerns by the end of the century. Among their number the San Tai Li business owned six or seven adjoining shops on the east side of Wing On Street, near the present ferry pier. It is said to have handled several lines of business including ship-chandlering and the production of sails and tackle, fishmongering and general dealings with fishermen, grocery and general goods and Chinese medicine. It also owned several junks for cargo and ferry purposes. A WONG of the third generation was managing its affairs in 1899, the business having been started by his grandfather, who was a Cantonese from Shun Tak district. Besides the shops, and the lime kilns, of which there were almost a dozen by 1904, there were at least two boat building and repair yards, and a business which specialised in beaching boats. \n\nThe repair tablet lists numerous outside subscribers, which indicates the business and social contacts which the island had with neighbouring areas. Eighteen Hong Kong businesses, including seven fish laans, and another seven shops from Shaukiwan, contributed to the fund, and so did shops from Tai Ping, Shek Wan and Kong Moon in the Pearl River Delta. A ferry boat business from Heung Shan, had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205520, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n57\n\n12th, 1852. This records a rearrangement of the books, and since “proper classification was out of the question” they were arranged according to size, so as to give a uniformity of appearance. A printed catalogue was produced under the direction of Mr. W. F. Bevan, assisted by Mr. A. Dixson; the latter was Secretary of the Library for the year reported, and was re-elected for 1852-53. There is no record of the total number of books, but during the year 75 titles in 133 volumes were added; the number of members rose from 63 to 66—against 19 new members, 10 had left the Colony, 1 died, and 5 withdrawn. The annual accounts3 balanced at $1,755.02, and the cash in hand at the end of the year was $37.11. The largest item of expenditure was \"Books, periodicals, and newspapers from England, $675.83.\" This did not include carriage, since it is stated that the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. kindly conveyed the monthly parcels free of charge. Rent of premises accounted for $355.00.\n\nThere had apparently been some criticism of the inaccessibility of the premises. Their exact location has not been ascertained, but an advertisement of 1852 gives Queen's Road as the address, whereas another in 1867 gives Wyndham Street. Whether the change was made in 1852 is not clear, but the proposed new premises would, according to the Committee's report, cost an additional $120 p.a. for rent. A search for subsequent annual reports should throw further light on this question of location. It would also be interesting if a copy of the printed catalogue of 1852 could be found.\n\nAlso in 1852, Dixson's Hongkong Recorder contains at least three advertisements relating to the Victoria Library. The first gives notice of a meeting of the committee to be held at 8 p.m. on 21st June, for the purpose of \"the selection of Books to be ordered by the next mail.\" The advertisement goes on to say that the monthly package by the last mail, which had been mislaid on board the P. & O. Co.'s receiving ship, had since been found, and as well as the usual magazines, certain books had arrived, including Gutzlaff's Life of Taou-kwang. It seems that there were at this time quite frequent purchases of books, since another notice in the Hongkong Recorder of 9th July announced the arrival of a further consignment, which included Davis's China during the War and since the Peace and Fortune's Tea Districts of China and India.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206053, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "A BRITISH MARITIME CHART OF 1780 SHOWING HONG KONG\n\nHENRY D. Talbot*\n\nA recent acquisition by the Map Library of the Department of Geography and Geology of the University of Hong Kong is of some interest as it appears to be the earliest known British map or chart depicting the island of Hong Kong.\n\nThe title is \"A Chart of the China Sea from the Island of Sancian to Pedra Branca with the course of the River Tigris from Canton to Macao from a Portuguese draught communicated by Captain Hayter and compared with the Chinese Chart of the Macao Pilots\".\n\nThe places mentioned need little explanation as they are names still used today. Sancian is also called St. John's Island and is to the west of Macao, while Pedra Branca is today called Pedro Blanco and is an isolated rock, used as a navigational landmark, to the east of Hong Kong. The River Tigris is the name given to the river up to Canton, derived from the name of the narrows called \"Bocca Tigris\" (Tiger's Mouth) in Portuguese, a translation of the Chinese name.\n\nThe Captain Hayter is evidently Captain George Hayter of the East India Company Ship York. This ship was in Chinese waters frequently from 1741 up to 1786 and Hayter was compiler of another chart dated 1787.\n\nThe chart was \"... Printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennett Map and Chart-sellers No. 53 Fleet Street, as the Act directs, 29 Nov. 1780\" Robert Sayer (1725-1794) and John Bennett were well known as map-sellers at the end of the eighteenth century. It is recorded that Robert Sayer retired in 1794 after almost half a century in the map chart trade.\n\nThe size of the chart is 950 × 640 mm., while the size of the map itself is 781 × 596 mm. The latter is the length along the neatlines, the inner border of the map.\n\n* Mr. Talbot is Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Geology in the University of Hong Kong. He was Hon. Editor of this Journal in 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206273, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "84 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\ntherefore in the hands of shopkeepers, compradors and pedlars of whom there are many, though their transactions when considered as a whole are but trifling.' \n\n12 \n\nIn his remarks on native trade, Gutzlaff states that an attempt had been made by a Cantonese capitalist to establish himself in Hong Kong. He is referring to Chinam, alias Chan Akuen, who with three other partners operated under the firm name of Tun Wo *. The Colonial Treasurer, R. M. Martin, also refers to him in his report: \"One man of reputed wealth named Chinam, who had been engaged in the opium trade, came to Hong Kong, built a good house, and freighted a ship. He soon returned to Canton, and died there of a fever and cold contracted in Hong Kong. It was understood, however, that had he lived he would have been prohibited from returning to Hong Kong\",13 \n\nIn June, 1843, Chinam bought Marine Lot 54 from Richard Oswald paying $8,000. At the time it had on it a Singapore frame house14 with brick enlargements. On the lot Chinam proceeded to build a large Hong in the Chinese style, but before the building was completed, he died in July, 1844. With his death the firm closed down its operations in Hong Kong and most of the Hong stood unoccupied for a number of years. One of Chinam's partners, Chan Chun-poo, was appointed his administrator, but due to irregularities in his handling of the estate he was imprisoned in 1854, and remained in prison for two years. He petitioned the Government for his release on the grounds of his advanced age. The property of Chinam's firm was sold in 1854 to Ow Yeung Sun, a trader from the San Wui District in Kwang Tung. \n\nAnother Canton firm that established itself in Hong Kong in the early days was Akow and Company. It was not in the same class as Chinam's Tun Wo firm, but its position was above that of the shopkeepers and tradesmen concentrated in the Bazaar areas. The company was granted Inland Lot 22 located at the corner of Queen's Road and Pottinger Street in the European section. The firm consisted of five partners, of whom Cheung Kam Cheong was resident in Hong Kong. He began to speculate in real estate and bought several lots at Government land auctions. His land investments were not successful and \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206385, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "176\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe end of June and the beginning of September, and was then removed from its quarters of which I have spoken on board ship. Many civilians also fell victims to Hongkong fever. The mortality was mainly owing to the want of accommodation for the multitudes who kept pressing into the new colony, and to the miasma set free from the ground which was everywhere being turned up. I remember visiting officers who were living in small huts reared on the hill behind the general's house. It was no wonder that one after another they were seized with fever, and either died, or were invalided home. Then the drains were for the time all open, and an atmosphere of disease, which only the strongest constitutions and prudent living were able to resist, might be said to envelope the inhabitants day and night.\n\nI have intimated my opinion that there was no subsequent year of sickness and mortality so great as that of 1843; and nothing can be more delightful than the change in the colony in this respect. I do not think there is now a healthier residence on this side of Africa. This has been very gradually arrived at, by the increase of good houses, effectual drainage, the better supply of water, and the growth of trees and vegetation in general. There were other unhealthy years, and it came to be said that we might expect one of that character every seven years; but we have ceased to be troubled with the apprehension of such a periodic visitation. As to the healthiness from increased vegetation, I may mention that Dr. William Morrison, the colonial surgeon, who himself died from abscess of the liver, in October, 1883,* told me, some years before that event, that he had advised planting the ground on the south of the street behind the Murray Barracks with bamboos, as being of speedy growth. It was done, and soon the grove which every one of you knows, began to wave, and there was from that time a marked improvement in the health of the soldiers in those barracks.\n\nThe Colony, I have said, is now one of the healthiest residences, if not the very healthiest, in the East. The average of 14 years, reckoning back from the present, gives a rate of mortality for the foreign residents, not including the military, of a very little over 4 per cent; and in 1868, the rate was a trifle under 2 per cent, rather lower than the rate of mortality in Great Britain.\n\n* SIC: Morrison died later than the date given, but I have no reference books available at the time of writing. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207132, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe purpose of the visit is to see\n\n197\n\n(a) the quiet residential terraces of this part of Kennedy Town, namely Tai Pak Terrace, Hee Wong Terrace, Ching Lin Terrace, To Li Terrace, and Hok Si Terrace;\n\n(b) the Lo Pan Temple which stands at the western end of\n\nChing Lin Terrace.\n\nKennedy Town was named after an early Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Arthur Kennedy in whose term of office, April 1872 - March 1877, the district was first developed. Kennedy ‘was genial, and possessed a great sense of humour, much common sense, and a strong Irish accent'. For a short but interesting and lively account of the events of his governorship see Endacott's History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 160-169),\n\nEndacott gives the following reason for the development of Kennedy Town, then located on the western fringe of the city of Victoria\n\nThe telegraph and the Suez Canal had brought changes in commercial practice; large stocks used to be kept by the European firms to meet any advantageous price changes; but now shipments could be arranged far more quickly. The result was that large godowns in the eastern district were no longer necessary, and coolies moved to the western part of the city in search of employment. To meet this change a new Chinese area was laid out on partly reclaimed land, and named Kennedy Town after the Governor.\n\nThe Five Terraces\n\nCarl Smith has very kindly provided the following information about the development of the particular section of Kennedy Town in which we are interested:\n\nThe area we are visiting today, lying between Pokfulam Road and the sea shore and from Holland Street to Sands Street, was the earliest development in what is now Kennedy Town. George Underhill Sands was granted a Crown Lease in 1873 for 330,634 square feet at Belcher's Bay. The lot was numbered Marine Lot 239. It not only had a sea frontage suitable for docks and a ship slipway, but it extended up the hillside toward Pokfulam Road. Sands died in 1877 and his executors sold the lot with its patent slips and shipways to the Hong Kong and Whampoa", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207141, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge dwellings and godowns. It was a pleasant area. Two of the properties were especially noted for their gardens. A Parsee merchant, Framjee Jamsetjee, in advertising his property for sale in 1845, stated that it was \"beautifully situated by the water side with a fine view of the Bay, surrounded by a garden, stocked with the choicest plants which have been imported at great expense, and now is in a flourishing condition.\" The other gardened property was called Spring Gardens, and for a number of the years the name was applied to the area. The name is preserved today by Spring Gardens Lane which marks the eastern boundary of the original property. The dwelling was also known as \"Old Government House\" for at one time it had been the residence of Governor Bonham [1848-1854]. Advertisements mention its \"ornamental grounds\" and \"fine well of spring water with powerful iron pump\".\n\nWhen the military gradually bought up and occupied the area between Central District and Wanchai in the 1840s and 1850s, the two sections were separated and Spring Gardens area lost most of its commercial activity. Decline set in, reinforced by a business depression, and a number of godowns and dwellings stood empty. Several of the properties reverted to Government through non-payment of Crown rents. Others were foreclosed by mortgagees. The military took advantage of the empty premises to use them as barracks and officers' quarters.\n\nPoor Chinese settled as squatters both on the west and east fringes of Victoria. To accommodate these on the east the Government put up for sale in 1847 a range of lots at the foot of Hospital Hill along the present Wanchai Road. These were used for small shops, trades, and family residences. The population, however, tended to remain poor and unruly. With the influx of displaced people during the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1850s several of the European properties were redeveloped with Chinese housing.\n\nThe area near Queen's Road East and Ship Street was probably the site of a small settlement before the British occupation of the Island. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong states that the Hung Shing Temple on Queen's Road East existed before the cession. The pattern of the lots also suggests that there may have been previous occupants. When the military rented some vacant properties nearby for barracks, several brothels were established on Ship Street north of Queen's Road East. To the south, up the hill on Ship Street, there were several small dairies operated by Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207143, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "208 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nwas bought by the Church and a large number of houses were built for the poor. In 1849, the Roman Catholics acquired land next to the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley and ceased burying in the old cemetery, though headstones remained scattered about for a long time. \n\nAnother Roman Catholic institution was located south of Queen's Road on the waterfront between what is the present Anton Street and Li Chit Street. Here the French Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1848, built an orphanage called the Asile des Sainte Enfance. \n\nIn 1845, two Americans, Charles Emery and George Frazer, moved their ship-building yard from Kowloon Point to a lot east of the French Orphanage. The yard passed through a succession of owners. In 1880 George Fenwick came into possession. He gave his name to the present Fenwick Street. In 1871 the Hong Kong Pier and Godown Company was launched to develop extensive wharfing and storage facilities. It occupied the land between the Orphanage and the shipyard. The present Gresson Street intersects the original property. The venture was not a success and the Company went into liquidation in 1873. In 1876 several Europeans financed by Chinese capital built the Oriental Sugar Refinery on property now defined by Swatow and Amoy Streets. It also soon failed and passed into receivership. Eventually, it was taken over by Jardine, Matheson and Company and was merged with their China Sugar Refining plant at East Point. \n\nThe first Protestant Chapel in the area was built in 1863 on Wan Chai Road by the London Missionary Society. A school was also opened, supported by Chinese subscriptions. The present Ying-Wa Girls School had its origins in the Wanchai Girls' Boarding School of the London Missionary Society opened in 1888. The Wanchai Chinese Methodist Church on the triangle of Hennessy Road, Fenwick Street, and Queen's Road East was occupied in 1936. \n\nThe Urban Services Office, where we are having tea, and the Wanchai Post Office next to it, are located on a lot which was sold to the first American resident of Hong Kong, Charles V. Gillespie. Here, in the spring of 1842, he built a substantial brick house of six rooms surrounded by a verandah at a cost of about $2,800. It was called “Jorrock's Hall” (sic) and was located on Inland Lot 14. The adjoining Lot No. 15 was also owned by Gillespie. He sold it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n215 \n\nThe area between Queen's Road and the present Des Voeux Road, originally the Praya, extending from Wilmer Street west to Eastern Street was bought in 1858 by a Chinese consortium consisting of Chun Afie, Pang Awah, Tso Atak and Leong Hang*. The tract purchased consisted of Marine Lots 90, 91 and 92. They were apportioned among the several purchasers. At first the property was devoted principally to Chinese ship building yards, but as population and business spread westward, the yards became crowded out. The two lanes Tsz Mi and Sai Woo were developed in the 1860's. On the old Praya there was a concentration of rice dealers and a scattering of salt fish stores, though Ham Yu** Lane was located on the lots immediately to the west, between Eastern and Centre Streets.\n\n \nLike all the land in urban Hong Kong, the area we visit has passed through successive changes in land use and ownership. The land use changes are marked by three main periods: first (1842 to around 1855) European godowns and residences; second (1851 to about 1880) ship yards, engineering works and coal godowns; and lastly (1870 to the present) Chinese shops, godowns and residences.\n\n \nThe owners of the land were originally mostly non-Chinese. But by 1876, all except a range of godowns and sheds owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was in Chinese hands, being divided between two of the largest land owners in the Colony: the Li family of the Wo Hang and Lai Hing firms***, and Kwok Acheong who was Compradore of the P. & O. Co., owner of his own steamships, and founder of the Fat Hing firm.\n\n \nAt its first settlement the area was almost rural, for it was situated at the western end of original Victoria. Because it provided a convenient spot for pier and landing facilities, two European firms selected West Point for their Hong Kong establishments, just as Jardine, Matheson and Company settled at East Point, even though both locations were somewhat distant from the main centres of foreign business in Spring Gardens**** and Central District. In\n\n \n*The Pang and Chan are the same that bought the land at the east end of Wanchai, in the vicinity of the Yuk Hui Temple—see \"Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”, earlier in this Section.\n\n \n** Cantonese for salt fish.\n\n \n*** See Smith: \"Emergence of a Chinese Elite”, JHKBRAS 11, pp. 90-92. See \"Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207151, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "216\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe case of the firms at West Point it was not a good situation in spite of the advantages of its water front. Neither of the firms used their property for a long period. Henry Pybus purchased Marine Lot 58 and the firm of Jamieson How and Company bought the adjoining Marine Lot 57. Both were Calcutta-based firms and both purchased their Hong Kong property at the first land sale in June, 1842. They immediately began to build godowns and residences and were in occupation by the fall of 1842.\n\nBoth Pybus and Jamieson, How and Co. had connections with Yorick Jones Murrow, an old China hand. In 1839 he was the agent at Canton for Jamieson's. Upon the death of Henry Pybus, Murrow succeeded to his business in 1844, and in 1852 he bought the adjoining godown property of Jamieson, Edgar and Co., as the Hong Kong branch of the firm was called. Murrow formed a partnership with James Stephenson to engage in California trade at the time of the gold rush. They developed an extensive trade with San Francisco and arranged for a line of steam packets between it and Hong Kong. The partnership was dissolved in 1854 and Murrow moved to Canton. In 1859, his property at West Point was sold at Sheriff's sale. Two years previous, he had moved back to Hong Kong and became editor and subsequently owner of the Hongkong Daily Press.\n\nMurrow as the \"Laird\" of West Point had a running feud with the Princely Hong at East Point. He used his newspaper as a weapon to attack. He was, of course, the lightweight contestant and several times he was sentenced for libel and for a period operated his newspaper from prison. He left Hong Kong in 1867*. \n\nThe suitability of the area for ship berthing has been mentioned. This feature attracted enterprises connected with the shipping industry. In the 1860's and '70's the shipping industry became an increasingly important feature of Hong Kong's economy, particularly as steam replaced sails.\n\nIn 1851, Thomas Roberts opened the West Point Cooperage and Boat Yard on the lot on the west side of what is now Queen Street. He sold his property to Lee Hing alias Li Sing in 1861. It\n\n* Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke: A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers, 1822-1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 139-141.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207152, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 223, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n217 \n\nwas redeveloped and in 1868 shops and godowns were built along Queen Street. \n\nNext to Robert's shipyard, Kwok Acheong had a compound in which he erected coal sheds, carpenter shops and a smithy. The latter was operated by Augustine Heard and Company. The present entrance to Tsung Sau Lane East on Queen's Road was the site of the original entry gate into the compound. By 1872 most of the buildings in \"Acheong's Yard\" had been removed, but in 1877 after the property had been sold to the Li family firm of Lai Hing, buildings were started along Tsung Sau Lane East. In the following year work was begun to redevelop Marine Lot 70, where Tsung Sau Lane West was opened in 1879. Previously the lot had been occupied by an engineering establishment. It was occupied successively by James Logan, William Swan, a boiler-maker, and William Dunphy, proprietor of the Novelty Iron Works. \n\nA large shipyard was built in 1856 on Marine Lot 58 where the Pybus godown had been built in 1842. The owners were two Scotsmen, George Harper and David Gow. In 1862 they sold out to James Logan, a plumber by trade, who took on as his partner John Riach, an experienced shipwright from Singapore. They operated as the Hong Kong Engine Works. The works of the new firm were destroyed by fire in 1866 and they sold the property to Li Sing. He redeveloped it by building a complex of shops, merchant hongs, family houses, and a theatre named Ko Shing. \n\nThree years before Harper and Gow built their shipyard, the P. & O. Co. had begun building extensive godowns and coal sheds on property immediately to the west. Some of this land they leased, others they purchased. Thus for a decade or so in the middle of the nineteenth century the entire area was dominated by establishments connected with the shipping industry. \n\nAs the land on which the ship yards, smithies and coal sheds had been built was redeveloped, the area took on its present land use. On Queen's Road there were the shops; on the Praya (now the south side of Ko Shing Street) the business hongs; and in the lanes and alleys between, godowns and businesses auxiliary to the hongs, such as paper, lumber, bags, mats and firewood (from broken down boxes) — all used in packing and shipping. \n\nThe lanes opened at various times, depending on when the lots were redeveloped. Those on Marine Lot 58 were the first. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207339, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n99\n\nadjacent to the European business centre, the so-called Central District (Chung Wan), or, eastwards along Queen's Road, in the district of Wan Chai.\" Once Kowloon was acquired, pong-paân were attracted to this new area of settlement because of low rents and the propinquity of the docks, wharves and godowns soon established there, which in time gave employment to numerous European overseers. At the end of the century, Kowloon had become the principal habitat of lower class Europeans. There were terraces of houses occupied solely by them. A witness wrote:\n\nThese are generally employees in the dockyards, or clerks, or the families of engineers and mates of the small steamers that have their headquarters in Hong Kong... Hong Kong looks down on Kowloon with all the well-bred contempt of Belgravia for Brixton. And even in the despised suburb on the mainland these social differences are not wanting. The wives of the superior dock employees are the leaders of Kowloon society; and the better half of a ship captain or marine engineer is only admitted on sufferance to their exclusive circle.18\n\nBut the part of Victoria most frequented, especially at night, by the European lower orders—soldiers, sailors, merchant seamen, beach-combers and others—was Tai Ping Shan, a densely populated Chinese residential area west of the Central District. In 1875 a visitor to Hong Kong wrote:\n\nPassing westward along Queen's Road, we come upon a quarter of the town much frequented by seamen of all nations. Here spirits are sold in nearly every second shop, and bands of common sailors may be seen spending their time and money on questionable drink in more questionable company, roaring out some rough sea-song in drunken chorus, or dancing to the time of a drum and flute, accordion or cornopean. The piles of Chinese houses which rise above this locality embrace Tai-Ping-Shan, or the hill of great peace. The name is a fine one, but a fine name will not hide the sins of the place. Tai-Ping-Shan is inhabited, for the most part, by Chinamen; but men are found there belonging to all the nations of the East. As for women, these are principally Chinese; they are numerous enough, but of the lowest type. There are strange hotels in this quarter,\n\n* There are a number of 19th century street maps available for early Hong Kong, held in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "100 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nbesides music-halls and lodging-houses, the haunts of vagabonds well known to the police.19 \n\nThe spectacle of Jack Tars, returning from the grog-shops of Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun, tipsily and rowdily weaving their way along Queen's Road, affronted respectable Britons. A Wesleyan missionary complained in 1894 that the colony was always upset by the arrival of a fresh man-of-war whose crew once ashore would behave like wild animals. \"They drink like fishes,\" he complained, \"ride round the town in rickshaws, making night hideous with their shouts, eat over-ripe fruit from street stalls, are stricken with cholera, and die in a few hours.\" He insisted that for soldiers and sailors (and possibly for most others in the East at the present moment) \"total abstinence is a duty\".20 \n\nThe Wesleyan missionary, a fervent supporter of the temperance movement, misunderstood the reasons for excessive drinking among servicemen in Hong Kong. It was not due to innate depravity or irreligion. Soldiers and sailors drank because of the tedium, the hideous boredom they had to endure as pariahs in Hong Kong. They were totally excluded from polite European society; there were no young white women of their own class to walk out with; there were few entertainments, except lugubrious church or mission functions, provided for them. Off duty the only pleasures available, apart from a climb up the Peak, a jaunt in a sampan, or a visit to the Botanical Gardens, were the drinking dens and brothels of the more welcoming Chinese quarters of the town. \n\nSailors, in particular, led almost completely isolated lives in the Far East. News from home could take months to reach their ships. Often they spent over a year without going ashore on leave. Walter White, a ship's painter, joined H.M.S. Scout at Sheerness in 1859, left England in that year and did not return from service on the China Station until 1864.21 His experience was typical. He spent New Year's Day, 1862, in Hong Kong and put up at the European Hotel, a hostelry overlooking Tai Ping Shan. From the verandah of his hotel, he wrote home, \"you can sit and look down upon the teeming, squalid living, jangling and evil smelling Chinese quarters.\"22 But it was in this teeming quarter that White and his naval companions were obliged to spend their evenings of leave, \n\nMajor Henry Knollys epitomises the life of the British gunner in Hong Kong in the 1880s thus:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208108, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW -LONG ISLAND \n\n131\n\nJunks are the reason for Cheung Chow which only exists to take over their cargoes of fish, salt, or hides, and to supply them in return with all that junks need, ship chandlery and stores, gear of all sorts, and certain amusements for the fisherman, some of them innocent and some not. It stands between Hongkong with its population of some 600,000 persons clamorous for food, and the fishing fleet which cannot afford to lose time beating about in narrow and often becalmed waters under high hills. At Cheung Chow the wind is almost always blowing, but the deeply indented bay and the sheltering spit between the hills give shelter. The junks can run in, unload their catch, revictual or refit, and stand out to sea in any wind, with no delay. The steam ferry carries their fish to the waiting markets for them.\n\nBut the islanders have a second string to their bow for the presence of the ferry has made it worth while to grow vegetables for the same market, and the little glens of the island are terraced to the limit to provide vegetables to the inhabitants and a surplus for that export.\n\nSubsidiary trades have grown up from the same root, if fish can be called a root; fish must be salted and dried, so there is a great trade in salt, though most of the salt which comes into Cheung Chow is not rubbed into the fish there but is re-exported to China.\n\nWhen we have pictured the little land to ourselves, described its climate, the races and tribes of its inhabitants, we will wander along the busy main street, and so take ship and depart from this little place so like some ancient Greek kingdom set in the wine-dark sea smelling of fish, overrun with pigs. Later we will return to see the Moon-cake festival, and after that let someone more capable take up the tale.\n\nThe Little Land and City\n\nCheung Chow is shaped as the photograph shows.*\n\nIt would seem that one of the very numerous saddle-shaped ridges in which Hongkong abounds has sunk here so that the ridge between the two peaks makes a long double beach, only one hundred yards wide at its narrowest. On the Western Side the bay is large and partly sheltered by other islands, but on the Eastern it is open to the sea, and the N. E. Monsoon pours aslant into that bay, and rages against its headlands. So the town turns its back to the\n\n* Not reprinted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 303, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n281\n\ndisturbances were under control to rescind the proclamation invoking emergency powers as soon as the Chinese New Year celebrations were over. But conditions in the colony had not yet fully returned to normal and various wild rumours continued to be put into circulation, including the story that when May arrived the enlarged garrison would make an attack on China and annex further areas of Guangdong north of the New Territories. However, no-one was expecting any serious trouble on the morning of 4th July when the elite of the colony turned out to welcome the new governor.\n\nThe ship bringing Sir Henry May from Fiji arrived off Kowloon point early in the morning and at 10 a.m. Sir Henry crossed the harbour in the government launch to Blake Pier where he was greeted with a salute of 17 guns. He inspected the guard of honour and met the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, all of whom were well-known to him. Among them was Sir Kai Ho Kai, the senior member of the Legislative Council, who had just received his knighthood, the first ever given to a Chinese in Hong Kong. Sir Kai had strong connections with the reform movement in China, but he had loyally supported the British administration in the measures taken to deal with violence in the colony, and the knighthood was his reward for this as well as for his long career of public service.\n\nThe next part of the ceremonial was the procession to the City Hall. Sir Henry and Lady May took their seats side by side in two sedan chairs, each carried by eight coolies. The chairs were escorted by eight Indian constables, four on the right of Sir Henry's chair marching two paces apart, and four on the left of Lady May's chair. Behind them was a European police sergeant, and he was followed by four more chairs carrying the four daughters of the new governor. The route to the City Hall was lined by soldiers stationed at intervals of three paces on either side of the road.\n\nAs the procession left Blake Pier and passed along Pedder Street towards Des Voeux Road a Chinese dressed in European clothes was seen to push his way through the crowd around the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209775, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "REVD. CARL T. SMITH'S NOTES ON THE SO KON PO VALLEY AND VILLAGE\n\nSo Kon Po can be translated as \"the straw broom plain\", or possibly, \"the straw broom landing place\". The valley is a pocket with hills closing in at its seaward end. The hill to the north is the site of Tai Hang Village and Tiger Balm Garden. To the south-west is Jardine's Lookout, and to the south-east is Caroline Hill. There are two principal roads, both circular, the Eastern Hospital Road and the Caroline Hill Road. The original So Kon Po district extended to the north-west of the valley itself, that is, to the north-east side of the old East Point Hill, now the area of Hysan Avenue and Lee Gardens. In the present area of Jardine's Bazaar, Irving Street and Keswick Street there was probably a Chinese settlement at the time the British occupied Hong Kong. In 1842 the population of this village of So Kon Po was given as eighty. The valley drained into the sea near the present junctions of Yee Woh Street, Causeway Road and Tung Lo Wan Road. Tung Lo Wan was the name of the bay at the seaward end of the valley; the bay has now been reclaimed to form the Patterson Street and Victoria Park area.\n\nThe original cultivators of the valley seem to have been the Wong (#) family. A few people in the village were engaged in ship-building and fishing.\n\nCapt. Belcher, commander of H.M. survey ship \"Sulphur\", landed on Hong Kong island in January 1841. As the most suitable site for a settlement, he suggested a spot \"at nearly the east end of Hong Kong bay, in two small indents; one opening into the valley of Wongneichong and another to the north-east [the So Kon Po valley]. A small promontory [East Point] of about 220 yards in length and 120 in breadth, with a frontage on both sides, has a landing place for boats at the point at all times of the tide. Both of these small bays are dry at low water spring tides, and would be easily gained from the sea\". (Canton Register, 7 Dec. 1841)\n\nCaptain Belcher's suggestion was not followed, but Jardine, Matheson and Company considered the East Point promontory,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210725, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "59\n\nStreet on the Natural History of Hongkong contained numerous references to the flora of the region and these notices would undoubtedly have had the effect of keeping the idea of a Botanical Garden in the minds of the relevant authorities, both in Hongkong and in London. For example, in Despatch no. 130 of 1860 it is stated that:\n\n\"Botanical notices have appeared in Hooker's Journal of Botany 1842. Collections made by Mr. R.B. Hinds, Surgeon, H.M. Ship “Sulphur”. Also in Journal of Horticultural Society 1844 and subsequent numbers by Lindley, of plants collected by Mr. Fortune on his first visit to China.\n\nIn Walpers Annales, descriptions by Dr. Hance of Hong Kong Plants. Some plants were described by the Botanist Mr. Wright attached to the American exploring expedition published by that government.\n\nA review of the Flora of the Colony, derived chiefly from the collections of the late Major Champion, 95th Regiment, was undertaken by Mr. Bentham, V.P.L.S. in Sir W. Hooker's \"Journal of Botany”, 1851 and succeeding years. This version was entitled 'Florula Hongkongensis'. The concluding section of the Botany of the voyage of H.M. Ship “Herald\" (London 1852-7, -4 to 100 plates) edited by Dr. Seemann, under the authority of the Lords Commissions of the Admiralty, is entirely devoted to Hong Kong, and includes, (in addition to the materials at the disposal of Mr. Bentham), the collections of Dr. Seemann himself, (not extensive, however). Since the date of these publications however, the knowledge of the vegetation of the island has been much extended and many novelties added by the constant explorations of the late Dr. Harland, Mr. Wilford (a collector sent out from Kew) and Dr. Hance now Vice Consul in Whampoa.\n\nA flora of Hong Kong to comprise all the plants hitherto discovered is now in preparation by Mr. Bentham", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210866, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 217, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "200\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nof the China Mail had been unfriendly to both him and his brother and was ready to publish any unfavourable report concerning the Tong family.\n\n-\n\nIn September 1856, the editor commented: \"Numbers of the Tong family connected with the Hongkong Government have an unfortunate knack of getting themselves into scrapes, for we are told that A-chick... has latterly been rendering himself obnoxious to his countrymen in California as head of one of the hway (associations), and that even his life is in danger. We have heard that it is A-chick's intention to return to Hongkong.”\n\nA-chick did not spend all his time visiting the Governor as representative of the Chinese, acting as community peacemaker, drafting letters setting forth the Chinese side of a controversy, or appearing in court. He was also a successful businessman.\n\nNotices relating to his first arrival in California speak of him as an associate of his uncle. Their firm was that of Tun Wo and Company. Soon, however, Tong A-chick was the manager of the Sam Wo Company. There may have been an amalgamation of the two firms. The store of Sam Wo was on Sacramento Street above Kearny. It was in the heart of the Chinese commercial centre.\n\nAn 1853 account of the Chinese section says it was \"the spot on which they first located their canvas houses in 1849, and they have stuck to it with remarkable tenacity.\"\n\nThe San Francisco establishment had direct links with a firm in Hongkong owned by the Tong family. The United States Customs House records for the port of San Francisco contain several ship manifests of goods shipped by the Hongkong firm and consigned to Tong A-chick.\n\nThese manifests show the kind of commodity in demand by the Chinese in California, items which could not be procured easily locally. Without these familiar products the sojourner would have felt more estranged and homesick.\n\nThe most popular imports were waterchestnuts, oranges,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211418, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "110\n\n mourning for one year. He expressed his hope that Grandfather would marry again.\n\nWhen Uncle learned from Father's letter of 11 February 1900 that Grandfather, Aunt Yim and her husband had been taken to a camp, along with others, for quarantine during the Honolulu Chinatown fire on 20 January, he wrote that he was sorry to receive such news of ill-treatment and discrimination against the Chinese. At the same time, he announced the birth of a son named Ting Kin (Toby), who was growing rapidly and smarter by the day. Uncle sent Aunt and the infant to the village to escape the violence of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. To avoid being accused as a Nge Mow Tsz or being killed, he bought a queue to wear whenever he alighted from his sedan.\n\nThe next letter preserved was dated 22 February 1902, when Uncle wrote from Canton that he had resigned as house surgeon from the Bok Chai Hospital\n\nwhere he had been assisting an American whose name in Chinese was Dr. Kwan. Uncle was not able to save from his salary of 60 dollars a month and he was kept busy night and day taking care of emergency cases, and consequently felt too confined. He thought he would teach physiology and chemistry for two hours a day at the Shi Man School and would start private practice. He also announced the birth of a second child, a daughter named Moo Ching, on 5 February\n\n1902.\n\nWhile still in Canton, he wrote on 21 October 1902 that Grandfather was indeed wise to have chosen a ‘large-footed' girl to be Father's wife, because women in China were beginning to unbind their feet, and that Second Aunt was thinking of doing it also. He stated that Ting Kin was anxiously waiting for the parcel Father was sending him and had asked many times what the gifts would be. Uncle's office was located on 12th Street in Canton. On 9 March 1903, while on board the Rajaburi on the way back to Hong Kong from Singapore via Swatow, Uncle informed Father that he was considering Manila or Honolulu as the next place for him to practise. Butterfield and Swire had retained Uncle and several other physicians to be ship surgeons, but the health authorities of Singapore only allowed ships with Chinese Physicians from the Alice Medical College in Hong Kong to enter the harbour. Uncle was not considered qualified because he only had three years of medical school.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211471, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "163\n\nGroven Ballen. There was some excitement when Mrs. Lam thought the infant was a boy and announced this to Father. Although having no sons was a disappointment to my parents, this infant daughter was no less precious. With his usual sense of humour, Father named her Dora Me Sun, explaining that Dora sounds like the Chinese words for \"too many\", that is, “too many\" girls. He ordered milk, especially rich for babies, delivered daily for Dora, but she could not tolerate it and became very colicky and fussy. I tried to help by carrying her, swinging her back and forth in my arms or in the hammock, hoping to soothe her with songs like “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Upon the advice of Mrs. Lam, fresh milk was replaced by malted milk, but this probably did not fill Dora's need for adequate nourishment and she continued to cry a great deal. The very strict 4-hour feeding schedule that the doctor recommended added to the problem.\n\nSoon the First World War cast a shadow of uneasiness over our lives and we felt the sadness of mothers who saw their sons drafted and sent to Europe. It came close to home when William Kam, our neighbour, and a few of our schoolmates left. War songs, rallies, victory bonds, first aid packages, etc. in school whipped up our patriotism. I had my first sight of an airplane then. It was a day of great rejoicing when the end of hostilities was announced. But soon the world-wide epidemic of influenza reached our islands and we would hear the sounds of sorrow in our community over the death of loved ones. We were anxious and frightened about an illness that struck so swiftly and with such deadliness. In spite of this, we were a happy family until in April, 1919, we received word that Father had come down with influenza on board ship bound for China. This was our last home in which we had all been so happy together, because Father died on his way back to Honolulu. His death left Mother widowed at age 32 with four young children, and gave me my first real loss, which had on me a sobering and maturing effect. Support and advice from friends helped Mother, sheltered from the world before this, to cope with her new responsibilities.\n\nRuth's education outside the home began in a small school for Chinese girls run by Mrs. Chang in a building behind the Fort Street Chinese Church. The following year Mother tried to enrol Ruth and me in Central Grammar School, but the principal, Mrs. Carter, reputed to be very selective of minorities and called by the Chinese \"pigeon eye\" ÉIR", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211679, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "69\n\nThe embarkation took place at midnight. It had begun to rain. There was no street lighting; the night was very dark and the gangway up to the hulk was slippery. These hulks were great steel pontoons, two hundred feet long, with a large deck house, in which were located the shipping company's office and some residential quarters. Wide stairs led down to the holds below, where the inward and outward cargoes were stored pending transfer elsewhere. To approach the ship you had to walk round outside the hulk along a gangway, about three feet wide, left between the deckhouse and the edge. To facilitate the movement of cargo no railings were put along this edge. I was carrying our younger child and I remember the feeling of horror when our other child, at a moment when the amah's attention was attracted elsewhere, toddled along to the edge to look over at the black tide rushing between the steel sides of the ship and hulk. My wife just in time snatched him back from the wet slippery edge.\n\nThe steamer was of the usual river design, like any small sea-going merchantman, but with more super-structure and a flatter bottom. There were not berths sufficient for all the refugees, who began to sort themselves out, some in the saloon and others in the smoking room. A wild alcoholic glow added to the sociability induced by the common dangers of the situation and I regret to say bets were taken whether one of the refugees, who was conspicuously expecting a baby, could last out till the ship reached Shanghai. When the Captain decided to start, husbands and bachelors were reluctantly persuaded to go ashore to return to their solitary and darkened houses.\n\nNext day the Consul decided to get in touch with the Chinese general who held the appointment of Garrison Commander at Kiu Kiang. This official was elusive but he eventually agreed to come to the Consulate for a conference. The safety of the foreigners in Kiu Kiang was really his responsibility and after some pressing he undertook to furnish protection. The British guards were consequently withdrawn from the Concession gates to the two hulks.\n\nDuring times of civil commotion respectable and well-to-do Chinese would bolt their doors or put up the shop shutters, as the case might be, and remain inside; but in any Chinese town there would also be an unruly element of loafers, pickpockets, thieves, and toughs, as indeed in any western city. Now was the opportunity for these hooligans. By midday the streets of the Concession were filled with a seething mob", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211830, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "220\n\nR: In the advertisement it was stated that tickets could be obtained from Messrs Lane, Crawford & Co, G.A. Bretts' Auction Room and Astor House Hotel. Lane, Crawford was a general store that had been established in Kiangsi Road (ex Church Street) since June 1862. The Astor House Hotel was situated in Hongkew (see also Survey).\n\n17.6.1864 (Fri)\n\nPerformance by Messrs J.R. Black and Marquis Chisholm (piano)\n\nTH: N.N. (H)\n\nN: Benefit for Mr. Chisholm\n\nR: John Reddie BLACK (1827-1880) was born in Scotland, but went to Australia to earn a living as a singer in the goldfields. After arriving in Japan, 1861, he became the editor of some English newspapers and from 1876-1880 he edited several papers in Shanghai. In 1864 he still managed to combine his two vocations. His entertainment was \"composed of songs interspersed with anecdotes and conversation of the most lively description which he varied every evening. He has a splendid voice and sings with great taste and feeling\" (NCH 4.6.1864). His accompanist on the piano was Mr. L.C. PHILIPPS (cf. 1.4.1864), but the latter died of cholera and his place was taken by Mr. Marquis CHISHOLM who was no newcomer to the Shanghai public. On June 17 he played a fantasia on Japanese airs, composed by himself. As a matter of coincidence there was \"an absence of ladies, many of whom are at present rusticating in Japan\", but for the other evenings \"the audience has always comprised the majority of the ladies resident in the Settlement\". Evidently this had come to be considered as most desirable, perhaps to lend an air of respectability to the performance. (NCH 11, 18.6.1864).\n\n22.6.1864 (Wedn)\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"Il Treated Il Trovatore\" (1863)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nC: Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company\n\nF: Music by the Rhenish Band\n\nTh: Olympic Theatre (H)\n\n+\n\nR: The first night of a new company, the \"*Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company\" and, if we may believe the Herald, the Shanghai world \"was completely taken by surprise. So minute an acquaintance with stage proprieties was shown that many of the audience were disposed to believe that they were witnessing a display of professional talent”. (NCH 25.6.1864).\n\n29.6.1864 (Wedn)\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"Ill Treated 11 Trovators\" (1863)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nT.H. LACY: \"A Silent Woman\" (1835)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Shanghai Amateur Burlesque Company\n\nF: \"New burlesque music\" by the Rhenish Band\n\nTh: Olympic Theatre (H)\n\nR: This is one of those increasing occasions in which only a short summary was published in the Herald, while the full report had appeared in the North China Daily News, no longer extant for this year. In any case the hope was expressed that more would be seen of the company \"as soon as the cool weather sets in\" (NCH 2.7.1864). According to the advertisement, tickets were obtainable from Lane, Crawford & Co (see 13.6.1864), Hall & Holtz (Ship chandler, general store and bakers; at the corner of Foochow Road (ex Mission Road) and Kiangsi Road (ex Bridge Street); MacKenzie & Co (shipchandlers, general store and general agents on the Yangkingpang in the French Concession); the Astor House Hotel; and Phillips Restaurant (Phillips, Moore & Co, Nanking Road-ex...)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211833, "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": 248, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "223\n\nharmonium by D.H. ENGEL\n\n17. \"Eupeidee\" (German student song and chorus) Th: Olympic Theatre (H)\n\nR: An advertisement only was published in the Herald of 29.10.1864. From it we learn that tickets could be obtained at the premises of Hiram Fogg & Co (ship chandlers, general store and auctioneers; one of the oldest foreign firms in Shanghai, located at the southern end of the Bund); Hall & Holtz (see 29.6.1864); A.A. Hayes Jr (Olyphant & Co, Nanking Road, ex Park Lane); and Herbert Cope (Geo Barnet & Co, Kiangsi Road (ex Church Street) and Hankow Road (ex Custom House Road)). It also becomes clear that there were at that moment at least two theatres in the Settlement: the Lyceum and the Olympic. The programme is interesting for the number of composers which have now been forgotten (Silcher, Kücken, Becker, Werner, etc.) and the piano arrangements of well-known opera arias.\n\n12.11-18.11.1864\n\nW. BROUGH: “Conrad and Medora” (1856)\n\nT: Burlesque pantomime (1 act)\n\nJ.B. BUCKSTONE: “Married Life\" (1834)\n\nT: Comedy (3 acts)\n\nJ.W. MARSTON: \"A Hard Struggle\" (1858)\n\nT: Domestic drama (1 act)\n\nW. SHAKESPEARE: “King John”, prison scene (Act IV, scene III)\n\nFurthermore:\n\n“Cinderella”, possibly by H.J. BYRON (1860) or T. TAYLOR (1845).\n\n\"Wonder\"; no contemporary pieces are listed in HED; only: Mrs. S. CENTLIVRE: “The Wonder. A woman keeps a secret” (1714) and H. CAREY: \"A Wonder or an honest Yorkshireman\" (1735).\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTh: N.N. (E)\n\nR: The Lewis company continued to draw large houses and ventured even to put a Shakespeare scene on the programme, from King John. It proved to be \"the hit of the week\". In it starred Miss Julia EDouin and Mr. Henry BIRCH: \"The acting was perfect. Miss Julia EDouin doing the fullest justice to the character of Prince Arthur and indeed taking the house by storm!\" (NCH 19.11.1864).\n\n19.11.1864 Sat\n\nH.J. BYRON: “Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTH: N.N. (U)\n\nN: Benefit of Miss Tilly Earl who played the role of Aladdin\n\nR: NCH 26.11.1864\n\n23.11.1864 (Wedn)\n\nR.B. SHERIDAN: \"The Rivals\" (1775)\n\nT: Comedy (5 acts)\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTH: N.N. (P)\n\nN: Benefit of Mrs. Gill who played the role of Mrs. Malaprop.\n\nR: NCH 26.11.1864\n\n26.11.1864 (Sat)\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp” (1861)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212248, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n167\n\nFrom manuscripts in the John Fryer Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.\n\nThe title on the holograph was added in pencil at the top of the page and underlined; a pencil was used to cross out the salutation, probably at the time when the title was added prior to typing many years later. In transcribing this material I have followed the holograph document. Minor changes have been made to bring punctuation and use of numbers into conformity with modern usage and to improve readability. Editorial additions are in square brackets. Fryer tended to write run-on paragraphs; a caret indicates where long paragraphs have been broken up. Colons and semicolons are not easily distinguished in the holograph; Fryer was inconsistent in his use of the apostrophe.\n\n1\n\nFryer mentions below that it has been a fortnight since his arrival. This would place the date for this letter around August 13, 1861.\n\n4\n\nA sketch of the general plan of St. Paul's College, drawn in ink and tinted with watercolors by Fryer, accompanies the holograph document. See Plans in text, redrawn from Fryer's sketch plan.\n\n4 Fryer generally wrote \"&\" in his handwritten letters, but converted these to \"etc.\" and \"and\" in his typewritten transcriptions.\n\nFryer became engaged to Anna Roleston of Chudleigh, Devon, before embarking for Hong Kong,\n\nThe Second Anglo-Chinese War, 1858-1860, which led to a stoppage of much of the trade of Hong Kong with China to 1861.\n\n# This is one of the rare examples of Fryer's use of hyperbole; other examples can be detected below.\n\nHI\n\nThe Reverend George Smith, Bishop of Victoria.\n\nRev. William Roberts Beach arrived in Canton in 1853 sponsored by the Wesleyan Missionary Society. He joined the Church of England in 1855. In 1857 he became Warden of St. Paul's College and Chaplain to the Bishop of Victoria. His other appointments included a period in Macao as Missionary Chaplain in 1857, and service as Chaplain to the Forces under Sir Hope Grant in 1861. He was appointed Colonial Chaplain and Canon of St. John's Cathedral by the Rev. Alford, who in 1867 became \"Lord Bishop of the see of Victoria, and Warden (for the Church Missionary Society) of St. Paul's College'. (see E. J Bitel, Europe in China, Hong Kong: Kelley and Walsh, 1895. p. 466.) Alford was Principal of Highbury Training College, London, at the time when John Fryer was enlisted for work at St. Paul's College.\n\n|| This was the College in Staunton Street, later renamed St. Saviour's (1863), and then (1875) St. Joseph's.\n\nזן\n\nFryer travelled to Hong Kong on the sailing ship Prince Alfred.\n\nPublished in Volume 29 (1989) of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\n14\n\nSee Plans in Text.\n\n15\n\nSee Plates 2-4.\n\n16. Charles R. Alford; see note 10.\n\nדן\n\n* \"animals\" standard English school master-speech for \"schoolboys\".\n\nश्र\n\nPossibly the British Museum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212302, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "221\n\nabout 20 headquarters staff. Shortly before Hong Kong was founded in the 1830s, this company controlled one-third of all foreign trade with China.\n\nJardine's\n\nToday, the best known of Hong Kong's traders is still Jardine Matheson, which predates the birth of the colony by nine years, although some say there has been an over-concentration on Jardine's history at the expense of other firms. Nonetheless it is the oldest, still thriving, western trading house in the Far East, having been established in the reign of William IV (1830-7).\n\nIn 1817 William Jardine decided to enter commerce, and, on an introduction by Hollingworth Magniac, from 1822 to 1824 he took charge of Charles Magniac and Company (Charles and Hollingworth were brothers) which was in financial difficulties. James Matheson arrived in Canton in 1820 and formed Matheson and Company. In 1828, Jardine and Matheson joined forces. The name Magniac was dropped, and the new enterprise was established by the two Scotsmen in 1832. The name remains the same to this day.\n\nWilliam Jardine had been a ship's surgeon in the Honourable East India Company from 1802-16. He retired to Scotland in 1838 (some records say 1839) and died in 1843. Matheson left the East in 1842 and took an active part in running the firm from Britain. He died in 1878 aged 82. Both were Members of Parliament in the 1840s. William Jardine had already returned to Scotland when the firm set up business in Hong Kong. When the first land sales were held in Hong Kong on 14th June 1841, Jardine's built godowns (warehouses) on land purchased in what is now Queensway. In 1842, these were sold to the Royal Navy for stores. Immediately Jardine's started to build an office, wharves, a slipway for ships, workshops, stables, houses, and a junior mess at East Point, on an isolated promontory. They also built godowns which had thick walls of granite blocks. The site was close to the present Yee Wo Street (fi) which takes its name from the Chinese name of the company (meaning 'pleasant harmony'), although the Chinese name for the firm is more often romanised as Ewo. All the original buildings have been demolished.\n\nOther places named after the company include Jardine's Bazaar", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212303, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "222 \n\nand Jardine's Crescent, both in Causeway Bay, and Jardine's Corner on the Peak. Bulkeley Street market, and streets named Perceval, Irving, Anton, Landale, Matheson, Paterson, Johnstone and Keswick are named after Jardine taipans.\n\nThere is also Jardine's Lookout. It was from this 433 metre high vantage point that observers galloped down by 'pony express' to head office, in the days before modern communications, with the news that a Jardine ship was approaching. In early Hong Kong the company is said to have had a fleet of 12 ships which were faster than those of rival firms,\n\nThe late Richard Hughes, wrote that, of the two founders, Jardine was the older and tougher, and the planner. He was respected and even feared, and nicknamed 'Iron-headed Old Rat', in Chinese, because of his insouciant attitude when attacked and hit over the head with a club in Canton (Hunter, 1844). Except for the one on which he sat, there were no chairs in his office. Visitors were not encouraged to dally.\n\nMatheson was more genteel, although not of exalted stock, and some of his family had been clergy and others army officers. He was more liberal, suave and affable, and even, so it is believed, regarded with some affection. Unlike most businessmen at the time, he was a person of some taste and culture. In 1827, he supplied a small hand printing press so the Canton Register, an English newspaper, could be published. He owned the only piano in Canton or Macau. But as Hughes writes, no one laughed when he sat down to play'. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) on the 19th February 1846.\n\nMatheson was a good organiser and administrator. He could draft a dry, caustic minute as the following illustrates:\n\n\"The 'Gazelle' was unnecessarily delayed at Hong Kong in consequence of Captain Crocker's repugnance to receiving opium on the Sabbath. We have every respect for persons entertaining strict religious principles, but we fear that very godly people are not suited for the drug trade. Perhaps it would be better that the Captain should resign.\"\n\nIncidentally David Matheson, a member of the 'clan', did resign some years later to become chairman of the executive committee of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213084, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "133\n\nsecretary of the Sanitary Board. He turned out to be wrong.\n\nMay 8th\n\nI am diagnosed A. Hung as suffering from plague and isolated him\n\nThe identity of A. Hung was revealed in the Report to the Governor. He was a ward boy in presumably the Government Civil Hospital. He was admitted during Lowson's absence in Canton with the diagnosis of remittent fever but having seen him Lowson diagnosed it as plague. This then was the first case he saw in the Hong Kong Epidemic. Action had now to be taken as described in the following entry:\n\nMay 10th\n\nOrder from HE OAG for report on plague in Canton in morning Order an four Taler to visit Tung Wah where I found about 20 cases of bubonic plague Visited Tung Wah again with Ayres at 2:30 pm Sanitary Board at 4:00 pm Long Meeting Gave order to have Hygeia over in morning and prepare for epidemic Government proclaimed Colony suffering from plague\n\nThe Governor then was Sir William Robinson. He must have been away and the person acting for him, known as the Officer Administrating the Government, could be the General Officer Commanding. The Hygeia was a hospital ship moored in the harbour for the isolation of patients suffering from infectious diseases such as small-pox and cholera. The Tung Wah was the same hospital which still stands on its original site, on Po Yan Street in Sai Ying Pun District.\n\nWe will now follow the situation as it developed from the entries of the next few days:\n\nMay 11th\n\nHygeia over Sanitary Board in pm passing bye-laws 13 deaths from plague\n\nMay 12th\n\nSome difficulty with moving patients but got them all over before 4 pm Saw all settled Rabbit and Guinea pig injected from A Hung 26 deaths reported from plague", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213103, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "153\n\nwas dangerously exposed to storms behind low and flimsy buns. This little temple almost certainly dates from the original reclamation for the saltpans.\n\nThe ferry pier and the Tin Hau Temple were built on the foreshore, about 200 yards from the town proper. Chan Hip-tsun and the other elders of the Shap Yeuk had designed the town proper as an approximately square walled enclosure, with two east-west streets, joined by a north-south street somewhat east of the centre of the town.* The town had four gates, two each to the east and the west. The most important was the Upper East Gate, which faced the fine three-span granite bridge built by the Shap Yeuk over the often violent waters of the Sha Tau Kok River,\n\nThe Shap Yeuk had built the walls and roads of their new market, but the shop units were built by investors from villages of the Shap Yeuk area willing to take them up. These investors then built over their lot, from the road back to the already completed wall.\n\nOnce the Shap Yeuk had succeeded in their political aims of freeing their district from the influence of outsiders, and had founded their market and its temple, they thereafter ran the district and market through the Council of the Shap Yeuk (the Tung Wo Kuk, \"The Council for Peace in the East\"). The day-to-day management of the market was handled by a Headman, appointed by the Tung Wo Kuk. He adjudicated minor disputes, and had at his disposal certain trust funds, and the income from the ferry tender, and from rent of the town weigh-beam. He let tenders to sweep the streets (the street-sweeper was expected to reimburse himself from the sale of the wastes as fertiliser), and supervised the Town Watch, recruited from youngsters of the surrounding villages, whose job was to maintain order, especially at night. The Council of the Shap Yeuk, the Headman, and the Town Watch, are all mentioned by the Basel missionaries in the 1850s, and there can be no doubt that the management structure of the town and district was in place from the first foundation of the town.\n\nThe market founded by the Shap Yeuk was called by them Tung Wo Market, “Eastern Peace Market”, but it was more usually\n\n1\n\n* See Map 2, taken from a map of 1853 prepared by the Basel missionaries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213110, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "160\n\nChung Ferry. Finally, the Japanese attacked Sha Tau Kok in 1938, 1939, and 1940, before taking it over late in 1940,\n\n41\n\nThese periods of disturbance caused serious problems to the Sha Tau Kok villagers. Their sole desire was to sell their vegetables and firewood, and buy their salt and household goods, but this was, year after year, interfered with by political problems. Sha Tau Kok was rarely - except during the Boycott - the centre of the disturbances, but it was almost always \"in the front line\", full of intrigue, nervous military, and difficulties. A market shop-owner in Sha Tau Kok was executed by the military in about 1935, in an event still a talking point in the villages, probably for being involved with the rebels to the east. An underground Communist cell was established in the 1930s in the market, centred on one of the teachers in the Tung Wo School, with the job of encouraging smuggling of strategic goods to Sha Yue Chung and the guerrillas, and of indoctrinating suitable youngsters, to prepare for an extension of rebel activity to the immediate Sha Tau Kok area.\n\n41\n\nThe elders of the Shap Yeuk continued to function throughout this troubled period as the managers of the market at Sha Tau Kok, but less effectively than before. The strong military presence in the town, the close Government interest in it, and the elders' inability to control the Customs, greatly weakened the Shap Yeuk as the effective local administration. The guns which had been placed by the Shap Yeuk in the gun-towers they had built to guard the bridge were confiscated very soon after the 1911 revolution, and the eastern gun-tower, at the front of the Tung Wo School, was taken over as the military barracks at about the same time. The warlord and Kuomintang administrations were usually unwilling to discuss problems with the local elders - noticeably so compared with the District Officer in the New Territories - and so the elders and their Council declined to having responsibility, effectively, only for those things the officials could not be bothered to interfere with, especially the running of the market night-watch and cleaning services.\n\nBy 1910, the elders were already talking of moving the market over the frontier into the New Territories, with its better security, better villager-administration relationships, and absence of Customs problems. Nothing, however, was done until 1925, when the chaos of the Boycott started to push the market across the frontier. Shops began to be built on the New Territories side of the border street in 1925, and this process", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213130, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "180\n\nthe town would bring baskets of vegetables to sell retail on street in Wang Tau Street. Some sold their vegetables at Yim Liu Ha - even before the hawkers started to migrate across the frontier there was some trading here. The saltworkers had no fields, and had to buy all their food - since there was about 100 of them, this represented quite a market. Usually, those villagers trading vegetables with the saltworkers at Yim Liu Ha would exchange their vegetables for salt, which they then hawked around the villages away from the market. One or two villages specialised in this vegetables and salt trade. Yet others specialised in exchanging vegetables for fish (usually the poorer quality, or broken, fish), which they then hawked around villages away from the market.\n\nThe villages further from the market found the vegetable trade difficult, and they usually did not take part in it. Their specialty was fuel. The villages near the market had cut all the trees in the vicinity of the village, except for the untouchable Fung Shui groves, long before, and they were seriously short of fuel as a consequence. The remote mountainside villages of the Shap Yeuk area, however, still had plenty of wood, but were usually short of cultivable land. The economy of these villages depended, essentially, on exchanging firewood for rice. Village women would leave these villages at day-break, carrying loads of about 75 catties of wood, cut and dried, and prepared to suit the particular needs of the specific market aimed at. The boat-people required wood cut into very small and even billets, to fit the tiny stoves on board their boats. The saltworkers needed wood cut to larger sizes to feed their furnaces and stoves. Individual villager or shopkeeper households needed wood cut to medium sizes. Individual fuel-selling villages tended to specialise in one or other of these markets. The best-placed fuel-selling villages, those whose wood reached the market first, tended to sell their wood in whole loads, 75 catties at a time. Those who reached the market later tended to have to sell their wood retail, catty by catty, originally in Wang Tau Street, later from the Railway Station forecourt. It was the custom that, if someone bought a whole load of wood, then the seller had to carry it all the way to the buyer's house, no matter how far from the market. Individual seller villages tended to develop a close relationship with individual buyer villages and households - often buyers would look out for sellers they knew, and order a load of fuel for the next market day. As with vegetables, so villagers who sold fuel to the saltworkers or fishermen sometimes exchanged their wood for salt or fish, which they then hawked through the villages away from the market.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213218, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "19\n\nReichmann's application for the Grand Hotel was not granted as he was a German national. He applied again in 1915 but to no avail. Though he was unsuccessful, the application suggests he was not interned with his fellow countrymen. After peace returned, he again sought a decision on his application for naturalisation (CO129/455, p37, 11 July 1919).\n\nI have presented this material in what some might consider excessive detail because it relates a connected history of accommodation for travelling and resident Germans from 1859, when Petersen's German Tavern was opened, to 1931, when his daughter retired from the management of the Station Hotel in Kowloon and closed its doors.\n\nCafe Weissmann\n\nThe Cafe Weissmann opened in 1904. In 1914/15 the name was changed to Wiseman, a less Germanic spelling. Lane, Crawford and Co. had acquired a controlling interest in Weissmann Ltd, so its Cafe was not considered to be alien enemy property. The licence for spirits was transferred from Rembold Ekhardt, who had held it from 1909, to Ellen H.K. King,\n\nAccording to Jarrett, the author of the column \"Old Hong Kong\" in the South China Morning Post (23 Sept. 1933), Hans Weissmann was a ship's baker who began business near the Bowrington Canal. If this is accurate, he must have begun his Hong Kong career at the Hong Kong and China Bakery Co. It was a limited company with the controlling interest being held by Lane, Crawford and Co. Mr. Weissmann opened a restaurant in a small room in the Beaconsfield Arcade in 1904, but he soon moved to the south-east corner of Queen's Road and Wyndham Street. Here, in addition to his \"Refreshment Room\", he had a \"Tiffin Room\" at No. 1 Wyndham Street. At the same time, the business became a limited company (DP20, 27 Apr 1905). The management of the restaurant was taken over by Carl Fiedler in 1908. A year later, the business was moved to No. 14 Des Voeux Road Central. Mr. Fiedler was not long after replaced by Rembold Ekhardt, who conducted the business under various names until 1914.\n\nCafe Weissman became Cafe Wiseman in 1914. No. 14 Queen's Road was redeveloped in 1926 as the Exchange Building. Lane, Crawford and Co. had its store there and for several years Cafe Wiseman became the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213243, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "44\n\nPeter Jebsen in 1908 established a business of repairing ships, boilers, machines etc. at Kowloon under the name Witzke and Co. In 1912 they mortgaged their property in Kowloon to Johann Heinrich Jebsen and Jacob Friedrich Christian Jebsen, then residing in Germany (PRO Hong Kong, Surrendered Deeds Series 11 B. No. 171). Both Witzke and Co. and Jebsen and Co. were liquidated in 1914, but Jebsen's returned to Hong Kong in the 1920s.\n\nUlderup and Schluter opened an establishment in Hong Kong in 1906 as general merchants, engineering agents and motor boat builders. The partners were Johannes P. Ulderup and Carl Schluter. When Jebsens returned to Hong Kong after the Second World War, Mr. Ulderup was head of their machinery department.\n\nBerblinger and Co. was founded by A. Berblinger and W. Otto in 1908 and was liquidated in 1914. The firm of Hugo Fromm opened in Hong Kong in 1908. In 1914 its manager was A. Jaharand, George Prien was an assistant in Blackhead and Co. in 1902 but in 1908 he set himself up in business as a dealer in cigars and tobacco. In 1914 his shop was in the Hong Kong Hotel Building. F. Wendt had an office at 6 Ice House Street in 1902. His business became Wendt and Co. in 1908. The partners in 1914 were F.A. Wendt and W. Melchers. The aerated water firm of Hill Bergdahl and Co. was liquidated in 1914.\n\nSeveral firms in existence in 1914 appear to be German but were not on the list of those placed under liquidation. Heuser, Eberius and Co. is listed in the 1914 Hong Kong Directory but both its partners were not in Hong Kong at the time. Mr. Heuser had retired from the firm in 1911, and a year later the remaining partner, Gottfried Fritz Eberius committed suicide (HKT 1 Mar. 1912).\n\nThe firm of Lamke and Rogge was formed in 1890 as shipbrokers by Johannes Lamke and Carl Heinrich Rogge. Mr. Lamke had been an assistant in Blackhead and Co., and then Arnhold, Karberg and Co. In 1885 he had his own shipbroking office until he and Mr. Rogge became partners. Mr. Rogge began his business career in Hong Kong with Melchers and Co. In 1914 Lamke and Rogge are listed as ship, freight and coal brokers. The directory also lists Robitske and Reis (Grossmann and Co.), merchants, 12 Des Voeux Road Central. No partners or staff are named. Christian Friedrich Grossman became a partner of Kirchner, Bögger and Co. in 1867.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213244, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "45\n\nBefore that he had been an assistant in Siemssen and Co. He went into business for himself in 1875 and two years later took on as a partner his brother Gustav Adolph Grossmann (DP 19 Jan. 1878). Christian Friedrich died in Hong Kong February 1899. A few days before his death Alexander Heinrich Alfred Finke became a co-partner (GG 7 Jan. 1899). Mr. Finke had been an assistant in the firms of Stolterfoht and Hust 1892-1895, Stolterfoht and Hagan 1896 and Lauts, Wegener and Co. 1898.\n\nShips and Stores\n\nBackhard and Company\n\n Friedrich Johan Berthold Schwarzkopf, a ship's captain who took the name Blackhead, was in China by the year 1853 for in February of that year he was married at St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong, to Sarah Bullen, the youngest daughter of William Robert Bullen of West Hackney, Middlesex, England (FC 19 February 1853 and St. John's Cathedral Marriage Register No. 131, 16 February 1853). He was an assistant in the firm of Murrow and Stephenson. He named his first child, who died in infancy, after William Murrow. Mr Blackhead began business on his own. In 1856 he opened a ship chandlers store on a hulk at the Whampoa anchorage on the Pearl River (FC 24 July 1856). His store shop \"Hornet\" was an old sailing vessel turned into business premises.\n\nWhen hostilities broke out between Britain and China over the Arrow lorcha incident at Canton, and foreign shipping had to leave Whampoa, the “Hornet” was moved to the Hong Kong harbour. Mr. Blackhead began building warehouses and an office by the seaside at the foot of Aberdeen Street. In September 1860 the company announced it had removed its ship chandlery, sail making and auction business from the \"Hornet\" to \"those new buildings lately erected in Queen's Road West, opposite Messrs. Gibb, Livingston and Co. and next door to offices of Messrs. Phillips, Mone and Co.\" (FC 13 September 1860).\n\nJohn Morris was admitted a partner in March 1860 (GG 31 March 1860) but he died in January 1861 (FC 21 Jan. 1861). He held a one third share in the business (PRO, Probate File No. 19 of 1861 [f/104]). Captain Henry A Bell was in charge of the business at Whampoa in 1860 and 1861, but Mr. Blackhead was the sole proprietor of the company until he left Hong Kong in 1872.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213245, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "46\n\nHe was then described “as perhaps the oldest foreign resident of the colony” (Daily Advertiser 23 Apr. 1872). Shortly before his retirement John Henry Smith and Frederich Rapp were admitted as partners in the firm,\n\nJohn Henry (or Johan Heinrich as it is given in one record) Smith remained a partner until his death at Genoa, Italy in June 1890. He was on his way back to Germany after a visit to Hong Kong with his wife (DP 21 June 1890). His will, which had been written in Macao in 1873, states that he was formerly of Cappelen, Germany. In his will he left all business of ship chandler and auctioneer and commission agent at Macao in trust for his wife Lizzie Smith of New York\" (PRO Probate File No. 29 of 1891 [4/8201]). By the time of his death some seventeen years after writing his will he had disposed of his interests in Macao. They were taken over by A. Muller in January 1875 (Macau Boletim 2 January 1875)\n\nChristian Friedrich Rapp (or as he was usually known Fritz Rapp) was admitted a partner in the firm of Blackhead and Co. in 1871 and his interest ceased some six years later (DP 2 Oct. 1877). He then went into business on his own as auctioneer and commission agent with an office on Zetland Street (DP 16 October 1877). Mr. Rapp died in Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1895. His tombstone in the Old Residents' Section of the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley states he was born at Stade on 30 January 1841. In his will he appoints his wife Mei Ho (May) as guardian of his children: Kwai Tsun otherwise Gustave, King Tsun otherwise Hermann, Sham Tsun otherwise Fritz, Shui San married to Mr. Li, Shui Yee and Shui Sun. In a codicil written on 1 December 1894 he states his daughter Shui Sun is now called Johanna Rapp and that one of the executors he had named, Hemrich Hoppius, was ill and likely to die. In his place he appointed Heinrich Gartels (PRO Probate File No. 7 of 1895 [4/1008]).\n\nBlackhead and Co. in 1886 were agents for the Kerscheldt Ice Depot. The ice was manufactured at the Saki Distillery on the Shaukiwan Road (DP 1 April 1886). In the same year they announced plans to build a wharf adjoining their coal godowns, then in course of erection, at what became known as Blackhead's Point in Tsim Sha Tsui (DP 3 April 1886). The account of the firm's Jubilee published in the Daily Press 31 March 1905 stated the company was the largest of the coal merchants in Hong Kong. The coal godowns and wharf later passed into the hands of Butterfield and Swire and were known as Holt's Wharf. The site is now", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214050, "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-1997", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "85\n\nWharf, one of the oldest landing stages, originally consisted of a simple wooden pier which needed to be replaced as successive reclamations advanced the seafront. In the mid-1880s when it was rebuilt it was still the principal landing place on the Island, being by this time a substantial wooden structure. Numerous other piers and jetties have always been scattered along the north shore which generally served the smaller-sized coastal and harbour shipping, larger ocean-going vessels making increasing use of the deep-water facilities in Kowloon. In 1911, the main piers in the central district were Queen's Pier (rebuilt in the mid-1920s), Kowloon (Star) Ferry Pier, Blake Pier (previously Pedder's Wharf) and the old P&O Jetty. By 1930 there were still some 30 piers and jetties on the Island jutting out into the harbour. The effects of severe typhoons caused immense damage to vessels and facilities, and heavy loss of life, for example that in 1874 resulting in the deaths of 2,000 persons; old photographs show a devastated harbour with the remnants of numerous piers sticking out of the wreckage-strewn waters.\n\nBy 1887, on the Mainland there were three principal jetties, ranging in length from about 110 to 145 metres lying just north of the south-west tip of Kowloon peninsula and a 150m-long vertical seawall to the south. The dock area itself incorporated a 1.2km-long narrow-gauge steel tramway system which was manually operated along the wharfage and through the extensive godowns. As a result of the devastating 1906 typhoon, in which 10,000 lives were lost (over 2% of the total population), enormous damage was caused to the existing wharfs and to the new Star Ferry pier which was completely severed and marooned from the land. A 200m-long 13m-wide wharf with 9 metres of water at low tide was added to the complex in 1916 which was long and deep enough to allow the largest ship visiting Hong Kong at that time to come alongside. By 1925 there were already 18 deep-water berths available in Kowloon.\n\nEarly in the century there were also piers and wharves for passenger ferries and commercial vessels in other locations, for instance in 1904 a berth was constructed at Lai Chi Kok to serve the oil tank farm and, shortly afterwards, at the end of Boundary Street there was a 36m-long 2m-wide pier with sufficient depth of water to enable freight to be transferred to and from steam launches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214103, "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-1997", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "140\n\nMacau's inner harbour is extended around the north-western flank and ship yards appear along the coast. The city grows to meet the new edge with street patterns in keeping with the forms of the older city. Streets follow contours or natural edges. Larger spaces appear at intersections of streets of odd angles. We see the first intimations of a more formal city plan being made at the northern, agricultural edge of the city in the centre of the peninsula in an area now known as San Antonio. Here the planner has organised city blocks in a rectilinear street pattern with a large square where streets meet at 45°, reminiscent of Cerda's plan for Barcelona of 1859.\n\nFigure 3: 1912\n\nThe map of 1927 shows us the first dramatic intentions to grow. The initial expansion shown in 1912 is mostly completed, the central square implemented, diagonal streets breaking up the overlaid grid. City blocks and urban forms are created which show more order than the old city but still retain the same scale. The new sections of town show another heritage, however, large sections of reclamation are laid out with indications of intended street patterns, all laid out on strictly rectilinear forms. The expansion into the small remaining areas of agricultural land mediates the change, shifting from tightly woven streets to straight avenues. Accidental gathering places no longer happen as streets meet at odd angles. A large park is shown in the centre to provide a formal open space of a city scale. This is the section of town into which the growing middle class move, traders without established trading houses. Many too are the members of the growing Eurasian community who now control much of the local economy.\n\nThe scale of the 1927 expansion is significantly different from previous growth, just as the scale of the harbour facilities shown are larger. A new sense of the world is manifested - the impact of an ordered manufactured world can be found in this by now quiet trading station. Massive reclamation is required to implement this plan. In an effort to bring back some of the sea-going shipping trade, the main harbour is to be moved from the inner harbour to the outer. Harbour walls are to be built to the south east in an (ultimately futile)\n\nFigure 4: 1927", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214289, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "110\n\ndying which already barricaded the street. The head of the column fell literally \"like the Moor's swath at the close of day.\"\n\n# 11\n\nThe form of cannon termed a howitzer was intended for firing its projectiles in a high trajectory. In effect it is a compromised mortar, mounted on a carriage so as to be more easily transported. Because this lessened the effectiveness of shot or grape they were mainly used with shell, which they could lob over defensive walls.\n\nIn order to be effective it was, of course, necessary to correctly aim the cannon. The cannon barrel was mounted on a carriage that could be slewed sideways, but the larger pieces mounted on board ships were quite cumbersome, and were mainly aligned with the ship. Guns were elevated with a screw jack or wedges, to give the correct range. The aiming, or 'laying' of a gun was a skilled task, as indeed was the whole operation of a gun. This had led to artillery men being formed into the separate regiments of the Royal Artillery. Troops or batteries of artillery were then attached to infantry forces.\n\nFinally the European troops had Congreve rockets. These carried a cast hollow head allowing bursting charges and a fuse to be inserted, thus being a type of shell. They were relatively inaccurate as they had a tendency to veer off line, and many officers at the time considered them to be of doubtful use. However, they certainly had a psychological effect against unsophisticated natives in some of the Victorian wars, and there is no doubt that they did inflict casualties. There is one spectacular example of a rocket finding the magazine of a junk and blowing it up.12\n\n12\n\nAs for the Chinese, on the face of it their guns were similar to those of the European forces. They were muzzle loaders and smooth bored, however, the quality of the guns themselves was not good. The Chinese method of casting cannon was with the muzzle down. This meant that the quality of the metal at the breech was suspect and in spite of using more metal, the guns were more likely to burst.13 The extra metal also made them very heavy,14 and this would make them difficult to aim.\n\nMost of the Chinese guns were mounted in shore batteries, al-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 272, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "238 \n\nment you will undoubtedly form a mental picture of the appearance of the mountain in time to come. The Chinese of course never dreamt, in 1842, when, by the Treaty of Nanking, they ceded to the English this barren rock, instead of the flourishing island of Chusan, what the red headed barbarians would turn it into. Even less likely were they to have dreamt that they, the Chinese, would with their own hands, be heaving these stones, laying walls, building parapets, mounting cannons... and round their own necks to boot.\n\nAll this has been done. True, the city of Victoria consists of one street but there are almost no houses on it; I erroneously said houses earlier: these are all palaces whose foundations bathe in the bay. The balconies of these palaces face the sea and are shaded by those scraggy bananas and palms which are visible from the searoad and which have the same effect on the landscape, as a forced smile on a sad face.\n\nI didn't go ashore for about three days: I wasn't feeling well and it wasn't inviting. There was no freshness or freedom in the air. Finally on the fourth day P. and I took the ship's boat, first going alongside the Chinese quarter, consisting of two sections of population: one section lives on boats, the other in little houses which are all clustered together and cling to the very shore and some of which are fixed on piles in the water. The boats, with families on board, stand in rows in the one place, or move about the harbour, engaging in fishing, trading and if not that, then transporting people from ship to shore and back. They all have cabin-like awnings. One sees family scenes everywhere: eating, stitching, a mother breast-feeding a baby.\n\nWe pulled in to one of the numerous piers in the European quarter and through some sort of merchant house, through a crowd of Chinese, vendors and porters (coolies), through all manner of odours, we squeezed our way to the street, thinking we would be able to breathe freely there. But on drawing breath, we seemed to be swallowing hot steam and then after only a few steps we had to think about a refuge where we could shelter in real, cool shade and not that which lay along one side of the splendid street. The sun burns here, even in the shade. We ran to some shop where bales of all kinds of goods lay heaped on the floor and, incidentally, with pharmaceutical items on the shelves. For some reason they also sold soda water and aerated lemonade. Here too the English drink it with a touch of brandy, that is, cognac, ostensi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214418, "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": 276, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "242\n\nagreeable in appearance.\n\nWe barely made it back to the European quarter and went into a hotel kept by a Pole. He said he had lived in Moscow for two years, when he was about fourteen and now he was over forty. I wanted to speak to him in Russian but he doesn’t remember a word. In a room closed from the heat, we were served a lunch of tender tasty fish and tough ham, which however we didn’t touch. P. then got into a sedan chair and ordered himself to be taken to some banker or other, while I set off further down the street to some superb quadrangular barracks. I passed an avenue with miserable scraggy trees and then walked along the water’s edge. It was no longer so hot, with a cool breeze coming from the bay. At the sea front I saw numerous large red insects flying from spot to spot. I wanted to catch a few and take them to G. Chasing after them I was unwittingly drawn to the gates of the barracks and found myself in a huge courtyard, which serves as a training area for the regiment.\n\nSome English officers saw me from the balcony, came down and invited me to join them, ‘to drink a glass of wine.’ We went into one of the rooms where the furniture, the crockery — everything confirmed what is said about the splendour of the officers’ way of life. Silverware and the finest linen are the normal accoutrements of their messes and dining-tables. The officers eat together at the one table and they adhere so strictly to this officer-family way of life that they are rarely absent from dinner. A spacious balcony, or verandah, where the masters of the barracks lazily doze during the hours of siesta, runs round the whole building. I declined the wine and was treated to some lemonade.\n\nIt was late and a sensuous, glittering and captivating night had descended when I returned to the pier, where I found P., waiting for the ship’s dinghy. Meantime a Chinese boat stood there before us; in the moonlight we could see two female figures in it. “What do we need the dinghy for?” I asked. “These women can ferry us across: let’s get in?” We got in and both women, holding on to the one oar, attached to the stern, began turning it briskly to right and left. The moon shone right in their faces: one was old, the other about fifteen, pale, with black, narrow, but nevertheless beautiful eyes; her hair was fastened at the back with a silver pin. “Take us to the Russian frigate!” we said. “Two shillings!” The young one named their price. “A hundred pounds sterling for some—", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215160, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "216\n\nA Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\nLion Rock. To give you an idea what it was like in the vicinity of the College: the Wan Chai streets and alleys seemed far more cluttered in those days with numerous bustling stalls and small shops. I could go to a barber's shop in the then narrow Tin Lok Lane, not far from Wood Road, and have a haircut, a shampoo, a shave, and a manicure for $2.70 (all dollars quoted in this paper are Hong Kong dollars). Being a generous chap, I gave a 30 cents tip. The College was quite hemmed in in those days, and the quadrangle, with teaching accommodation all around, only allowed for limited parking. Many teachers did not have cars then.\n\nStudents, however, still played basketball but under restrained conditions. They also played the Chinese game of ‘kicking the shuttlecock’, which I also enjoyed playing.\n\nThe Hong Kong Funeral Parlour was then just around the corner from the College. At various times during the day, brass bands leading funeral processions along the street would strike up tunes such as \"Abide With Me\", \"Polly Wolly Doodle All The Day\", and \"Yes, We Have No Bananas\". There was a small flower market close by. Even when the College moved to Hung Hom, in Kowloon, there was a funeral pavilion next door. This raised a certain amount of consternation regarding our feng shui, as relatives of staff fell sick. We had to rearrange our desks.\n\nAt the old Technical College in Wood Road, there was both a senior and a junior staff room, with about 10 of us teachers in each. Student-teacher contact hours varied from about 21 to 25 (or even more) a week, and our Principal insisted, at one time, that all classes had a short weekly test first thing every Monday morning. When I first arrived by ship on a four-year tour in the mid-1950s, in what was a rather colonial atmosphere, I was impressed by the students' ability in mathematics, science, and draughtsmanship. English was not up to the same standard. Metaphorically, students still did not step on the teacher's shadow.\n\nThere was sometimes talk by Chinese teachers of students being more receptive to Chinese methods of imparting knowledge, such as more dictating of...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215908, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "141\n\nDr. Waters arrived in Hong Kong in 1954, at the age of 34, not so young but not so old.\n\n\"I can remember there used to be parades in the street over in Chatham Road of troops marching, the army marching and there were British types around with bowler hats and furled umbrellas and things like that. And it was then really very colonial and very British. Funnily enough, I never realised it would change so much...I mean I thought things would be like that forever.\"\n\nHe sailed to Hong Kong on a ship and the journey took 31 days. He came to work for the colonial service and right from the beginning, he had come to stay. Waters sold his builder's business back in England to take on a permanent job teaching for the now Hong Kong Polytechnic. Waters met his wife, a local Hong Kong Chinese, in the territory. In his book \"Faces of Hong Kong: An Old Hand's Reflection,\" Waters talks about how his father-in-law never approved of their relationship. His father-in-law died in 1959, and Waters and his wife married in 1960.\n\nHis mother-in-law and sisters-in-law welcomed Waters to the family. But it was a time when interracial marriages were not tolerated by many. At work, things were less than comfortable, at times.\n\n\"It's got much better,\" said Waters. \"I married on the Queen's birthday in 1960. We were married in the morning and we went to the Governor's garden party at Government House in the afternoon. But, oh yes, there was without a doubt a certain amount of racism and there was a certain amount of ostracism in the institution where I worked. I felt it myself. Now of course, it's very common for mixed marriages.\"\n\n72\n\nWaters joined the RAS in 1964 but hadn't heard of the society before then. He was invited to join the RAS Council in 1990 and became president in 1996, just before the handover. Since the handover, the RAS is one of the few organisations to have kept the 'Royal' in the name.\n\n\"No one has bothered us. We carry on the same way. We make sure our roots are planted here.\"\n\nWaters very naturally falls into Cantonese when he speaks. Every once in a while, his statements end with 'hai m hai' (isn't that right)?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216103, "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": 402, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "336\n\nGovernment servants completed four-year tours up until the early 1960s. When we went on leave, being seen off was a grand occasion. One would normally organise a reception for a number of friends. They boarded the ship. Occasionally, there was a bit of gate crashing by people known as \"professional see'ers off\" who enjoyed the company and a few free drinks.\n\nBrass bands would play Auld Lang Syne on the quay and paper streamers would be thrown to friends on shore. As the ship pulled away the streamers would break and the \"umbilical cord\" would be severed, as it were. After a four-year tour a government servant would earn something like seven months leave plus 30 days travelling each way. That meant you were away from the colony for about nine months. Being seen off was an important affair for Chinese too and, in the 1950s when the growing of rice was not profitable any more and the \"vegetable revolution\" was underway, many New Territories' Chinese made their way to England to work in restaurants. On being seen off just about the entire village would sometimes turn out!\n\nOn one occasion I was on leave in England and a fellow passenger on a train spotted my suitcase. 'Ah,' he said, 'you're from Hong Kong. Tell me. Do they still put paint on with their hands?' I had to admit that painters stick their woollen-gloved hand into a pot of paint when they paint metal railings and the like. They still do. It's labour saving. It's surprising what people remember about Hong Kong after they have left.\n\nPestilence\n\nThe colony was not a healthy place in its young days and many expatriates died young, as a wander through what we used to call the Colonial Cemetery (now the Hong Kong Cemetery) in Happy Valley reveals. There were cases of bubonic plague up until the 1920s with an especially bad epidemic in 1894. There was a worrying outbreak of cholera in the early summer of 1961. Stalls were manned by nurses in the street, for example by the Star Ferry. There was no wasting of time and no paperwork. All you did was roll up your sleeve. Now, from the days of pestilence and being an unhealthy place, Hong Kong has a life expectancy greater than most western countries, including Britain and the USA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216222, "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": 521, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "455\n\ncould sometimes hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. At the time one could still hire a sedan chair and four coolies to carry one up to Conduit Road. There were half a dozen or so parked regularly in Wyndham Street, in Central, up until the late 1950s. The fare was 30 cents for each 15 minutes with a 30 cents surcharge. The working life of a chair coolie was said to be eight years.\n\nAs with many houses in Conduit Road at the time, 41 Conduit Road had a superb view and, long before the days of cross-harbour tunnels, one of the pastimes of children was counting the number of ferries they could spot. Between the two World Wars an eccentric Englishman who lived in Robinson Road, not far away, did not own a clock. He used a telescope to tell the time from the clock tower then standing in Pedder Street. In the \"good old days,\" more than one British Governor used the activities in the harbour as a barometer of the strength of the economy. We are talking of times, up until the mid 1930s, when a cannon was fired from Blackhead Point, in Tsim Sha Tsui, to let residents know when a typhoon was approaching or, alternatively, the mail ship had arrived. Occasionally, inhabitants were not sure to which of the two events the firing referred!\n\nWhen the FCC vacated the premises the final days had come for the old mansion at 41 Conduit Road. In 1960, it was bought by Cheng Hing Realty and, in 1966, rebought by Court Properties. As with so much of Hong Kong it was a case of 'Hungry for the new forget the old.' The old building was demolished and the site remained empty for some time. The sale price was reputed to have been $13 million. The site was then redeveloped. In the summer of 1970, there were 1,200 applications to purchase the 400 flats at Realty Gardens. My wife and I were successful in the ballot and we took possession of our newly completed flat in Venice Court, for which we paid, in mid 1972, the princely sum of $114,000. Prices were still low after the property slump brought on largely by the drawn-out 1967 riots. My flat has been a splendid investment. We let it for the first four years, unfurnished, at $2,000 a month. We moved in ourselves on 1 March 1976.\n\nAlthough I can see a narrow strip of the harbour and Stonecutters Island (an island no longer) from my bedroom window, my flat at Realty Gardens in fact faces south. It is thus shielded from the cold north-easterly monsoon in the winter and receives the benefits of the cool", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]