[ { "id": 204237, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nBesides the Governor and Shortrede, the first office-bearers included Major-General D'Aguilar, Peter Young the Colonial Surgeon, Mercer the Colonial Treasurer, John Bowring the Younger (of Jardines); and also Thomas Wade, the celebrated interpreter and Envoy to China, who later became famous as inventor of the Wade System of romanization of Chinese still in general use today, and, as Sir Thomas, was to become President of the Society in London in 1887.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by Mr. G. Gutzlaff, the missionary, at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring (the younger John Bowring's father), and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nDuring the twelve years of its life, the Society was dogged to some extent by the personal animosities prevalent in Hong Kong in the early days; but it flourished under the inspiration of Sir John Davis, and also for a time under Sir John Bowring, who enjoyed a European reputation as a scholar—as President he preferred to be called Dr. Bowring—and who animated the Society with his personal influence and by his contributions to its discussions. The Society had no permanent home of its own, but in 1849 it was granted by Sir S. G. Bonham a room in the Supreme Court building. It published six volumes of Transactions, the first in 1847 and the last in 1859.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859 and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary—Dr. W. A. Harland, M.D.—the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which could be printed and distributed only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine, and his successor Sir Robert Jardine, and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204240, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n5\n\n## PRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nIt is with great pleasure that I submit a report of the activities of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for the first year of its existence after its revival in December 1959.\n\nThe original Branch which was founded in 1847 in the early days of the Colony and which included some of the most eminent oriental scholars of the time as well as the leaders of the Church, Government, the Armed Services and of the merchant houses, came to an abrupt end in 1859. After the lapse of a century a movement started in the Colony among those who had been members of branches of the Society elsewhere, in Malaya and in Shanghai where the Society had been compelled by force of circumstances to close down in 1950, to revive the Society in Hong Kong. As Sir Richard Winstedt, the Director of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, wrote:\n\n\"Circumstances had placed the port in a very favourable position for the study of one of the most important cultures of the world\"\n\nand Hong Kong had now the opportunity of filling a void and fulfilling its natural role as a centre for the diffusion of knowledge and culture of Asia and of China in particular.\n\nIt is barely over a year since a meeting was held attended by more than thirty interested members when a resolution was passed for the revival of this Branch. More than twice that number had pledged their support, including persons prominent in academic, professional, commercial and financial circles. The meeting adopted the constitution which had been approved by the parent Society and elected officers and a Council to hold office until this General Meeting. (The names of those elected have already been given in the brief history of the Branch at the beginning of this volume.)\n\nThe success of the founding meeting was crowned when His Excellency Sir Robert Black set the seal of his approbation by consenting to become the patron of the new Branch and when he presided over a meeting of the Society on January 23 of this year. It was the first time that a Governor of the Colony had presided at a meeting of the Hong Kong Branch since the days of Sir John Bowring, a hundred years ago. Thus he closed the gap of a century.\n\nWe are, I feel, justified in considering the result of the first year's work as very gratifying and the second year has already started in a way that is highly encouraging. Within a month of the founding meeting we had 72 members. At the end of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204242, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n7\n\nwho stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany as well as to literary pursuits. It may not be generally known that it was as the result of the efforts of the Royal Asiatic Society that Government was persuaded to grant a piece of ground for a Botanical Garden which was projected in the time of Sir John Davis and carried into effect when Sir John Bowring was President. Following this precedent we had three excellent lectures illustrated with a wealth of coloured slides by the following:\n\nCaptain A. M. Macfarlane on \"Birds of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides and a tape record of bird songs and calls. Miss B. T. Chiu on \"Flowers of Hong Kong\" illustrated Mr. P. A. Nixon's coloured slides, and\n\nMr. J. D. Bromhall on \"The Marine Fauna of Hong Kong\" illustrated by coloured slides.\n\nThese lectures were in part designed to appeal to the educational circles and it is hoped that with wider publicity we may have the benefit of more members from the schools and colleges of the Colony.\n\nIn concluding my reference to the lectures and addresses I wish to record our deep gratitude to those who have contributed so richly and so readily to the success of our first year's record.\n\nAll except two of the meetings held last year were held in the rooms of the British Council and the Branch owes a debt of gratitude to the generous assistance of the British Council and of its Representative, Mr. R. E. Lawry, for affording us, free of charge, the use of these rooms as well as of the projector and operator for the slides in illustration of the lectures. Without this assistance it would have been difficult for the Branch to carry on as the moderate yearly subscription of $20.00 per member would not otherwise go far towards paying our expenses, including the hire of rooms and the issue to every member of a free copy of the Journal of the Branch.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch has no home of its own. It is indicative of the importance which Governments attached to the Royal Asiatic Society 100 years ago that the Government of Hong Kong granted to the Hong Kong Branch a room in the Supreme Court, where it could hold its meetings and house the valuable library which it built up and which it had eventually to hand over to the Morrison Education Society.\n\nIn Shanghai the Government granted to the North China Branch a parcel of land on which, with the aid of generous grants from The Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Council", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204289, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n53\n\nthe failure of subscribers to return the books on leaving the country-so that there is a large space occupied by books that are of little value to the Society, or to the public. I would recommend that the Library be inspected, and that those books which are not worth binding anew should be disposed of, and the proceeds be devoted to rebinding those that are worth keeping. In this way, the library will be freed from a good deal of trash, and the really valuable part of it, which is by no means small, could be more easily accommodated in the apartment designed for it, and better fitted for the use of subscribers.\n\nThe reports of the Society for 1844, 1845 and 1846 do not specifically mention the Library, but it is interesting to note that at a meeting of the subscribers in January 1846 it was unanimously resolved, \"That a bust of the late Hon. J. R. Morrison (who had also died, at the early age of 29 in 1843) be immediately commissioned from England, to be placed in the public rooms of the institution of the Morrison Education Society; that a copy of Chinnery's painting of his father (the late Rev. Dr. Morrison) engaged in the translation of the Bible into Chinese, be obtained for the same purpose; that the sum of $1,000 be appropriated to meet the cost, and the expense of placing these memorials in China.\n\nBy 1849 the Society was running into financial difficulties, the premises had to be closed and the Library was packed up. By 1855 it was open to the public again when, according to an advertisement appearing in the Hong Kong Register on 30 October, 1855, \"The Library of the Morrison Education Society, now deposited in a room in the Court House, is open every day from 1 to 4 o'clock p.m. to Members of the Society for the giving out and exchange of Books. Parties, not members of the Society, may obtain the advantages of the Library, on payment of an Annual Subscription of $5. By order of the Trustees, James Legge, Secretary.”\n\nAt the annual meeting of the Society in 1858 the question of the permanent disposal of the Library was scheduled for discussion. In this same year they had accepted on trust a collection of 400 books belonging to the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which had been founded in Hong Kong in 1847 by Sir John Davis, later revived by Sir John Bowring, but which was now defunct. A report of the founding of the Asiatic Society appears in the Hong Kong Register for 1847 with a list of 44 titles of books, prints, etc., which had been presented.\n\nThere had been a growing demand for a proper public library and in May, 1863, the Morrison Education Society issued a circular urging the foundation of such a library in a City Hall and offering its own books and those of the Royal Asiatic Society", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204531, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "The keen and active interest in the Society shown by our patron, Sir Robert Black, and members of his family is very gratifying and is warmly appreciated. Despite the exacting calls on their time they have been attending our meetings, and this is a noble example to other busy people in the Colony. We appreciate also the zeal of many other prominent personages including the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Hogan, and the Hon. W. C. Knowles who is a member of the Council and whose business house has provided us with both an Honorary Treasurer, Mr. T. J. Lindsay, and an Honorary Librarian, Mr. John Le Mare. I should like also to refer to the interest in the Society taken by members of H.M. Forces and particularly to the interest taken by Col. Halliday and Col. Mackenzie, both of whom have now left the Colony, but it is greatly hoped that this interest will be sustained by their successors. In this connection it may be interesting to mention the first office-bearers of the Society in 1847:\n\nPresident: Sir John Francis Davis (Governor); Vice-Presidents: Major-General D'Aguilar, Major H. P. Burn, John Stewart, Dr. Kinnis; Council: Lt.-Col. Brereton, Peter Young (Colonial Surgeon), W. T. Mercer (Colonial Treasurer), J. C. Bowring (Son of Sir John Bowring); Secretary: A. Shortrede; Corresponding Secretary: Capt. Clark Kennedy; Chinese and Foreign Secretary: Thomas Wade;* Treasurer: F. Bevan; Curator: C. T. Watkins.\n\nIn conclusion I wish to thank all the officers and members of the Society for their loyal and wholehearted support. I am probably in a better position than anyone to appreciate and also to pay tribute to my colleagues on the present Council, in whom you have a hard working and active body, and each of whom pulls his or her full weight in the furtherance of the objects of the Society.\n\n* Afterwards Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., British Minister at Peking from 1871 until 1883, and later first Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204897, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPAGE\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1964\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1964\n\nTRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH, 1964 - 1965:\n\n✓ Archeological Discovery in and around Hong Kong S. G. Davis\n\nNiah Cave, 1947 - 1964 T. HARRISSON\n\nCHINA BRANCH TRANSACTIONS REPRINT:\n\nThe Population of China SIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nARTICLES CONTRIBUTED:\n\nThe Dialects of Hong Kong\n\nBoat People: Kau Sai J. McCoy\n\nThe Southern Sung Stone Engraving at North Fu-t'ang JEN YU-WEN\n\nPiracy on the China Coast A. D. BLUE\n\nThe Hong Kong The Chinese University of S. HUANG\n\nReview Article: Government and People in Hong Kong, by G. B. Endacott C. LUPTON\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nLIST OF Members\n\n1\n\n6\n\n9\n\n20\n\n27\n\n46\n\n65\n\n69\n\n86\n\n95\n\n101\n\n116\n\n127", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204926, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "27\n\nTHE POPULATION OF CHINA\n\nA LETTER ON THE POPULATION OF CHINA,\n\naddressed to the Registrar General, London:\n\nBy SIR JOHN BOWRING. Read to the Society, 8th August, 1855.\n\n(Editor's Note:-Beginning with the present volume the Society will reprint a selected article from the Transactions of the old China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society whenever it is convenient to do so. There were published in Hong Kong six Transactions of the China Branch between the years 1847 and 1859. The only known complete extant sets of the Transactions in the Colony are the microfilmed sets recently acquired by the Library of the University of Hong Kong and by the Society. The present selection is taken from Transactions, Part V, 1855, pp. 1-16. The author was Governor of Hong Kong, 1854 to 1859, and an able early President of the Society. The subject is one of continuing, intriguing interest. The article is reprinted here in its original, unrevised form.)\n\nGovernment House, Hong Kong, 13th July, 1855.\n\nSir, I wish it were possible to give a satisfactory reply to your inquiries as to the real Population of China.\n\nThere has been no official census taken since the time of Kia King, 43 years ago. Much doubt has been thrown upon the accuracy of these returns, which give 362,447,183 as the total number of the inhabitants of China. I think our greater knowledge of the country increases the evidence in favour of the approximative correctness of the official document, and that we may with tolerable safety estimate the present population of the Chinese Empire as between 350,000,000 and 400,000,000 of human beings. The penal Laws of China make provision for a general system of registration; and corporal punishments, generally amounting to 100 blows of the bamboo, are to be inflicted on those who neglect to make the proper returns. The machinery is confided to the Elders of the district, and the census is required to be annually taken; but I have no reason to believe the law is obeyed, or the neglect of it punished,\n\nIn the English translation of Father Alvares Semedo's history of China published in London A.D. 1655, is the following passage\n\n\"This kingdom is so exceedingly populous, that having lived there two-and-twenty years, I was in no less amazement at my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204927, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "28\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\ncoming away than in the beginning, at the multitude of the people. Certainly the truth exceedeth all hyperboles, not only in the cities, towns, and public places, but also in the highway there is as great a concourse as is usual in Europe on some great festival. And if we will refer ourselves to the general register book wherein only the common men are enrolled, leaving out women, children, eunuchs, professors of letters and arms, there are reckoned of them to be fifty-eight millions fifty-five thousand one hundred and four score.\" The minuteness of the enumeration would seem to shew that the father quoted some official Document.\n\nI forward herewith two Tabular Statements which I have copied from Dr. Williams' Middle Kingdom, one of the best books on China. The first (No. 1) gives a list of the various estimates from A.D. 1393 to 1812, with the authorities quoted. The second is a re-arranged statement of Censuses taken at different periods, (No. 2).\n\nAs there are few men in China more diligent or better instructed than Dr. Williams, I thought it desirable to communicate with him in order to ascertain his present views as to the credit which may properly be attached to the official statistics of China. I send copy of his letter, (No. 3).\n\nI do not know that there is any safer course than to reason from details to generals, from the known to the unknown; and I have taken every opportunity which my intercourse with the Chinese has afforded me, to obtain, if not correct, at least approximative, information as to the true Statistics of the country. It may be affirmed without any hesitation, that as regards the Five Ports and the adjacent districts, to which we have access, the population is so numerous as to furnish argument that the number of inhabitants of the entire Empire is very much greater than is represented by the official returns. These localities cannot be taken as fair averages; for, naturally enough, increased commercial activity has brought with it a flow of new settlers, and there can be no doubt that some of the ancient seats of commerce have lost much of their population in losing their trade; but whether all the causes of decline in particular spots have much counteracted the fecundity of the Chinese races considered as a whole, may well be questioned.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204929, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "30\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\npoor in their declining years. Age may also be pleaded in ex-tenuation of crime, and in mitigation of punishment. Imperial decrees sometimes order presents to be given to all indigent old people in the empire. I am not aware of any detailed statistics giving the number of such recipients since a return published in the time of Kanghi (1657). Kienlung (1785) directed that all those claimants whose age exceeded 60, should receive 5 bushels of rice and a piece of linen; those above 80, 10 bushels of rice and two pieces of linen; those above 90, 30 bushels of rice and two pieces of common silk; and those above 100, 50 bushels of rice, and two pieces, one of fine and one of common silk. He ordered all the elders to be enumerated who were at the head of five generations, of whom there were 192, and, \"in gratitude to heaven,\" summoned 3,000 of the oldest men of the empire to receive Imperial presents, which consisted principally of em-broidered purses, and badges bearing the character # shau, meaning Longevity.\n\nThe Kanghi Tables, shewing the numbers who enjoyed the benefit of the Edict are these:\n\n \n PROVINCES\n Above 70 Years\n Above 80 Years\n Above 90 Years\n Above 100 Years\n TOTALS\n \n \n Chihle\n 11,111\n 535\n 11\n 646\n \n \n \n Leaoutung\n 244\n 88\n 5\n \n 337\n \n \n Kansuh\n 41,991\n 9,043\n 250\n \n 51,284\n \n \n Shantung\n 65,225\n 26,067\n 1,330\n 9\n 92,631\n \n \n Honan\n 8,132\n 3,651\n 451\n 5\n 12,239\n \n \n Keangnan\n 34,088\n +\n 1,065\n 3\n 35,156\n \n \n Chekeang\n 21,866\n 982\n \n \n 22,848\n \n \n Shanse\n 13,382\n 11,582\n 317\n \n 25,281\n \n \n Hookwang\n \n 37,354\n 25,544\n 2,850\n 65,752\n \n \n Keangse\n 7,190\n 580\n +\n \n 7,770\n \n \n Kwangtung\n 17,369\n 9,415\n 591\n \n 27,375\n \n \n Kwangse\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Fuhkeen\n 489\n 114\n \n \n \n \n \n Szechuen\n 10,213\n 5,232\n 369\n \n \n \n \n Kweichow\n 176\n 99\n 13\n \n \n \n \n Yunnan\n 749\n 94\n 603\n \n \n \n \n \n 15,814\n 288\n 843\n \n \n \n \n \n +++\n \n \n \n \n \n \n TOTALS\n 184,086\n 169,850\n 9,996\n 21\n 373,935", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "32 \n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING \n\nrace is thus augmenting, the causes which lead to the destruction of food, — such as the overflow of rivers, fires, ravages of locusts, bad seasons, and other calamities, — are to a great extent beyond the control of human prudence or human exertion. It would be difficult to show what new element could be introduced which would raise up the native supply of food beyond its present productiveness, considering that hand husbandry has given to cultivation more of a horticultural than an agricultural character.\n\nThe constant flow of emigration from China, contrasted with the complete absence of emigration into China, is striking evidence of the redundancy of the population; for though that emigration is almost wholly confined to two provinces, namely, Kwangtung and Fookien, representing together a population of probably from 34,000,000 to 35,000,000, I am disposed to think that a number nearer 3,000,000 than 2,000,000 from these provinces alone are located in foreign countries. In the kingdom of Siam, it is estimated that there are at least a Million and a Half of Chinese, of which 200,000 are in the capital (Bangkok). They crowd all the islands of the Indian Archipelago. In Java, we know by a correct census there are 136,000. Cochin China teems with Chinese. In this colony we are seldom without one, two, or three vessels taking Chinese emigrants to California and other places. Multitudes go to Australia, to the Philippines, to the Sandwich Islands, to the western coast of Central and Southern America: some have made their way to British India. The emigration to the British West Indies has been considerable; to the Havana greater still. The annual arrivals in Singapore are estimated at an average of 10,000, and 2,000 is the number that are said annually to return to China.* \n\nThere is not only this enormous maritime emigration, but a considerable inland efflux of Chinese towards Manchuria and Tibet; and it may be added, that the large and fertile islands of Formosa and Hainan have been to a great extent won from the aborigines by successive inroads of Chinese settlers. Now these are all males — there is not a woman to 10,000 men: hence perhaps the small social value of the female infant. Yet this perpetual out-flowing of people seems in no respect to diminish the number of those who are left behind. Few Chinamen leave \n\n* Journal of the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, p. 286,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204933, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "34\n\n―\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\non the water, and never have or dream of any shelter other than the roof, and who seldom tread except on the deck or boards of their sampans,\n\nshow to what an extent the land is crowded, and how inadequate it is to maintain the cumberers of the soil. In the city of Canton alone it is estimated that 300,000 persons dwell upon the surface of the river: the boats, sometimes twenty or thirty deep, cover some miles, and have their wants supplied by ambulatory salesmen, who wend their way through every accessible passage. Of this vast population some dwell in decorated river boats used for every purpose of license and festivity — for theatres, for concerts — for feasts, for gambling — for lust, for solitary and social recreations: some craft are employed in conveying goods and passengers, and are in a state of constant activity; others are moored, and their owners are engaged as servants or labourers on shore. Indeed their pursuits are probably nearly as various as those of the land population. The immense variety of boats which are found in Chinese waters has never been adequately described. Some are of enormous size, and are used as magazines for salt or rice; others have all domestic accommodations, and are employed for the transfer of whole families, with all their domestic attendants and accommodations, from one place to another; some, called centipedes, from their being supposed to have 100 rowers, convey with extraordinary rapidity the more valuable cargoes from the inner warehouses to the foreign shipping in the ports. All these, from the huge and cumbrous junks, which remind one of Noah's ark, and which represent the rude and coarse constructions of the remotest ages, to the fragile planks upon which a solitary leper hangs upon the outskirts of society — boats of every form and applied to every purpose, exhibit an incalculable amount of population, which may be called amphibious, if not aquatic.\n\n―T\n\nNot only are land and water crowded with Chinese, but many dwell on artificial islands which float upon the lakes, islands with gardens and houses raised upon the rafters which the occupiers have bound together, and on which they cultivate what is needful for the supply of life's daily wants. They have their poultry and their vegetables for use, their flowers and their scrolls for ornament — their household gods for protection and worship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204935, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "36\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\ndeserving of note, and all display evidence of the inadequate proportion which the produce of the soil bears to the demands for the consumption of the people.*\n\nThe Chinese, again, have no prejudices whatever as regards food: they eat any thing and every thing from which they can derive nutrition. Dogs, especially puppies, are habitually sold for food and I have seen in the butchers' shops, large dogs skinned and hanging with their viscera by the side of pigs and goats. Even to rats and mice the Chinese have no objection, — neither to the flesh of monkeys and snakes: the sea slug is an aristocratical and costly delicacy which is never wanting, any more than the edible birds' nests, at a feast where honour is intended to be done to the guests. Unhatched ducks and chickens are a favourite dish. Nor do the early stages of putrefaction create any disgust: rotten eggs are by no means condemned to perdition; fish is the more acceptable when it has a strong fragrance and flavor to give more gusto to the rice.\n\nAs the food the Chinese eat is for the most part hard, coarse, and of little cost, so their beverages are singularly economical. Drunkenness is a rare vice in China, and fermented spirits or strong drinks are seldom used. Tea may be said to be the national, the universal beverage; and though that employed by the multitude does not cost more than from 3d. to 6d. per lb, an infusion of less costly leaves is commonly employed, especially in localities remote from the Tea districts. Both in eating and drinking the Chinese are temperate, and are satisfied with two daily meals \"the morning rice\" at about 10 a.m., and “the evening rice\" at 5 p.m. The only repugnance I have observed in China is to the use of milk -- an extraordinary prejudice, especially considering the Tartar influences which have been long dominant in the land; but I never saw or heard of butter, cream, milk, or whey, being introduced at any native Chinese table.\n\n* See a valuable paper on Chinese Agriculture in Chinese Repository, vol iii, pp. 121-27,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204937, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "38\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nhaving been nursed and reared by tigers.\" \"Where should we have been,\" he asks, \"if our grandmothers and mothers had been drowned in their infancy?\" And he quotes two instances of the punishment of mothers who had destroyed their infants, one of whom had a blood-red serpent fastened to her thigh, and the other her four extremities turned into cow's feet.* Father Ripa mentions, that of abandoned children, the Jesuits baptized in Peking alone not less than three thousand yearly. I have seen ponds which are the habitual receptacle of female infants, whose bodies lie floating about on their surface.\n\nIt is by no means unusual to carry persons in a state of exhaustion a little distance from the cities, to give them a pot of rice, and to leave them to perish of starvation when the little store is exhausted. Life and death in China, beyond any other region, seem in a state of perpetual activity. The habits of the people, their traditions, the teachings of the sages all give a wonderful impulse to the procreative affections. A childless person is deemed an unhappy, not to say a degraded, man. The Chinese moralists set it down as a law, that if a wife give no children to her husband,\n\n*Doubt has been sometimes expressed as to the practice of Infanticide in China on any great scale; but abundance of evidence of the extent of the usage may be found in Chinese books. The following is a translation of a Decree of the Emperor Kanghi, entitled,-\n\n\"Edict prohibiting the drowning of children.\" \"When a mother mercilessly plunges beneath the water the tender offspring to which she has given birth, can it be said that it owes its life to her who thus takes away what it has just begun to enjoy? The poverty of the parents is the cause of this wrongdoing; they have difficulty in earning subsistence for themselves, still less can they pay nurses and undertake all the necessary expenses for their children; thus driven to despair, and unwilling to cause the death of two persons to preserve the life of one, it comes to pass that a mother to save her husband's life consents to destroy her children. Their natural tenderness suffers; but they at length determine to take this part, thinking themselves at liberty to dispose of the life of their children, in order to prolong their own. If they exposed these children in some unfrequented spot, their cries would move the hearts of the parents; what then do they? They cast the unfortunate babe into the current of a river, that they may at once lose sight of it, and in an instant deprive it of life. You have given me the name of Father of the People: though I cannot feel for these infants the tenderness of the parents to whom they owe their being, I cannot refrain from declaring to you, with the most painful feelings, that I absolutely forbid such homicides. The tiger, says one of our books, though it be a tiger, does not rend its own young; towards them it has a feeling breast, and continually cares for them. Poor as you may be, is it possible that you should become the murderers of your own children? is to shew yourselves more unnatural than the very beasts of prey.”— Lettres Edifiantes, vol. xix, pp. 101-2,\n\nIt\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204939, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "40\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nGenerally however the wife willingly coincides with the husband in introducing into the household any number of concubines whom he is able to maintain, since she exercises over them an undoubted authority, and the child of a concubine is bound to pay higher respect to the first wife than to its own mother. The Chinese illustrate all the domestic relations by imagery, and are wont to say, that as the husband is the sun, and the wife the moon, so the concubines are the planets and the stars of the domestic firmament.\n\nAnd it has been often truly observed, that though the Chinese may be called sensualists, there is no deification of the grosser sensualities such as is found in the classical pantheons, and in many of the oriental forms of faith. Tales of the amours of their gods and heroes seldom figure in their historical books or traditional legends. The dresses and external habits of the women in China are invariably modest, and on the whole the social arrangements must be considered friendly to an augmentation of the human race. The domestic affections are strong. Parents are generally fond and proud of their children, and children obedient to their parents. Order is indeed the first law of Confucius; authority and submission are the apex and the basis of the social pyramid.\n\nThe sentiment of dishonour attached to the extinction of a race by the want of descendants through whom the whole line of reverential services (which some have called religious worship) rendered to Ancestors, is to be perpetual, is by no means confined to the privileged classes in China. One of our female servants, a nominal Christian, expressed her earnest desire that her husband should have another wife in her absence, and seemed quite surprised that any one should suppose such an arrangement to be in any respect improper.\n\nThe marriage of children is one of the great concerns of families. Scarcely is a child born in the higher ranks of life ere the question of its future espousal becomes a frequent topic of discussion. There is a large body of professional match-makers, whose business it is to put all the preliminary arrangements in train, to settle questions of dowry, to accommodate differences, to report on the pros and cons of suggested alliances. There being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204940, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "THE POPULATION OF CHINA\n\n41\n\nno hereditary honours in China—except those which reckon upwards from the distinguished son to the father, the grandfather, and the whole line of ancestry, which may be ennobled by the literary or martial genius of a descendant—the distinctions of caste are unknown, and a successful student even of the lowest origin would be deemed a fit match for the most opulent and distinguished female in the community. The severe laws which prohibit marriages within certain degrees of affinity (they do not however interdict it with a deceased wife's sister) tend to make marriages more prolific and to produce a healthier race of children. So strong is the objection to the marriage of blood relations, that a man and woman of the same Sing or family name cannot lawfully wed.\n\nSoldiers and sailors are in no respect prevented from marrying. I expect there is from the number of male emigrants the greater loss of men by the various accidents of life abstraction in many circumstances from intercourse with women, a great disproportion between the sexes, tending naturally enough to the lower appreciation of woman; but correct statistics are wanting in this, as indeed in every other part of the field of enquiry.\n\nThe proportion of unmarried to married people is (as would be deduced from the foregoing observation) exceedingly small. To promote marriages seems everybody's affair. Matches and betrothals naturally enough occupy the attention of the young, but not less that of the middle-aged and the old. A marriage is the great event in the life of man or woman, and in China is associated with more of preliminary negotiations—ceremonials at different steps of the negotiations—written correspondence, visitings, protocols, and conventions than in any other part of the world.\n\nI am in hopes that we may be able to obtain the vital statistics of some given district, from which more accurate results might be deducted than are afforded by any existing data. I keep this object in view. I have the honour to be, sir, yours very faithfully.\n\nJOHN BOWRING.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204941, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "42\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nTo GEO: GRAHAM, Esq.,\n\nRegistrar General, &c., &c.,\n\nLondon.\n\n(Table No. 1)\n\nReign of Monarch\n\n1 Hungwu, 26th Year,\n\n2 Hungchi, 3 Wanleih,\n\n4 Shunchi, 5 Kanghi,\n\n6\n\n7\n\n+\n\nA. D. Population\n\n1393, 60,545,811) Mirror of History,\n\nChi-\n\nnese Repository, vol. x.\n\n1662, 21,068,600) General Statistics of the\n\nwww\n\nEmpire, Medhurst's\n\n++\n\n4th\n\n**\n\n1492, 53,281,158\n\n6th\n\n*\n\n1579, 60,692,856\n\npage 156.\n\n++\n\n18th\n\n6th\n\n++\n\n49th\n\n**\n\n-\n\n1668, 1710,\n\n25,386,209 23,312,200)\n\nChina, page 53.\n\n49th\n\n**\n\nJ\n\n8\n\n**\n\n9 Kienlung,\n\n50th\n\n1st\n\n10\n\n8th\n\n**\n\n11\n\n8th\n\n12\n\n*\n\n***\n\n1710, 27,241,129\n\n1711, 28,605,716\n\n1736, 125,046,245 1743, 157,343,975 1743, 149,332,730\n\n8th\n\n1743, 150,265,475\n\n13\n\n18th\n\n**\n\n\"J\n\n1753, 103,050,060\n\n14\n\n1760, 143,125,225\n\n25th\n\n**\n\n15\n\n16\n\n25th 26th\n\nH\n\n17\n\n27th\n\n1762, 198,214,553\n\n4,552\n\n1760, 203,916,477 1761, 205,293,053\n\n18\n\n55th\n\n23\n\n1790, 155,249,897\n\n19\n\n57th\n\n++\n\n1792, 307,467,200\n\n*\n\n20\n\n57th\n\n**\n\n1792, 333,000,000\n\n21 Kiaking\n\n17th\n\n>>\n\n1812, 362,467,183\n\nYih-tung Chi, a Statistical work,\n\nMorrison's\n\nView of China. General Statistics, — Chi-\n\nnese Repository, vol, i. page 359.\n\nMemoires sur les Chinois,\n\ntom. vi.,\n\nGrosier, and by De\n\nGuignes:\n\nquoted by\n\nVoyages à\n\nPeking, tom. iii. page 72.\n\n\"Les Missionnaires\" De Guignes: tom. iii. page 67.\n\nGeneral Statistics, — Chi- nese Repository, vol. i. page 359.\n\nYihtungchi, a Statistical work,\n\nMorrison's\n\nView of China. Memoires sur les Chinois, tom, vi.,- De Guignes, tom. iii, page 72. Allerstain; Groster: De Guignes: tom. iii. page\n\n57.\n\nZ. of Berlin, in Chinese Repository, vol. i. page 361.\n\nGeneral Statistics,\n\n―\n\nDr.\n\nMorrison, Anglo-Chin: Coll: Report 1829.\n\nStatement made to Lord\n\nMacartney\n\n-\n\nStatistics,\n\nChinese Repository,\n\nvol. i. page 359.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204943, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "44\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\n(No. 3.)\n\nCANTON, 29TH JUNE, 1855.\n\nDEAR SIR,\n\nIn respect to the question of the Population of China, I have nothing new of any general application to the subject. It would be a good service to the statistics of the race, for Hienfung to make out a general census, as his grandfather did, now forty-three years after the last.\n\nThe visits made to villages and towns in this prefecture since the breaking out of disturbances last June, have strengthened rather than diminished one's faith in the accuracy of the census. Large towns, like Shihlung, Kiúkiáng, Kinchuh, Fuhshán, Sintsiun, and others, have been found to contain even larger numbers than the representations of the Chinese had led one to believe. Fuhshán occupies even more ground than Canton, rather than less; and several observers agreed in estimating the portion which was burned last autumn as large as the entire western suburbs of Canton. Sintsiun is estimated at Half a Million, though data are wanted to confirm this figure. You will see a list of villages enumerated by Mr. Bonney in the Anglo-Chinese Calendars for 1852 and 1853, all of which were situated within a radius of two miles of Whampoa, or on Fa-té island, west of Macao passage. Few spots in the world maintain a denser population than the delta of Pearl River, nearly all of which is included in the prefecture of Kwangshan, which is about one-ninth of the whole province. Its density of population doubtless is greater than any other equal area in the whole province; for if the whole contained as many, the entire amount could hardly be less than thirty millions instead of nineteen millions as now reckoned.\n\nThe Registrar General must needs be content with an approximate estimate, from the nature of the case, our inability to make minute personal examination, and the lapse of time since the last general census. Hue, I see, estimates the combined population of Wúcháng, Hányáng, and Hánkau in Húpeh, at the high figure of Eight Millions, if I remember aright, for I have not the book to refer to; this is more than I have seen any one else reckon it. He", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841 - 1962 99\n\nwas actually protecting local Chinese. The Colonial Office had no desire to see the indigenous population handed over to the power of the Hong Kong British business interests. It was not considered until the 1870s that the Chinese might have a part to play in the function of government, the Colonial Office believing that \"the testimony of those best acquainted with them represent the Chinese race as endowed with much intelligence but very deficient in the elements of morality\" (Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir John Bowring). The first Chinese member of the Legislative Council was not appointed till 1880, and he, so a Colonial Office minute tells us, was a cipher. While obviously it was not practical to give much in the way of electoral power to either the British or the Chinese communities in the nineteenth century, it seems a pity that more was not done between the two world wars when it might have been feasible. There was a certain broadening of the Executive Council by greater community representation soon after the first war, and significantly, as Mr. Endacott points out, what had been the continuous representation on the Council since 1850 of Jardine, Matheson was interrupted in 1921. But the slump in Europe, its effect on the Colony's trade, and the rising militarism of Japan all discouraged progress.\n\nIt is true that the Colony has gained some measure of independence over the years from control from London. It is financially self-supporting, and since 1958 the annual estimates have no longer been submitted to the Secretary of State. Representation on the two Councils, Legislative and Executive, has been broadened, though there is still no elected element. Furthermore, an effort has been made to bring local people into the ranks of the Civil Service, though it has not met with the success of similar efforts in, for example, former African colonies.\n\nMr. Endacott notes that in 1952 for the first time a locally recruited officer was promoted to be the head of a government department; unfortunately, he does not tell us which department, or how often this has happened again in the succeeding thirteen years. For many and various reasons, the recruitment of Chinese to the Administrative Service in particular has been slow. At first sight, though a self-governing Hong Kong is an impossibility in view of the international situation, a largely Chinese territory might", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205699, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# CONTENTS\n\n## PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1968\n\n## HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1968\n\n## TRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH 1968\n\n## Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in Hong Kong up to 1941\n\n### T. C. CHENG\n\n## ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED:\n\n### Y\n\n### Militia, Market and Lineage: Chinese Resistance to the Occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899\n\n#### R. G. GROVES\n\n### Tung Kwu Island; the Type Site of Hong Kong's Older Prehistoric Culture\n\n#### W. SCHOFIELD\n\nPage 1\n\nPage 5\n\nPage 7\n\nPage 31\n\nPage 65\n\n### King Mongkut and the Kingdom of Siam\n\n#### R. BRUCE\n\n### The Linguistic and Literary Value of Ming Dynasty 'Mountain Songs'\n\n#### JOHN MCCOY\n\n### The Chinese Descent System and the Occupancy Level of Village Houses\n\n#### H. G. H. NELSON\n\n### Some Notes on Ethno-botany in the New Territories of Hong Kong\n\n#### ARMANDO DA SILVA\n\n### The Mapping of Hong Kong\n\n#### J. T. COOPER\n\nPage 82\n\nPage 101\n\nPage 113\n\nPage 124\n\nPage 131\n\n## ARTICLE REPRINTED:\n\n### The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri\n\n#### RONALD C. Y. NG\n\nPage 141\n\n## NOTES AND QUERIES:\n\n### Bethesda and the Berliner Frauenverein Für China\n\n#### ALBRECHT PLAG\n\n### The Comet of 1532 —\n\n#### L. Carrington GOODRICH\n\n### What Inspired Sir John Bowring's Hymn?\n\n#### L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\n### Books from the Victoria Library —\n\n#### H. A. RYDINGS\n\n### Early Hong Kong Libraries\n\n#### J. R. JONES\n\nPage 149\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151\n\nPage 152\n\nPage 154\n\nPage 154\n\n### Defence Wall at Pass between Kowloon City and Kowloon Tsai —\n\n#### W. SCHOFIELD\n\n### Removal of Villages for Fung Shui Reasons. Another Example from Lantau Island, Hong Kong\n\n#### JAMES HAYES\n\n### The Occupancy Level of Village Houses in the Hong Kong Region\n\n#### JAMES HAYES\n\n### A Pair of Pottery Covered Jars found at Shek Pik, Lantau Island\n\n#### JAMES C. Y. WATT\n\n## BOOK REVIEWS\n\n### Kelly and Walsh\n\n## THE LIBRARY, 1968-69\n\n## LIST OF MEMBERS\n\n### HON. EDITOR\n\nPage 156\n\nPage 158\n\nPage 161\n\nPage 163\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 179\n\nPage 183", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205728, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "28 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nNOTES \n\n1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: \"For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty\n\nSee E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349.\n\n2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was \"educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)\". I find no evidence to support this.\n\n3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government.\n\n4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94.\n\n6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies.\n\n7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140.\n\n8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199.\n\n9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98.\n\n10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, \"Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205782, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "82\n\nKING MONGKUT OF SIAM AND HIS TREATY WITH BRITAIN\n\nROBERT BRUCE*\n\nWhen Sir John Bowring sailed up the river to Bangkok in March 1855 he was asked by King Mongkut not to fire a salute lest the citizens be alarmed. Sir John, Governor of Hong Kong and Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in the Far East, reluctantly agreed to postpone the ceremonial explosion from the Rattler's guns until the anxious citizens had been given one day's warning.\n\nThe Siamese had cause for concern. The Burmese, their traditional enemies, had been conquered by the British; and a dozen years before the Bowring mission the great Chinese Empire had been defeated by the British navy. On their eastern frontier, the Siamese watched with alarm the French encroachment on Cochin-China and their own dominion of Cambodia. To the south of the Isthmus of Kra British power was spreading into the Malay States, including Kedah, a feudatory of Siam. But their fears were to prove unfounded. The Bowring mission to Bangkok was completely successful for both British and Siamese. On April 18th, 1855, a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, an agreement which was to secure for Siam, alone in south-east Asia, independence from colonial rule and which set her on the long, painful road of modernisation.\n\nForce had been used to 'open' China. In the same year as Bowring's peaceful mission to Bangkok Commodore Perry's American warships were demanding commerce and navigation rights of the Japanese. Even after the Treaty of Nanking had\n\n* This article, entitled \"King Mongkut of Siam\", appeared in History Today for October 1968. The original text, slightly extended, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor. Mr. Bruce lectured to the Hong Kong Branch on this subject in February 1968.\n\nMr. Bruce is at present a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, U.S.A. He served eight years as Representative of the British Council in Thailand and later filled the same post in Hong Kong where he was a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society. Mr. Bruce was also one time Director of the Government School of Chinese Language at Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205783, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n83\n\nopened the Treaty Ports and a second British conflict with China had proved the superiority of Western arms, the Chinese court refused to reform. The Japanese were quicker to read the signs. Only Siam, unlike her weak neighbours in the tropical south, was able to adapt herself to the new world without war or its threat and without loss of sovereignty.\n\nWhy was this? Was it because Britain and France had agreed to the Thai kingdom being a buffer between their Indian and Indo-Chinese empires? Or was it that the King of Siam who received Sir John Bowring had more vision than most of his Asian contemporaries and was succeeded by an equally gifted son? Whatever the reasons, the Treaty of 1855 was a major factor in determining the future of the Thai kingdom. It provided for the opening of diplomatic relations with Britain and, as a natural consequence, with other western nations. It introduced extra-territorial rights to British subjects living in Siam and allowed them to own or rent property. In commerce the Treaty abolished the strangling system of monopolies owned by the King and 'farmed' to Chinese merchants - replacing it by a free market with low duties on imports and exports. The year after the conclusion of the British treaty the Americans and the French secured similar agreements and these in turn were hastily followed by treaties with various European nations. These treaties marked a turning-point in the modern history of Siam.\n\nIn the century and a half which followed Louis XIV's mission to Ayuthia in 1689 Siam had little or no contact with the West. In the mid-eighteenth century her main preoccupation was the constant war with the Burmese who finally sacked their ancient and splendid capital in 1767. By the time the new house of Chakri had established the capital at Bangkok in 1782 the British East India Company had consolidated its dominion over India. The tea trade with China was growing rapidly and ports of call on the eastern run were obvious advantages. Francis Light obtained Penang island for the Company from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786 for the annual payment of $6,000 and the vague understanding of British protection. Kedah was an acknowledged feudatory of Siam, but at that time King Rama I was far too busy with the building of Bangkok to concern himself with the incident and the British were not then interested in Siam. Raffles had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205794, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "94\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nnecessary for the late King? He would be welcome then, that is in 1852. At the same time he took the initiative in improving trading conditions. Monopolies were partly removed and duties on imports and exports reduced. For a moment it seemed that Siam's foreign relations could be improved without formal treaty and the British Government did not press the matter. But in fact there was much to be done, and with a new British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong it was opportune to resume discussions.\n\nSir John Bowring was a very different diplomat from his three British predecessors, Crawfurd, Burney and Brooke or the American envoys Roberts and Ballestier. He was an intellectual, a radical reformer, a disciple and editor of Jeremy Bentham, a linguist who could prattle in a dozen languages, an ex-Member of Parliament and a writer of hymns, an inveterate talker, a man with limitless energy and a Victorian capacity for pomposity and self-glory. After a career of business, politics, writing and self-appointed diplomacy in the courts of Europe, Bowring, being short of money, accepted public office as Consul at Canton. That was in 1849 when he was fifty-seven. Some five years later he became Governor of Hong Kong, Superintendent of Trade and, most glorious of all, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary responsible for relations with China, Japan, Siam and all countries in the Far East.\n\nBowring's five years' Governorship of the island colony on the coast of China was anything but successful. Some of his senior officials were incompetent and even corrupt, and he was unpopular among the British merchants. Worst of all he precipitated the second Anglo-Chinese war by sending warships to bombard Canton over a quite unworthy incident. But he was completely successful when he sailed to Bangkok in March, 1855, to negotiate a treaty with the Siamese.\n\nMost of the detailed business of the negotiations was done by Bowring's young assistants, his son John C. Bowring, an employee of Jardine, Matheson and Co. in Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, his secretary, who was later to have a distinguished career as Consul at several ports on the China coast, (Mongkut referred to the young men as \"Mr. Parkes and Your Excellency's upspring\".) But it was Bowring and King Mongkut who created the favourable atmosphere which allowed progress to be rapid and the discussions congenial. It was clear from the start that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205795, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n95\n\nSiamese were willing to have a treaty which would open up trade and increase Western influence. They had some anxiety, however, about what the Cochin-Chinese, the Vietnamese would think about the treaty. Would they conclude that the Siamese had surrendered to the British? King Mongkut asked Bowring time and again to go to Cochin-China to make a similar treaty. The King was also anxious about the kind of man who would be chosen as British Consul, if this article of the treaty were accepted. Would he be as much a gentleman as Sir John? Bowring assured him that only the best man would be appointed and that he hoped to go to Cochin-China.\n\nThe whole business for this momentous treaty was transacted in the most felicitous manner. King Mongkut and his equally intelligent Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, understood the issues at stake; these were not merely the details of imports and exports, the appointment of Consuls and the rights of foreigners, they were no less than the independence of Siam and the beginning of her modernization. It was much to Bowring's credit (and to Harry Parkes and young Bowring) that he was able to gain the confidence of the King, to allay his fears, and to assure the Siamese that the new policy that the treaty was launching was greatly to their own as well as to the British advantage.\n\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed on 18th April, 1855, less than a month after the arrival of the mission. Its first article pledged perpetual peace and friendship and the protection of the two nations' subjects in each other's countries. Article 2 provided for the appointment of a British Consul at Bangkok who would have jurisdiction over British subjects in Siam. The third article was an extension of the second, requiring that Siamese offenders should be given up to Siamese justice and British offenders to British justice, that is, the Consul. This was the system of extra-territorial rights which had recently been obtained from the Chinese after the Opium War. It was an infringement of Siam's sovereignty but it gave assurance to British subjects that they would not be exposed to the severity of Siamese justice and encouraged the setting up of business houses. This right was given up in 1909, long before its withdrawal in China, in return for the independence of Kedah and the other northern Malay States from Siam. The next three articles of the treaty were all concerned with the rights of British subjects. They could", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n97\n\nceremonies, audiences and banquets. A white elephant had been captured the previous year, the most auspicious of auguries for the new reign and now its presence seemed to be bringing the expected good fortune. Mongkut seemed to enjoy the company of the Englishmen, particularly Bowring whom he called “my friend”. As a parting gift he offered Sir John two elephants, but they were gracefully declined owing to transport difficulties. But Bowring did accept two tufts of hair from the white elephant's tail, which he later presented to Queen Victoria.\n\nThe gates were open. Within a year the Americans and the French had signed their own versions of the treaty with King Mongkut. In the next three years half a dozen European nations had similar agreements with the Siamese. By April, 1856, Harry Parkes returned with the Queen's instrument of ratification and a personal letter from Her Majesty. King Mongkut was delighted with this royal favour from mighty Britain and ordered a procession for formal delivery of the letter. In fact these ceremonies infuriated Townshend Harris, the newly-arrived American envoy, as he had to wait many days before he could begin discussions on his own treaty.\n\nThe effect of Mongkut's treaties with the West were far-reaching. Trade increased rapidly and had more than doubled by the time of the King's death in 1868. The character of the trade changed. There was virtually no export of rice before 1855, and by the end of the century rice accounted for nearly seventy per cent of Siam's exports. Bangkok grew rapidly, foreign merchants set up offices in the capital and there was an increase in the number of Chinese entering the country. The King's fiscal system had to change. Instead of royal monopolies of imports, taxes were charged at an agreed level.\n\nThe political effects were even more important. Foreign consuls lived in the capital and Siam sent embassies to Europe for the first time. The King took the initiative in employing foreign experts in his civil service. This practice was greatly extended in the next reign, that of his son, King Chulalongkorn. British officers were employed in the police force. A Belgian advised on legal reform. Germans were invited to plan the building of railways. Americans and Danes were appointed to civil and military duties. Most notorious of these appointments was that of Anna", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205798, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "98\n\n: R. BRUCE 100\n\nR. BRUCE was delighted. But it was then, enjoying his astronomy, showing off his English, and gratifying his vanity in front of foreign dignitaries, that he contracted a fever from which he never recovered. He returned to Bangkok and was dead within a few weeks. The work which he had started was carried on by his Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, who acted as Regent of the country until the Crown Prince Chulalongkorn came of age. His reign was successful but the way had been opened by his father, King Mongkut.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nSir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, London, Parker and Son, 1857.\n\nW. A. R. Wood, A History of Siam, Bangkok 1924.\n\nD. G. E. Hall, A History of South-east Asia, London, 2nd edn., 1964.\n\nA. L. Moffat, Mongkut, the King of Siam, Cornell U.P., 1961.\n\nA. B. Griswold, King Mongkut of Siam, New York, Asia Soc., 1961,\n\nWalter F. Vella, 'The Impact of the West on Government in Thailand' in Publications on Political Science, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 317-415, University of California Press, 1955.\n\nVarious Journals of the Siam Society, Bangkok.\n\nThe quoted passages listed 1-6 are from the following:-\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3. From 'Siam and Sir James Brooke' by Nicholas Tarling in the Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XLVII Part 2, November 1960.\n\n4. From The Kingdom and People of Siam by Sir John Bowring, London, 1857.\n\n5. From Mongkut, the King of Siam by Abbot Law Moffat, Cornell University Press, 1961.\n\n6. From 'English Correspondence of King Mongkut' in the Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XXII, July 1928.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "100\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nwas delighted. But it was then, enjoying his astronomy, showing off his English, and gratifying his vanity in front of foreign dignitaries, that he contracted a fever from which he never recovered. He returned to Bangkok and was dead within a few weeks. The work which he had started was carried on by his Prime Minister, Praya Suriwongse, who acted as Regent of the country until the Crown Prince Chulalongkorn came of age. His reign was successful but the way had been opened by his father, King Mongkut.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nSir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, London, Parker and Son, 1857.\n\nW. A. R. Wood, A History of Siam, Bangkok 1924.\n\nD. G. E. Hall, A History of South-east Asia, London, 2nd edn., 1964.\n\nA. L. Moffat, Mongkut, the King of Siam, Cornell U.P., 1961.\n\nA. B. Griswold, King Mongkut of Siam, New York, Asia Soc., 1961.\n\nWalter F. Vella, 'The Impact of the West on Government in Thailand' in Publications on Political Science, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 317-415, University of California Press, 1955.\n\nVarious Journals of the Siam Society, Bangkok.\n\nThe quoted passages listed 1-6 are from the following:-\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3.\n\nFrom 'Siam and Sir James Brooke' by Nicholas Tarling in the Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XLVII Part 2, November 1960.\n\n4. From The Kingdom and People of Siam by Sir John Bowring, London, 1857.\n\n5. From Mongkut, the King of Siam by Abbot Law Moffat, Cornell University Press, 1961.\n\n6. From 'English Correspondence of King Mongkut' in the Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XXII, July 1928.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205851, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n151\n\nSo, on November 18, he despatched a memorial to Peking which laid the blame for mismanagement of the country not only on Chang Fu-ching, but also on several others in responsible positions. The emperor, naturally, was infuriated, and Feng nearly lost his life as a result; but that is another story.\n\nNow back to the comet. Becoming curious about its very long duration, I wrote to Mr. D. J. Schove of St. David's College, Beckenham, Kent, with whom I have previously corresponded on sun spots and similar phenomena, and asked if there had been any report on it by observers in Europe. He replied:\n\n+4\n\nThe comet of 1532 was more important than that of Halley and was visible even in the daytime. It is recorded e.g. in Italy, Switzerland, England, Russia, Japan and Korea.”\n\nAnd one of my American correspondents, Dr. C. Doris Hellman, professor of history at Queens College, New York, adds to this a Spanish record left by Gaspar G. Molera, who published a tract on it in Barcelona in 1533.\n\nNow I am curious as to whether there is any notice of the comet's appearance in the New World. Mr. Schove writes that Aztec chronicles record the comets of 1490 and 1529, but not those of 1531 and 1532. If any reader of this Journal knows of one I hope he will let me know, or publish it in the JRAS, Hong Kong branch.\n\nColumbia University, 1968.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nWHAT INSPIRED SIR JOHN BOWRING'S HYMN?\n\nEver so often one hears that John Bowring's famous hymn\n\n“In the cross of Christ I glory\n\nTow'ring o'er the wrecks of time”\n\nwas inspired after he saw the facade of the Collegiate Church of St. Paul in Macao. But is this true?\n\nThese words were penned in, or shortly before, 1825, the date of the publication of Bowring's own book entitled HYMNS, in\n\n* See for example, M. Hugo-Brunt in his excellent article on St. Paul's Church in the Journal of Oriental Studies, 1-2 (1954-55) p. 344.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205931, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "the Society included the hierarchy of the Government, Military, Medical and Mercantile communities.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President of the Hong Kong Branch, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by the Rev. C. Gutzlaff at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring, and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nThe Society was fortunate in enjoying influential Government and press support, including that of the China Mail, and continued under Sir George Bonham who gave the Society a room in the old Supreme Court building to hold its meetings and to house its library.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859, and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary, the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would undoubtedly have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which eventually appeared only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine (and his successor Sir Robert Jardine) and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.\n\nIt was thus with a deep sense of responsibility, and also of duty, that it was decided to revive this Society in 1959 after the lapse of a century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206188, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPage\n\n1\n\n1\n\n1\n\n1\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1970\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1970\n\nTHE LIBRARY 1970-71\n\n9\n\n13\n\nARTICLES CONTRIBUTED:\n\nThe Taipings at Ningpo: The Significance of a Forgotten Event STEPHEN UHALLEY, JNR.\n\n17\n\n33\n\nThe Debate on National Salvation: Ho Kai Versus Tseng Chi-tse-CHIU LING-YEONG\n\n52\n\nLetters from China 1835-36-HON. EDITOR\n\nChinese Voluntary Associations in Southeast Asian Cities and the Kaifongs in Hong Kong-ALINE K. WONG\n\n62\n\nThe Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong-CARL T. Smith\n\nThe District Watch Committee: \"The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong'-H. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nA Brief Report on Sung-Type Pottery Finds in Hong Kong-J. C. Y. WATT\n\nA Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong-JAMES HAYES\n\n74\n\n116\n\n142\n\n151\n\nArticles Reprinted:\n\nThe Colony of Hong Kong-Rev. James LEGGE\n\n172\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nVisit to the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, and other places on Hong Kong Island\n\n194\n\nRope-making and Dyeing/Calendering on Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n198\n\nCharcoal Burning in Hong Kong\n\n199\n\nWhat Inspired Sir John Bowring's Hymn?-J. M. BRAGA\n\n203\n\nCeremonies of Propitiation Carried Out in connection with Road Works in the New Territories in 1960\n\nG. C. W. GROUT & HON. Editor\n\n204\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nList of MEMBERS\n\n210\n\n226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206393, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "184 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Colony, which his predecessor had not done, and which his successor was still less able to do. During all his time the Colony was in a dead-alive state. What trade had sprung up during its first years had rather decreased under Sir John Davis, and it was not till about 1854 that it received a fresh impulse. I remember walking, in 1849, one afternoon with old Mr. Holliday—so we should call him now with his stalwart sons among us—and having a gloomy conversation with him on the state and prospects of the place. Taking our stand at a point a little beyond what is now St. Paul's College, where we had a good view of the harbour, we counted 28 square-rigged vessels in it, storeships and all, with hardly a steamer among them. \"After all,” said Mr. Holliday, \"there must be some trade, else those vessels would not come to the place.\" By and by came the emigration to California, and afterwards that to Australia, but though these produced some excitement, they did little to the furtherance of trade. In 1850 the T'ae-p'ing rebellion began to be talked of, and, Sir George Bonham going on a visit to England, Dr. Bowring came down from his consulate in Canton to take his place, which finally became his own, when the other vacated his office in 1854, leaving his name in the Bonham Strand.\n\nAbout this time Yeh, whose name ere long became notorious all over the world, and who had for some time been governor of Canton province, was appointed viceroy of the two Kwang. The T'ae-p'ing rebels made themselves masters of Nanking, and the south and seaboard of China began to heave with rebellion. One body made itself master of Fat-shan, and Canton was threatened. Yeh, however, maintained himself there, keeping his executioners busy. The numbers put to death in 1852 and 1853 were very many every month, and they greatly multiplied, as the insurgents were gradually got under. It has always seemed to me that this was the turning point in the progress of Hongkong. As Canton was threatened, the families of means hastened to leave it, and many of them flocked to this Colony. Houses were in demand; rents rose; the streets that had been comparatively deserted assumed a crowded appearance; new commercial Chinese firms were founded; the native trade received an impetus which it had not lost till it was arrested by the superfluous vigour of some of Sir Richard MacDonnell's early ordinances.\n\nPage 210\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206394, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n185\n\nI hurry on to the month of October, 1856, when there occurred the affair of the lorcha Arrow at Canton, which grew out of the practice of granting sailing letters to native craft, adopted, I think in the previous year, by Sir John Bowring, and which was rendered necessary to save the holders of them from capture by the insurgent fleets in the neighbourhood of Whampoa. A more unfortunate occasion of hostilities could not have presented itself; it was almost as bad as the opium complications which brought on our former war. It was felt to be so by Sir Michael Seymour, into whose hands the management of the thing soon passed from those of the Governor, and he tried to shift the quarrel to the old question of throwing open the gates of the city. The sense of many at home was sufficiently declared by the decision of Parliament against going to war about the matter, and under any other prime minister than Lord Palmerston the adverse vote would have been final. He appealed from it, however, to the country, which supported his policy, and Lord Elgin was called to proceed to China, and square up all the accounts between it and Great Britain.\n\nBefore that, however, on the morning of the 15th January, 1857, occurred the diabolical attempt to poison a large number of the inhabitants of the Colony by means of bread supplied from the bakery of A-lum. I was one of those who partook of the poison. I did so twice; early in the morning, and again at breakfast time; soon getting rid, however, of all the noxious matter through violent paroxysms of sickness. Never was such a day of excitement in the Colony; and had A-lum been caught at once, he would have been lynched beyond a doubt; but he had gone off with all his family by the early steamer to Macao. Being pursued thither, and brought back, he was subsequently brought to trial and acquitted, the guilt of the deed being thrown by him on his foreman and another man, who had made their escape. He was subsequently kept in gaol at large for some time, and there I made his acquaintance. He was a tall, imposing-looking man for a Chinese, and had been well educated. The respect and deference shown to him by all the prisoners were wonderful. On the Sundays, when I went to conduct a religious service with them, he quite took me under his patronage, had the books ready, and maintained perfect order among all who attended.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206397, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "188 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Ta-koo forts; and there were expectations of a second expedition to secure the fulfilment of that treaty.\n\nSir John Bowring left his name in Bowrington, and the Bowring Praya. He was the most learned of our governors, and I had sincerely wished that he might prove himself as mighty in deeds as in words.\n\nSir Hercules Robinson was a different man, as slow to speak as the other was ready, though he could speak well enough when moved. He began his administration under favourable auspices. The treaty of Tëentsin had given a considerable impulse to trade, and soon the concentration in the Colony of the large force for the second expedition to the North produced a great circulation of money, and increased the demand for house accommodation. Building went on rapidly; the value of ground rose immensely; fortunes were realized by many. Most of this, however, was merely a temporary and factitious prosperity, though Sir Hercules seemed to think, as many others did, that it was real, and that tomorrow would be as this day and much more abundant.\n\nMany important measures were carried through in his time. In 1860, the Chinese schools, supported by Government throughout the island, were entirely re-arranged, and I may claim to myself the merit of having pressed on successive governors the adoption of the present system, which Sir Hercules was the first to take up heartily, and give effect to. We were very fortunate in obtaining such a master to inaugurate it, and carry it out with untiring devotion, as Mr. Stewart. He has been doing a great work of education with hundreds of pupils, the benefits of which will be increasingly felt by the Colony and by China itself.\n\nSir Hercules adopted another scheme, which I had in vain recommended to one governor and another. My idea from 1844 was that the administration of the Colony would not be thoroughly satisfactory, till many of the offices in it were filled by men having a practical knowledge of the Chinese language, and a sympathy with the people. To secure the former, I advised the bringing out of young gentlemen as student-cadets, hoping that they would gradually acquire the latter also. I venture to think that the idea was sound; and it has not been fruitless by any means.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206412, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n203\n\nin the upper Aberdeen reservoir area, known to me, that may also have been connected with charcoal burning.\n\nIt would assist if walkers who come across pits of this nature would be kind enough to report them to me, with a map reference, in order to build up information on this little known subject.\n\nOne last point. Herklots asks why kilns are located so high up on the hill sides. Village people have reminded me that there is no point carrying wood down to a kiln when it is easier to put the kiln near the wood supply and carry the charcoal down to the village or the shore.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nWHAT INSPIRED SIR JOHN BOWRING'S HYMN?\n\nProf. Carrington Goodrich's reference to the hymn \"In the Cross of Christ I glory\" (Notes & Queries, JHKBRAS Vol.9(1969) pp.151-2) is interesting and although it shows that John Bowring wrote the hymn before he ever visited Macao, the tradition of a very close connection with the ruins of Macao's San Paulo is a very strong one.\n\nI have personally heard from two very knowledgeable persons that Bowring was a great admirer of the old church:\n\nMr. Henry Hyndman was a local resident who was particularly interested in the personalities of old Macao. He was born in 1828, educated in Macao and then Singapore, and worked in Hong Kong and Shanghai before he retired to Macao. In the final stages of his life (he lived to be 98 years old) it gave him great pleasure to talk about the people he knew, among whom was Sir John Bowring, who visited Macao frequently from 1849 to 1859. Mr. Hyndman recalled seeing the English visitor at the foot of the ruins and of how, later, after he was Governor of Hong Kong, Sir John's name came to be associated with the hymn.\n\nIn 1927 to 1928, Sir Cecil Clementi, then Governor of Hong Kong, used to visit Macao and on one occasion at dinner in the residence of the Governor of Macao, Sir Cecil spoke of his youth", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206413, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "204\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nin Macao, when he was a Cadet of the Hong Kong Civil Service, some thirty years earlier, and of how he had heard of Sir John's friendship for Macao and of his association with the Church of San Paulo and that it had had some influence on the hymn.\n\nProf. Hugo Brunt, whose account of San Paulo is so well liked,* tells me that he is rewriting the article and adds that he was told by Mr. T. Bowring, then Director of Public Works in Hong Kong, about the influence of the ruins on his grandfather.\n\nIt is not surprising that so many people, not making an effort to trace the date of the first publication of the hymn, were led to believe that it was written after Sir John Bowring had actually seen the ruin, but we are indebted to Prof. Goodrich for pointing out the facts.\n\nHowever, I have come across a reference which may serve to shed some light on the subject. There is a reference to the hymn in Rev. W. T. Keeler's Romantic Origins of some Favourite Hymns, London, Letchworth Printers, 1947, where mention is made that although the hymn was first published in 1825 the fourth verse was added after 1859. It is not impossible, therefore, that Bowring could have been impressed with the close appropriateness of his hymn to the Cross surmounting the old ruin at Macao and this could have explained how his name came to be associated with the ruin.\n\nCanberra, 1971.\n\nJ. M. BRAGA\n\n* Journal of Oriental Studies 1-2 (1954-55) p. 344 seq.\n\nCEREMONIES OF PROPITIATION CARRIED OUT IN CONNECTION WITH ROAD WORKS IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1960\n\nEditor's Note. Early in 1960, road widening took place at Hiram's Highway which links the Clear Water Bay Road with Sai Kung Market. Objections to the work were received from villagers of Pak Wai, where the existing road passed behind the village fung shui grove and from Sai Kung Market where the road passed behind a family's ancestral hall. In accordance with usual Government practice, due notice was taken of these legitimate objections, and payments were arranged for ceremonies to offset the adverse influences which those concerned feared would result from disturbing the two locations.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206730, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "1\n\n# PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1972\n\nI am very pleased to report to you this evening on the activities of this thirteenth year of the resuscitated Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is a year that has seen an increase in membership, in activities, and in sale of our publications.\n\nThe timing of this Annual General Meeting is most auspicious, for as many of you probably know, this month the parent Society in Britain is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The Royal Asiatic Society, it might be recalled, was designed partly to bring together in London members of learned societies in the East, which had been formed for study of its various cultures. We, as one of these societies, and indeed directly affiliated to it, enjoy the privileges of using the very rich library facilities of the Royal Asiatic Society when we are in London.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society was founded in March 1823, and it was not long afterwards that our original Hong Kong Branch was also founded. This was in 1847, and meetings were held in a room of the old Supreme Court building where the library was also housed. Unfortunately however, we were not to share the parent Society's long unbroken history. With the departure in 1859 of Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, and the death in that year of the Society's secretary, the organizing body collapsed. Despite the efforts of all those of the time, who recognised the important contributions the Society was making to the cultural life of the Colony, it failed to revive.\n\nIn 1959, a hundred years later however, a group of people who had become concerned about the dearth of cultural activities in Hong Kong at that time, decided that they would try to improve the situation and bring the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society back into life. They were fortunate in having the enthusiasm and support of scholars working in the Colony, and other members of the community who desired to promote both interest in, and research into, the culture and environment of Hong Kong, China, and their near neighbours. This enthusiasm, I am pleased to say, has continued. Many scholars: historians, anthropologists, and other students of society and culture; and natural scientists, have presented some of their original research materials to the Society in talks, symposia, papers and journal articles,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206751, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "22 \n\nH. A. RYDINGS \n\nWe began this review of the China Medico-Chirurgical Society with some account of those who were officers during the first year of its existence. It is therefore appropriate to finish with a look at the office-bearers of the 'Philosophical Society of China”, and to note how many of them had been associated with the former society. The original office-bearers (22) were:\n\nPresident \n\nMajor H. P. Burn \n\nVice-Presidents Dr. Kennedy \n\nCouncil \n\nDr. Balfour \n\nA. Shortrede \n\nJ. C. Bowring \n\nGeneral Secretary W. F. Bryan \n\nTreasurer \n\nCurator \n\nDr. Young \n\nC. T. Watkins \n\nDr. Harland \n\nDr. Barton \n\nThere are five doctors on this list, of whom three are known to have been members of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, namely Drs. Kennedy, Balfour and Barton. The Dr. Young was probably Peter Young, the Colonial Surgeon, and not J. H. Young, who had been Secretary of the Medico-Chirurgical Society but had resigned. Dr. W. A. Harland, who read a paper on \"The Chinese system of human anatomy and physiology\" (23) at the meetings in September and October 1847, was later to become the Society's \"devoted Secretary\" (24), but is not included in the membership list of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, though he may have joined it after the list was compiled. A new set of office-bearers was appointed with the first change of name of the Society (21) and adoption of a constitution on 19th January 1847, with His Excellency Sir John F. Davis, Bart., F.R.S. as President: but that is another story.\n\nNOTES \n\n1 [J. R. Jones] in JHKBRAS, v. 1, 1961, p. 1.\n\n2 There are three copies recorded in libraries in the U.S.A., i.e. the National Library of Medicine at Washington; the Boston Medical Library; and the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine.\n\n3 Trans. China Med. Chir. Soc., v. 1, 1845-46, p. 28.\n\n4 Memoirs of the life and labours of Robert Morrison, comp. by his widow, London, 1839, v. 2, p. 148.\n\n5 Chinese repository, v. 16, 1847, p. 187-9.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206878, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n149\n\nragés par le gouvernement, y accouraient en grand nombre. Beaucoup de Chinois venaient s'y établir et y construire des maisons. C'est ainsi que furent jetés les fondements de la nouvelle ville de Vittoria, avant la ratification du traité de Nankin, qui porte la date du 5 avril 1843.\n\nL'administration de l'île, comme il fut arrêté à cette époque, est confiée à un gouverneur. Il est assisté d'un conseil exécutif composé du secrétaire de la colonie, du commandant de la garnison et du procureur de la couronne, et d'un conseil législatif dont le gouverneur est le président. Ce conseil est composé d'un juge, du secrétaire de la couronne, du trésorier, de l'auditeur général, de l'inspecteur général et de trois des principaux négociants de l'île, nommés par la couronne, sur la présentation du gouverneur.\n\nLa police emploie 60 Européens, 382 Indiens et 180 Chinois qui forment un personnel respectable de 550 personnes.\n\nSous les cinq gouverneurs qui se sont succédé depuis 1843 jusqu'à 1863, la colonie s'est formée et accrue comme par enchantement, en sorte que, sur ces rochers, presque déserts en 1839, on comptait, en 1863, 3,080 habitants européens ou américains, et plus de 121,900 Chinois, dans la ville et dans les villages, avec une entrée de 120,028 livres sterling et une sortie de 121,880 livres. Elle avait un grand palais pour le gouvernement et un autre palais pour le gouverneur.\n\nLa nouvelle ville de Vittoria, avec ses édifices somptueux, offre tout le confort de la vie, toute la propreté et tout le luxe anglais : des rues larges et souvent bordées d'arbres, des trottoirs, des portiques. Elle renferme des hôpitaux, des casernes, des théâtres, des clubs, une cathédrale protestante, une loge maçonnique inaugurée anno lucis 5854 (1852), des mosquées, des pagodes et des chapelles réformées. Toutes ces récentes constructions s'échelonnent, du rivage de la mer au sommet de la colline, sur une étendue de plus de cinq kilomètres. La mer elle-même, refoulée sur plusieurs points,\n\n3 Gouverneurs de l'île:\n\nSir H. Pottinger, du 28 juin au 7 mai 1844.\n\nSir John Davis, de mai 1844 au 1er mars 1848.\n\nSir George Bonham (sic) de mars 1848 à avril 1854.\n\nSir John Bowring, d'avril 1854 à mai 1859.\n\nSir Hercules Robinson, de septembre 1859 au 15 mars 1865. Sir F. MacDonnell (sic) de 1865 à 1872.\n\nSir A. Kennedy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208211, "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": 250, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "234\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nmountains about Kuatun and Sanchiang.... It is secretive, hiding by day in the beds of the streams and apparently prowling by night.\" The only other record of the distribution of this species of which I am aware lists it for both Fukien and Chekiang (Anon., 1977).\n\nDoubtless the specimen found in a catchment channel near Shek Kong had been carried down with water collected from a stream at a higher altitude, most likely from Tai Mo Shan.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAnonymous (Compiled by the Amphibians and Reptiles Research Department of The Biological Research Institute of Szechwan Province)\n\n1977 Systematic Keys to China's Reptiles. (In Chinese) Press, Peking.\n\nBoulenger, G. A.\n\n1912 A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London.\n\nPope, C. H.\n\n1935 The Reptiles of China. Natural History of Central Asia, Vol. 10. The American Museum of Natural History, New York.\n\nSmith, M. A.\n\n1935 Sauria. Reptilia and Amphibia, Vol. 2. The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Taylor and Francis, London.\n\nHong Kong, 20 July 1978\n\nJ. D. ROMER\n\nTHE PUBLIC BOTANIC GARDEN OF HONG KONG\n\nSir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from April 1854 to May 1859, was a Governor with wide interests. In his History of Hong Kong, George Endacott relates (pp. 104-105):\n\nHe cared for cultural things; he set up a museum in one of the rooms of the Supreme Court to the annoyance of the court officials, and he was the leader of the local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was also very keen to set up a public Botanic Garden, and lectured to the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong on its value in spreading knowledge of Chinese trees, woods and fibres.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208212, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n235\n\nThe first set of regulations for the new public garden appeared in the Hongkong Government Gazette on 1st August 1864. It reads as follows:\n\nGOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION\n\nThe Public Garden having been established for the recreation of the inhabitants of Hongkong, all respectable persons will be admitted subject to the following regulations, which will be altered hereafter as circumstances may render necessary.\n\n1.--No person will be allowed to walk on the grass or to quit the walks.\n\n2.--It is strictly prohibited to pull or handle flowers, or to do any injury to any plant or tree: and persons in charge of Children are required to see that this rule is observed by them.\n\n3.--Chinese Mechanics and labourers will not be allowed to use the Garden as a thoroughfare.\n\n4.--No admission will be allowed to Chairs and Chair Coolies, or to Dogs unless led.\n\n5.--The Garden will be open from 5 A.M. to 8 P.M. from April 1st to September 30th, and from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. from October 1st to March 31st.\n\nBy Order,\n\nW. WILSON, Acting Surveyor General.\n\nSurveyor General's Office, Hongkong. 6th August, 1864.\n\nFurther regulations have been issued from time to time in the century and more since the Garden was first open to public use, and it has well served generations of local residents as a place for relaxation and enjoyment. The history of this useful institution which began during Sir John Bowring's term of office is long overdue. It is hoped this brief notice will encourage someone to undertake the work.\n\nHON. EDITOR", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210724, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "58 \n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU \n\nLordship that the house in which he resided, (situated within the grounds alluded to), has been tendered to me for a Government House; I did not trouble your Lordship with this matter, being of opinion that the house in question, considering its locality and other circumstances connected with it, is totally unsuitable for the purpose.\" \n\nFollowing continued discussions with the Hong Kong Government, the Governor, Dr. Sir John Bowring, F.R.S., F.L.S. a botanist in his own right, wrote on August 14th 1855 to Lord John Russell asking for money from the Colonial Funds to establish “a Public Botanic Garden”. In addition, Bowring suggested that a house would be built for such a person (to be recommended by Sir William Hooker, Superintendent of Kew Gardens). Bowring stressed the commercial importance of the venture in the following passage: \n\n\"The access we are now obtaining to the Chinese Empire itself, and to circumjacent countries, would enable me, with such an auxiliary, to render valuable services, not to science alone, but to the commercial interests. As associated with science, inquiries are constantly addressed to me on the subject of dyes, oleaginous matters, fibres for textile purposes, materials for paper-making, and other topics; which the presence of a Botanist would enable me more satisfactorily to answer. \n\n++ \n\nThe Governor continued; \n\n\"Independently of which I might be able to render services to the Botanic Gardens in India, — to send useful plants and fruits to the mother Country and the Colonies, and generally to promote objects to which I cannot now personally attend,. . . \n\nDespite these overtures to London not much was done in Hong Kong to get the Botanical Gardens established, though various despatches in the form of Answers to Queries from Downing \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211089, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "125\n\nany Chinese whom he suspected of being abroad for an improper purpose. If the suspect did not make a proper answer when challenged, he was to be shot on the spot.\n\nThe Home Government took exception to this provision because \"it seems to expose the lives of peaceful citizens to serious danger without adequate cause.\" The Colonial Office considered the measures of the ordinance too severe for the situation in the Colony as it had been described in the Governor's covering despatch. Sir John Bowring had said the measures were intended to prevent the burning of Victoria. He expressly stated he had no fear of an uprising among the Chinese.\n\nIn view of this the Colonial Office suggested that if an uprising should occur the best procedure would be to declare martial law, rather than have measures incorporated in an ordinance which are customarily in effect only when martial law is in force. The Governor was instructed to issue a Proclamation suspending the ordinance.\n\nWhen these instructions were received in Hongkong, however, the Colony had passed through the traumatic experience of their poisoned breakfast bread. This had exacerbated the feeling of insecurity among the foreigners. It was deemed necessary that there be an Ordinance \"for better securing the peace of the Colony.\" Hence, immediately after the Proclamation of the suspension of Ordinance No 2 of 1857, Ordinance No 9 of 1857 was enacted.\n\nIt did not contain the clauses which were objectionable to the Home Government but it retained the light and pass requirements.\n\nFrom time to time as the years passed the hours were changed and the conditions modified. Provisions were made to alleviate some of the inconvenience caused to Chinese of recognised good reputation by permitting them to secure an annual pass on application to the Registrar General.\n\nIn 1870 Ordinance No 14 of that year was enacted “to amend and consolidate the law in relation to the Issue of Passes for Chinese.\n\nPage 150\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214115, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "152\n\nOn the publishing side a bimonthly newsletter as well as a reputable annual journal, which is highly thought of in academic circles, are produced. Other publications like occasional papers consisting of such topics as write-ups of symposia, and books like Hong Kong Going and Gone (1980) and Beyond the Metropolis (1995), have been, and are being published. A number of Branch members have also published on their own account and others have been decorated by Her Majesty the Queen for heritage related work and community service. In Her 1997 Official Birthday Honours' List, four RASHKB members were awarded the MBE and another the Queen's Police Medal.\n\nIn addition to several members serving in their own capacities on Government committees, such as the Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB), a number of RASHKB volunteers have assisted the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) with the grading of buildings. Also, the AMO and the RASHKB banded together to mount a four-month long exhibition, entitled Hong Kong Going and Gone, in 1995-96. The Branch has also helped the AMO by providing speakers as well as leaders of tour groups.\n\nPersonalities\n\nObviously the RAS, like most organisations, depends on people. When the Branch was first formed the then Governor, Sir John Davis (1844-48), frequently took the chair as a scholar of both literary and scientific achievement. He retired from Hong Kong a year after the Branch was established. On leaving the Colony Sir John resumed his China studies, founded a chair at Oxford University and died academically revered at 92 showing, yet again, that those interested in heritage are often a long-lived breed (Spurr 1995: 35).\n\nHe was followed by Governor Sir Samuel Bonham (1848-54) who believed the study of Chinese addled the brain, although he did allocate a room in the Supreme Court solely for the use of the RASHKB. But his successor, Governor Sir John Bowring (1854-59), when he chaired RAS meetings, always insisted on being addressed as Dr Bowring and not as \"Your Excellency\". Bowring was fluent in, or had a working knowledge or a book knowledge of upwards of 14 languages (Chambers 1969: 162). He had also spent five years as British Consul in Canton where he learned Chinese. One of his accomplishments was translating", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214116, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "153\n\na Chinese novel into English.\n\nOther eminent persons who were Fellows of the RASHKB first time around were Dr James Legge, of the London Missionary Society, sinologist and headmaster, who has been described as,\n\n...perhaps the most important intellectual, among both foreigners and Chinese, in 19th century Hong Kong (Pfister 1993: 180).\n\nOne of his most important works is the eight-volume set of translations of the Chinese Classics.\n\nAnother Fellow of the RAS was Thomas Wade, the celebrated interpreter and envoy to China, who invented the Wade system of romanisation of Chinese. In 1887, as Sir Thomas, he became President of the RAS in London.\n\nIn 1996, Professor P.S. Erasmus G. Harland came from England to deliver a lecture to the Hong Kong Branch about his forebear. RAS Fellow Dr William Aurelius Harland MD, came to Hong Kong in 1843 to fill a post at the Seamen's Hospital. He also translated several Chinese medical works into English and later served as Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. He died in September 1858 and was buried in the Colonial Cemetery (now the Hong Kong Cemetery).\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring and the death of its devoted Secretary, Dr W.A. Harland, the Hong Kong Branch collapsed. This came at an unfortunate time and deprived the RASHKB of prestige it would shortly have gained. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translations of the Chinese classics. Another member, T.W. Kingsmill, in 1865 had to obtain the help of the Shanghai Branch of the RAS to publish his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.\n\nWhat about personalities connected with the RASHKB after its \"reincarnation\"? Although Walter Schofield was one of Hong Kong's first archaeologists, who served as a Government Administrative Officer from 1911 up until 1938, his main achievements were largely accomplished before the Branch was re-established, in 1959. But, from then on, in retirement in England, Schofield did write papers which were published in the Branch's journals. While he served in Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214119, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "156\n\nwhich came out at the end of the last century (about Europeans living in the Colony), that (Spurr 1995: 48):\n\nThere was no real pleasure, nothing but a heavy and pompous extravagance, with no return on the large sums fooled away, an outstanding ignorance of all the surroundings, the Chinese, their language and their ways, or even of the very place itself.\n\nYet, having said that, today, as in the past, many Europeans do come to Hong Kong and, during their stay, they do learn something about local history, and Chinese customs and culture. This need will no doubt continue. In such cases the RAS can help.\n\nIn addition, a number of scholars visit Hong Kong or write to the RASHKB from overseas. Information has been requested on the pre-World War II Fox Hunt, held at Fanling in the New Territories, details regarding past Hong Kong personalities and wildlife sightings, to give but a few examples.\n\nHong Kong can be proud of its religious tolerance, with regard to temples, ancestral halls and the like, and, when the British took over the New Territories in 1898, on a 99-year lease, they promised that Ching dynasty laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott 1958: 38). Consequently, unlike many territories occupied by more oppressive colonial powers, in spite of the British and the Chinese keeping largely apart, an affinity of sorts developed between the two races. Governor Sir John Bowring, too, who chaired RASHKB meetings in the 1850s, disliked weaning the Chinese away from their own religious beliefs and practices (Spurr 1995: 51). A fair amount of local culture has been retained in spite of westernisation and the passage of time.\n\nThis retention of local culture in the Territory means that, if scholars want to study \"things Chinese\" which are closer to customs of the old China, and to visit locations where fewer changes have taken place, they are more likely to come to Hong Kong (or go to Taiwan). Here old customs and the modern can be seen side by side. This is less likely to be the case in the People's Republic where much has been disrupted by the influences of Communism over the past half century, including such events as the devastating Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214410, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "234\n\nit to the nearest river, washed all the sea salt away with the flowing water and then dried it by the above mentioned method. And so his tea will go to England, and being well roasted, will give a fine brew. And as it is well known that the English are not interested in the aroma of the tea, but in its colour, there is the hope, through this bit of speculation, of acquiring not only fine profits but a fine reputation.\n\nDon't think however that it's only speculation that occupies the minds and constitutes all the activity of the local population. There is a club here with a good library, which orders many journals; on top of this there is a reading room - a small public library, established and maintained by a few private individuals; finally there is a branch of the London Asiatic Society, which has monthly meetings and publishes its reports. I was invited on the 8th November (new style calendar), to a meeting of the Society, where among the outside visitors there was quite a number of ladies. The President of the Society, Sir John Bowring, who had been in Russia, had in the past expressed the view, that the \"Russian Government was so jealous, that there had never been an instance of even one single person being sent to the Peking Mission, who could speak another language, apart from his native Russian, and this was with the specific aim of preempting the possibility of communicating to Europe information acquired in Peking.\" Now one of the members of the Society, Mr. Shortred proposed to rectify this view and pointed to me as someone who had been at the mission and who could supply positive information. I replied, that the Russian Government had never had any such thought in mind, that on the contrary it, itself, even tried to disseminate information, received from Peking; that previously, mainly students from seminaries, where although other languages were taught the predominant language was Latin, had been selected for the mission; but that more recently people were being sent there from theological academies and universities - places of higher learning where everyone acquires a basic knowledge of several European languages. As for the view of Mr. President, it is very possible that soon after their return from Peking the members of the mission that he had seen were in no condition to converse freely in any European languages, simply because they had no practice in ten years, even though each one of them read and probably wrote one of the European languages. Sir John Bowring stated, that since the time he had been in Russia, much had undoubtedly changed there. Incidentally it is worth noting that Sir John Bowring is himself regarded as a great linguist. He", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214412, "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": 270, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "236 \n\nand the children's school. I don't know what keeping the city's sick residents in hospital costs; but outsiders, for example sailors from visiting ships, are charged very high rates - a dollar and a half a day. On the other hand education is provided to those desirous of it for next to nothing: children of both sexes and of any social class coming to the school only pay a dollar a year.\n\nFor the transference of commercial, political and other information within the colony, three papers are published here, coming out once or twice a week; and once a month the most important news is reprinted in a special publication (the Overland China Mail) for communication to other parts of the world. Commercial advertisements in these papers are published both in English and Chinese.\n\nFinally I consider it my duty to express my gratitude to the people of Hong Kong, for their hospitality and consideration, extended to us during our internment. I arrived in Hong Kong before my other comrades in internment, with only my midshipman Kovalevsky: this was on the 29th September. Released on our word of honour we had only just stepped ashore when we were met by Mr. Borrows, an American businessman, who having invited us to his home did indeed manage to make us feel at home. After that we received an invitation from the 59th Regiment stationed here, not only for lunch on a particular day but to be permanent guests at their table. It goes without saying that we declined the latter but during lunch the gentlemen officers were courteous to the degree of not a single word being said concerning military events or that could have been remotely connected to our situation. This circumstance might seem trivial to some; but we were in a particular frame of mind then, and till this day I remember it clearly. Soon after this the club, the reading library were open to us - and this without any hint on our part, but only through the attentiveness of our hosts. At first I didn't think of presenting myself to the governor, fearing a confrontation with the authorities; but I was soon convinced that Sir John Bowring was nothing like Admiral SIR JAMES STIRLING, who during the course of our internment did not even deign to glance at one of our officers. I won't list all our friends in Hong Kong, but will say, that all the inhabitants, it seemed to us, were inspired with the one desire: to make our involuntary stay with them, pleasant.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214599, "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": 14, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "himself a Hongkonger at heart and one of us. He helps the Branch in many ways albeit at a distance.\n\nWe are sorry to have to report the death of Sir Robert Black, at the age of 93. Sir Robert was Governor of Hong Kong from 1958 to 1964. While serving in the Colony he was Patron of the RASHKB and, on one occasion, he even chaired a Branch meeting. This was the first time a governor had chaired such a meeting since the days of Sir John Bowring in the middle of the 19th century. Sir Robert was also our first Honorary Member, a position he held until his death.\n\nWe also regret having to record the passing of member Jeanne Bromfield, in May 1999 in England. She, together with husband Tony and family, lived and worked in Hong Kong, as a teacher, from the 1950s until relatively recently. She attended RAS functions regularly.\n\nWe are also sorry to have to record the passing of RAS member Dr Alan Birch who taught at the University of Hong Kong for many years. He made a major contribution to local history and many students passed through his hands. His monuments are around for all to see.\n\nMembership drive and public relations\n\nRealising that if our Society wishes to attract new members it is not desirable to hide our light under a bushel, some emphasis has been placed on public relations. This has included appearances by members on television and radio, on both English and Chinese programmes, and reports in the press. A number of our members have also been engaged by other societies to lecture to their memberships. In such cases they usually take the opportunity to mention the RAS. We must also thank RAS Member Sydney Cowell who sent out details of the RAS to a number of his colleagues and friends. As a result, new RAS members were recruited.\n\nWe are grateful to Council member Julia Chan who arranged for a RASHKB exhibition to be held in the foyer of the Main Library of Hong Kong University. This attracted considerable attention among staff, students and visitors. Plans are being laid for similar exhibitions to be held at other venues in the Territory.\n\nxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216129, "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": 428, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "362\n\nMay 1859 after the departure of Sir John Bowring, but was revived with the approval of the parent Society in London and reconstituted as the Hong Kong Branch in December 1959 under the active patronage of the Governor, Sir Robert Black. It is currently very active and is in a sound financial position.\n\nThe Library\n\nSimilar to other branches, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society set up a collection of books within its field of interest, relating to Asia and its culture. As a result of the merger with the Medico-Chirurgical Society, it had the benefit of inheriting all the books from this Society.\n\nThe Society in Hong Kong was not as fortunate as its Shanghai counterpart where the Government, in 1868, provided a site for its building at a nominal rent and later granted it in perpetuity to the Society.2 For many years, the Hong Kong Branch did not have any permanent site, and thus its collection moved from place to place.\n\nIn the early days, in 1849, as allowed by the then governor Sir S. G. Bonham, the collection was housed in a room at the Supreme Court building where the Society had its meetings. In 1859, when the Society ran into difficulties, the, by now, valuable collection of 400 books was placed in trust with the Morrison Education Society (formed in Canton in 1835) which, from 1855, had also kept its library in the Supreme Court house. In November 1869, when the Duke of Edinburgh visited the Colony to open the first City Hall, the Morrison Education Society presented its own library as well as that of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society to the first City Hall Public Library to serve as the reference collection. This laid the corner stone for the future relationship of the Society with the Hong Kong Public Libraries which eventually would become the permanent home for the Society's collection. In fact, following the resuscitation of the Hong Kong Branch in 1959, the President's first annual report stressed the need for ‘a meeting place of our own where we can build our Oriental library which should fill a special need'3 and expressed the hope that some accommodation could be made available in the City Hall. However, this was not realized until after several movements of both the Society and the collection.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]