[ { "id": 204869, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n147\n\nBranch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The following additional notes, which are not meant to be comprehensive or definitive, are added for interest.\n\nAccording to YUEN Yuen's revised edition of the History of Kwangtung, the present structure dates from 1817 and has therefore been in existence for nearly 150 years. Its construction followed a period of recommendations, which probably accounts for the curious fact that it was built after the provincial government had finally managed to deal successfully with the large pirate fleets which had terrorized the Kwangtung coastal and riverine regions for the past twenty years. It seems certainly to have been a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted; though it may also have resulted from increasing concern with European activity in the delta. The official documents of the time would establish which it was.\n\nThe fort contains buildings within a large enclosure whose walls measure 225 feet long x 265 feet deep. The front ramparts, through which the entrance gateway passes, are between 15-20 feet thick. The layout at the time of the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, in 1898, is clearly shown on the survey sheets for Tung Chung, which were prepared soon after the lease. If my memory serves me right, the walls are still in good condition. A village primary school has ample space inside the compound and some of the old buildings, which may have housed the garrison in 1898, are used as offices by the school and by the Tung Chung Rural Committee.\n\nThe walls have stone foundations to a height of perhaps 8-10 feet and a superstructure built of the common bluish-dark grey bricks of the region. Geologists would be able to say whether, as is likely, the stone and the granite slabs used in its construction were brought from the quarries on nearby Chik Lap Kok, the island which juts north from Tung Chung Bay. In this respect it is similar to the other remaining fort on Lantau. This is at Fan Lau at the south-west tip of the island and has been attributed, probably wrongly, to the Dutch. It is considerably older than the Tung Chung fort and the San On district history states that it was built in 1684. However, it has been long...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 291, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "270\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU\n\nIn the 1970s when District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan, my contacts with local village people established that there were families in Lo Wai which had tea bushes on the mountain slopes of Tai Mo Shan. The Hui (4) family of Lo Wai village collected tea from wild bushes near the present radar station at the very top of Tai Mo Shan. One old man, born in 1896, used to collect ten catties a week during the season, commenting that the best time for plucking the leaves was in the third lunar month: the leaves become older and coarser thereafter. This type of tea was described as wan mo (雲霧) (\"cloud mist\"). He began doing this when he was about 10 years old, selling to other villagers and not to shops or teahouses. He also collected medicinal herbs on the mountain. Another favourable location for wild tea trees on this mountain, he said, was Nam Tong To (南塘肚) where the Shing Mun villagers collected leaves from wild tea bushes there of the same type. Such trees could not be replanted and grown elsewhere, he stated. Separately, old Shing Mun villagers living in Kam Tin since their removal there in 1928 for construction of the Jubilee Reservoir, themselves confirmed their taking of leaves from trees in this locality. In the foothills west of Tsuen Wan, villagers of Yau Kam Tau also collected leaves from wild tea bushes.12\n\nLantau island possessed a rather special type of red \"tea\", with a brilliant red infusion, known as tsz pooi tin kwai (紫背天葵). Tsz pooi tin kwai was described to me as being “half herb half tea”. It was used as a kind of cooling tea (清熱茶) for “over-heating” from food or drink, sore throats and the like. The leaves came from a plant growing between cracks in rocks and stones in high gulleys where there was much moisture. The people of Tong Fuk village on south Lantau, at the foot of the Fung Wong mountain, used to collect these from upper slopes. It was also collected by the women inmates of the religious houses of Ngong Ping and others living at the Po Lin monastery there. Some of the produce found its way to shops in Tai O market where one of the leading shopkeepers, chairman of the Rural Committee, gave me some at intervals. According to Shiu-ying's Hu's An Enumeration of Chinese Materia Medica (Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1980) page 153, it is to be described in English as the Tea Begonia (Begonia fimbristipula) and in Chinese as (紅天葵/紫背天葵).13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214873, "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "257\n\nAs I reported to Mr. (later Sir Ronald) Holmes, the villagers had changed their minds about letting the work proceed \"a further three times\" in the four days that had elapsed since my first visit to the village to deal with the difficulty. Enquiring into the reason for the renewed stoppage of work, I was told by the village representative and elders that the deities in the two local temples had had to be consulted, and that the propitious day for resuming work would be a day or two later.\n\nFrustration and annoyance are writ large in my report on these events:\n\nI replied that I certainly hoped that this would be the case since I was not possessed of second sight sufficient to enable me to know what they had not said to me on my first visit [about the need to consult the deities].\n\nNor could I be expected to understand their frequent changes of mind during the past two weeks when they would say one thing to Mr. Abbas [the land bailiff], quite another to the contractor and the Roads Engineers when they wished to resume work, and yet another to myself; not once but several times all round.\n\nMasters indeed in the art of creating confusion and uncertainty!\n\nOn this visit, it had soon appeared that the villagers had thought up extra reasons for causing us delays. On our way to Tong Fuk, passing by the South Lantau Rural Committee office at Pui O, we had been given letters from the Village Representatives of Tong Fuk and the adjoining village of Shui Hau, making some additional points in the ongoing dialogue with the District Office. These concerned what I described as \"an entirely new series of complaints\" about the crop compensation to be paid in connection with the engineering works, the villagers professing themselves worried about the compensation schedules and about rates of compensation:\n\n... \"All this, mark you,\" [as I told the Commissioner], “though in their large-scale airing of perplexities on the Monday not one word of these matters had been breathed, saving only their concern about [the date of] payment.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]