[ { "id": 204309, "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": 77, "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\n73\n\ncalled \"Umbrella of Noumenon and Unity\" (hun-yüan san A) which is decorated with emeralds and precious pearls of divine power which are threaded together to form the words: \"to pack up the universe.\" When this umbrella is opened, heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, will be covered up by darkness, and when it is rolled the world will be shaken. Mo Li-hai carries a spear and on his back there is a four-stringed guitar (p'i-p'a) which will produce the same effect as the \"Blue Cloud Sword\" when played on and the four strings correspond to earth, water, fire and wind. Mo Li-shou carries two whips and a bag in which is concealed a peculiar creature resembling a rat, hua hu-tiao (the striped marten). When hurled into the air this creature will assume the shape of an elephant with wings from its ribs and will devour every one.\n\nThe combat between these four brothers and the heroes from the camp of King Wu can be found in Chs.39-41 of the novel. They are engaged in mortal combat with the Li brothers, Chin-cha, Mu-cha and No-cha in Ch.40. If the reader knows that Li Ching, the fabulous father of these three Li brothers is in fact derived from one of these four heavenly kings, Vaisravana, the ingenuity of the author of this novel can be appreciated, because before the publication of this novel, in many other works Vaisravana and the Chinese god Li Ching, based on the historical hero so named of the Tang dynasty, had long been amalgamated and formed a single name, P'i-sha-mên t'ien-wang Li Ching (Vaisravana or Li Ching, the Heavenly King of Vaisravana). The Chinese transliteration from the Sanskrit \"Vaisravana\" since the T'ang dynasty has been Pi-sha-mên (R), the last character of which, mên, though senseless in this connection, normally means \"gate\". Thus, in popular literature, the term P'i-sha-mên lost its original meaning and became the name of the P'i-sha Gate, and it was therefore natural enough to have a heavenly general, like Li Ching, to take charge of it, though in English this may appear peculiar.\n\n* In Yang Ching-hsien's (MRK) play T'ang San-tsang Hsi-t'ien Ch’ü-ching (EXRE), Scene 9, we read \"P'i-sha-mên hsia Li Tien-wang\" (TX) which means the Heavenly King Li under the P'i-sha Gate. In the prompt-book Ch'i-kuo Ch'un-ch'iu P'ing-hua ta (TH), chüan 3, we have \"P'i-sha-mên To-t'a Li T'ien-wang\" (*XE) or P'i-sha-mên, the Heavenly King Li who holds in his hand a pagoda. Sometimes the story-tellers thought since there was a P'i-sha mên (gate), it was wise to create a palace, called P'i-sha Kung (CE W D). In the Nan-yüeh-chi, Ch. 11, we have \"P'i-sha Kung Li Ching Tien-wang\" (K*XE). In a long eulogistic poem in Ch. 12 of the Feng-shen, there is a palace in heaven called K'un-sha Kung (R V E) which is obviously an erratum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204316, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n80\n\nthat a Taoist priest entered her chamber. She was indignant and shouted, \"This is my inner room; how dare you, a stranger, come in!\" The Taoist priest said, \"Hurry up, madam, receive your marvellous child!\" Before she had had time to reply, the priest pushed something into her arms and she awoke, and her body was wet with cold sweat. She was frightened and before she could tell her husband all about the dream, she was again seized with a birth spasm. Li Ching went to the sitting room which was adjoining and thought over the matter. Suddenly two maids came out exclaiming “Madam has given birth to a monster!” Li Ching held his sword and rushed into the chamber. The room was filled with red mist which emitted a strong fragrance. A lump of flesh was rolling round the room like a wheel. Li Ching cut it with his sword and a baby jumped out, bathed in red light. The boy was very handsome; his face was as white as powder; on his right wrist was a golden bracelet; and his belly was covered with a piece of red silk gauze, which shone with a golden glow. He was a god, a re-incarnation (avatar) of the Ling-chu-tzu (Master of the Intelligent Pearl) and was destined to be the vanguard under Marshal Chiang Tzu-ya.\n\nTo give birth to a lump of flesh is something unusual in Chinese legends. But similar cases can be cited from the Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese as early as the third century. In the tale of Putrah (7) in chüan 7 of the Avadanasataka (# E), it is said that \"when the Buddha was in the country of Kapilavastu (E6) under the nyagrodha tree (ficus Indica), there was an elder who was very rich and his treasures were abundant and beyond measure. He married a wife from a notable family whom he loved very much, and with music and dances he used to entertain her. Now she conceived and when ten months elapsed she gave birth to a freak—a lump of flesh. The elder was vexed about it and thought it inauspicious. In the Fu-kuo Chi (DE \"A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms\") under the \"stupa in the Vaisali” (œÊME) it is recorded,\n\n+\n\n·\n\n•\n\n•\n\nOn the upstream of the Ganges River there was a king whose concubine gave birth to a lump of flesh. The formal wife was jealous and said it was inauspicious, so she ordered this lump to be put in a wooden box and thrown into the river. Another king went out for an excursion on the river and opened the box in which he found a thousand babies who were extraordinarily handsome and dignified. The king took care of them until they grew up, when they were brave\n\n23 No. 20, The Tripitaka in Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204341, "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": 109, "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\n105\n\nBecause of their limited resources monasteries in Hong Kong have never been able to act as is'ung lam, that is, public monasteries which on the mainland made it their obligation to accept all wandering monks. There has been and is no religious obligation for Hong Kong monasteries to receive refugees or visitors. They are private institutions and a stranger, even though he is an ordained monk in good standing, can be refused admission. There have, however, been some monasteries here (notably the Tung Pu Toh) that did manage to shelter hundreds of refugee monks in the years immediately following 1950, and they have been much admired for so doing. Most of these monks have since emigrated to Taiwan.\n\nOne of the problems facing the Sangha in Hong Kong is how to maintain its size. While the number of lay Buddhists is growing, the Sangha is not. Only the Po Lin Tsz performs ordination. Other monasteries do not have the equipment and personnel required. The South China Buddhist Academy (at the Wong Faat Tsing She), which was the only seminary in the Colony, has ceased to function because there were not enough candidates for the rigorous training it offered. It may be that the atmosphere in Hong Kong does not favour the development of the attitudes that best lead a young man to take refuge in the Three Jewels. If his only reason for accepting the hardship of monastery life is to escape greater hardship outside the monastery, he is unlikely to have the diligence necessary for seeking enlightenment or to contribute much in the way of helping others to seek it. The Sangha faces the danger of decline both in size and quality.\n\nIV. GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION\n\nThe Chinese Temples Ordinance, passed in 1928 to protect the public from extortion and fraud which were then becoming more prevalent in the urban areas, deals with places of Chinese worship open to the public where fees or other charges are levied. Such temples are placed under the control of a statutory Chinese Temples Committee, consisting of leading Chinese citizens with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs as the chairman and the only government member. The Committee can require the transfer of any temple falling within the provisions of the Ordinance and all its property, without compensation, to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs' titular ownership. Five old temples are specifically excluded from the operations of this Ordinance; a sixth one, the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road, often used by film companies, has for over 50 years had a separate Ordinance of its own placing it under the control of the Tung Wah Hospitals; the administrative and financial supervision of seven others is delegated by the Temples Committee to the Tung Wah Hospitals. The Temples Committee at present directly administers 36 temples,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204731, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n25\n\nendangering the lives of the entire foreign community in Canton. Finding the foreigners resolute they were allowed to return to their Factories, but were told that the bond must be given on the following day, and no excuse would be given. Yesterday Elliot, Snow, and Van Basil31, sent in written communications to the officers who all came again to the Consoo House stating that they could not give the bond required, but that they would avail of the first vessel sailing for their countries to make known to their sovereigns and governments that this new law relative to opium was now published, and that all who brought any here within a certain time must suffer the penalties. Elliot's and Van Basil's Chops were to this effect, but Snow said that if they insisted up his signing the bond for himself and countrymen he could not do it but must ask for permission to leave the country. This was unsatisfactory and his letter was returned as well as Van Basil's.\n\nToday we heard nothing further of the matter, but this morning the Commissioner, the Viceroy32 and the Hoppo33 left Canton for the Bogue, which looks a little as if they did not mean to enforce it.\n\nWe are all quiet, provisions supplied us but no stranger allowed to be in the Factories.\n\nThursday, 11th April, 1839\n\nWe anxiously expected news today from the Bogue but none came and we are surprised that the Chinese have received no letters. The uncertainty of what will be the termination of all this business give us great uneasiness. It appears evident that the English will all leave the place the first opportunity that offers and their doing so may give rise to some serious confusion. Captain Elliot it appears intends the moment he gets without the Bogue to communicate to the Commissioner his sentiments on this piratical act he has perpetrated, of [the] seizure of the opium or causing it to be delivered by seizing our persons and keeping us in prison. The Yum Chae34 may be enraged at that and God knows what he may do with those foreigners who happen to be in Canton when he hears from Captain Elliot that retaliation will be visited upon the Chinese for seizing this property. We are in a most entire trap, that is evident. Took supper on board the linguist's boat. Moller and Fearon with me.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n75\n\nVaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement.\n\n28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282.\n\nA Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui.\" Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27.\n\n29 \"Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long.\" New Territories Report 1917, p. J2.\n\n30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home.\" New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55.\n\n31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction:\n\nIn the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162.\n\n32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest.\n\n33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon,\n\n34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci.\n\n'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206061, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "136 \n\nS. F. BALFOUR \n\nThe Tanka or the Tan people are the Cantonese-speaking fishing population. The word Tan is a proper name and dictionaries define it as follows: \n\n\"Tan is the name of a people. They are held to be a branch of the Man tribe. They live in boats along the coast of Fukien and Kwangtung making fishing their livelihood. They are pearl divers. Since the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618) they have been counted by able-bodied males for purposes of taxation. In the year 1618 they were classified according to families, headmen were appointed among them and anchorages in the rivers were set apart for them. A yearly tax of fishing produce was collected.” \n\nIn 1723 an imperial edit was passed allowing them all the privileges of ordinary Chinese citizens, except the right to compete in the public examinations which they never obtained. \n\nLet us now pass to the Hoklo. The word Hok is a dialect variation of Fukien and the Hoklo are the Fukienese fishing people of our region, but there is another term for them always used in literature, Man. We have already seen that the Tanka are considered a branch of the Man tribe. The word is very ancient and is used synonymously for \"barbarian\" or \"uncouth\". From the name alone you can judge that the Hoklo were once considered by the Chinese as barbarians. \n\nThe Punti are the Cantonese-speaking peasants. The word means \"native to the country\" and it is a weak adjective of the type used by one man to describe himself in relation to a different person. It therefore gives no clue to the origin of the people bearing it. They themselves claim to be of pure Chinese stock and to have colonised the province of Kwangtung from North China, and they refer to themselves as men of T'ang, meaning the T'ang dynasty. In many cases they can trace their ancestry back to Chinese settlers of northern stock, though there is no record of any arriving in the region earlier than the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960). \n\nThe word Hakka means the \"stranger people\", it is used to describe the peasants of a different dialect to Cantonese who have \n\nIn the topographies for instance Man is used for Hok-lo.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206243, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HON EDITOR \n\nof the period in later life in two well-known books entitled The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (Kelly & Walsh, 1882 and 2nd edition 1911) and Bits of Old China, also published by Messrs. Kelly & Walsh at the same dates. C. Toogood Downing's The Fan-Qui in China (three volumes, London, Henry Colburn, 1838) is another well-known contemporary account.\n\nExtracts from the Letters * \n\nTO HIS SISTER, DATED CANTON, 12TH DECEMBER, 1835 \n\nMy time here is fully occupied, I am glad to say. If sometimes rather too much so there's no great harm done; I assure you I have supped too full of the horrors of idleness in time gone by, to fret at hard work now. There are several circumstances in Canton life which agree with me very well—and these are just enhanced by contrast with its disadvantages. There is some interest too in the strange faces, browned and weather-beaten, of the ship-captains from Liverpool and London etc. who are lodged and boarded of necessity in our Hong here all the time their Ships are in the Port, so that Covers are laid every day for an indefinite number, and the whole Domestic Establishment in short is a Boarding-House with a Table d'hôte at 7 p.m. The comfort of this evil, is the sanctity with which folks' private-rooms are regarded—seeing that there is no privacy whatever elsewhere; and in my bedroom accordingly, I enjoy greater security and deeper seclusion than if I were a stranger in an Inn with boots and chambermaids and postboys to interrupt me whether I have business with them or no. Sundry persons who dislike the strict imprisonment of a Canton-life, venture out, of evenings, on the river, in wherries. As there is a barrier, a break-water, of some thousands of boats and river-crafts of the most unutterable forms and still more unmentionable characters, to break, bruise and burst through, before ten square feet of dirty water can be won free, this is not an amusement I have taken to; and fond as I used to be of it, I think I shall become more and more averse to experiments on the Canton River the longer I remain in China. Three Europeans have been drowned by accident since my arrival here, which is just an \n\n* \n\n* The text has been left in the writer's style. Additions and queries in square brackets are the Editor's.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206429, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "220\n\n \nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n \nsupport his thesis about variations in the three components of the chia. But ideally of course — and one is asking too much — we would like to know, if only by some crude measure, the statistical frequency of these variations. Were some variations so rare that they were clearly aberrations evolved by a few families? Thus in Western societies typically most husbands and wives live together; there are however some few cases — they do exist — in which eccentric husbands or wives live in separate households but continue to meet at need. How much attention should one pay to this rare family form? How many cases would make a variation significant in terms of social structure? The question is a worrying one.\n\n \nThe essay by Mrs. Margery Wolf on child training and the Chinese family is brilliantly written: sensitive, perceptive, acute. She shows how the way in which Chinese children are raised — the elder brother having to defer to the younger for some years — helps to develop tensions between them when they become adult. She also traces the process of fen-chia (partition of chia) to the competition that develops between the wives of married brothers; for wives come from stranger families and, unlike brothers, their loyalty lies primarily with their own little tribe of husband and children. Professor Freedman has been accused in a review of cutting the Chinese father down to size: Mrs. Wolf pursues this theme. She argues that the Chinese father, but not necessarily the mother, becomes a lonely and pathetic figure in old age, an authority in decay, with the power to make family decisions gradually eroded as the son or sons reach the plenitude of their vigour and manhood. Mrs. Wolf discusses not only the 'typical' family but variations — the sim-pua (hsin-pao) (little daughter-in-law), the practice of providing sons with wives by adopting an infant girl, and the custom of uxorilocal marriage. The treatment of these variations forms an important segment of her paper and throws much light on the developmental cycle of the family. Reading her paper, I was immediately reminded of the picture presented by Arensberg and Kimball in their classic study of the Irish small farmer and of his destiny when old.* Mrs. Wolf's paper is full of subtleties and insights, as one would expect from the author of The House of Lim.\n\n \n* Family and Community in Ireland (Harvard University Press, 1940).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206804, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\n75\n\nto be attached to the back of a puppet general and the like. There was also a wooden trunk containing about 30 puppet-bodies.\n\nThe orchestra sat on the backstage floor. The band-leader had a set of drums and a clapper. There were two pairs of gongs, two sonas and a pair of two-stringed violins. There were also two female singers with the orchestra. The whole troupe comprised 12 persons and was paid H.K.$2,500 to perform one hour in the afternoon and a full Opera for four hours in the evening.\n\nBefore the performance started, the puppets were taken out of the trunk, a stick was attached to each hand and the headless bodies were hung on a string at the joint of stick and hand back-stage (Plate V). The left puppeteer was obviously the technician. He adjusted the head on the puppet with glue (UHU), fastened the headgear, bent the wires of the hand around a sword or a halbard, hooked the leading rod into the back and led it onto the stage. While fighting the puppet often loses its head or its sword, but it is quickly repaired and the action continues. The puppeteer guides the right arm with his right hand, left hand and back-stick with his left hand. This technique gives the largest range of movements. If a general has to show his strength by leg movements, the puppeteer transfers the three sticks into his left hand and moves the legs with a fourth stick. The scene is often suddenly tumultuous when whole armies appear. The puppeteer then holds nine sticks of three puppets in each hand. But it poses a great technical problem to let them pass each other or one group another. (Plate VI) It is difficult to keep them standing on the floor, and when not in action they hang in midair (Plate VII). The puppets cannot walk, they fly over the stage (Plate VI). They can easily kneel down but often uncontrollably spread their legs. After its appearance the puppet's back-stick is taken off, its head is put back into the drawer and its body is hung on the string.\n\nThe puppet itself is tiny, about 10 inches high. Its body is a carved wooden torso, to which two-jointed legs of wire or wood are attached. The arms are stuffed like sausages with a bend at the elbow, altogether too soft to be well controlled. The costume is very detailed, including the shoes, and cannot be taken off. Only the heads can be exchanged. These heads complete with hairdo are made of clay and painted. Their features resemble the old, small, delicate, glove puppet heads of Fukien.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206811, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "82\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\ndissolved in 1964 when because of lack of business the old leader got so desperate that he threw his puppets literally into a rubbish-bin. The third group Tung-i still exists under the leadership of Wu Mu-sen and Ch'en Yung-ming. Their puppets are older and much larger than those of the Hsin-shun-hsiang troupe, and are very seldom used now.\n\nWhen Wang Chiao-tsou died his eldest son Hsi-ch'in continued the Hsin-shun-hsiang Troupe. He usually plays the Yeh-hu, for which he is very renowned, in the opera-orchestras. This is a two-stringed violin of which the sound box is made of a coconut shell. Five of the seven brothers and sisters Hsi-ch'in, Hsi-tang, Hsi-yü, Hsi-ch'ing and Hsi-hsien are all versatile musicians or singers, joining in the puppet or opera performances. There are also six artists of the older generation with 30-40 years' experience performing with them. They are Li Chen-chiang, Huang Shun-ch'i, Ma Chen-huan, Chang Chung-liang, Li Han-t'an and Chiu Hsüeh-ching.\n\nDuring a typhoon in 1960 Hsi-ch'in's squatter hut was flooded and most of his puppets were destroyed. He travelled to Ch'aochow to replace them, but he could not find any old ones. Fortunately, he found an old-puppet-maker who made a new set which he took to Hong Kong, and it is used now by his troupe and also by the Tung-i Troupe.\n\nToday, there are about sixty puppet-bodies and eighty puppet-heads, belonging to these two troupes, the Hsin-shun-hsiang and the Tung-i. They give no more than seven performances a year between them. They are still called by Ch'aochow associations to perform at the festival of the T'ien-kung Chi on the 5th day of the first month, the festival of Po-kung Fu-te Ta-yeh on the 29th day of the third month and to the ceremony of Hsieh-shen (thanking the gods) in the 12th month. Although the name of either of the groups invited to perform appears on top of the curtain, the puppets, puppeteers, musical instruments and musicians are mostly the same. The fee is handed to the leader of the troupe who, together with the leader of the orchestra, keeps a larger share. The rest is distributed equally among all the other performers, puppeteers and musicians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207100, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n165\n\nthat he owned so much sugar that it would be possible for him to place jars of sugar touching each other all the way from his village to Kam T'in. Tang answered \"Fix the price of each jar of sugar and I will undertake to put the required amount in each jar from one village to the other!\" All the onlookers applauded and called on the two men to make good their boasts. Tang went home and consulted with his mother how to raise the necessary money but she begged him not to do it, because, she said, thieves would certainly hear of it and it would be impossible to guard the jars. So Tang decided that the best way out of the difficulty was to arrange another dinner together and apologize to T'o.\n\nThe other story tells how a notorious robber named Faan Ha On (L) tried for three years to break into Tang's house with the idea of robbing him, but without success. Tang, who like many rich men was particularly nervous of thieves, had his house very well guarded and barred. One day when Tang was in Kam T'in Market he walked straight into Faan by mistake, and with such force that his head was quite bruised. The thief was abject in his apologies and Tang, not knowing who he was, asked his name. When he heard that this was the famous robber, Tang was afraid, fearing to be kidnapped, but Faan assured him that he intended no harm. “For three years I have tried to rob your house,\" he confessed, \"but I have found it too well guarded and even your roof is impenetrable. If you do not believe me go and look for all the stones that I threw away from the dried persimmons I ate, as I lay hidden waiting and watching for an opportunity to enter your door! But there is always a chance still of a careless servant leaving your door open and to make your house even more secure you should build a series of goose-houses round it. Geese are better than dogs, when a stranger comes they will always give the alarm.\" So Tang went home, much impressed, and did what the robber had suggested, even to sending a servant to collect the persimmon stones which are said to have weighed 50 catties. But when later on he tried to find Faan Ha On to show his gratitude to him he was told that he had been killed by a cat, the reason being, the people said, that he had, in a previous existence been a rat!\n\nThe most unaccountable story of all is that of the \"Ngan To Laan (i) silver coins run away from their old home” which is reputed to have happened in the 32nd year of Kwong Sui (1906) of Ts'ing dynasty. On the dragon boat festival day of that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207196, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LIST OF MEMBERS\n\nORDINARY MEMBERS:\n\nSAPSTEAD, G.\n\nSCHWARZ, W. H.\n\nSCOBELL, C. L.\n\nSELWYN, J. B.\n\nSHAW, Dr. & Mrs. B. C.\n\nSHOEMAKER, J. F.\n\nSHU, Dr. H. T.\n\nSIEGEL, H. W.\n\nSIU, Miss A. V.\n\nSLEVIN, Brian\n\nSMITH, Rev. Carl T,\n\nSO, Dr. Chak Lam\n\nSOLOMON, Mrs. Miriam\n\nSPAIN, Mr. & Mrs. E. J.\n\nSTAFFORD, Peter\n\nSTEINER, Henry\n\nSTEMPEL, A.\n\nSTEWART, Miss J. M. C.\n\nSTRANGER-JONES, A. J.\n\nSTRICKLAND, John E.\n\nSTUMPF, K. L., O.B.E.\n\nSU, Ming-Hsuan\n\nSU, Samson\n\nTAYLOR, Mrs. V.\n\nTHOMA, Dr. Richard\n\nTHOMAS, Rik\n\nTHOMAS, Mrs. S. E.\n\nHighways Office, Public Works Dept., Murray Building, H.K.\n\nc/o Achelis (HK) Ltd., Kowloon City P.O. Box 9334, Kowloon City, Kowloon.\n\nPolice Headquarters, Arsenal Street, H.K.\n\n2404 Connaught Centre, H.K.\n\n72, Middleton Towers, 140, Pokfulam Rd., H.K.\n\n73, Kadoorie Avenue, Kowloon.\n\n70, Mt. Davis Road, H.K.\n\nc/o Bayer China Co. Ltd., 1916 Union House, H.K.\n\nFlat A, Hing Mee Bldg., 13th floor, 25-31 Leighton Road, H.K.\n\nPolice Headquarters, Arsenal Street, H.K.\n\nChung Chi College, Shatin, N.T.\n\nDept. of Geography & Geology, University of Hong Kong, H.K.\n\n2 Wongneichong Gap Road, F5, Woodland Heights, H.K.\n\nD28 Burnside Estate, Repulse Bay, H.K.\n\nc/o The Mandarin Hotel, Connaught Road, C., H.K.\n\nGraphic Communication Ltd., Printing House, 6 Duddell Street, H.K.\n\nc/o Gilman Office Machines, 41st floor, Connaught Centre, H.K.\n\n28, Lancashire Road, Kowloon.\n\n12E, Cliffview Mansions, 25, Conduit Rd., H.K.\n\nc/o The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., G.P.O. Box 64, H.K.\n\nLutheran World Federation, Dept. of World Service, 33 Granville Road, Kowloon.\n\n28 Broadway, 10-B Mei Foo Sun Chuen, Kowloon.\n\nc/o Shanghai Commercial Bank Ltd., 12 Queen's Road, C., H.K.\n\n6A Pekao House, 30 Conduit Road, H.K.\n\n44, Mt. Kellet Road, 3A, Mountain Lodge, H.K.\n\n31 Conduit Road, 9th floor, H.K.\n\nC-3, Clearwater Bay Apts, Clearwater Bay Road, Kowloon.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207675, "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-1976", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "48\n\nDOUGLAS W. SPARKS\n\nAccording to Kan, the potential role of Kaifongs in mediating between government and people has been negatively affected by actual government policy. Government has tended to de-emphasize the potential role of Kaifongs in community organization, and has indirectly controlled them by withholding possible funds, while providing support to other voluntary organizations (Kan, 1970: 221). Whatever their overall effects upon Hong Kong society, it is clear that there is considerable variation in their impact on local areas. I would suggest that Kaifongs in resettlement estates may be the least active and effective among their number in uniting and developing the local community. The more active and influential of such organizations appear to be located in commercial and private housing areas. These statements are tentative in that the existing literature on Kaifongs in Hong Kong does not appear to resolve these questions.1\n\nThat there is less direct economic and political competition in the urban areas, or at least in some resettlement estates, does not mean that there is no interethnic hostility. The viability and successful functioning of Teochiu organizations and festivals is a reflection of such hostility and of a general feeling of competition with other ethnic groups, particularly in the organization of ritual, in which there is implicitly the aim of having the biggest and the best festival in the local area. Conflict with a neighbor, work colleague, or stranger in the market may escalate and be expressed in terms of ethnic hostility and perhaps require reinforcements from one's own ethnic group in order to \"resolve\". Interpersonal conflict between members of different ethnic groups might even be more frequent and likely to lead to violence with the increase in density and the chance that an appropriate mediator would not be immediately available.\n\nIn conclusion, it is clear that economic and political structure have been important determinants of variation in the expression and organization of ethnicity in Hong Kong. Differences in urban and \"rural\" social structure are obviously related to differences in the nature of interethnic dynamics in the respective areas. The study of ethnicity in Hong Kong should prove to be a particularly fruitful\n\n1 There is an extensive literature on Kaifongs, much of which is impressionistic and not based on intensive research. Kan's dissertation (Kan, 1970) and later publications are the most extensive and detailed studies (her later publications are in the name Aline K. Wong).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207854, "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-1976", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n227\n\nhis wife to bury him in the crucial spot when he came to die, which in good time she did, wrapping him in a mat because she was too poor to pay for a coffin. Time passed and her son grew up to become a great scholar. Summoned by the Emperor to Peking he made the long journey north. On the way the boat he was travelling in got into difficulty but was saved by a god in a nearby temple. The people with whom the young scholar was travelling honoured the god for his help, but he refused to do so, going so far in arrogance as to strike the god on the head with his fan. Eventually he reached the capital and after a while returned home in triumph. He then showed himself so overbearing, especially in his behaviour towards his maternal uncle, that his mother rebuked him, reminding him that his father had died a humble death and had been buried in a mat. The scholar agreed to rebury his father in a fitting manner, but when he came to search for the body it was not to be found. While men were fruitlessly hunting for it round the spot indicated by the widow, the god whom the scholar had insulted appeared in the guise of a stranger and advised him to throw lime into the duck-pond, whereupon the body would appear. The scholar took the advice. The body rose at once to the surface but along with it came nine dead fish, only one of which had its eyes open.\n\nNine bright possibilities, that is to say, had been stored away in the fung shui; one of them had been realised in the success of the scholar — and that was now at an end; the others were ruined. (When I recounted this story to a Chinese friend in Singapore he capped it with one in which a passing scholar, on being told of the enormous success of a family which had stolen another family's fung shui and acted cruelly towards its members, sat down by the stolen grave and lamented. If such people could prosper by the principles of Earth, where were the principles of Heaven? He had hardly spoken when lightning smashed the tomb and put an end to the fortunes of the wicked family.)\n\n61. I have already referred to the tomb of Sun Yat-sen's mother in Pak Fa Lam. I was taken to see it by a part-time geomancer. (He looks like an old-fashioned scholar. In his youth he was a graduate student at a famous American university and held some official post in Canton until the arrival of the Japanese. He now teaches in Hong Kong). His analysis of the site was briefly as follows. The high peak at the rear is excellent; it stands for authority and power. The front aspect is also very good; there is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207857, "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-1976", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "230\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nrich man from Hong Kong). Similarly, the fung shui of buildings plays a less important role in the city than the country. There are naturally severe limits to what can be done in the urban area to extract the best geomantic possibilities from a given site and to avoid places which have been labelled as bad fung shui risks. By and large, I think we may say that in the city fung shui is a retrospective explanation of fortune rather than a prediction of it, and that in urban conditions far more reliance is placed on the dominant geomantic effects of crucial sites (government offices and other public and semi-public buildings). City-dwellers conducting a stranger around their streets point out to him the residences of rich men which have brought them good fortune or the houses which, because of their unfavourable sites, have exerted a malignant influence on their inhabitants. (A new road, pointing like a deadly arrow to Mr. A's house, brought him disaster. Mr. B enjoys the protection of wind and excluded and static water). In the countryside, in contrast, the geomancy of buildings is both forward-and backward-looking. The height of a new village house must take into account the height and position of the ancestral halls and other houses, in order that the fortunes of other people may not be prejudiced by one's efforts to improve one's own. In a remarkably interesting case being argued out during my stay in the New Territories a disproportion in the two halves of the roofs of new houses was the cause of an agitation which cost the people responsible for the houses much money and frustration. It was held that, the front sections of the roofs being longer than the rear, the future of the inhabitants would be cut short. As for retrospective geomancy, misfortune - disease, death, lack of male children, poor harvests, and so on - may come to be attributed to faults in fung shui which are then put right. The entrance to a wall round the village (wai) may need to be protected by new 'arms' or skewed to alter the orientation of the whole village. A building thought to be too high may be lowered. Again, good or bad fortune may be attributed to earlier fung shui actions for which in fact there is no evidence. It is a common feature of New Territories village organisation that communities which are now solidly or predominantly composed of one clan were in time past made up of several. The disappearance of the weaker ones, through emigration or failure to reproduce, is often said to have followed from their geomantic indiscretion or, as in a case which has impressed itself on me, from the superior geomantic techniques of the survivors. In this case the sole clan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207997, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "20\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nseveral other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water, stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed by boats which preceded and followed us, and we passed the floating market, where women, wearing immense hats of palm-leaves, sell all sorts of edibles, balanced in their little canoes, now giving a paddle, now making a bargain, and dropping down with the tide, and again regaining their place when the bargain is finished. The first impression of the town is miserable. The houses are crowded and numerous, and even the palace does not present a more captivating aspect, for, though large, it is as incommodious as the worst. We had been seated but a few minutes when Pangeran Usop arrived, and directly afterwards the Sultan. He gave us ten leaf-cigars, and sirih, and, in short, showed us every attention; and, what was best of all, did not keep us very long. Our apartment was partitioned off from the public hall, a dark-looking place, but furnished with a table brought by us, and three rickety chairs, besides mattresses and plenty of mats. We were kept up nearly all night, which, after the fatigues of the day, was hard upon us.\n\nFurther observation confirmed us in the opinion that the town itself is miserable, and its locality on the mud fitted only for frogs or natives; but there is a level dry plain above the entrance of the Kiangi river, admirably suited for a European settlement; and across the Kiangi is swelling ground, where the residents might find delightful spots for their country-houses. The greatest annoyance to a stranger is the noisome smell of the mud when uncovered; and all plated or silver articles, even in the course of one night, get black and discoloured. The inhabitants I shall estimate moderately at 10,000, and the Kadien population are numerous amid the hills.\n\nAnd yet another graphic picture of the city of Brunei written in the early part of the present century. This is an observation by C. A. Bamfylde, an officer in the service of the Raja of Sarawak, Charles Brooke,11\n\nIt may be as well here to give a description of Brunei and of its Court.\n\nThe Brunei river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208119, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "142 \n\nW. J. HINTON \n\nsails have been lowered and stowed, white awnings cover the decks, there is a gilded bamboo \"whip\" at the foremast of each junk and the bay is alive with small boats. Once past the police searchers, the crowd disperses into the town to buy food at the stalls which line the thoroughfares. Evidently this is fair day. All the shops are doing a roaring trade, and the streets are full of visitors from Hongkong, and even from Canton, and places a hundred miles away.\n\nPresently we notice that the crowd is drifting in one direction; going with it, we find ourselves off the main street. Passing the gates we enter a field covered with booths and resounding with the clash of cymbals and the shrill note of the pipe. Here is all the fun of the fair.\n\nA matshed has been erected, part theatre and part temple. At the far end a theatrical performance is now being given. The clang of cymbals marks the warlike gyrations of the actors, but now and then gives way to the shrill tones of the two-stringed violin in moments of pathos. And all the time the priests on either side of the open end of the theatre chant their services at two altars. A Chinese who is near me either cannot or will not tell me what gods are served at these altars. To me they seem to present an aspect of amicable rivalry.\n\nOn either side of the entrance, but without, stand two large conical frameworks of bamboo, stuck all over with small white rice cakes, and looking each like an ear of Indian corn. These are about twenty feet high. There are small replicas on portable platforms.\n\nWe leave the grounds and walk to the Pak Tai Temple where a procession is forming. It is one of several, for each village street provides a procession, and there is great emulation between the teams. The procession starts. At its head is a Dragon, at least it is a dragon for all practical ceremonial purposes though to the carnal eye it seems a large mask completely covering the head of a boy. He prances and sidles along, mopping and mowing most realistically, the formidable but apparently benevolent monster rolling his head and his eyes, and shaking his sinuous body; for which purpose a second lad under a red streamer of thin cloth goes through all the motions that can reasonably be expected of a Dragon's hind legs.\n\nThe beast is followed by bearers, carrying a platform covered with a canopy, and on the platform two small girls, powdered and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208131, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "154\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nbefore I handed him over to the Police: thus I was able to show that on balance Government had in the end not lost a single cent. Both shroffs were arrested and sentenced later. I then spent a good deal of time, especially on voyages to the islands, drawing up rules for the financial guidance of my successors, but Mr. Wynne Jones, who took over from me in late 1926, thought them too cumbrous, and discarded them.\n\nOne of the subjects which used to excite much feeling in the Chinese countryside was the disturbance of graves. In 1930 this occurred at Tai Wan in Lamma, on the big sand bank later excavated by Father Finn, once a leading local centre of Bronze Age culture. The sand diggers had cut away so much sand that coffins buried 2 feet deep in the bank were sticking out, and their contents could be seen. I at once ordered digging to stop till the coffins could be properly disposed of. Enquiries in the village showed that the villagers were not interested; so it was clear no local cemetery had been violated, and the persons buried had most likely been boat people. I believe the sand contractors got the Tung Wa Hospital authorities to remove the coffins: certainly there was no trouble with any local people. The high level and good preservation of these coffins showed that their burial took place long after the Bronze Age.\n\nOne troublesome class of case was the 'fung shui' difficulty caused by digging a new grave on a hill ridge not far above an older one. If the family owning the latter lost a child or two by smallpox or other complaint, they would conclude that their ancestor was displeased with them for letting a deceased stranger ‘ride' his grave, and so hinder the good influences of the site reaching him. Such cases might have to be settled by removal of the later grave, or by some compensation to the aggrieved family.\n\nOne crime that often came before my court in the office was stealing sand for building. Sand collecting was regulated by a system of permits, allowing junk masters to collect sand at selected beaches, each junk having its own collecting beach. Sand shortage was serious from 1924 to 1926, when concrete was coming into fashion for building, and between the demands of builders, and the interests of New Territory cultivators of land behind the sand banks, there was acute conflict, which sometimes grew into a shooting match. One such conflict took place at Sha Lo Wan in Northwest Lantau; this village was very jealous of the fine sandbank protecting its fields, and had licensed gun owners; so the junk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208208, "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "# NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n231\n\nNeumann who was supervising the Union after Gützlaff's death. Eventually, Neumann made a statement that there was no doubt that Feng had been in Hong Kong with Gützlaff in 1848 (by letter dated May 1854) but without mentioning baptism. These two instances only prove the strong influence of the false report.\n\nEven if Feng had paid a brief visit to Gützlaff in Hong Kong in 1848, after failing to see Hung at home, it is difficult to believe that he was baptized by Gützlaff; in as much as he could not afford to stay long enough for the necessary schooling under Gützlaff, whilst on Gützlaff's part he could not baptize a stranger after one or two interviews with him. Moreover, Feng had by then founded the Society of God-Worshippers for over two years with a membership of about 3000 whom he himself had baptized and it seems unlikely that he would condescend to be baptized by Gützlaff and join his Union which had less members than his own Society. Absolutely there was no need for the baptism by Gützlaff. Moreover, Gützlaff was usually very methodical in keeping a record of the name, address, etc of every person whom he had baptized. A double checking on the list that Carl T. Smith found in the detailed reports that Gützlaff sent back to Germany showed that Feng Yun-shan's name was not there. This list consists of all the persons he had baptized from 1840 through 1848 to 1850. Even Clarke stated in a seminar held in the University of Hong Kong some years ago that all he could find in Gützlaff's private archive was the baptism of a school teacher on a certain date. It cannot be taken for granted that this teacher, without his name being mentioned, was Feng.\n\nLast but not least, the silence of Hung Jen-kan and Hamberg on Feng's having visited Gützlaff should not be passed over lightly. Jen-kan, so closely associated with Feng, must have known such an important event had Feng made the visit. Hamberg, being an assistant of Gützlaff in the Union must also have known of the event. Yet, Gützlaff's name was not mentioned in Hamberg's book The Visions of Hung-Siu-tshuen and Origin of the Kwang-Si Insurrections (1854) which was based on Jen-kan's information. It simply narrates that Feng waited in the village for Hung Hsiu-ch'üan's eventual return. This silence should not be interpreted as an intentional negligence of something to Gützlaff's credit, but should be highly and appropriately regarded as strong negative evidence.\n\nHong Kong, 1978.\n\nJEN YU-WEN", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208295, "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-1978", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1977\n\n(Covering the period April 1, 1977-March 20, 1978)\n\nIt is my pleasure tonight to report to you on the year's activities and progress of our Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. During this eighteenth year since the Society was resuscitated we have continued to organise a regular programme of lectures and occasional tours drawing on both local talent and the expertise of visiting scholars, and I begin with a short resumé of these events, so that newcomers particularly may gain some idea of the range of our interests.\n\nIn April Mr. Geoffrey Emerson, a local historian of the Japanese Occupation, gave an illustrated talk about the Stanley Internment Camp during the 1942-45 period: a camp where many local residents at the time were forced to live by the Japanese authorities. Several of the persons thus interned attended the talk and some interesting discussion arose. The talk will be published in the 1977 Journal for it is based on original research. Also in April Michael Stevenson spoke on the Chinese Press from his long knowledge as a journalist and particularly his more recent work for the Sing Tao Group of newspapers and as a public relations consultant.\n\nIn May, Tony Reynolds, Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Hong Kong University, and member of the Friends Ambulance Service in West China between 1941-46, described his fascinating experiences as convoy leader for a load of medical supplies allowed by the Nationalist Government to be taken to the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Region occupied by the 8th Route Army—the first since 1941. This talk which also gives Mr. Reynolds' impressions from meetings with Mao Tze-tung, Chou En-lai and Marshal Chu Te will appear in the 1977 Journal too.\n\nThe first of two lectures in June was concerned with the History and Music of the Cheng, the Chinese 16-stringed zither, delivered by Professor Liang Tsai-ping who has performed and lectured in both Europe and the U.S.A. as well as Asia; and the second with political and other changes in the Far East in the last ten years, given by Tony Lawrence, for nineteen years Far Eastern Correspondent for the B.B.C. In July Brian Peacock, Curator of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208446, "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-1978", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "154\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nto be influenced only by bribery. They did much to contribute to the evil name which Hsien government has enjoyed. There were other factors which contributed to poor government during the Ch'ing dynasty specifically. The breakdown of the examination system through corruption during much of the nineteenth century; the law which made an official a stranger in his district, often not understanding the problems of the people, and at times not even their local dialect; and the impermanency of office which led to an attempt to make as much money as possible against lean years — all these worked for corruption.\n\nBesides an attitude of avoidance on the part of the people, there has generally also been an indifference to the central government. Several factors may account for this. In the first place, for the mass of the people the real, day-by-day government was in the village. In case of flagrant law-breaking the government stepped in. Otherwise, only when it was very bad, or when taxes were excessive, did it become real. And on the whole the government was careful not to stir the people to acts of collective resentment. On the positive side, the great mass of the people, the peasantry, had no voice in political matters, even when these concerned their own district. When it is remembered how indifferent is the majority of the population in \"democratic\" countries about anything beyond purely local issues, this attitude on the part of the Chinese peasantry does not seem so strange.\n\nThis indifference can be illustrated by a comparison between the attitude toward law as it obtains in the West and in China. In America, for example, there seems to be an increasing dependence upon government to regulate the details of living; and morality often seems to be reduced to the mere observance of codified law. In China, on the contrary, the typical attitude seems to have been, from ancient times, that the law of the state was meant to apply only to those members of society to whom moral law could make no appeal, and who must, therefore, be subjected to force.1 The School of Law (群家), with an attitude toward law which is thoroughly Western, has been repudiated in China since the Han dynasty.\n\nIt is not understood that a thing may be right or wrong, merely because it is allowed or forbidden by government; everything is\n\n1 Hummel, Arthur W.; \"The Case Against Force in Chinese Philosophy\", p. 344.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208560, "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-1979", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1978\n\n(Covering the period March 21, 1978 — March 26, 1979)\n\nDuring the just completed, nineteenth, year of the resuscitated Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, your Council continued to organise a regular programme of lectures, local and overseas excursions; to publish a Journal; to continue with its work on our project for photographing and cataloguing old buildings in the urban area, expand our library collection, and to endeavour to expand membership. I have pleasure in reporting on these various activities and related matters tonight.\n\nLecture Programme\n\nLectures during the year have been given by a number of different specialists working both in Hong Kong and overseas, and we were fortunate in hearing from many of them on the most recent results of their research. The programme opened on April 11 with a talk by Miss Barbara Ward, an anthropologist who has made several field trips to Hong Kong and who spoke on social and cultural aspects of traditional Cantonese opera with special reference to the importance of opera to the fisherfolk of Hong Kong. Miss Ward is currently Reader in Sociology at the Chinese University and a long-standing member of this Society. We wish her luck with her future work and hope to hear more of her field work in the future.\n\nAlso in April we heard from Professor Peter Hodge, an active member of the Heritage Society, about the aims of that Society, and the problems surrounding conservation of buildings in Hong Kong; and in May we had two talks by anthropologists—the anthropologists were well represented this last year—the first by Dr. Hugh Baker, and the second Dr. James Watson. Dr. Baker is an old friend and addresser of our Society and was visiting from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He talked about problems of conflict and intermarriage in lineage villages of the New Territories, a subject on which he is currently working. Dr. James Watson, also of the School of Oriental and African Studies and again no stranger to the Society, talked about long-term effects of emigration on the Chinese lineage community of San Tin—the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208801, "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-1979", "page_number": 258, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n231\n\nstrength (“gunboat diplomacy” and “showing the flag”) that westerners were indeed the equal of Chinese, and that the trade which was mutually beneficial ought to be allowed to flourish in peace and tranquillity.\n\nProfessor Graham shows quite clearly that, of course, the dominant theme of this whole period was the issues raised by the meeting of traditional sino-centrism and the dynamic of western expansion, a familiar theme from the work of countless China scholars including Fairbank and Waley. The author details much of the theme in episodes in Canton (“a war of nerves between British ‘barbarians’ and Canton ‘imbeciles’”), at Chusan, at Shanghai (in 1841 a “squalid” place “rising from the middle of ‘a low unhealthy marsh’”, but by 1858, a queen of a city “with handsome houses and gardens and busy quays”, pp. 217-218), and finally, close to the imperial seat, at Taku at the mouth of the Peiho.\n\nThe book pays the usual attention to some of the familiar and hoary myths: on the one hand, the Chinese official belief in “self sufficiency” and on the other the Western traders' belief in the limitless potential of China for international trade (The present interest in China of the international business community sounds all too familiar to the historian!); the “inscrutability” of the Chinese (the author seems to subscribe to this myth even toward present day Chinese!); their “traditional courtesy to the stranger” (For accuracy substitute “curiosity toward” for “courtesy to”!); and the curious belief that Chinese did not (do not?) react to heat and cold and pain and hunger like the rest of mankind (despite which, history shows quite clearly that the Chinese do indeed react to such stimuli as armed force and deprivation, like their fellows.)\n\nGraham on occasion overstates and exaggerates his analysis of the character and temperament of oriental races, seemingly succumbing to the now fashionable habit of admiration for anything “oriental” that lately, and again, permeates western attitudes and approaches to the Orient.\n\nOne also notes a contradiction or so: on page 356 we read,\n\n“Whether out of ignorance, natural courage, or despair, they (Chinese) were never cowed by the trappings of military might. The British Commissioner underestimated their determination and tenacity.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209205, "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-1981", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\ncommunity in Hong Kong on the long established Chinese custom of buying children as domestic servants. This attention led to concern, discussion, agitation, the formation of societies and finally in 1923 an Ordinance in the Hong Kong Legislature to abolish the system.\n\nThe case concerned a man who had met two girls aged ten and thirteen on a street in Wanchai. They had gone out to buy sweets and had become lost. The stranger took them on a tram to the Yaumati ferry. They crossed to Kowloon and then returned. He left them for a few minutes to buy something in Wing On Store on Connaught Road Central. The girls came to the notice of the police and the man was arrested when he returned to where he had left them.\n\nMr. Alabaster claimed the two women who owned the girls did not have lawful care of them because they were bought to serve, and they were sold as slaves and slavery has been abolished (in Britain and its colonies) and it is not lawful”.\n\nOn being examined by the Chief Justice one of the mistresses gave evidence that one of the girls had been sold by her elder brother as she had no parents. The Chief Justice asked, \"Then as put by the learned Counsel for the defence, she is your slave?”\n\nThe witness replied, \"I do not know what you mean by slave. Once the girl is sold to me she is my property. It is the custom among the Chinese to buy servants.\"\n\nMr. Alabaster thanked the Chief Justice that the answer to his question had made it so clear the girl was a slave.\n\nHis Lordship then asked Mr. Alabaster, \"What is a slave?\"\n\nHe replied, \"I contend that a person who is bought by a master and may be sold by a master, who receives no wages, except clothes and food in exchange for work is a slave.\"\n\nMr. Alabaster admitted that sale of a child might be legal in China, but once it was brought to the Colony, it had the right to freedom.\n\nThe Chief Justice referred to the Proclamation of Captain Eliot to the Chinese of Hong Kong in 1841 that stated Britain would respect the religious rites, ceremonies and social customs of the Chinese. The Supreme Court usually took into account the question of Chinese custom. If the point in law raised by Mr. Alabaster were to be sustained by a Full Court it would have most serious consequences.\n\nThe question was not settled by the court but it provoked public", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "131 \n\na Chinese, \n\nwas deeply concerned to do justice to the defendant a foreigner, a stranger in Britain and instructed the jury to disregard the matter since it had not been conclusively proved that the slips of paper were relevant to the murder charge. But the sinister import of the Chinese characters must have impressed itself upon the jurymen and it would be too much to expect that they did not speculate among themselves as to the evidential value of the translated sentences. If, in fact, the words did refer to Mrs. Miao's contemplated destruction (which seems likely), then her husband must have had murder in his heart before he left America, not long after his marriage to Siu Wai-sheung, a rich woman. Again, if this is so, it was a premeditated murder, not one born of impulse or passion, like most domestic murders in Europe and China, yesterday or today.\n\nMiao, Travers Humphreys tells us, was ably defended by Mr. J. C. Jackson K.C., but he had little to go on.35 The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming in its assemblage; the case for the defence speculative and insubstantial. Miao, through his counsel, argued that he and his wife had been followed by a gang of Oriental jewel thieves; and evidence was obtained from a few persons that two Oriental gentlemen, Chinese or Japanese, had been seen in the Derwentwater area at the time of the crime. These shadowy figures were neither identified nor located. The jury was left with the following puzzle: if members of an international gang, specialising in the theft of jewellery, had robbed and killed Mrs. Miao, why did one, or both, then attempt to sexually assault the victim of their greed? That was certainly not professional criminal practice. And, furthermore, forensic scientists had already demonstrated, convincingly, that the assault upon poor Mrs. Miao had been faked. There were, for example, no bruises upon her body. Who, then, would benefit from the murder, if we dismiss the shadowy robbers? Surely only the bereft husband.\n\nThe defence was not able to weaken the structure of circumstantial evidence deployed by the prosecution. The jury was out for an hour and a half and brought in a verdict of guilty. Mr. Justice Humphreys then sentenced Miao to death, on which he cried out 'I am not guilty!' and embarked on a voluble defence of his actions until stopped by the Judge.\n\nHis appeal was heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209769, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "6\n\nyelled at her 'are you in charge here?' 'O no,' said she, ‘not me'. The officer demanded that she bring out the in-charge. Sister went in and the mother superior came out. When she came up to the officer, he yelled at her: 'aren't you afraid of me?' 'Of course not' she replied 'I know you have come to protect me.' It seems that protecting Sisters was not in the Japanese handbook for battle, and when the Japanese don't know what to do, they stand there and suck in their breath loudly. Well the officer stood there sucking in his breath for a long time, and finally turned to the soldier with him and said. 'In that case, you write out a notice and put it on the front door of the convent that nobody can come in here without my written permission!' Carmel Convent was untouched for the rest of the war! All the other places for miles around were looted from top to bottom.\n\nAfter the war, the house resumed its original purposes, headquarters, language school, and rest house. When the Communists took over China, our priests as well as practically all the other foreign priests stayed here. At the same time, the house became the headquarters for a massive relief effort providing all the primary necessities to the huge deluge of refugees that poured into Hong Kong from China.\n\nThe house has now been made into two sections, one section for public use for retreats, meetings, seminars etc. The other section's for our own headquarters and rest house. The back part of the property towards the mountain has been sold off for a housing project known as Stanley Knoll. But we still have the glorious and spectacular view of the sea to the South.\n\nI thank you for taking the time to come to see the house, and I thank you especially for your kind attention. As the Chinese are wont to say: the first time you come, you are a stranger. The second time you come, you are a friend. I hope we will be friends.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209851, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "88\n\nChinese \n\nLoan Word \n\nCharacters \n\nMeaning \n\nPak-choi \n\n白菜 \n\nAnother name for Chinese cabbage, \n\n*Pak pai \n\n白牌 \n\nLiterally 'white label', meaning hire cars which are in fact operating illegally because they are not licenced to carry passengers for a fee. \n\nPekingese \n\n北京(狗) \n\nA small long-haired dog, of the pug type, orig. brought from the Imperial Palace at Pekin. \n\nPekoe \n\n白毫 \n\nA superior kind of black tea, so called from the leaves being picked young with the down still on them. \n\n*Pinyin \n\n拼音 \n\nLiterally 'to write according to sound' \n\nreferring to the romanization system used to write Chinese rather than the traditional Chinese characters. \n\nPetuntse, \n\n白墩子 \n\nA white earth, consisting of pulverized granite; used in combination with kaolin in the manufacture of Chinese porcelain, \n\nPetuntze \n\nA 4-stringed Chinese musical instrument plucked like a guitar and having a large body resembling a lute and a neck with 12 or more frets that leads into the body.\n\nPipa \n\n琵琶 \n\n*Putonghua \n\n普通話 \n\nLiterally 'ordinary speech', the standard dialect of China. \n\n*Renminbi \n\n人民幣 \n\nLiterally 'the people's currency', referring to the currency of the People's Republic of China. \n\nSamfoo \n\n衫褲 \n\nA style of casual dress worn by Chinese women, consisting of waisted blouse and trousers, \n\nSampan \n\n舢舨 \n\nApplied by Europeans in the China seas to any small boat of Chinese pattern. \n\nSamshu \n\n三燒 \n\nAn alcoholic liquor distilled in China from boiled and fermented rice. \n\n*Sharpei, \n\n沙皮 \n\nLiterally 'sand-skinned', referring to the rough and loose skin of this breed of dog, formerly known as the 'Chinese Fighting Dog'. \n\nsharpi \n\nTo drug or otherwise render insensible, \n\nand ship on board a vessel wanting hands. \n\nShanghai \n\n上海 \n\nA soft undressed Chinese silk. \n\nShantung \n\n山東 \n\nA Chinese breed of small dog similar to a Pekingese. \n\nShih tzu \n\n獅子 \n\nOne of the finer varieties of black tea.\n\nSouchong \n\n小種", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210537, "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-1985", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "125\n\npasser-by in conversation! The following example, which was discovered in Rome, is no more pungent than most:\n\nStranger, the bones of the man buried herein Entreat you not to piss upon\n\nThis tomb. If you are a kind-hearted man, Mix wine, drink of it, and give some to me.\n\n26\n\n27\n\nThis last thought invites us to shift our attention to the second question which needs to be considered at this point, namely the attitude that the Romans adopted toward their dead. Collectively, the deceased were referred to as the manes, which we may translate as shades or spirits, and Cicero leaves us in no doubt that they were to be numbered among the gods. He makes the point twice in his essay On the Laws, first decreeing that \"kinsmen who have died shall be considered gods\" (Leg. 2.22), and later commenting that the nine days following immediately upon the funeral, when the house of the deceased was ritually purified, would not have been considered holidays \"if our ancestors had not desired that those who have quit this life should be numbered among the gods” (Leg. 2.55). This belief is the source of the expression dis manibus — \"to the divine spirits of the dead\" that may still be read on literally scores of thousands of Latin tombstones. This always appears in the plural, and it is only in the course of the first century B.C. that it is conjoined with the name of the individual or individuals whose remains have been interred. For this reason, it is generally accepted today that before this date the individual was not venerated as such by his descendants, but blended insensibly into the assemblage of earlier ancestors, who were tended collectively. This may well be the case; several other aspects of traditional Roman behavior that touch upon the cult of the dead also experienced convulsive change during the late Republic, a point to which we shall return later. For now, let it merely be observed that in the following three centuries this cult not only persisted but actually grew steadily more elaborate.\n\nHow did the Romans attend to these divine spirits? At the heart of their system lies a belief common to many cultures, the notion that the dead neither require nor benefit from prayers to the celestial gods, but are sustained by the necessities of life itself,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210547, "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-1985", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "135\n\nout of the family.\" She goes on to contend, however, that in every other conceivable circumstance a village couple without sons must utilize their property to secure sacrificial offerings for themselves. A man with an only daughter, for example, in some regions of China may contract an uxorilocal marriage for her. At the heart of this arrangement is an agreement that one or more of the sons born to this union will continue their maternal grandfather's lineage by assuming both his name and property. In so doing, of course, they also acquire an obligation to see to his needs after death — an obligation that instantly ceases if for some reason the property should be withheld.\" In contrast, a man without natural heirs may adopt one of his collateral kin, or someone completely outside his clan; alternatively, he may effect a transfer of property to a kinsman or stranger without resort to adoption. In either event, the outcome will be the same: “just as property inheritance accompanied by descent entails the obligation to worship, so also may property inheritance in the absence of descent require worship.\"2 Indeed, the link between property and the cult of the dead is so strong in Ch'i-nan that one can acquire responsibility for the spiritual well-being of a deceased person merely by making use of his property, while a father who disinherits one of his sons for any reason thereby absolves him of all responsibility for his maintenance in the afterlife.63\n\nAhern's interpretation of the role of property in uxorilocal marriage has been confirmed by Arthur Wolf in his own field work. One of his informants in San-hsia acknowledged the obligation that the arrangement creates with the matter-of-fact comment that \"you have to worship your mother's father because he gave you his property.'64 The rest of her findings, however, have generated considerable controversy. Steven Harrell has countered with an argument that property does not play even a marginal role in fixing responsibility for the dead in the village that he investigated. Most villagers, he says, readily admit their obligation to care for everyone in their primary line of descent.“ Arthur Wolf has further complicated matters. Working in a village not more than a mile away from Ch'i-nan, his research has induced him partially to agree with both of his colleagues, thereby generating a third point of view! He has concluded that “both descent and inheritance create an absolute obligation to the dead.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211119, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "155\n\nlegal system. This, the memorial claimed, China did not have.\n\nIt was for this reason that foreign nations had demanded extra-territorial rights. By insisting on this protection for their subjects in China, the Treaty Powers showed, it was affirmed, that “in one most important particular they consider it (China) outside the pale of modern civilisation.”\n\nThe foreigners easily recognised that the Chinese legal system was different from theirs, but they did not appreciate the traditional values and procedures it embodied. These had enabled China to survive as a united nation for more than a millennium.\n\nOn the other hand, the administration of the law in Hongkong was sometimes arbitrary and unfair. There was special legislation affecting the Chinese only; and an examination of nineteenth century court cases leads me to conclude that it often did not properly ensure the life, liberty and property of the Chinese who were under its jurisdiction.\n\nNor was every European in that day convinced that the Chinese received fair treatment in Hongkong. In 1863 a traveller, probably a missionary, reported the following incident at a village near Shumchun just beyond the present border:\n\nA Chinese, when he saw the stranger, took off his coat and showed his back to the assembled villagers. It bore the marks of a severe flogging. The victim called upon all to observe \"how the foreign devils in Hongkong treat a respectable Chinese.”\n\nThe traveller was sympathetic. He observed: \"I strongly disapprove of the way such punishments are carried out by the police. It used to be a most horrid spectacle to see, as often one might have done, a poor wretch, with his back all raw and bloody, exposed in Queen's Road, trembling with pain, shame and cold.\"\n\nHe thought it was natural for the Chinese to bitterly resent such treatment, especially those who \"had suffered unjustly, or from some trivial offence such as three hairs from a horse's tail, for which I have known flogging with a rattan afflicted.”\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211771, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "161\n\nspare time to the amusement of their fellow residents. Moreover, as has been said before, the community was small, and the critic had after all to live with his actor-neighbours who would no doubt know about his identity.\n\nThus, \"A Stranger\" wrote, about George Colman's Heir at Law (April 21 1851): “Zekiel Homespun was inimitable; we had no idea there was a Gentleman in Shanghae who could take the difficult part so well.) The simplicity, humour and serious earnestness which it displays in some parts were brought out and sustained in a manner that we have scarcely seen equaled, except by some of the leading actors of our Metropolis\". And again: “Constant playgoers as from childhood we have been we have rarely, indeed never, ‘assisted' at a more agreeable evening than that of Wednesday the 16th instant [i.e. February 16 1859]. The performances [of J.M. Morton's Whitebait at Greenwich and Thomas Morton's Sink or Swim] passed off with the utmost eclat due to the talent and exertions of the actors\". Sometimes the author felt it even necessary to apologize for any criticism he uttered: \"We do this, not in the invidious character of critics upon amateur performances or still less as tinctured with the slightest disposition to find fault, but in order that the excellent materials which have been combined in the troupe should be made as much of as possible. Indeed it is the very appreciation of the talents displayed on Thursday [sic; this should be Wednesday January 23 1856– JH] which prompts the expression of these remarks. We are sure that neither the performers nor the audience would thank us for the undiscriminating and therefore worthless praise which usually satirize amateur performances\". But even in this case the critic only had made some comments on the costumes that were used in one of the pieces (cf. Calendar, 23.1.1856). Mild remarks were the severest criticism dished out; about one of the actors on June 2 1859, **we may perhaps be permitted to take an exception to his brogue, which, however good as an assumption, scarcely denoted one to the manner born\"; and about another on the same evening; \"his humour seems better fitted for low than for eccentric comedy\".\n\n10\n\nOnly when it came to the choice of pieces was the paper not always undividedly positive. Writing about John Maddison Morton's Done on Both Sides (February 10 1858) not much enthusiasm was shown: “We have witnessed, we confess, better farces on the same stage and we are inclined to believe that as actors may sometimes not come up to the play, it occasionally happens that plays are not altogether worthy of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211802, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 217, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "192\n\n12.12.1850 (Thur)\n\nG.A.A. BECKETT: \"Roofscrambler\" (1835)\n\nT: Burlesque\n\nW.H. MURRAY: \"Diamond cut Diamond\" (1843)\n\nT: Farcical interlude (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (A)\n\nR: NCH 14.12.1850. From the file I have been using the pages on which the review appeared were missing, so no further information can be given.\n\n28.1.1851 (Tue)\n\nJ. KENNEDY: \"Love, Law and Physic\" (1812)\n\nT: Farce\n\nW.B. RHODES: \"Bombastes Furioso\" (1810)\n\nT: Burlesque tragic opera (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (A)\n\nR: In only a short impression the Herald wrote that \"the performances went off with much spirit amidst repeated plaudits and continual bursts of merriment. The present company seems likely to become highly popular and the public are much indebted to them for according such seasonable diversion at this dull period of the year\" (NCH 1.2.1851).\n\n21.4.1851 (Mon)\n\nG. COLMAN Jr: \"Heir at Law\" (1797)\n\nT: Comedy (5 acts)\n\nJ. TOWNLEY: \"High Life below Stairs” (1759)\n\nT: Farce (2 acts)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: Theatre Royal (A)\n\nN: Final performance of the season.\n\nR: About the actors the critic thought it \"uncourteous to select where all did their best and there was much to praise; we will, therefore, only say in allusion to Heir at Law that STEADFAST maintained the character of the fine old English bachelor with spirit”. In the same issue appeared a letter from \"A Stranger\": \"The character of Dr. Pangloss (in Heir at Law) was performed with much quiet humour and the pedantic stolidity of an L.L.D. and A.A.S. (sic!) were exceedingly well portrayed, though at intervals much too low to enable the back part of the audience to catch the full force of the quotations\". The Herald added that the part of Dr. Pangloss is, perhaps, the most difficult in the play, for an Amateur to sustain; the curt witticisms and various learned quotations require an experienced actor to give with effect\".\n\nHigh Life below Stairs \"flagged somewhat from the previous exertions of the actors, but we must not omit to notice the excellent acting in the representative of the Lord Duke's servant'\n\nDespite this and in spite of the editor not being very much satisfied with some of the language in the plays he thanked “our young friends for their kindly endeavours to promote amusement amongst the community, they were spared neither trouble, time nor expense to cater for the intellectual appetite of Shanghai in the classical drama” (NCH 26.4.1851).\n\n26.1.1852 (Mon)\n\nD. BOUCICAULT & C. MATHEWS: \"Used Up\" (1846)\n\nT: Comedietta (2 acts)\n\nH. CAREY (music: J.F. LAMPE): \"The Dragon of Wantley\" (1837)\n\nT: Burlesque opera (3 acts)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 220, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "195\n\nhis alarm allayed amidst the warmest applause from the audience for his clever and successful \"sell\". In addition the editor wrote that this Prologue afforded H. E. more valuable hints how to treat the Rebellion than all the suggestions that have been submitted to him since his arrival. Apparently Bonham was \"so much delighted that we are not without hopes a report on the performances may form the subject of his first despatch from Shanghae”. So much for modesty. As regards the performances themselves, the writer had it in confidence from a tall whiskered male who occupied a front seat disguised in a dress coat, that although Hong Kong theatre is now more conveniently lit up in the Victoria Theatre in acting Shanghae would not suffer by comparison\". \"That treaty port chauvinism was not lacking even at that early stage was made clear when the visitor insisted that our Head Actor has been brought from Hong Kong”. Despite his earlier lukewarm praise he must have made some sour remarks too, for the editor wrote that \"except as to the heroine, his critical skill was evidently at fault in discriminating the excellences of the other performers in Betsey Baker; and all he could be got to say regarding Apartments was something about Mr. and Mrs. Keeley having many worse imitators” (Robert Keeley, 1793-1869; and Mrs. Keeley (Mary Ann Coward), 1806-1899: famous British actors). (NCH 26.3.1853).\n\n5.5.1853 (Thur)\n\nG.A.A. BECKETT: \"Siamese Twins\" (1834)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nR. BUTLER: \"The Irish Tutor\" (1822)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Music by the band of the Susquehanna\n\nTh: Imperial Theatre (B)\n\nN: Final performance of the season\n\nR: The close of the season by the amateurs who called themselves the \"Lily Troupe\" for a \"bumper house\"; with some “admirable music by the Band of Susquehanna\" — a steamer belonging to the U.S. Japan Squadron. (NCH 7.5.1853).\n\n8.3.1854 (Wedn)\n\nJ.M. MADDOX: “A Fast Train! High Pressure!! Express!!!\" (1853)\n\nT: Farce\n\nW.B. BERNARD: “A Practical Man\" (1849)\n\nT: Farce\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nP: Music\n\nTh: Tac Ming Theatre (C)\n\nR: At the start of the evening a, for part of the audience at least, unexpected treat was in store: “On the rising of the curtain a ludicrous incident quite upset our friend BUSKIN. He was set down to enact \"Colonel Jack Delaware\" (in A Fast Train — JH) but a storm met him as soon as he appeared on the stage and he was fairly hissed off when a stranger leapt over the footlights and announced his intention of supporting the character. The curtain dropped and after a short delay the volunteer Yankee came forward, dressed in the most extravagant fashion and took up the part with great spirit\". Was the leading actor-manager really taken by surprise? This could hardly be, and it must be assumed that it was, like the \"rebellion\" before, a set up. At any rate the \"interloping Yankee was enrolled in Buskin's company. The musical department was sustained by \"Messrs Thalberg and Koenig with their usual talent and success\". Both these noms de théâtre were after well known musicians: Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), a Swiss pianist and composer; and Friedrich Koenig, a German violinist. (NCH 11.3.1854).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212181, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "100 miles upriver. We sat munching our sandwiches prepared to watch the expected \"frightfulness\" when it came. It was a lovely day, the wooden benches of the launch were hard, and there was no air raid. As the shades of evening fell, we returned to the city, chastened by the thought of the edifying effect of this exhibition of Western fortitude on the watching Chinese.\n\nThe \"black-out\" system in Nanking was not like the one to which we have subsequently grown accustomed in England. There were no special arrangements to mask lights, whether on the streets or in the house. At night all lights would be turned on full, until the \"alert\" was sounded, when everything would be thrown into pitch darkness by the turning of a master switch at the power station. Some days later the plant was knocked out by several direct hits from dive bombers. The sale of electric torches soared and there was a hunt round for kerosene lamps: but the most serious consequence was to cut off radio reception. The Club came into its own, and of an evening everyone would be there seeking news and absorbing refreshment in the dim glow of flickering candles, stuck in the necks of empty bottles, of which the supply continued to grow.\n\nWe were by this time all experts in the technique of bomb dodging; even the dogs had their routine. At the first siren Sandy, the labrador, would get up from his place in the sun on the lawn and haughtily stroll into his corner behind the sofa in the drawing room. Tim, the springer pup, would continue to doze, until he heard the noise of the aircraft engines, when he would stand up, glance at the sky, and walk into a downstairs cloak room to go to earth behind a certain domestic convenience usually found in cloak rooms. Within the city wall was a game preserve, where pheasants flourished; and it was remarkable how little notice they took of the loud bark of the anti-aircraft guns nearby, but as soon as they heard the dull sound of a distant bomb-burst, the old cocks would all start to cackle angrily. It was evident that the earth tremor caused by the crump upset them more than the crash of the gunfire, though of course pheasants have very sharp hearing.\n\nOur boy was a great stand-by. He became a self-appointed expert at distinguishing the different types of plane, friend or foe, whether by the noise of their motors or by the shape of the wings, and he would announce his opinion with the complete confidence of extreme...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212215, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "134\n\nphone. It was a friend of mine, a former N.O., to let me know he had just heard from the British gunboat that the Luftwaffe was bombing Warsaw. I went over to a party at another table to tell them that the launch picnic we had arranged for the following Sunday would be off. The news spread from table to table. No emotion registered on the faces of the stolid English people sitting on the verandah of that exclusive club. A stranger coming in just then would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary except, perhaps, that it was later than usual when the members scattered from their tables to go home to dinner. I do not think that this display of composure was entirely due to British phlegm; it sprang in part from an unimaginative failure to realise what the news meant. Warsaw was very far from Shanghai. My Sunday picnic need not have been cancelled for all the difference the war made in its early stages. The chief problem seemed to be whether those with children in England should move them elsewhere, to the States or to China. There was no encouragement to join up; in fact, young men were informed officially that it was their duty to stick to their jobs to keep British trade going.\n\nSince the outbreak of the war between China and Japan, there had been a succession of political murders and outrages in the foreign areas of Shanghai. I think probably that the Chinese government started it. They considered any \"puppet\" fair prey and, I daresay, those Green and Red tongs came in useful. Then the Japanese retaliated by organising terrorist gangs of their own, and attacking Chinese with prominent government connections, or such as refused to collaborate. It almost amounted to a reign of terror, under cover of which ordinary crime, too, increased. The police found great difficulty in coping with the situation. They themselves were sniped at by both sides. The police, in both foreign areas, were remarkably efficient, but unpopular with the official Chinese, because so often involved in suppressing illegitimate political activities, which had a long history in Shanghai.\n\nMy wife and I were living in a small flat in the French town, and several of us, in preference to joining the Shanghai Volunteers, decided to join the French Special Police. We were issued with a blue uniform, with a thin red line down the trouser, a police kepi, and a French tin hat; also a large Mauser automatic, one of numbers collected from time to time at the Concession entrances from disbanded Chinese troops seeking admission to the safety of the foreign area. In this accoutrement we paraded several evenings a week at the Central", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212232, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "151\n\na mark or two on my hand one morning, but they proved mere pimples arising from the heat.\n\nAs regards the vegetation, I must say that although taken altogether the island is not so well supplied with vegetation as some parts of England, yet what there is, has been so judiciously taken care of, and propagated, that in a few years it will become well wooded, in all the habitable parts. No pains are spared in planting and rearing trees, and nature assists the efforts of man, by a rapid and luxuriant growth. But even now, all parts that are inhabited are surrounded by trees, the quantity and size depending only upon the time since the houses were built. There is the Asiatic pine, found through Central Asia to the Himalehs. The rocks and table lands in Hong Kong are well planted with it, making it look very like the Scotch pine or fir in England. The bamboo looks well, and its luxuriant and rapid growth, together with the graceful appearance of its foliage, has caused its prevalent use. The apple, pommaloc, laichis (Chinese plum), willow, oak, mulberry, appear the chief. There are several fine trees of which I can only get the Chinese name in our shrubbery. Nearly all the vegetable food comes from the mainland. It is tolerably reasonable in price. A fine pine-apple costs about —/4o. Plantains 1\" to 2a a pound. In a few weeks fruit will be plentiful. Potatoes about 2a a pound. Rice ditto. Bread 5o per pound. Ginger grows fine here; and the green ginger preserved is delicious. There is a nice fruit, just out of season, called Wong-pay, and another whose name means “dragon's eyes\" is not pleasant to my palate. Fish is very dear; a little fish for breakfast costs 5 or more.\n\nThe town of Victoria is a long street running nearly parallel with the shore of the bay. Branching off from this street are the many hills, covered with English villas for a good way up. The eastern end of the town is mostly occupied by large merchants' offices, warehouses, etc....... and beyond are many fine English houses. The Chinese streets are very curious to a stranger. The Chinese shops are likewise interesting. Some however are in English style. An English shop is a different thing here to what it is in England, and more resembles a warehouse. There are, however, a few fine milliner's shops, hotels, dispensary, and club room. At the Eastern extremity are the Barracks, the parade ground, and market; and about a mile on, is a beautifully wooded hill, where the Colonial Chaplain, the Rev. J. Irwin, resides. Then passing through a ravine you open upon Happy Valley. A Chinese villa is quite a curiosity. Here and there you see one perched upon some eminence; but it does", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212233, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "152\n\nnot do for a house to be very isolated, or it would be continually attacked by robbers. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is a fine building, and also the Governor's house. Just behind the College are some fine buildings.\n\nAnd now, after a glance at the island, I will go on to describe the inhabitants. Of course they are mostly Chinese; next come English, Parsees, Portuguese, Americans, Germans, French, and Arabs. Spaniards might also be mentioned. The Chinese are the working part of the population. Generally they are industrious and active. The lower classes however are dirty and degraded. The middle class are generally well informed and intellectual. Some hold very important situations. One striking feature in Chinese character is their don't care sort of feeling. If they can get out of doing anything they will, unless they see a chance of being well paid for it. Anything they do not want to understand, they pretend great ignorance of. In fact unless money is in the way, one would take them for a race of idiots. Never can you tell if they are pleased or angry. They are the most cold-hearted race that can be imagined. The men agree well together; never do I hear any quarrelling among them. They do not take wine or beer, and a drunken Chinese is as uncommon a thing here as a really honest one. One needs be very sharp to deal with them.\n\nI went to buy some earthenware, and it was as much as I could do to keep the fellows civil. A crowd always collects in a shop when they see an Englishman. I should have lost my watch, purse and umbrella twenty times over if I had not kept my eyes open. As pickpockets they beat London all to nothing. I had to keep my eye on the whole lot of them. They will even cut off the tail of one's coat and quietly walk off with it; and a few coat tails makes them a suit of clothes.\" One has to be all bluster, and to keep a walking stick or umbrella continually in motion, to keep pace with them. I being a stranger, perhaps they wanted to try my patience over what I was buying. It seems a favour for them to let you buy of them. In fact they never speak of the English but as fan-kwai, i.e. foreign devils. They are very hypocritical. There is no knowing their thoughts or intentions. In fact a Chinaman in Hongkong is quite a riddle.\n\nThey generally dress in white. All wear a sort of coat, and very full knee breeches and gaiters. Their shoes always look very neat, although the soles are above an inch thick. They are slippers in appearance rather than shoes. They never wear a hat except when they wish to keep off the sun, when they use one as big as an umbrella. A Chinaman ordinarily dressed, with his long pig-tail hanging down behind, does not look so bad after one is used to it. Some of the wealthy ones stalk about in the evening with all the dignity imaginable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212605, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "139\n\na game, I suspect, long known to Burma, which until 1937 was a mere annex to India. The counters were not only things, such as aeroplanes, or guns, or cement; but also persons, such as administrators, or pilots, or corporals. It all depended where you were on the list of priorities. Top priorities took their pick of what was going. When a battalion commander, or the head of a government department, is instructed to detail so many men to such and such a job, outside his own sphere of interest, being human, he will naturally discard the men he can best spare. They will not be his best men; he will get away with what he can. It would be dangerous to try to impose too far on a high priority. All is permissible. A low priority is fortunate to receive anything, but must accept what is offered. Burma was at the bottom of all the priorities.\n\nNeedless to say by the time our troops were due we had received no cooking pots, no hurricane lamps, no latrine buckets, and no brown paper. I borrowed what I could from our father and mother, the Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the night before the troops arrived went into the bazaar to purchase the rest out of my own pocket.\n\nOur troops were a grand lot: they were collected from the Commandos in all parts of the world. Some came from Australia, while others had only recently taken part in the evacuation from Greece. We were put through the motions of S.K. (silent killing) and taught the art of booby-trapping. Our Chief Instructor, Calvert, later to win renown as a Brigadier under Wingate, was a regular sapper, with a bent for thinking up ever more ingenious ways of perplexing the enemy. We developed all sorts of devices, and blew up as much as we dared. The Maymyo valley echoed to the sound of explosions, and the local inhabitants, or the visitors from the plains, would say, \"There are those Bush Warfare people at it again.”\n\nI must confess that my first impressions of Burma had been poor. Rangoon looked decayed and depressing in the heat. The walls of brick, covered with plaster, showed large mould stains, the result of the damp monsoon climate. On arrival at Maymyo, a stranger, insufficiently briefed, and knowing no one, I was shocked at the formality, in the second year of the war, which required every one to change into evening clothes for dinner at the Club. It may have been something to do with the name by which the school was known, or the free and easy ways of our Commando men, but at first people seemed to look on us with a slight suspicion, not unlike the attitude towards the stage villain who is expected to do the wrong thing by the modest maiden. However, in time the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212831, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "125\n\nto hold the local headman responsible for the collection of the number required; they were paid for at fixed military rates. Throughout Yunnan commerce in peace time moves by pack saddle. The Yunnan mule is a large strong animal, at one time much in demand for work in Burma; but now the wear and tear of war had created a shortage. We had to wait some days at Paoshan before the necessary number of beasts was produced, and then we only got off because I had carried introductions to some of the local gentry, who willingly came to our assistance.\n\nWe took seven days to reach Shunning, over a series of mountains; the mule track went up and up and up, and down and down and down; it seldom ran level and we seldom covered more than ten miles by the map in a day. In actual ground covered the distance was often double. We arrived at Shunning in time for the Chinese New Year. We had to wait over for the festival, a day on which no one will work, and the general commanding the Army very kindly invited us to a feast prepared for his American allies. Here again we stayed at the American mess and were made most comfortable. From Shunning to Tetang we took five days; mules became scarcer and on several stages bullocks were brought in from the fields to carry our wireless sets and equipment. Pack bullocks move more slowly than mules, but get there eventually. Our chief trouble was in trying to get off sufficiently early in the morning. On arrival at the destination for the day, the headman would be warned how many beasts we would need the next day, and he would promise to have them ready for an early start at 7 o'clock. But there was often difficulty in collecting the requisite number and it might not be till long after midday before we could move off. It was wearing on our patience.\n\nIt was on this stretch that I received further confirmation of the sort of trouble we might expect. At one deserted village, where we stopped for the night, we were joined by a stranger who appeared friendly enough. He was later heard haranguing the Chinese members of our party in Cantonese which he thought we did not understand, asking them why they worked for the foreign British, telling them it was unpatriotic to do so, and threatening them with dire consequences.\n\nI cannot tell the whole of our difficulties, only sufficient to make the story clear; but that much I believe should be told. It is only fair to the British public, particularly at a time when the most important conferences are to be held concerning arrangements for the future peace of the world, to know how their compatriots fare in foreign countries, and how", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213471, "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-1995", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "34\n\n19 Balfour, op cit p 449\n\nReport, DCNT., 1959-60, para 45\n\nReport, DCNT, 1954-55, para 9\n\n\"stranger people\", the word used by the Hakkas to describe themselves (Reports, DCNT, 1959-60 para 46 and Balfour, op cit p 332)\n\n5 Balfour, op cit p 333\n\n54 ibid, and Barbara E. Ward's article \"A Hakka Kengsi in Borneo\" Journal of Oriental Studies, Hong Kong Univ Press, Vol 1, No 2, (July 1954) p. 359\n\nReport, DCNT. 1954-55, para 8\n\nReports, DCNT, 1959-60, para 46\n\nBalfour, op cit. p 464\n\n54 Balfour, op cit pp 460-463\n\nBalfour, op cit p 464\n\nibid\n\n62\n\nReports, DCNT, 1959-60, para 46\n\n6.1\n\nReports, DCNT, 1954-55, para 9\n\nReport, DCNT. 1954-55, para 8\n\nibid\n\n50\n\nReport, DCNT, 1955-56, para 8\n\nBalfour, op cit, p 446 (The notable exception is that the Hakka do not celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival)\n\nReport, DCNT 1954-55, para 8\n\nBalfour, op cit, p. 464", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213806, "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-1996", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "130\n\nThis third letter is to be found in manuscript form among the Fryer papers in The Bancroft Library, papers which Fryer deposited prior to his death in 1928, papers which he was selective about preserving. It is an essay no doubt written for \"home\" consumption, but in its holograph form is without salutation or signature. Creases in the holograph suggest that it was mailed; perhaps it was accompanied by a \"covering\" letter which has not survived. The manuscript consists of six large pages with two columns per page, tightly penned, each page completely and neatly filled with writing and numbered, clearly the product of much reflection, control and effort. The manuscript has the title \"Account of Three days excursion on the Mainland of China.\" Many years later, perhaps after the typewriter became available, Fryer added the date “1862” in pencil. Other manuscripts in the collection have been annotated with a similar blunt pencil, probably prior to typing. The date was in error as the excursion could not have taken place before 1863, as will be described in a footnote that accompanies the \"letter\" below.\n\nFryer's origin was quite humble; his father was a Dissident itinerant Methodist preacher who appears to have had trouble finding his place in the society of Kent, his mother was a sometime school teacher and proprietress of a shop. Fryer was ambitious and was what we now call \"upwardly mobile.” In this letter we find Fryer at age 23 and well on his way to becoming an accepted China hand. He is invited by the already prominent German missionary Rudolf Lechler, who had arrived in China in 1847 to represent the Basel Mission, to join a party which includes three other substantial Englishmen. Lechler had worked in Kwangtung (Guangdong) among the Hakka peoples, had established a reputation for having \"gone native,” living in a Chinese house, wearing Chinese attire and probably a queue. The party included the Rev. Thomas Stringer of the Church Missionary Society and who had only recently arrived in Hong Kong, the Rev. John Irwin the Colonial Chaplain since 1855, and one \"Captn Drummond of the 99th”. During the excursion, Fryer, the youngest of the party, is at ease in this company and appears to be well on his way to becoming accepted by the establishment. He apparently has no trouble socializing, sharing meals, rooms, yarns and jokes, and doing a bit of pheasant shooting with his fellow excursionists.\n\nLittle is known of Fryer's two years at St. Paul's College other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213809, "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-1996", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "133\n\nACCOUNT OF THREE DAYS EXCURSION ON THE\n\nMAINLAND OF CHINA.*\n\n*I\n\nHaving for some time desired to take a trip on the mainland, and having been invited to the German Mission stations at Li-long, and Ho-how, I had waited several months for an opportunity. Mr Lechler, a German missionary had arranged an excursion, and kindly came and invited me to be one of the party. So I went to headquarters, and got leave. Unfortunately, the time was immediately before the New Year's Examination, and at the utmost I could not be back till the day before: and as the Governor's prizes of two watches and two telescopes were to be distributed at the Examination, and it was to be a very grand affair, it was rather an awkward time to go away. However, I knew that I might not get another chance, so I determined to go at any sacrifice. The party was to consist of five, viz. the Colonial Chaplain, the Rev T Stringer, the missionary; the Rev R Lechler; Capt Drummond of the 99th, and myself.\n\nI made little or no preparation for the journey till the morning we were going to start. Then I hired a man to act as servant, cook, and coolie and [to] carry my luggage: and got a Chinese travelling basket, which held all my bedding, clothes, and all that was necessary for the journey. Then at half past ten on Wednesday morning, January 28th, I began the journey, equipped in my oldest clothes, and a white umbrella. Our place of Rendezvous was on the Bonham Strand. After waiting at the place appointed, for several minutes, the party slowly arrived one by one, and when we had mustered all hands, we proceeded to the Chinese passage boats. I had some fun among the Chinamen on the wharf by buying about twenty oranges. A whole crowd gathered round, and as I spoke Chinese to them, it was fine fun. The fellow tried to cheat me right and left: so I said to him and those round: \"he sees I am a foreigner, and so he wants to get the advantage over me,\" then I took up his ticket from the basket, and read \"All these oranges 6 cash each (without the peel).\" So I said \"now you all see his ticketed price\" and yet he wants me to pay more than double, because he thinks I cannot read Chinese. \"Now what shall I do to him?\" The poor fellow looked very sheepish, and the crowd began to jeer him, so he said I might have as many as I liked for 5 cash each. So I bought a stock for the\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213810, "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-1996", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "134\n\njourney, and paid him 10 cash each for them, and then we came to the boat.\n\nIt was no easy thing to get on board, and as it was my first attempt at a Chinese craft, I was quite disgusted with the affair. After being on deck for a while, I found the two cabins which 5 men were to occupy. Each cabin was about the size of a chest of drawers, and cockroaches and smaller vermin revelled among the dirt. However, there was no help for it. Lechler, who has lived as a Chinaman and previously worn a tail for 10 years, took it all as a matter of course, and seemed quite at his ease. These boats are about 50 feet long, with the stern very high out of the water, and the bow very low. There is one principal mast and sail, which does all the work. In a minute the sail can be hoisted, and in 10 seconds can be lowered. Clumsy as it all is, it is surprising what good sailors Chinamen are. There is no danger if they are left to themselves. They can tack in less than no time. The \"shut kung\" calls out \"chun shun\" and the great sail sweeps round across the deck in a trice. All who are on deck must instantly stoop very low, or they will find themselves lying sprawling on the lee side.\n\nThe arrangements being made we started off in company with 8 other boats belonging to the same firm. Our ship was the chief one, and was named the \"Shoon-lay\" or \"good profit\"; all of them had names meaning gain and profit (all the Chinamen ever think about). We got out of the harbour by the use of the two immense oars or sweeps at the stern, which move the ship along tolerably fast. Then when we were clear of the harbour, we made for \"pirates bay\". The weather was delightful; the sea was very clear; and we went on charmingly with a brisk breeze. Hong Kong at a distance is certainly a fine place. The immense Peak behind the town is a grand spectacle, and the fast increasing colony, with its fine houses on the hillside are beautiful to look at, especially on a clear day, in the sunshine. We had no end of fun among ourselves, and kept a continual fire of jokes at Stringer's dog, which was condemned to be eaten on the voyage. I gave it to a Chinaman and told him to kill it and eat it; much to Stringer's dislike and our amusement.\n\nWe were each armed with a revolver, and each had a stick or something else in case of need; we had, moreover, two double-barrelled guns, with which we now and then let fly at the wild ducks. At three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213811, "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-1996", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "135 o'clock we had our dinner on the deck. Such fun and such make shifts. Our stock of portable soup was very good however, and what with venison pasties and other items we got a very comfortable dinner, much to the amusement of the Chinese passengers, about 20, and the sailors. My servant came in very handy, as he was the only professional cook of the party. Our food was cooked in the Chinese way, in a little earthenware stove, and a camp canteen kettle. The deck all the while was at a very considerable slope, so that it was necessary to mind one's p's and q's, in order to avoid catastrophies. Then when we were done and cleared away, the Celestials came forward and took the deck and began their meal. Each passenger pays 30 cash (not quite three halfpence) for his meal of rice and fish and little nic nacs: and as they only eat two meals a day, you may imagine that there is not much profit to be got out of it. They did walk into the rice and no mistake.\n\nOne little boy I took a fancy to: he was a friend of the owner of the ship and his father a rich man at Sam-tsun the place we were going to. I had a long talk with him, and we read some of the Pilgrim's Progress. He had been to school 6 years, and literally knew nothing after all. The Chinese system of education is the greatest folly imaginable: No Chinaman, in less than ten years is supposed to be able to know the meanings of the characters. Many learn 5 years and only know the sounds.\n\nHowever this little fellow and I got on very well together. He was much amused with Stringer's dog, and asked dozens of questions about it. Then I offered to sell it for a dollar, but the youngster said it was no good only to eat,\" and therefore was too dear. So I joked him that he had not a dollar belonging to him, whereupon he produced a handful of dollars from his purse, and showed me a bundle of paper which he said had 7 dollars inside. He seemed to have perfect confidence in us that we would not try to rob him. It was hard to talk with him, through his dialect. It was like a Londoner and Yorkshireman. “Tea” he called \"Chay-yup\" and we call it \"Chah-eep.\" About four o'clock we entered the “Kup shui moon\" a channel opening into the \"Bogue” or as English people say \"Bocca Tigris\" or \"tiger's mouth.\"\n\nHere we passed the Canton steamer going to Hong Kong. The people stared to see Europeans on board a Chinese craft. Towards evening the breeze dropped off, and at sunset there was quite a calm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213816, "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-1996", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "140\n\nat the top was another of these tea houses and here we called a halt. I soon got into a chat with an old priest with his clean-shaven head. His temple, or rather hovel, was close there and he got his living by begging. He was stone blind. It was a mendicant Friar, and a wandering Friarð in argument. He freely acknowledged the absurdity of his creed. He is a Buddhist: and offered me on the spot to go with me and learn my creed if I would feed and clothe him. Then I jeered him about his idols, and why he did not get them to help him. The worst of them is, they all acknowledge the absurdity of it, but say it is their custom. Western Foreigners have customs and celestial's have customs, and all creeds are good alike: here the matter ends.\n\nWe again got on our route, and descended the valley. Mr Stringer and myself were so long with the old priest that we were far behind the rest of the party; but we were armed and therefore there was no danger. When we again reached the valley at the bottom, our road lay along a small stream for a few miles. The rest of the party were out of sight, and we went on alone, partly uncertain that we were going right. At last, however, the road suddenly opened into a deep valley on the right, and at last we saw the German Mission House, just under the brow of the hill, and our companions seated very comfortably on the balcony [Ed.: An illustration of the Lilong Station accompanies this article.] So we put our best leg foremost, and at last tired of walking and riding we got in about 5 o'clock. The house is not a very grand affair. But it just has served their purpose. There is only one other house near it for a long way. The situation is beautiful in the extreme, and as healthy as possible. They have a little ground in front, and on the sides of the hills are plantations of tea shrubs, though nothing very bright about them.\n\nThe missionary staff consists of Mr Winnes, who has been in China nearly 20 years, and a fine young German, named Eitel\". I was much struck with him. There is a nobleness and firmness in him which I greatly admire. In fact, there is something almost severe about his look. But the animation with which he speaks, and the natural energy of his character, together with his pleasing and gentlemanly deportment, lead you soon to see he is not an ordinary person. [Ed.: Photographs of Lechler, Winnes and Eitel accompany this article.]\n\nWe took a short walk on the hills, and then came home to dinner, which by the bye I enjoyed with a keen relish. Then we sat a while on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213817, "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-1996", "page_number": 169, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "141\n\nthe verandah and afterwards in the little parlour I was soon deep in an argument with Eitel and Winness, as to the general tendency and aim of Paul's preaching, and we maintained the point a long time, without either giving way. At last Winness is a fine Chinese scholar, and we had a long talk about religious publications in the Chinese language, of which he has written several. Then we turned in for the night, after our evening devotions, and after hearing Mr Winness' evening service, in his chapel. Really the singing of his boys was melodious to a high degree. He has about 20 whom he teaches German, etc. One is now at Hong Kong waiting to go to Germany to be educated as a missionary, and can play the Harmonium quite well.\n\nWe then turned in. The only two rooms in the house for Europeans served our turn. Four in one, and three in the other. It was sharp work. The mosquitoes were immense great things, and big enough, and many enough to suck all the blood out of one man, but with seven of us, they could not quite manage it. So in the morning we were all able to get up. Few of us slept much. I slept but very little, although I had the best bed.\n\nIn the morning I took a walk over the hills with Eitel for an hour or two, and then after breakfast we prepared to go on the hills pheasant shooting. I got a long two-barrelled gun, and Stringer got another, and so four of us started, with a guide. Two at last struck out one way, and then Capt Drummond and I went the other.\n\nWe were soon out of sight and hearing of the rest. But no pheasants were to be seen. This Drummond is a fine fellow, and has no foolery about him. He appears to be as good a Christian officer as could be expected, considering the many things they have to make them wild and dissipated. His right hand and shoulder were bitten severely by a great tiger in India, which caught him and carried him off. The tiger was soon wounded, and at length dropped him, and next day was shot dead. It just gave him a pat on the head with its paw, and made him insensible. It was a narrow escape. The tiger was rather old and its teeth were almost worn out, or it would have been far worse with him.'2 We walked a long time, but shot nothing.\n\nSo we began to bend our steps home through the village of Lilong. We looked at many houses and things, and even entered some of them and looked about. We were much amused with the immense great wheelbarrows the people use. The wheel is made of planks, sawed...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213819, "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-1996", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "143\n\nunder weigh, and went down the river like a dart. The wind and tide were in our favour. We took our tea, and the night came on very bitter cold. I wrapped up in my deci skin, which was very serviceable, and I was laughed at by the Chinamen who called me \"The red flower spotted butterfly\". As we tacked out of the river the ship rolled, and I felt rather funny. Towards midnight we were rolling very considerably and I had to get up on the sly and pay that tribute to Neptune which she always exacts from landsmen, who are not used to the sea. About 3 o'clock we came to anchor in the Kap shui moon, and there we were till about nine, when we managed to steer out as the tide turned, and got soon into a fresh breeze which took us off to Green island, then we tacked again and came round into the harbour. I felt glad to get ashore again after so much of knocking about and want of sleep. Fortunately Stringer's dog neither got shot nor eaten, although it was threatened over and over again. I was glad enough to get into a sort of tub and get on shore the best way I could, with Irwin and Lechler, and reached home after 75 hours absence, in safety.\n\nAlthough I did not immediately feel the benefits of the voyage, I did so afterwards and hope to make another similar trip some day or other. My whole expenses were just over 5 dollars, and I saw what would cost any of you “Western barbarians” at least a couple of Hundred Pounds sterling.\n\nThe next night I went to bed early, and slept on till quite late next day, to make up for lost time. The officious man I took with me had put Mr Eitel's large feather pillow and two of his shirts and other items belonging to the others in my box, so that when we got to Hong Kong, I was puzzled to know what had been done. The beauty of the thing was this, that the fellow seemed to think he had done a capital thing for me, and said \"you have gained by me\". Poor Eitel sent word to know if I wanted to be like the magpie that borrowed the feathers of other birds to improve its own plumage - since I had gone off with his feather pillows and shirts. They all tease me finely about it and it will be a joke for a while to come.\n\nI ought to have mentioned sooner how the house was attacked at Li-long by about 50 robbers.* They threw in \"stink-pots\" as they are called, and tried to enter, to rob them, about 2½ months ago. But the Chinese cook gave the alarm, and shot a man who had got up the balcony.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213820, "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-1996", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "144\n\nto enter: another was knocked down: and after one or two had smelt the powder, and tasted some small shot, they all took to their heels and ran. They afterwards found the wounded man, and instead of giving him up, they extracted the ball, and he is now recovered and gone to another place: although some of the people say he is dead. They have not the least fear, although a stronger attack is rumoured. They are brave, noble men, who sacrifice all for Christ. They have done great good, but keep it quiet. A man whom they admit to baptism must be well known to be a changed character. Consequently their Christian professors are an armament1a to them. Their discipline is strict, yet salutary. They win the respect of the Chinese, even those who will not embrace Christianity. When I contrast the noble boldness of their character with that of those around me - and above all with my own, I see vast room for improvement. And here my story has found an end.\n\nNOTES\n\n* From the John Fryer Papers The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley\n\n\"1862\" added to the manuscript in pencil Fryer made similar notes in pencil on other manuscripts in this collection many years later when transcriptions were made by typewriter. Miss W Haas Archive Assistant at the Evangelical Missionary Society in Basel, Switzerland, has determined that the date must be 1863, because a letter by Philip Winnes dated February 5, 1863, mentions a visit by Rudolf Lechler \"with four Englishmen\". In addition, E.J. Eitel (b. 1838) arrived in Hong Kong on October 24, 1862. Thus this excursion began on January 28, 1863, after Fryer (b. 1839) had been in Hong Kong almost 18 months. Eitel and Fryer were thus about the same age. See note 11.\n\nRudolf Lechler (1824-1908) was a Basel Mission pioneer, he spent 52 years (1847-99) in China and worked in Kwangtung with Hakkas.\n\nThe Rev. John James Irwin was Colonial Chaplain at Hong Kong during 1855-67.\n\nThomas Stringer, M.A. (Oxford), worked for the Church Missionary Society.\n\n1 As of this writing, Captain Drummond has not been identified.\n\n? Perhaps it was good only to eat.\n\n7 \"Nets\" in the sense of \"Catches\".\n\nPerhaps a pun on his name.\n\n\"That is, Buddhist.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213822, "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-1996", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "146\n\nFigure 1. The Basel Mission Station at Lilong was visited in January 1863 by John Fryer, Rev. Rudolf Lechler, Rev. John Irwin, the Colonial Chaplain, and Rev. Thomas Stringer. Courtesy of the Evangelical Missionary Society, Basel, Switzerland, by permission. copyright, Basel Mission Archive.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213972, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "6\n\nordinary people could play a greater part in their own local affairs without \"rocking the boat,\" and so strengthen what was still in the 1960s a nebulous sense of identity with Hong Kong as something more than a dependent entrepôt.\n\nBill Dickinson had come to Hong Kong from West Africa as a man of good report with capacity for high office, widely experienced in local government and as right-hand man to the deputy governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). It may be thought that he made insufficient effort to affect the outward manners of a society that regarded itself as more sophisticated than an officer who preferred to wear khaki shorts in summer; he was generally seen as a stranger from a dark continent, and though well-liked did not move in élite circles. As Clerk of Councils and a Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary, he had held positions which gave knowledge but little power. Sir David Trench found in him an appropriate officer to assist in solving his dilemma. On 29 April 1966, he appointed Dickinson to chair a working party with the following (typically for Hong Kong detailed) terms of reference:\n\nTo explore and advise on practicable alternatives for the development of an effective and convenient system of local administration in Hong Kong which will take account of the size and complexity of the existing Urban Areas, the planned creation of new towns in the New Territories, and the different stages and development in the rural areas, with particular regard to—\n\n(a) the types of local authority which might be established and the criteria which might govern their establishment;\n\n(b) their possible composition, and the various methods of selection and tenure of office of members which might be considered;\n\n(c) the powers and functions they might have;\n\n(d) possible sources of revenue and financial powers;\n\n(e) their staff and the means by which their functions might be carried out;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214332, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "154\n\nMany of the illustrations tended now to concentrate on showing the human side of the Chinese, and the related narratives discuss their subjects in terms which would have been particularly welcome to the British reader, who would for example have approved the love of animals spoken of in relation to the illustration, \"Peking Cab.\" \"It is astonishing how the Chinese manage their animals by kindness. Refractory mules which could not be persuaded to go into the shafts by threats from Indians are as obedient as dogs at a word from a Chinese carter, a stranger to them. The Pekinites are very fond of horses.\n\n>> 31\n\nThere is further evidence of rapprochement in the fact that there is now a degree of westernisation in the delineation of Chinese features, particularly in \"A Group of Chinese.\"52\n\nAs a whole, the illustrations and related narratives now seek to create a sense of fellow-feeling, and to win a recognition by the British Public that the Chinese people as a whole are fellow-dwellers on Planet Earth. The description of Chinese boys on the ice is a good example of this. \"The Peiho ... is frozen over, and the ponds from Pekin to Taku are solid blocks of ice, on which numerous boys disport themselves much in the same way that small boys do in other parts of the world. There is, however, one dodge I never saw before. A kind of skates, made of Indian corn stalks, are placed, not fixed, under the feet, and the boys, grasping poles, shove themselves along at a glorious pace. Of course, now and then they meet with a fall but up they get again, laughing heartily at their little accidents, and begin life afresh. Nothing can be more glorious than this steady frost, with the cloudless, clear skies, the sun shining all day, the moon all night, making the ice sparkle like diamonds, and producing a most exhilarating effect in the human frame.\"53\n\nComparatively few of the illustrations, now, return to the topics of domination, retribution and punishment. Those there are may be represented by a spirited portrait of Lord Elgin on horseback,54 and by illustrations entitled, \"Weighing the Compensation Money Exacted from the Chinese for the Released British Prisoners and for the Families of those who were Murdered,\" \"Arrival at Tien-Tsin of a portion of the Chinese Indemnity Money, Escorted by Chinese Troops,\"55 and \"French Spoils From China Recently Exhibited at the Palace of the Tuileries.\"57 In keeping with this, the focus here returns briefly to those who had suffered at Chinese hands. The Editor glances at the financial generos-\n\n56", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214409, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "233\n\nappear now next to the thumb, tip to painting, now return to their place back in the reverse position. Generally speaking the Chinese are very good copiers. I saw a copy of Raphael's Madonna in a reduced size, brought from Berlin and another made from it here by a Chinese: it's difficult to distinguish one from the other. They themselves only paint flowers and insects well, copying each little leaf of a flower, each little butterfly's wing with such thoroughness, that they seem to be glued on to the paper. Much beauty is brought to these drawings by the paper itself which is like fine velvet and which the English call rice-paper but which is actually made from the pith of a plant belonging to the family araliacea and known in Chinese as den-tsao i.e. the lamp plant because lamps are made from its thin stems. It is said to grow exclusively on the island of Formosa, at least it is only there that they cultivate it and make paper from it. Paper used primarily for making artificial flowers.\n\nThat same ability of the Chinese - to be satisfied with little together with their imitativeness results in that all artisans and workers here, as well as all household servants - are of their number. A Chinese tailor will guilelessly offer you to chose from a fashion picture of three to four years earlier; a Chinese stone-mason builds magnificent houses according to European plans. But for whatever kind of work it might be it is easier to find a Chinese man than a Chinese woman; and that is why positions which are elsewhere occupied by female servants are here mainly occupied by men. And if it is strange to see a footman in a long tunic and with a long plait by the table, then it is stranger still, as is often the case, to see a similar Chinese in the role of a children's nanny.\n\nIn Hong Kong I had the opportunity of seeing for the first time the drying of tea; and although it was not the preparation of tea from fresh leaves, but the drying of tea that had become slightly damp, the process is nevertheless in essence the same. Cauldrons, in the form of hemispheres, are fixed into the hearth at an incline: their back part is raised sufficiently to allow the plane of the opening to make an angle of up to 50° with the horizontal. A worker, standing before each such cauldron continuously stirs the tea placed there with his hand always in one direction, thus imparting to it a circular motion until, with the fire burning under the cauldron the tea dries as required.\n\nTalking of tea, it would be opportune to mention an incident which occurred while I was in Hong Kong. A vessel carrying tea sank; the cargo was salvaged and sold at public auction. The dealer-speculator, who bought it, took", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214598, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Membership\n\nAs at 16 March 2000, our Branch's membership stood at 607. This was made up of 487 local members and 120 overseas members. In fact, since the Council meeting held on 27 January 1999, to 16 March 2000, 147 new members have been recruited. As I have pointed out in previous presidential reports, one thing that has changed in recent years is the composition of membership. Among expatriates, Hong Kong is not so 'British' as it used to be and the turnover of people is more rapid. This has resulted in a more cosmopolitan Branch which makes for variety. This is no bad thing.\n\nIt must be emphasised that it is not just council members, among the membership, who play active parts in ensuring Branch functions run smoothly. Non-council members who sit on the Activities Committee, for example, have an important role to play as do our Volunteers who assist the Antiquities and Monuments Office. But even outside these bodies several RAS members play active roles. These vary from helping to recruit new members to leading outings. We are grateful for their assistance although there are too many willing helpers to name everyone individually.\n\nIt gives me great pleasure to record that, in November 1999, our Honorary Vice President, the Reverend Carl T Smith, prominent historian and keen supporter of archival research, was awarded honorary membership of the International Council on Archives East Asian Regional Branch. Congratulations Carl!\n\nWe are also pleased to report that one of our newly recruited overseas members, Dr Edward Cecil Harris FSA, was recently awarded the MBE in the 2000 New Year's Honours List by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Although Dr Harris lives in Bermuda he is no stranger to Hong Kong. He has been here on a number of occasions attending conferences and on speaking engagements. Congratulations Dr Harris!\n\nI am also pleased to report that our Past President, Dr James Hayes, together with his wife Mabel, returned to Hong Kong over the period 17 November to 13 December, 1999. Although some nine flying hours away, and living in Sydney, we are pleased that James still considers\n\nXII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216345, "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-2003", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "53 \n\n* Giles, Glossary, op.cit., p.57. \n\n44 Downing, C. Toogood (1838). The Stranger in China, or The Fanqui's Visit to The Celestial Empire in 1836-7. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 2 vols., Vol. I, pp.9-10. A diary kept on a French ship in 1779 tells of an \"outside\" pilot boat from Macau, whose five occupants spoke a kind of corrupt Portuguese. Charles de Constant (1939). Recit de Trois Voyages A la Chine 1779-1793. Passages chosen and annotated by Philippe de Vargas. Published by L'Ami, Revue Mensuelle, Yenching, Peking.. \n\n45 \n\n46 \n\nDavis, The Chinese, op.cit., (1836 edition, London, Charles Knight), Vol.II, p. 447.. \n\nDowning, The Stranger in China, op.cit., Vol.I, p.10. \n\n* Ibid., Vol. I, p.27. \n\n48 \n\nMorse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, op.cit., p.74 \n\nDavis, The Chinese, op. cit., (1836 edition, London, Charles Knight), Vol.II, p. 449. \n\n50 Ibid., Vol. II, pp.448-9. \n\n51 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, op.cit., p.74. \n\n32 \n\nChina and the English (1835). New York, p.73. Written for Abbott's Fireside Series. \n\n53 Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, op. cit., p.99. \n\n54 Abbott's Fireside Series, op.cit., p.73, \n\n55 \n\nA striking instance is given in Wei Peh T'I (1981). Juan Yuan's Management of Sino-British Relations in Canton 1817-1826, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (hereafter JHKBRAS), Vol. 21, pp.153-5. Pidgin English has been described succinctly as being 'a singular admixture of corrupted Portuguese, English, Hindustani, and other foreign words spoken largely in a Chinese syntax': Chang, Commissioner Lin, op.cit., pp.235-6, n47. For a recent detailed statement on Pidgin, see Selby, Anne and Stephen (1995)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]