[
    {
        "id": 214855,
        "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": 270,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "238 \n\nToday, globalisation is going full steam ahead. Who could have forecast in the 1960s, that most of the little compradors' shops on street corners, with their delicious kum wah hams hanging from ceilings, would be nudged out by mighty supermarkets?\n\nWho could have guessed that, with globalisation of palate, McDonald's would become 'haute cuisine' for young Chinese many of who are now overweight?\n\nOf course things were cheaper then and, at my Chinese wedding banquet on the Queen's Birthday in 1960, at the old Sun Ya restaurant on Nathan Road, the cost was an exorbitant HK$130 for each circular table of 12 guests. We tipped $10 a table. That was the going rate. On the afternoon of our wedding day my wife and I were invited to the garden party on the lawn at Government House. In those days people were proud to receive an invitation from His Excellency just as, more recently if they care to admit it, they are proud to receive an invite to the reception on China's National Day.\n\nBut wages for old one hundred names (the man in the street) were low and there was little in the way of social amenities. My Chinese amah was paid $160 a month with half a day off a week. She was lucky. Many received far less and no time off unless they specially requested it. People did not complain. They knew things were much worse in China where famine raged after the failure of the 'Great Leap Forward.' Hong Kong citizens queued up at the post office, in the early 1960s, to send food parcels to relatives on the Mainland. Later Hong Kong changed and, after the 'Star Ferry Riots' of 1966 and the protracted riots of 1967 (an overspill of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), Hong Kong became richer and conditions for the man on a tram began to improve.\n\nCorruption was rampant in those early years before the setting up of the ICAC, although, in my over 26 years of government service working in education, I personally was never once solicited. It was more common in departments such as the Police, Public Works and New Territories Administration. The receiving of presents, however, had to be watched. After the riots, a watershed in many ways, Hong Kong became richer with, more recently, a higher GDP than that of Britain. A large Chinese middle-class formed.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216102,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 401,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "335\n\nOther Ranks Coloured\n\nAT'S (Auxiliary Territorial Service - women)\n\nBut of course race was not just something for westerners. It was not so dissimilar for some Chinese. I have a friend who said to her daughter, ‘All right, you can go to Britain to study. But you must promise you will never marry a westerner.' Such views are still not so uncommon. There is an obituary in the HKBRAS Journal, Vol. 27, 1987, page 5, for RAS member KMA Barnett OBE. The writer suggested that Barnett's 'occasional sourness could be traced to a resentment that his (most happy) marriage to a Chinese had blocked his promotion.' The writer also said that Barnett was inclined to believe that AIDS was a divine (or nature's) deserved punishment for societies which tolerated, even glamorised, “deviants.”\n\nIn the case of my own Anglo-Chinese wedding, although I did receive a certain amount of ostracism from a few colleagues in the early days, most accepted my marriage without too much difficulty. Certainly I received no objections from my employer, the Hong Kong Government. In my case I was married in the morning and, in the afternoon, my Chinese wife and I were invited to the Governor's garden party on the lawn at Government House. This was held annually, on the Queen's Birthday, 21 April, which was then a public holiday. We held a Chinese dinner that evening, in the old Sun Ya Restaurant on Nathan Road. The cost was $130 per Chinese table each seating 12 persons.\n\nMany people, certainly pre-World War Two, took the view that stratification was correct and necessary as lifestyles of the Chinese and westerners differed so considerably. The Chinese, at least outwardly, were not too disturbed by racial discrimination. They took it all quite stoically. After all, they knew who was really superior. Was not their country the Middle Kingdom, with a complex culture and a continuous civilisation going back 5,000 years? They did not want to live on the Peak anyway, it was far too humid up there. Yes, like the British, at heart the Chinese knew who the superior beings really were. Today, while there is still some class distinction and snobbery in the Territory, both among Europeans and Chinese, the old days of racial discrimination have fortunately largely gone. Mixed marriages make the world go round.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]