[ { "id": 204728, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "22\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nforwarded it let me send a small chit to Mr. Sturgis by the same conveyance.23\n\nWeather very warm.\n\n9 p.m. Houqua came in this evening with a Chop from the Commissioner for Mr. Snow, the Consul, which orders him to give up 1,500 and odd chests of opium which he says he knows are held by American merchants, and does not believe the statement sent him three days since by Mr. Snow wherein was clearly stated that this opium which was held by American merchants had been surrendered to Captain Elliot by his order as it was British property.\n\nA quantity of large Chops left Canton today for Lankeel to receive the opium and bring it to Canton. It appears the vessels outside are to come up to Lankeel and there deliver it, two vessels at a time, so that it may be a month yet before we are released from imprisonment, if so soon. The Chinese do things of this sort very slowly.\n\nAll the vessels at Whampoa remain as before. On the day the Commissioner laid his paw upon us, stopped the trade, surrounded us with soldiers, and deprived us of our cooks, coolies and servants and of all intercourse with the Chinese there were 7 or 8 vessels ready for sea and on the point of sailing, amongst them are three consigned to us, Vancouver, Niantic, and Francis Stanton all loaded except the last and she only wanted a few tons more to complete her cargo.\n\nIt is to be hoped the Chinese government will have to pay all this detention with interest, to say nothing of the violent imprisonment of all foreigners in Canton who are not to be released till opium, not their own, is given up to this scoundrel of a Commissioner. It is nothing more nor less than an act of piracy. Not one of us is allowed to quit Canton, innocent or guilty, till the opium is all in his hands. He has caught us this time in a trap, but please God he may be well thrashed for it yet, and if our lives, as he threatens, are to be the penalty for the non-delivery of the 20,282 chests of opium this place may by and by be made too warm for him,24\n\nSunday 8th*\n\nAchun arrived today from Macao and reports that there are\n\n* A mistake, Sunday was the 7th and the 8th was a Monday,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204741, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n33\n\nbeing to get rid of the opium as quick as possible and thereby procure our release. The latest accounts from below are that 12,391 chests have now been delivered to the Chinese. We hear also that Saoqua, one of the Hong merchants at Chumpee, met with a serious accident getting into his own boat from one of the ships. While here old Houqua, one of our best friends, has been confined to his house for a week past with dropsy of which he has a bad attack.\n\nNearly all the Factories have now their compradores, cooks, and coolies and here and there a servant. Our imprisonment is the same as before but the guard at night do not keep up such a continual beating of gongs and blowing of horns as they did. Sunday evening, 28 April, 1839\n\nThis evening while taking tea at Elmslie's, Houqua and Mouqua came in. They each sat down and ate some jelly and bread and took a cup of tea. The former had just had a letter from Pwankuqua dated at Chumpee yesterday, which said that 13,900 odd chests had been delivered. After half an hour's chat on various matters they went over to see Captain Elliot at the hall. Wrote to J. & P. Sturgis at Macao, gave the letter to Delano to be forwarded.\n\nWe heard this morning of the arrival of the Cowasjee Family from Calcutta and Singapore with 500 chests of opium. The Columbia and John Adams sailed from the latter place five days before her. The Columbia we understand for Lintin direct and the John Adams to touch at Bankoff. This news was received with great delight throughout our prison as they may in some measure hasten our release or the catastrophe, whatever it is to be. No passage boats or ship boats allowed to run.\n\nMonday, 29 April 1839\n\nSeveral days since we heard that three lascars had been brought from the coast of Chinchoo at which place they probably deserted from some ship and were lodged at the Consoo House. Today they were released and sent out to the Factories. Nothing can be made of their story except that they belonged to an opium vessel on the coast and had landed and were left behind. This was of course carefully concealed from the Name-Hoe who questioned them at Consoo House. We hear today that Mouqua is better and Saoqua also. He requested permission of the Yum Chae to come up which was refused.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204786, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n77\n\nsettlement is given below and it is sufficient to say that at first they owned little beyond their houses22 and seem to have been closely involved in fishing, at any rate in the second half of the century. When their senior elder Mr. CHUNG Fat ## (born 1876) was a boy of fifteen years old, his grandfather owned nine fishing boats of the Hoklo type. These rowing boats were manned with the help of other Hakkas, their friends and clansmen from the Tsuen Wan-Shing Mun-Pat Heung area of the present New Territories. They fished by day or night according to the season, using thread nets made in the shape of a basket and sold to them by Hoklo people. The boats were often out overnight, depending on the distance to which they went to fish and the nature of the catch. They often fished all round the Lantau coast and into Deep Bay, which is a long way for a rowing boat, though anyone who has seen the speed with which the rowers propel these craft off Cheung Chau will not be surprised at this. In 1896 Mr. CHUNG's uncle returned from Sandakan in Borneo, and took him there to work for three years, after which he came back, was married, and together with his uncles and cousins again made the sea his business. This time he did not do the fishing, but with two small sailing boats operated as a fish collector. On behalf of a shop, which was owned by a Punti of San Wui †† extraction then resident on Peng Chau, he went out to the Tanka boats fishing the neighbouring waters and bought their catch, for which he received a commission. At a later stage (1916-46) he worked two boats with which, in the summer months, he collected grass bought from the Lantau villagers opposite Peng Chau. He dried the grass and sold it the following year to fishermen for caulking their boats on a piece of land which he had bought for the purpose. By 1899 the CHUNGs had taken a lot of mortgaged land from the LUI family,23 and all this activity connected with the sea was in addition to farming paddy and vegetable fields, which was mainly carried on by the womenfolk.\n\nThese paragraphs illustrate the diversity of activities in a small coastal settlement like Peng Chau and the danger of assigning one group to its traditional role and no other. It exemplifies what, in 1840, the famous Commissioner LIN of Opium War fame reported as being a local Kwangtung saying, “Seven go to fishing, three go to the plough”, and again “Three parts mountain,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204798, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n89\n\ncoastal and riverine areas of Kwangtung were always receiving the unwelcome attention of pirates and robber gangs, right up to the end of the nineteenth century and well into the present one. The Taiping rebellion occupied the middle years of the century and, though it does not seem to have caused much bloodshed in the San On district, the large-scale struggle between Hakkas and Puntis in the parts of the province west of the Delta must have increased mutual antipathy between the two groups elsewhere. The Opium War and the War of 1857-60 saw increased foreign activity in Hong Kong waters. There were therefore both internal and external dangers to be expected on a small island settlement like Peng Chau at this time.\n\nInternally there was probably less trouble than there was potential. There are no recollections of fighting between the various groups of settlers on the island, though the Hoklos, who are generally credited with a more turbulent disposition than the Cantonese and Hakkas, perhaps in most cases having fewer possessions to make them cautious, sometimes fought among themselves.51 The Cantonese shops in the main street were ever fearful of robbery and violence and until ten years ago one could see the last of the protective gates known as ... There were three of them, barred every night, one at each end of Wing On Street and a third at the entrance to a large lane which left the main street at right angles and led to the Hakka settlement. Within living memory one or more watchmen were employed at night by the Kaifong and collected contributions from shops according to their size. These night defences were erected as much to keep out bandits and robbers coming from the sea as thieves or dissatisfied elements from within the island. There was, as Mr. CHUNG recalls, a small military post on the island in the late nineteenth century, but this would scarcely deter would-be assailants, especially if they were numerous and well-armed, and there can be little doubt that the first farmers and shopkeepers lived in genuine fear of such assaults. There are sufficient instances of violence from neighbouring places at various times to show that such fears were fully justified3½ and an isolated town like Peng Chau would have offered better prospects for pillage than a lonely village of farmers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204801, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n19 The Harbour Master's Report for 1906 in Sessional Papers 1907, p. 130, which presumably gives figures for the whole Colony, states that 1,796 native craft were sunk, and in the majority of cases totally lost. The total loss of life, he said, \"must have been excessively high, amounting to approximately 5,000, though there are no positive records to show the actual number that perished\". The typhoon was not expected, and a few days afterwards a committee was appointed to enquire whether earlier warning could have been given to shipping. A month later its members opined that \"reviewing the evidence as a whole, the committee find that prior to 7.44 a.m. on the 18th September 1906 there was no indication of a typhoon approaching Hong Kong... and warning was given as soon as, in the circumstances, was practically possible.\" The Report of the Typhoon Relief Fund Committee in Sessional Papers 1907, pp. 277-287, gives no information about Peng Chau, though Table 1, p. 283 may include some Peng Chau craft,\n\n20 The system of credit is briefly described on p. 2 of the Report of the Fisheries Department, Hong Kong Government, for 1946-47.\n\n\"The practice of the laans before the war was to obtain control over the fisherman by granting loans to him for the repairing of his boat, buying of new gear, etc. at certain period during the year. In return the fisherman was expected to market all fish caught through the laan who would make appropriate deductions although, in many cases, the laan would ensure that the fisherman never settled the loan and therefore was never free to market his catch through anyone else.\"\n\nPeng Chau appears to have had several concerns of this type, though they combined their activities in this direction with general shopkeeping. They dealt in a variety of goods and sold also to land customers, besides acting as middlemen for the fishermen's catch and providing them with all their requirements. The big dealers connected with the Peng Chau fishing fleet at the time of the repair tablet of 1878 appear to have been seven Hong Kong laans mentioned on the tablet. This shows that the number of Peng Chau boats was sufficiently large for outside merchants to do business with them, either directly or through the local smaller dealers.\n\nOne should not, however, take too narrow a view of the fishermen's position vis-à-vis the laan. The same willingness to allow the fishermen goods on credit, and so run up debts and incur obligations which would ensure that they continued to patronise the same shop or laan, was also extended by shopkeepers to the farmers and townspeople. S. Y. Lan op. cit. gives much detail on laans, some of whom were Tankas.\n\n21 For this information see Hong Kong Annual Report for 1899, pp. 14-15, Colonial Reports, Annual, 1899, No. 314 (London, HMSO, 1901).\n\n22 BCL.\n\n23 BCL.\n\n24 Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (London, Allen and Unwin, 1958) p. 101. Orme's Report mentions, p. 44, the diversity of the fishing population thus, \"The Hoklos, who are a kind of sea-gypsy, only form a very small section of the land population, some 1500 in all, but much of the fishing is in their hands. Of the junk population, the large majority are Puntis (I assume he means Punti-speaking), and of the remainder some Hakka and some Hoklo.\"\n\n25 Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification No. 557 of 1901.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204838, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "116\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nwhich lies in the mouth of the Pearl River estuary between Macao and Castle Peak on the opposite headland. However, during the south-west monsoons the anchorages of Kapsuimun門 pq 29, and Hong Kong were used because they provided greater protection. The Kapsuimun anchorage was situated south of Ma Wan island and sheltered to the west by the headland of Lantao and to the east by Tsing I island. Because of the smuggling of opium from depot ships at these outer anchorages the capabilities of the anchorages off Lantao island and between Hong Kong island and Kowloon on the mainland became thoroughly known to British merchants and sea captains. In 1835 a former member of the British East India Company published a book in which he advocated the need for Britain to obtain some island from which trade with China could be carried on because of the uncertain conditions of trade at Canton following the ending of the Company's monopoly30. In a review of this book published in the Chinese Repository the reviewer remarks on the fact that the author pressed the idea of Britain acquiring Macao from Portugal, which he considered ill-advised. He wrote\n\nThe want of a good harbour, and its dangerous position in the season of typhoons and strong north or east gales, unfit it for the possession of a commercial nation, as point d'appui. Lantao is better, and this we should prefer of the places named by our author. It is an island, capable of defence, producing abundant supplies of food, with many good harbours, is not so near the provincial city as to render it dangerous for natives to resort to it, for the purpose of commerce.31\n\nThus in 1835 Lantao was still considered eligible as a possible British settlement. In May 1839 the British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, and all British subjects, left Canton as a result of the measures taken by the Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü, and retired to Macao. However, when in mid-August of 1839 the British were forced out of Macao by Chinese pressure it was to the anchorage of Hong Kong that the English ships went. Although Hong Kong was eventually ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Nanking 1842 this had not always been an automatic choice, the possibility of forming a settlement on Formosa, the Bonin Islands, and on Ma Wan and Lantao island had previously been given serious consideration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204972, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n71\n\nPiracy was firmly rooted along the South China coast. Then, during the First China War, many junks were allowed to act as armed privateers, and when the war was over, became pirates rather than return to peaceful trade. Hong Kong and its neighbouring islands had always been centres of piracy, or the home of fishermen ambitious to earn a dishonest dollar or two from piracy. The new British colony must have appeared like manna from Heaven to these people, and the colony's first years were marked by an increase in piracy. There was a similar increase in piracy around Singapore at the same time. The founding of Singapore in 1819 had resulted in a great increase in native trade in the area, and this suffered severely from attacks by well-armed Chinese junks, which sometimes attacked European ships. Captain James Brooke with his sea Dyaks played a big part in suppressing piracy in these waters.1\n\nThe period between the First and Second China Wars is one of the most confusing in Chinese history. On one hand is the founding of a British colony at Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports, and the inception of regular shipping services along the coast; while on the other is the persistence of lawlessness and piracy. In the background is the increasing weakness of the Manchu Dynasty, and during the last years of the period, the Taiping Rebellion.\n\nWhen the East India Company controlled the China trade, there was little need for naval protection in Chinese waters, and the Cantonese were traditionally opposed to the Royal Navy. The large and well-armed East Indiamen and \"Country\" ships were perfectly capable of fighting their way past the pirates who infested the Canton River delta, as were smaller, but faster and equally well-armed opium clippers. In spite of Chinese objections, however, British warships visited Canton on several occasions. Anson called in the Centurion in 1741, on the famous voyage on which he captured the Manila galleon, and Cook in 1779 with the Resolution and Discovery after his three-year cruise in the Pacific. Cook's ships were careened, refitted, and provisioned at Canton, the East India Company advancing the money in return for bills on the Admiralty in London.\n\n1 The first white Rajah of Sarawak.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205067, "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-1966", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "18\n\nJOHN J. NOLDE\n\nlarger problem. That this may have been the case is reflected in a memorial to Peking from an “unknown writer\", a translation of which appeared in The Chinese Repository of April, 1838.24 The author states that the present sad state of affairs dates from the disastrous fire of 1822, the uprisings of minority tribes on the Kwangtung-Kwanghsi border (which I have not mentioned) and the devastating floods of 1833 and 1834. The memorialist urged Peking to take strong action, included in which should be the suppression of the opium traffic.25\n\nFrom 1840 to 1842, the Opium War probably dominated the day to day life of our Hong Kong-Macao-Canton area. The Royal Navy controlled the river from Canton to the sea. The city itself underwent a kind of siege in 1841, and British troops and elements of the local militia actually clashed on the heights north of the city in May of that year. Hong Kong became a British colony. The local histories report almost nothing but the activities of the barbarians, as do the official memorials and edicts.\n\nYet one wonders whether or not this is a case of the \"big news story stealing the headlines\". Except for the episode of May, 1841, the local populace was rarely and only peripherally involved. After the May incident, the British action was conducted in the north and Canton was outside the main stream of events. The best we can say is that we don't know,\n\nWhen we come to the late 1840's, the historian is faced with the same problem that confronted him in the 1820's and 1830's. The standard documents seem to suggest that the dominant theme was again barbarian-oriented, and the historian's emphasis has generally been on the post-war treaty settlement, the reopening of trade, and, especially, the anti-foreign movement which culminated in the \"Canton City Question” of 1849.26\n\nBut what was really happening?\n\nIt would seem rather obvious that the diplomatic negotiations of the time were of little concern to the average villager along the river. Similarly, the reopening of trade per se could have had only a minor impact. But the anti-foreign movement seemed to have been another matter, one in which the populace was directly involved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205072, "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-1966", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n23\n\nThis may violate some of the basic principles of the historian's craft. It means going beyond the documents, or at least reading into them interpretations which the documents per se may not warrant. It means reading between the lines. It may even mean attributing significance to the fact that a document does not exist. It means applying the principles of anthropology, sociology, agricultural economics, even psychology to events which occurred many years ago.\n\n....a tricky procedure at best.\n\nBut it may, in the end, bring us closer to what \"really happened\" than has heretofore been the case.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ch'ü Tung-tsu, Local Government under the Ch'ing, Cambridge, 1962.\n\n2 Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960.\n\n3 These are the districts (hsien) of Nan-hai, P'an-yü #, Hsun-teh 顺德, Tung-kuan 东莞, Hsin-an 新安, and Hsiang-shan 香山,\n\n4 Cf. M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, London, 1951; P. C. Kuo, A Critical Study of the Opium War, New York, 1935; H. P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, Cambridge, 1964; etc.\n\n5 For account of this pirate's exploits see C. F. Neumann, History of the Pirates Who Infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, 1831. This is a translation of a Chinese work entitled Ching-hai fen-chih 靖海氛志 by Yuan Yung-lun 阮永纶\n\n6 The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, July, 1821,\n\n7 The Canton Register, July 26, 1828.\n\n8 The Chinese Repository, June, 1834, p. 83.\n\n9 The Canton Register, February 18, 1828,\n\n10 Ibid., October 3, 1829.\n\n11 Ibid., December 12, 1829 and September 6, 1830.\n\n12 The Chinese Repository, June, 1832, p. 80.\n\n13 The Canton Register, March 8, 1828.\n\n14 The Chinese Repository, April, 1836, p. 566.\n\n15 Ibid.\n\n16 Ibid.\n\n17 Kwang-chou fu chih (广州府志), Canton, 1879 ed., chuan 81, p. 286.\n\n18 The Canton Register, June 18, 1829,\n\n19 For details see pertinent issues of The Chinese Repository, The Chinese Courier; The Canton Register; Kwang-chou fu chih, p. 306.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205327, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nAs I have said, stowaways and private cargo of this kind were considered legitimate 'pidgin'. Many snug villas on the south coast of England and the Clyde coast of Scotland owe their origin to legitimate 'pidgin' and 'squeeze'. Opium, drugs, and arms and ammunition came into a different category, however, and Europeans involved in this kind of 'pidgin' were usually acting under duress. Any unsolved murder, suicide, or disappearance of a European officer invariably gave rise to lurid rumours of entanglement with unscrupulous opium gangs.\n\nI once found a dozen or so small flat tins, like sardine cans, tucked away among some clothes in a rarely used drawer in my cabin. I was new on the coast at the time, and pleasantly thrilled when told that it was opium. I was advised that the best thing to do was to throw it over the side, and the outcome was that the messroom boy disappeared at the next port. My only other experience of opium was its sickly sweet smell, which I used to encounter when going along the 'tween decks at night. There were always a few groups of passengers there indulging in a mild session of opium smoking. Even today, some forty years later, any similar smell takes me back to the dimly lit 'tween decks of the Antung, Kwangtung, or Kiangsu, and revives all my old memories of the China coast.\n\n'China coasters' were run on the compradore system in those days, a maritime analogy to the system common in much of Sino-Western commerce ashore in the ports. Under this system the deck passenger accommodation was hired from the owners by a Chinese compradore, who carried his own staff to look after the deck passengers.\n\nThe compradore was also in charge of the cargo, for which in turn he was paid by the owners, and his staff which looked after the deck passengers when at sea acted as stevedores and tallymen in port. The compradore was responsible for stolen or damaged cargo, and insured himself against this, often through the owners acting in their capacity as insurance brokers. The chief steward and his staff looked after the captain, officers, and saloon passengers; while the bosun and Number One Fireman each catered for his own department. The compradore was a responsible Chinese business man, with influential connections at all the ports at which his ship called, and a great part of the ship's success depended on him. Harmonious relations between the captain and the compradore, therefore, were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205330, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n85\n\nwere very small, but had very powerful engines and steering gears. Only the high passenger and freight charges enabled them to run at a profit. One of the most important cargoes from the Upper Yangtse was tung oil, which was latterly carried in bulk. This oil was used in the manufacture of high quality paints and lacquers, and was so valuable that the privilege of cleaning out the cargo pumps after discharge was one of the most highly prized perquisites of the engine room staff. The Upper Yangtse was too dangerous for night navigation, so that the Gorge boats anchored each night at dusk, and set off again at dawn. Officers on these ships were paid a special bonus after a season on the Upper River, and also given local leave.\n\nBecause they operated in inland waters, the Yangtse riverboats were exempt from certain of the manning regulations which applied to deep sea British ships. Certificated masters and chief mates were always carried, but sometimes the second mates had no British qualifications, and were either White Russians or Chinese. During the inter-war years these White Russians were often former officers of the Imperial Russian Navy, and without exception were very capable and efficient. On the engine room side the chief and second engineers had British qualifications, but sometimes Chinese third engineers were employed,\n\nThe opium clipper tradition inherited by the 'China coasters' resulted in smart and well run ships, a credit to the owners and crews concerned. The pre-war 'China coasters' were probably the smartest ships in Britain's Merchant Navy, and their bright paintwork, gleaming brass work, and smart red-sashed quartermasters would have gladdened the heart of old Admiral Benbow. Their closest rivals under the Red Ensign were the coasters of the Straits Steamship Company which were based on Singapore, and which traded round Malaya and the East Indies. 'China coasters', apart from officers, had all Chinese crews, while the Straits coasters and their Dutch K.L.M. rivals had Malays on deck and Chinese down below, a good combination in pre-Sukarno days. Sailors and firemen sometimes spent a lifetime on one ship, and often the bosun and Number One Fireman would have started their careers on the same ship twenty-five years earlier. The Arab and Indian practice of the bosun and Number One being responsible for their department was followed on the China coast, and each department was very much a family and clan affair.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205511, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "48\n\nT. J. LINDSAY\n\nOne point that shows up in the accounts is the speed of coaling at Singapore. In 1880 Glencoe loaded 1,130 tons in 103 hours, in 1882 Sterling Castle 1,600 tons in 10 hours, in 1884 Glenogle 1,500 tons in 62 hours. Moyune 700 tons in 5 hours in 1887 as against Glenogle 1,200 tons in 5 hours in the same year. The “Glen\" figures of 220 tons an hour in 1884 and 240 tons in 1887 are remarkable.\n\nWhat of the conditions in these ships racing home? The stoke-hold must have been almost unbearable, so it is no wonder that difficulties with the stokers were reported. In 1882 there was trouble culminating in Singapore when a stoker of Glenogle struck the Chief Engineer. When a European shore policeman came on board the 31 stokers threatened but the policeman \"took his stand in the most daring manner and fairly cowed the men by his determined demeanour\". At Hankow, too, there was trouble in 1883 when some of Glenogle's crew were reported to have mutinied and the Navy had to be called in to deal with the situation.\n\nPassengers, too, had something to complain of. On one occasion in Singapore when two or three passengers had been granted conditional passages they found the saloon and every state-cabin crammed with tea.\n\nConditions in the China tea trade were about to change. In 1881 the North China Daily News wrote:\n\n“It is not so many years since China was the only tea producing country. It was sufficient then for the buyer to watch the deliveries at home and the export from China, to be guided, with little chance of error, in his operations. But the fatal energy of our race has reared up in British India a frightful rival to the Flowery Land, and India not only demoralises China by sending opium here, but demoralises our tea markets by sending tea in increasingly enormous quantities to London. There are no squeezing Mandarins in India, there is European supervision in packing and the firing of the leaf, and the plantations are connected with civilization by the railway and the telegraph. Everything is done to give India an unfair advantage over China. Java is competing too, and Ceylon is threatening. As yet Indian tea is hardly taken on the continent of Europe at all, but here too it will penetrate sooner or later, as it is doing into America and Australia, and then there will be no corner of the earth where the sway of China tea will be undisputed.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205731, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "31\n\nMILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE:\n\nCHINESE RESISTANCE TO THE OCCUPATION OF HONG KONG'S NEW TERRITORIES IN 18991\n\nR. G. GROVES*\n\nIntroduction\n\nViolence, or the very real possibility of violence, was endemic in southeastern China during the nineteenth century. The provinces of Kwangsi, Kwangtung, and Fukien were notorious to imperial official and foreign observer alike for their varieties of armed conflict. Brine, a British naval officer with contemporary experience of the coastal provinces, described the mid-nineteenth century situation as follows: \"the whole history of the period is little else than a continual series of local insurrections, bursting out in all directions. The coast was infested with pirates, who not only caused great injury to the coasting trade, but frequently landed and sacked the villages lying adjacent to the sea. In the two Kwang provinces armed bodies of men moved from town to town, and committed large robberies in open day... the Pekin Gazettes were full of reports from the provincial governors acquainting the emperor with the disorganized state of the country, and complaining of the inadequacy of their troops to quell the interminable revolts.\" To this catalogue of ills may be added the Opium and Arrow Wars, inter-lineage and clan warfare, ethnic conflict, and major and minor rebellions.\n\nThe prevalence of violence was by no means new. Writing of the Hsin-an District of Kwangtung Province, just over a century ago, the German missionary Krone noted: \"Hung-mo the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary... to appoint an officer with the title ‘Shou-yu-sho'... Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.\"3 More recently Professor Maurice Freedman, surveying a mass of evidence and arguing that organized violence\n\n* Mr. Groves is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia. He conducted field research in the New Territories between 1963-65. His article \"The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories\" appeared in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories (ed. M. Topley) published by the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. in 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205786, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "86 \n\nR. BRUCE \n\nmonopolies abolished whilst levies on imports were to be limited, and vessels were to pay a tax on their size. But Burney failed to get permission for a British Consul to reside at Bangkok. Nor was he able to free British nationals from Siamese law. \n\nNext came the Americans. A merchant, Mr. Edmund Roberts, was commissioned by the President to secure a treaty at least as good as the British one. This was seven years later, in 1833. Although a President seemed to the Siamese a much less august personage than a King and America was both remote and less important, Roberts secured his treaty. It was almost exactly the same as the Burney agreement. \n\nIn the next two decades, especially in the \"forties, trade became more difficult. In fact the treaties with the British and the Americans gradually eroded away, and the old monopolies were taken back by the Court. Imports and exports were farmed to Chinese merchants by the King. Duties were arbitrary and heavy and trade dwindled. Everywhere else the British had greatly expanded their commerce by mid-century. Singapore was growing rapidly, the China trade had increased still further after the Opium War, the northern coast of Borneo was open to British commerce. It seemed only natural and civilised to the bold merchant princes and sea captains of Victorian England that Siam should, willy-nilly, share in the new prosperity, especially now that the first steamships had reached the Gulf of Siam. \n\nSir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, was the next British envoy to sail up the Menam to Bangkok. He came in August 1850 on board H.M.S. Sphinx accompanied by a merchant vessel of the Company, the Nemesis, both steamers. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, cautioned Sir James to be careful in his quest for better trade. \n\n\"In conducting these negotiations\", he directed, “you must be very careful not to get involved in any disputes or hostile proceedings which would render our position in Siam worse than it now is or which might compel Her Majesty's Government to have recourse to forcible measures in order to obtain redress. It is very important that if your efforts should not succeed they should at least leave things as they are and should not expose us to the alternative of submitting to fresh affront or of undertaking expensive operations to punish insult”.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206012, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 87\n\nhundreds were to be seen, and the 1937 census showed Bangkok to have 196,000 Chinese females to 336,000 males. This shortage of female compatriots in the early centuries induced many Chinese to intermarry with the local Malays, Siamese, or Indonesians; and until well into the present century there always seemed a reasonable chance that the overseas Chinese would merge into the local communities. The relaxation of anti-emigration laws and the cheap and easy communications provided by the steam-ships, however, enabled more and more Chinese women to emigrate, and this reversed the previous trend towards assimilation. This factor may have been as important as political developments in increasing tension between the newly independent states of South-east Asia and their Chinese populations.\n\nBy the end of the 19th century the combination of enlightened public opinion and official action had mitigated the worst abuses of the continued coolie trade to South America and the West Indies. At the same time economic developments in South-east Asia were greatly increasing the already large demand for Chinese labour in that region. Rubber and tea plantations, tin mines and rice mills, all required labour which the local populations were either unable or unwilling to supply. As a result the centuries-old emigrant trade from south China increased many times over, and it was with this comparatively recent mass emigrant trade that the China coast steamship companies were most concerned. This became one of the most profitable sections of the China coast trade.\n\nThe domestic deck passenger trade had been important from the earliest days of foreign shipping on the China coast. The opium clippers had only carried European passengers, mail, and specie, in addition to opium; but all other foreign ships on the coast looked on deck passengers as a very important source of revenue. In a country so ill-equipped with roads as 19th century China, shipping played an indispensable role in passenger transport. In 1849, for instance, when the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao Steam Packet Company was formed and commenced a regular service between the three ports, the cost of a deck passage between any two of these ports was one dollar. The speed, regularity, and safety of the foreign steamships soon enabled them to capture the cream of the deck passenger trade from the junks.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206402, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n193\n\nkeen on the east. I see this island the natural outlet to all Europe, and by the Pacific lines to the United States, for the mineral wealth and various produce of one half the great Empire. I see itself the home of a happy population, three times more numerous than the present, and foreigner and Chinese dwelling together in mutual appreciation. I see in its harbour a forest of smoking tunnels, with hardly a white-winged sailing vessel among them; opium is a phantom of the past. The emigration of the poor goes on from it on principles approved and guarded by the Chinese and other governments, while the enterprise and integrity of its merchants, the kindness, forbearance, and purity of all its inhabitants are spoken of with delight from Peking to Hai-nan, from the farthest west of Sze-ch'uen to the borders of the Eastern sea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206424, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n215\n\nThe opium trade of Shanghai may have taken place \"on the busy Bund\", but not until after 1858. The authors apparently never have heard of Woosung and its hulks.\n\nThe authors, intent on opium, assert an oil painting of an island with a British flag on a pole on the shore is \"Lintin”. In the background, with top masts housed, are ships. It is painted and signed \"C. Cramer 1803\", obviously an European artist. Evidently the authors do not realize that opium trading in 1803 was conducted at Whampoa and only reached Lintin in 1821. They also err when they state Jardine Matheson & Co. “diverted their ships to Lintin Island and other independents followed suit”. In 1803 Jardine Matheson & Co. was not in existence. They maintain the ships in the background are \"Scandinavian flag-ships”. Of course there is no such thing as a Scandinavian flag, and a look at the poor photograph shows a white field and a dark cross on a flag, more indicative of the St. George ensign than either a Danish or Swedish flag with its dark field and light cross. You will find this Scandinavian error repeated 5 other times. To cap it all, one finds a British sailor rolling a barrel along the shore, surely an impossibility in 19th century China. Can the scene be somewhere in the Mediterranean where there are islands and mountains and British warships in 1803?\n\nThe authors manage to insert a most extraordinary amount of misinformation into their nautical writings. In plate 37, correct to a French \"bark”, not a “schooner\". The liner Empress of Japan is identified correctly in plate 44, but why date the picture \"circa 1880\" when the steamer begins service in 1891? The painting is on the \"stern\" of the Chinese Merchant Junk, plate 63, not the \"prow\", as the rudder shows clearly just below. For the English \"clipper\" dated 1866, substitute \"bark\". Evidently they know nothing of monsoons or they would revise \"the cumbersome East Indiamen which could only make two round sailings each season between India and China”. Of course the answer is one sailing per season. The numerous islands between Macao and the China Sea \"make a landfall at Macao\" almost prohibitively difficult.\n\nSome of the identifications of Port Scenes are ludicrous. Any person who locates \"the Praya Grande bordering the bay of the inner harbor” at Macao or \"the Governor's Palace at the northern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206776, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n47\n\nonly did she carry troops, but often had a gun brig and several small boats in tow. Diana seemed to produce an effect on the Burmese analogous to that produced on the Mexicans by Cortes' horses. She continued in government service until she was broken up at Calcutta in 1835, and her engines installed in a new ship of the same name. The second Diana was also built at Calcutta, and was employed by the government as a cruiser against pirates in the Straits of Malacca,\n\nAlthough her origin was so closely connected with China, the first Diana never operated in Chinese waters. The first steamship to be seen in China was the Forbes, also built at Calcutta and launched in 1829. The Forbes was much larger than the Diana and cost 300,000 rupees. After she had been running on the Hoogly for several months, the Forbes was chartered by Jardine, Matheson and Company to tow their Jamesina, a barque of 362 tons which had formerly been H. M. S. Curlew, to China. At this time great importance was attached to getting the opium from India to China as quickly as possible in order to command the highest price, and no satisfactory passages had been made from Singapore to China against the north-east monsoon. The opium ships normally waited at Singapore until the monsoon was over before tackling the passage up the South China Sea, so that only one India-China voyage was possible in a season.\n\nThe Forbes-Jamesina convoy left Calcutta on 14th March 1830; the Forbes having 134 tons of coal on board, two-thirds English and the remainder Indian, while the Jamesina had another 52 tons of Indian coal for the Forbes, besides her main cargo of 840 chests of opium. Good weather was experienced on the passage to Singapore, where they arrived on the 27th, steaming for most of the time at 5-4 knots, and at the most favourable times reaching 7 knots. Four days were spent at Singapore, during which time the boiler was cleaned and bunkering carried out. The monsoon was still strong when they left on 31st, and speed fell first to 3-4 and later to 2-1 knots. By 12th April Forbes had only 12 days' coal left with over 500 miles to go and no sign of the monsoon easing. The Jamesina, therefore, was cast off and Forbes proceeded alone, reaching Lintin on 19th April, the first steamship to be seen in China. The Jamesina arrived two days later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206777, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "48\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nThe Forbes completed the last few days of her passage under sail, in order to reserve a few tons of coal for the river passage. When the Chinese pilot came on board to take her up to Lintin she was under steam with wind and tide against her. He showed no astonishment, however, and quietly gave the helmsman his orders as if everything was normal. At last the captain could stand his bland indifference no longer, and asked him if he had ever seen a steamship before. The pilot calmly replied that this mode of propulsion had once been common in many parts of China, but had fallen into disuse. He knew that everything was alright so long as black smoke came from the funnel, but as soon as white steam appeared he was uneasy. Chinese acquainted with 'pidgin English' came to call a paddle steamer like the Forbes \"outside walkee\", and a screw steamer \"inside walkee\".\n\nAlthough this attempt to beat the monsoon failed in terms of the charter, it was still considered a success. During the passage between Singapore and Lintin coal had been transhipped from the Jamesina to the Forbes three times, each transhipment taking 3 to 4 hours. It was thought that 2 or 3 days could have been saved by speedier bunkering at Singapore and speedier transhipment at sea. That the experiment was not repeated was due to several factors. One was the lack of suitable fuel at Canton; the Forbes burned wood on her return passage. Another was the prospect of objections from the Chinese authorities.\n\nThe most important factor, however, was the greatly improved sailing ships which were being built at that particular time. In 1829, just a year before the Forbes-Jamesina experiment, the first and most famous of the opium clippers, the Red Rover, appeared on the scene. In her maiden voyage the Red Rover made the round trip between Calcutta and Macao in 55 days, carrying 800 chests of opium. She had equally successful passages in the next two years, by which time she had at least three rivals on the run. From then no one thought of employing steamships against the north east monsoon in the South China Sea, and the success of the opium clippers kept steamships out of the opium trade for another twenty years. The Red Rover, like many of her successors and rivals was built in India, at the Howra Dock Company's yard. She was launched in September 1829, and for her first few years was owned by her captain, the famous Captain Clifton, in partnership with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206883, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "154\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMCMULLEN COLLECTION OF BILLS OF LADING\n\nAs stated in the Hon. Librarian's report, printed on page 11 of this issue, the most important accession during the year was the collection of nineteenth century bills of lading formed by Rear-Admiral M.A. McMullen, C.B., O.B.E., R.N. (Rtd.),* The bills are for various consignments to and from China ports, and there is a brief description of the collection on p. 37 of the printed catalogue of the Library of the Branch. A calendar with index has been prepared by the Hon. Librarian.\n\n*This was obtained as a gift for the Branch through the offices of Dr. J. R. Jones, Past President of the Branch. The following text of his letter to Mr. Rydings, our Hon. Librarian, explains how this came about:\n\nH. A. Rydings Esq.,\n\nThe Librarian,\n\nThe University of Hong Kong.\n\nHONG KONG.\n\nDear Rydings,\n\nOld Bills of Lading\n\n3 Abermor Court, 15 May Road, HONG KONG.\n\n25th April, 1972.\n\nTwo years ago I had some discussions with Mr. J. G. Young of Messrs. Andrew Weir and Company Limited of Baltic Exchange Buildings, 21 Bury Street, of London E.C.3. concerning a number of bills of lading dating from the time of the Canton Regime. They include Bills of Lading from Jardine Matheson and Company Limited and their predecessors, Magniac and Company and Augustine Heard and Company and others trading in Canton and later in Hong Kong.\n\nThey were owned by Admiral McMullen who wished to find a suitable home for them and I considered that they were of great interest historically and otherwise, and of special interest to Hong Kong, and I have accepted them in the name of the Royal Asiatic Society. I enclose a package concerning these documents and hope that the Society will accept them.\n\nYours sincerely,\n\nJ. R. JONES.\n\nP.S. The owner of the collection of the old bills of lading was Rear Admiral M. A. McMullen who entrusted them to Mr. J. G. Young of Messrs. Andrew Weir and Co. Ltd. with whom I was put in touch by Mr. H. B. Neve, formally of the Bank Line (China) Limited of Hong Kong. Amongst the collection Jardine Matheson and Company appears twice, once as receivers of 10 chests of Opium, whilst Gilmans are also mentioned as shippers of 100 half chests of tea from Shanghai to Hong Kong. There is also reference to Macondray & Co. who are presumably related to the Arm of that name now operating in the Philippines.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206891, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "162\n\nRattans\n\nRice\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n6 SUWONADA 29, 30, 31, 33, 34\n\n8, 20\n\nRouth (F.R. & D.)\n\n35\n\nTacoran, Nanjie\n\nRussell & Co.\n\n16, 29, 33\n\nTaria, J.M. de\n\nTaylor, P.\n\nSACRAMENTO\n\n22\n\nTea\n\n14, 30\n\nSafflower*\n\n33\n\nThomas (Charles) & Co.\n\nSalmon\n\n38\n\nTongues\n\nSan Francisco\n\n15, 22, 24\n\nTrautmann & Co.\n\n25, 38\n\nTurpentine\n\nSelzer water\n\n34\n\nShanghai\n\nSHERBURNE\n\nSilva, J. A. da\n\nSilver bars\n\nSemechand, Caramichand [?] 4\n\n29, 30, 31, 33, 34\n\nUpton, W.F.\n\nVALETTA\n\n1\n\nVENUS\n\n4, 12\n\nVermicelli\n\n22\n\nSingapore Roads\n\nSmith (W.H.) & Son\n\nSorabjee & Simjee\n\n7, 9\n\nWHEELER, W.E.\n\n23\n\nWhiskey\n\nAnagrada 2, 28\n\n10\n\n5\n\n7\n\n38\n\n31\n\n21\n\n18\n\n24\n\n37\n\n24\n\n15\n\n38\n\n2 White, G.\n\n1\n\nSteel, A.\n\n7\n\nWild (Aaron D.) & Sons\n\n16\n\nStephen, S.\n\n38 Williams, Blanchard & Co.\n\n38\n\nStone, Bombay\n\n37 With, M.C.G.\n\n28\n\n*See notes below.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe following notes relate to the more obscure items in the foregoing index.\n\nAnfião de Malva-Opium from Malwa, an area in W. Central India, which together with Benares and Patna were the main opium growing areas. I am indebted to Mr. J. M. Braga for this identification, which defeated students of Portuguese in Hong Kong.\n\nCumsingmoon-Kap Shui Mun, the straits between the N.E. point of Lantao Island and Tsing I Island.\n\nCutch=The commercial name of the catechu obtained from Acacia catechu, used in tanning (O.E.D.)\n\nNankeens-Either a kind of yellow cotton cloth, originally made in Nanking, or trousers made of this material.\n\nSafflower=Dried petals of Carthamus tinctorius, a thistle-like plant cultivated in the Mediterranean region, India and China for the red dye obtained from the flowers, also used in the making of rouge.\n\nHong Kong June, 1973.\n\nH. A. RYDINGS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207062, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n127\n\nsurprising that the Governor of Hong Kong wrote to London in April 1899, \"The Tai Po district is well known in Canton to be turbulent, that to the northeast of Mirs Bay being noted for piracy, and so ill-disposed that I am informed no Customs Official dares to land there except with the support of a revenue cruiser\". When making his farewell speech to the Legislative Council of the Colony four years later, he described its residents as 'a large agricultural population with a reputation for turbulence .... and with a rooted objection to any interference with their settled habits or customs'.2 Smuggling was common throughout the region, whether of salt or opium. The older villagers admit to their complicity in these varied activities: an old man born on Lamma Island in 1883 told me in 1960, with a twinkle in his eye, that he had been in all lines of business.\n\nDuring all this time the situation in inland areas of the hsien was apparently no better than on the sea and coast. The situation in the late 1850s was described in eloquent terms by the German missionary Krone who had been in the area since his arrival in China in 1850. He spoke of the large bands of robbers which frequently pass to and from through the country pillaging the villages and parties of travellers ....3 He explained that 'when the Mandarins intend to levy taxes, they announce their intention to the gentry of the villages, one or two weeks, or sometimes a month, before their arrival. They then make a progress through the district, accompanied by a sufficient force to protect themselves against large bands of robbers, which sometimes have the audacity to attack the tax collectors if the escort be not strong'.4 He emphasised 'how troubled and insecure the normal condition of this district is, and for a very long time has been'.5\n\nKrone then noted an additional, and in southeast China characteristic, source of insecurity. 'Not only are robbers and pirates to\n\n1 SP, 1899, p. 528.\n\n2 Hansard, 1903, p. 53.\n\n3 Krone, p. 114.\n\n4 Krone, p. 119.\n\n5 Krone, p. 114. The wider area bore no better reputation. Writing of the Tan-shui district of neighbouring Kwei-shin hsien, the Hong Kong Daily Telegraph of 13th March 1879, quoting from the Catholic Register stated \".... now and then the Chinese authority has to send some military Mandarins with extraordinary powers to clear the place by taking up a good number of robbers: and only last year the great military Mandarin told one of our Missionaries that of one village he has dozens of names in view for the next execution\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207789, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA (With especial reference to the Upper Yangtze)\n\nA. D. BLUE*\n\nWest China, and in particular the provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan, interested British merchants in India before the end of the eighteenth century, and this interest increased after Britain got a foothold in Lower Burma in the early nineteenth century. Not until Britain was established at Shanghai and on the Lower Yangtze, however, did the British China traders take any great interest in West China. Until the 1860s, therefore, the initiative in opening West China to British trade came from the West, and concentrated on reviving the old caravan routes from Upper Burma into Yunnan. The Treaty of Yandabo between Britain and Burma in 1826, which established Britain in Arakan, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, rekindled interest in these old routes. Sino-Burmese contacts went back many centuries, but were usually recorded from a diplomatic or military aspect, although it was well known that there had been considerable trade along these routes. At this time Canton was the only British foothold on the China coast, and the much shorter land route across Burma seemed to offer many benefits to British and Indian merchants in both India and Burma. Then, and for many years afterwards, India was the source of most of China's foreign imports, cotton and opium in particular, and much of British policy in the Far East was concerned with maintaining and extending this trade.\n\nAn interesting side product of this China-India relationship was the proposal to import workers from west China for the infant Assam tea industry. The East India Company had become interested in the possibility of tea production in Assam as early as 1823, when indigenous tea plants were found in the Upper Brahmaputra\n\n* The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtze in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Five of his articles have been published previously in the Journal. \"European Navigation on the Yangtze\" in Vol. 3, 1963, \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965, \"The China Coasters\" in Vol. 7, 1967, \"Chinese Emigration and the Deck Passenger Trade\" in Vol. 10, 1970 and \"Early Steamships in China\" in Vol. 13, 1973.\n\nPlates 20-25 and the sketch-maps at the end of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208110, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND\n\n133\n\nTyphoons bring with them torrents of rain. More falls in the two or three days that follow than in a whole year in drier climates. It is these rains which make possible the dense population of the deltas of South China as well as the disastrous floods.\n\nFrom October to March there is little rain, but the sun is always bright and hot. The wind blows for the most part from the North and East, and the cool air, hot sun, and brilliant sea make an exhilarating setting for the activities of the little state. Even in summer the climate is far superior to Hongkong's, the air fresher and the oppressive canopy of clouds less unbroken. Hence there are summer visitors, missionaries and their families from the interior, and business and professional men from Hongkong, who live apart from the village but in perfect friendliness and to mutual advantage.\n\nThe town itself stretches for a mile along the shore, being only a few streets deep at the ends, but widening out in the middle to a little market square, some three streets wide. The main landing stage opens on to this market place, and here the police and the male and female searchers take their stand to prevent the smuggling of arms or opium which would otherwise most certainly take place. There is another and older pier a hundred yards or so away, at which the salt junks load.\n\nIn the main street almost every building is a shop, workshop, or both, until we reach the end nearest the Pak Tai Temple, which is in the \"West End\" of the town. There we find private houses of the usual narrow type. The backs of half these shops and houses run out on to the beach on a picturesque disarray of piles and retaining walls, interspersed with garbage heaps. There is none of the beautiful and simple cleanliness of the Japanese village. On this beach side or on the beach itself are two slipways for beaching and repairing the junks, a tannery, several boat-building yards, a distillery, coffin maker, and several blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and coppersmiths' shops.\n\nThe beach is a scene of constant activity. At the Eastern end is a floating village of sampans, occupied by families of the Tan Ka tribe, and when one of these sampans becomes too old to float any more, it is hauled above high water mark, and some family or other lives there until it literally drops to pieces. They look rather like huge sea slugs taking to life on shore when the struggle for survival on the water has become too severe for them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208125, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "148 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD \n\nto nearness to the market in Hong Kong, partly to the presence of coral in the shallow and then comparatively clean waters of the western approaches: in fact the sea near Ping Chau was officially divided into two Marine Lots, Nos. 1 and 2. Not long after, with constant raking of the sea bed for raw material, growing pollution of water from rubbish dumping by the Sanitary Department and increasing sewerage from Hong Kong by increase of the water carriage system, the industry declined for lack of coral to burn: complaints were made about this to me at one time. In Ping Chau this industry employed numbers of Hoklo lime burners and in 1925 they staged a clan fight which cost several men their lives. There was no police station on the island, so investigations were delayed and no evidence of murder could be got: so after taking a lot of evidence in my 'court' in the Hong Kong office, I simply bound everybody over, which at any rate gave a period of peace to Ping Chau. It must not be thought that the decline of lime burning ruined Ping Chau, for the islanders had thoughtfully provided themselves with a lucrative light industry in the shape of six or seven flourishing gambling houses, which naturally emptied whenever a D.O.'s or Water Police launch appeared. \n\nCommunications with the outside world were then pretty elementary. A junk left Ping Chau about 8 a.m. for Hong Kong and returned to the island in the evening; no more encouraging to anyone wishing to 'Come to sunny Ping Chau' than the clouds of smoke and lime dust that rose perpetually from the kilns. Another industry for which Ping Chau and the other western islands were well adapted was distilling, as their inaccessibility was a great assistance to undertakings wishing to short-circuit the revenue regulations. \n\nYet another industry flourished at one time in this group of islands. The small islet of Kau Yi Tsai, between Ping Chau and Kau Yi Chau, has a cleft in its granite cliffs which opens inwards into a cave of some size. About 1922 this was the scene of the greatest opium seizure in the Colony's history up till then: 8 tons of Persian opium came from the cave, and the crew of the sampan guarding it were put up for banishment. Only the banishees appeared before me, as I was then in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, but what became of them I cannot remember. \n\nThe increasing population and prosperity of the Colony caused similar developments at Cheung Chau: building land was greatly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208132, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n155 \n\ncrews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. \n\nOne of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. \n\nAs I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap \n\n* Public Works Department.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208782, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "212\n\n\"Five Belongings\"\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n(a) Belonging to the Religion (皈依)\n\n(b) Belonging to the Mean (飯中)\n\n(c) Belonging to the Truth (皈正)\n\n(d) Belonging to the Unity (歸一)\n\n(e) Belonging to the Void (皈空)\n\n\"Four Tests\"\n\n(a) Test of True Self (考自)\n\n(b) Test of Sincerity (考真)\n\n(c) Test of Dedication (考願)\n\n(d) Test of Sacrifice (考捨)\n\nAlso the Religion practised a rather sophisticated form of \"sitting cross-legged\" as a means to cure opium addicts.\n\n(d) Yan Cheung Villa (仁昌別墅)\n\nAccording to surviving elderly inmates, the Yan Cheung Villa was built by a group of persons from South China who belong to a society established about 1920—known as the Tung Sin She (同善社). It belongs to that body of the laity worshipping the 'Three Religions' of China i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism*. It had followers in various parts of Kwangtung but no major centre. In the early 1930s the Society's leaders were looking for a site to build such a place, but Kwangtung was often in a disturbed state and they were of the opinion that a remote site in the New Territories of Hong Kong would be preferable, as the Colony had an enviable reputation for law and order, peace and quiet. Accordingly, a search was made for a suitable site. Tsuen Wan was then a small market town with a very quiet and beautiful hinterland and yet possessed excellent communications by sea and land with Hong Kong and Kowloon. A site with good fung shui in a locality with a propitious name was selected and agents bought land from local villagers.\n\n* Mayers Chinese Reader's Manual p.298 describes them as the Three Systems of Doctrine (or Religion)' and states that they 'constitute the recognized systems of religion, philosophy and ethics among the Chinese'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208800, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "230\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe years following the change-over were not peaceful. The western relations with China were not, on the whole, harmonious. This was largely because a tradition-bound and conservative bureaucracy, loosely ruled from Peking, was reluctant to allow contact with outsiders except within the long established tributary relationship by which the \"middle kingdom\" dealt with foreigners.\n\nProfessor Graham uses mainly western (and almost completely British) sources in his research. His extensive use of Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Admiralty and Indian Office Records in London and New Delhi has given him the expertise with which to assess British policymaking and the multifarious problems arising in its implementation in the imperial period of the nineteenth century. He uses private papers to complement official sources, delving into such well known collections as those left by the \"actors\" of the story, among them Palmerston, Wellington, Russell, Pottinger, Aberdeen, James Matheson, William Jardine. And he does not neglect the less well known diaries and journals left by common seamen and admirals who were participants in the action of the book.\n\nThe purpose, then, as the author admits, is to see the conflict between China and the west \"through European eyes” (p. viii). But here the author is rather modest for he does make excellent use of the best available translated sources to attempt to understand the conflicts from Chinese views.\n\nThe chapters are roughly chronological, beginning with a discussion of the Canton \"system\" of trade in tea, silk, opium and silver, and tracing the \"campaigns\" of the naval skirmishes in 1839-41 and 1856-60. Inserted, at appropriate places, are chapters on the founding of Hong Kong as a colony, the problems of administration and command in the Royal Navy (the China Station was not actually established until a division of the East Indies Station occurred in 1844), and the impact of the Crimean War, Russia and the Indian Mutiny upon events in China.\n\nIt is curious that rather limited naval skirmishes leading to consular treaties should be denominated by historians as “wars”. Professor Graham defines three separate Anglo-Chinese Wars, viz. 1839-41 (\"the Opium War\"), 1856-58, and 1860. These limited campaigns were found necessary, according to the preponderant British view, because Chinese officialdom was largely ignorant of western armed strength and must be shown by a demonstration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209316, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n205\n\nfarmers could ever raise enough cash for those expenses requiring substantial cash payments, e.g. to build or repair extensively a house or buy a new plough. I was told that careful management could make a plough last almost indefinitely: a completely new plough was needed only if the old one shattered into fragments. The wooden parts could be replaced by the farmer cutting and preparing wood himself, the coulter had to be regularly replaced by a coulter bought new but could be fitted on by the farmer. The blacksmith in Tai Po would accept the old coulter in part payment for the new one; he would then melt it down to recast it. Small expenses (e.g. extra rice, sugar, oil, other comestibles) could be met by the sale of firewood etc. Sugar was very cheap: sale of 1 picul of firewood would enable enough sugar and oil to be bought to last a thrifty family several weeks. As for houses, these were repaired as soon as the slightest signs of wear, cracks, leakage or ants appeared, and would thus survive almost for ever, barring typhoon or fire damage. If a home did get so damaged a poor family could only repair it by mortgaging its fields at a high price (say, at the rate of 1 or 5 picul per harvest per tau). If good years supervened in which there were good harvests and opportunities for wage labour such a family could recover and pay off the mortgage, but if bad years came the mortgage might be foreclosed and “that family would starve and might well die\". Substantial wealth in ready cash \"usually came from outside\" from remittances from seamen etc. as in Wai H.L.'s father's and uncle's case, or the Ng family in West Lane etc. One member of Chan family (Name given me by Wai H.L. but I forgot it) in Tai Wai “about 30 or 40 years older than Wai Siu-ling” (i.e. born about 1855-1865) became very rich as a seaman at the turn of the century or thereabouts or a little earlier. He became the \"leader” of an American ship. Villager wanting to go to sea would have to receive his recommendation, and would have to pay to get it. He also smuggled opium to Chinese communities in the U.S.A., making great profits which he used to buy up houses and fields in Tai Wai. He shamed the other villagers \"by wearing only silk when they could afford only hemp, and eating pork and chicken when they could afford only rice and salt fish” He also married the most beautiful girl in Sha Tin, However, he was caught when his last smuggling adventure \"just before he retired\" (1915?) went wrong and was fined very heavily. He could not pay and had to sell all his belongings at an auction. He was considered a \"bad man\" - not because of his smuggling but because he did not help the village. \"Other men who became rich like this would repair the r'ong (ancestral hall) or do other communal acts, but he not only refused but would not even help his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209870, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "107\n\nfamous for the 8½ tons of Persian opium found there about 1921, guarded by an armed sampan and hidden in a cave. Kau Yi Chau (“Armchair Island\") is larger and higher. The sea all round is polluted with Hong Kong refuse tipped from sanitary barges.\n\nFurther on to the east is Lamma: also rendered \"Nam A” (\"Southern Forked Island”). This is an island of remarkable shape. Its best harbour is in the north-west, Yung Shu Wan (\"Banyan Tree Bay\"): all the others have defects: Luk Chau Wan (\"Deer Island Bay\"), Sokkwu Wan (\"Dragnet Bay\") or Picnic Bay, and Tung O (“East Haven”) are all too exposed in winter, Tai Wan (\"Big Bay\") and the other landing places on the west coast are surf-beaten in summer, and Tung O is more liberally supplied with reefs than any other bay in the islands except Ma Wan. Sham Wan (\"Deep Bay\"), a beautiful, deep, drowned valley, gets the swell nearly all the year round; besides, there is hardly any cultivated land by it. Hence Yung Shu Wan, with well-watered plains, villages, and low hills behind it, is the island's only commercial harbour: it has a sampan ferry to Aberdeen, the island's real commercial centre.\n\nLamma specialises in orchards, chiefly of papaya; water buffaloes, tigers and other evil beasts are unknown there, and the island seems prosperous, though animal diseases and shortage of water often cause losses. An interesting point is that some of the land here was used as endowments for what we would call \"fellowships\" for scholars in Namtau under the old order of things.\n\nSince 1932 Lamma has attained much fame as the leading site of the prehistoric culture of the South China coast, as the result of my finding large quantities of ancient pottery in good condition, and the later researches of Father Finn, who published his results in detail in the \"Hong Kong Naturalist\".25 The earliest glazed pottery in China comes from here. Another site nearby has rougher, more primitive objects than the bronzes and ornaments of Tai Wan; and a hill near Yung Shu Wan forms a third site closely related to the other two. At least four other sites have been found on the island, besides stone axes on the hills. The modern population probably does not exceed 1,000,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210162, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "112 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nen are all of the sort that go barefooted and work in the field. I have not seen one small-footed woman here. At least 8/10 of men here smoke opium.' \n\nAs we have seen, Aberdeen, about the same time, was, as Collinson reports, also a fishing port. According to another military observer, Captain Cunynghame, it contained about 200 buildings, and had “a very respectable appearance”. It is thus very likely that it engaged in the same mixed business as Stanley, and contained a similar size of population and a similar mixture of people.24 \n\nThe villagers were essentially farmers and fishermen relying on their padi fields for a subsistence rice crop twice a year, supplemented by coastal fishing. The old style of village life, that must have characterized Hong Kong's settlements before British rule, lingered on in its essentials well into this century until squatters and development ended the old life style. Even as late as 1967, at Little Hong Kong, Old Village, an old lady then aged 80 told me that her's had been the first family in the village to apply for a mains water supply ten years before, and some villagers were still in 1967 cutting grass to use as fuel to heat water, cook pig food, etc. and going to the foreshore to find edible items. \n\nIn earlier days, the hillsides were apportioned for grass cutting between clans and their member families as in the New Territories, and she had changed areas where she married a man in another clan from the New Village. Besides being cut for fuel at home, grass was taken to Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay to sell to the boat people anchored there. They used it to burn the marine growth from the underside of their craft at regular intervals (usually twice a month), as was done in many coastal villages in the area. \n\nThe villagers used the adjacent sea shore to supplement their diet, waiting for the tide to go out and spending up to four or five hours daily in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lunar months (March till May or June) gathering sea eggs, digging in the sand for clams, looking for other shell fish among the stones and gathering sea weed to feed the pigs. Both men and women engaged in the work, and she recalls both her mother and father carrying large baskets of sea", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210870, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "204\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThe Tong brothers, King-sing and Mow-chee, were strong supporters of any scheme to introduce modern scientific, commercial and industrial ideas to China. They participated in the organisation of the Chinese Polytechnic Institute founded in Shanghai in 1874. Its object, as set forth in the prospectus, was “to bring the sciences, arts and manufactures of Western Nations in the most practicable manner possible before the notice of the Chinese.\" The proposed means of doing so were through exhibitions, lectures and classes, and a library and reading room.\n\nAt the time of Tong Mow-chee's 60th birthday celebrations, it was stated that \"the Tong family had played an important part in the history of the trade relations between foreigners and Chinese in Shanghai, and they may be said to be the leaders of the party of progress in the initiation and development of commerce after the style of foreign countries.\"\n\nAs compradore of the leading foreign firm in China, Tong Mow-chee held important positions in Chinese business associations such as the Canton Guild at Shanghai, the Hankow Tea Guild and the Canton-Swatow Opium Guild. In these organisations he was called on to use his ability as arbitrator when disputes arose. In this his early experience in San Francisco in diplomatic negotiation proved of great help.\n\nTong Mow-chee died in Shanghai on July 6, 1897. A description of his funeral and a sketch of his life was published in the North China Herald. Some of the statements in the biographical account do not agree with contemporary documentary evidence about certain facts of his life.\n\nThe description of the funeral procession depicts a form of Chinese pageantry that has now all but vanished. \"The coffin was of very heavy and expensive wood which had been painted and varnished, over and over again, until the outside coat of the coffin was over an inch thick, which would enable it to defy damp and wet for years. A handsome gold-embroidered red satin pall covered the coffin, which took relays of 32 men each time to carry it. Many beautiful and expensive banners were to have been unfurled for the occasion, but rain prevented it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210996, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "33\n\nsave it from defilement, they often built incinerators to burn paper with words written on it. In 1859, the Commodore, Chang Yu-tang ski, erected a fine pavilion over an incinerator and old men were hired to gather abandoned paper for burning. On the plaque over the entrance were engraved the characters “Ching-hsi tzu-chih-ch'u”**(A pavilion for revering word-bearing paper) in Chang's calligraphy. Though a military man, Chang had pretensions to being a scholar and calligrapher, and his inscriptions found in the pavilion were reportedly much copied in the region.'\n\n16\n\nUp to 1898 there were no shops of any kind within the City.1 In fact, the word \"ch’eng” is rather arbitrarily translated as \"city\", which to a modern person, immediately conjures up visions of shops and other commercial facilities. This is misleading since traditionally, a Chinese ch'eng was simply an area enclosed for defence, and where officials resided. However, a cluster of shops lined the street Kowloon Street — which stretched for about a quarter of a mile from the East Gate to the water front. This became an increasingly prosperous market town, serving not only the Walled City but more distant areas such as Saikung and Shatin. From a fairly early date, a kaifong (chieh-fang i.e. neighbourhood) association, which organized such public functions as health, safety and good order, had existed.ii By 1880, the Lok Sin Tong (Luo-shan-t'ang; lit. Hall of Willing Charity) was founded. Like many Chinese \"charitable societies”, it exercised great social and economic influence, and its contribution was most strongly manifested in providing free education and free medicine in the area.\n\n18\n\nAs trade grew in the area, a Kwangtung Provincial Customs station was set up in 1871 to prevent smuggling, especially opium from Hong Kong. In 1886, it was replaced by a Chinese Maritime Customs station.iii A pier, the Lung-chin jetty, completed in 1875 after two years of construction, extended some 700 ft. into the sea. As the beach silted up and the jetty became worse for wear, it was repaired in 1892 and extended for another 260 ft. with a subscription of $1,700 raised by more than a hundred shops and individuals,\n\n20", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211016, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "53\n\nhowever, it is interesting to note that Mok's universe of persons and occupations encompasses such categories, as well as the more pragmatically justified \"Broker\", \"Interpreter\", \"Agent\", \"Magistrate\", \"Justice of the Peace\", \"Compradore\", \"Stone-cutter\", \"Tin-smith\", \"Shroff\", \"Coolie Agent\", et al. It is also interesting to note that the dramatis personae of this section of the book include \"Schoolmaster\", \"Teacher\", \"Horse-boy\", \"Bad man\", \"Fool\", \"Watchman\", \"Porter\", \"Deaf\", \"Convent Sister\", \"Midwife\", various family relations, \"Tenant\", \"Kidnapper\", \"Geomancer\", \"District watchmen\", \"Juggler\", and \"Priest\".\n\nA similar ambivalence, between traditional and modern as well as between East and West, may be detected in other sections of the book. Under \"Stores and Business Shops\", for example, one finds a Bank, Foreign goods shop, Factory, Dispensary, Tobacco store, Hardware dealers, Ship Chandler's store, as well as a Compradore shop, Opium divan, Pawn-broker's shop, and Chinese Bank. Under \"Clothing and Wearing Apparel\", the reader could discover a way to pronounce \"Pyjama\", \"Silk stockings\", \"Breeches\", \"Chemise\", \"Mosquito net\", \"Knickerbockers\", \"Cholera belt\", \"Combination\", \"Pantaloons\", and \"Swallow Tail coat\", while the separate section on \"Chinese Clothes\" introduced him to the pronunciation of such objects as \"Wadded Coat\", \"Mandarin robe\", and \"Queue string\". The section on \"Crockery and Household Articles\" and the separate section on \"Household Articles\" provide an interesting glimpse of some of the personal belongings which Mok Man Cheung assumed would be characteristic of his readership. Such items include \"Wine bottle\", \"Scissors\", \"Tea cup\", \"Tea saucers\", various other pieces of crockery (including a \"Mustard cup\"), \"Nut cracker\", \"Cheese scoop\", \"Pickle fork\", \"Candle stand\", \"Soy stand\", \"Bamboo broom\", \"Feather brush\", \"Red tape\", \"Bay Rum\", \"Hair oil\", \"Powder horn\", \"Bullets\", \"Horse saddle\", \"Dagger\", \"Tooth brush\", \"Tooth pick\", \"Chessmen\", \"Thimble\", \"Gramophone\", \"Telephone\", \"Looking glass\", \"Lamp chimney\", \"Scissors\", and \"Horse whip\". Under \"Court Matters\" and \"Punishments\", the reader could also find traditional modern, Eastern and Western practices intermingled. For example, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211309, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "PIRATES IN THE PEARL RIVER DELTA\n\nDIAN H. MURRAY*\n\nThis study of “Pirates in the Pearl River\" was a multiarchival research project whose goal was to piece together information on a group of Chinese non-elites who had hitherto escaped the attention of historians and to turn our attention seaward from the Chinese mainland in order to place our understanding of land-sea relations within a broader ecological context. The research drew upon documents written in Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Portuguese, Japanese and English and involved visits to archives in Washington, D.C.; Taipei, Taiwan; Beijing, China: Macao, Hong Kong; and London.\n\nAlmost at its outset my investigation revealed a significant growth of piracy within the Pearl River Delta and along the entire South China coast from Chekiang to Vietnam between 1796 and 1810. Within Kwangtung province alone a confederation of several thousand pirates and a fleet of 1,200 junks dominated delta and coast alike forcing all who set sail, regardless of whether they were merchantmen, fishermen, salt distributors or opium smugglers, to purchase passports for immunisation against attack.\n\nThe military prowess of the pirates was such that they successfully fought the Ch'ing government fleet, in the form of the Kwangtung provincial water force, to a standstill and involved themselves in both battles and negotiations with the Western foreigners then on the scene.\n\nYet, during 1810, at what seemed to be the height of their power, the pirates disappeared almost overnight from the sea. It then became my mission to understand both their rise and fall. Initially, I had intended to investigate the entire phenomenon and to account for all of the pirate activity along the southeast littoral. In the end, however, I discovered that just as there were economic macroregions within which life was lived on the continent, so, too, were there similar regions or 'water\n\n* Professor Murray, of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, is author of Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790-1870 (Stanford University Press, 1987). This talk was delivered to the Society on August 1st, 1983.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "135\n\nwas approached by a wealthy Honolulu merchant to be an opium agent in Kaneohe, he declined. He was a man of principle and honour; money could not tempt his integrity even when the going was rough. He was generous and a good provider. The family never lacked for food or snacks. After the children had had their dinner, Uncle would sit alone at the table, enjoying a peaceful interlude and slowly sipped a bowlful of Ng Ca Pei wine between mouthfuls of food. He seemed particularly fond of roast pork and could be heard chomping on the crisp skin. After dinner he would drink strong tea from a huge coffee-pot.\n\nIn contrast, Aunt, a short and plump woman, was easy-going and good-tempered. She seldom found it necessary to scold and discipline her children. She was a good cook and is especially remembered for her stuffed bitter melon and duck sautéed with pineapple slices. For Chinese New Year she would always send us a huge mochi pudding, about a foot in diameter and four to five inches thick. She would pound mochi rice in a large stone mortar with a huge stump of guava wood and use the flour for the pudding, which required a whole day of steaming. The mortar, a cow's horn that Uncle blew to summon the workers from the field at meal time, and a round whetstone operated by a foot pedal, were three pieces of equipment which fascinated me.\n\nUncle and Aunt retired to a life of peace and security, in a home free of encumbrances and with enough savings to be independent and to leave some to their children. Unfortunately, Aunt met an early death from a heart attack on 30 November 1941, at the age of 57. Uncle, on the other hand, lived to the ripe old age of 84, when he died from a stroke in 1962.\n\nGrandfather suffered from rectal bleeding and intense pain before he died. The date of his death is not known to me. Uncle used to send money to him regularly and continued to support Step-Grandmother after Grandfather's death. I met her for the first time in 1919 when Mother took Dora and me to the sick bedside of Father, who had been welcomed by Step-Grandmother into her house. She was then widowed, living alone with her son, Tin Suk, then about seven years old. Her daughter, Mrs. Pong, had already been married but frequently spent a few weeks visiting her. A good and enduring relationship developed between us and these family members during the six months we stayed in Shekki. Step-Grandmother extended herself in making us comfortable and in cooking\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211463, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "155\n\nI remember crying in pain and rage because adults and children gathered around me to watch.\n\nMother also used some of the ointments that Grandfather Jong brewed for us. One white jar contained a blackish, gummy substance, a bit of which in warm tea was for gastro-intestinal discomfort, and which I later learned contained a little opium. A jar of pink ointment was for drawing influence to a head after it had been warmed over a small flame and applied as a poultice. Mother was so pleased when Uncle Yim sent us a dried gall bladder of a bear because of its \"cooling\" effect on an infected area. Once she dissolved some of it in water and applied it to me. When I fell and cut my head, what Mother did was to press some tobacco, which Grandmother Jong used for her water-pipe, on the wound to stop the bleeding.\n\nAs we grew older and Mother began to learn more Western practices from some of her new-found friends, in particular Mrs. Lam Quan, a neighbour who had studied at Kawaiahao Seminary, castor oil was the first order of treatment when any of us got sick, followed by a dose of Chinese herbal tea to “cool” our system. According to Dr. Joseph Lam, the herbs served as a diuretic. Diet for the sick would always be congee, or sweet potatoes boiled in water and sweetened with cakes of brown sugar from China, or a thin sweetened gruel of white-flowered sweet potato flour, also imported from China. For a congested chest, she would rub the area with warm peanut oil and the feel of her soft, warm hand would give me comfort and reassurance.\n\nMother's health was always fragile, but she took very good care of herself. I do not know what her early ailments were, but she used to buy \"Vivai\" from a Mrs. McAllister upon the advice of Mrs. Lam Quan. Mother would drink the liquid and have either Ruth or me massage her back with the ointment at bedtime. Young and tired, I would often doze off while trying to do the boring task. Fortunately, this did not last long. In addition, Mother would use all kinds of Chinese medicines, often referring to a handbook of medicine. Soon after Helen was born, she suffered such severe gastric pains that a herbalist was called in to treat her. When I was in high school, it seemed that every time I planned to go to a football game, she would get so sick that I would have to be home with her. Later, after Father's death, when women were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211672, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "62\n\nthe British Concession at Kiu Kiang. The mud, waist-deep and soft in the autumn, when first exposed by the receding waters of the snow-fed river, was now dried firm, and streaked with gutters, where the drainage from the houses along the Bund had cut out little evil-smelling runnels.\n\nA broad gravel walk reached the full length of the Concession, half a mile or so along the river front to a small creek at the western boundary. Plank gangways led from the bund across the mud to each hulk. A thoughtful municipality had provided benches, where on a warm day you could sit under the shade of the large trees planted by an earlier generation, rest your feet on the iron railings erected along the Bund edge, and watch the junks go by; or listen to the coolies chanting as they carried cargo between godown and ship. At the eastern end of the Bund and at the back, gates gave access to the narrow teeming lanes of the Chinese walled city and the congested suburbs, that hedged in the Concession on the two landward sides.\n\nWithin this small space lived a mixed community. There were several dozen British, a few Americans and some Japanese, with the odd Frenchman, Italian or Portuguese; also a small Russian group, who kept much to themselves and were mainly concerned with compressing and exporting brick tea, stamped in designs calculated to appeal to Muscovite taste. For a long time Chinese had not been allowed to live in the Concession, as they would soon have crowded out the limited space set apart for foreign occupation, but at this time exceptions had been made. The odium of owning the Concession, as was not infrequently pointed out by their kind friends, lay with the British; but all shared in its benefits alike under the \"most favoured nation\" clauses included in the treaties with China.\n\nThese benefits in retrospect did not appear small. Here within the Concession, in contrast to what went on without, law, order, and security prevailed. The law was known, the administration was honest, the small police force of Chinese constables under a British superintendent was reasonably efficient, taxation was equal for all, and the expression of opinion was free.\n\nSocial activity centred round the Club where the times were often good. In 1927 it was housed in the unrequired portion of an ancient godown, in the other half of which amidst an aroma of tar reclined large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211770, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "160\n\nminority in the foreign community.' The effects of this discrepancy on the local dramatic scene will be dealt with later.\n\nBy far the greater part of those who came out to China were active as merchants or mercantile assistants; in general, they were in their late twenties or early thirties, and lived together in the hong of their firm. During business hours they traded in silk, tea, opium, and sundries; leisure was sought mainly in sports: racing, fives, bowling, cricket; by some in the Shanghai Library (established 1849), or the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (founded 1857). All, however, seemed to love the amateur theatricals that were put on several times a year.\n\nII. Theatrical Criticism\n\nIn order to appreciate the information that has come down to us about the theatre in early Shanghai, some attention should first of all be paid to the way in which contemporaries wrote about it. (For reviews see the Calendar of Performances).\n\nThe main, in fact the only, source as regards the early history of the foreign settlement in Shanghai is the “North China Herald”, a weekly that was founded in August 1850. A daily edition, the “North China Daily News” was begun in 1864, but the surviving copies date back only as far as July 1866. Other papers were published in the period under discussion, notably the \"Shanghai Recorder\" (1862-1869), but of these too all trace is lacking, with the exception of one volume (1865) of the \"Shanghai Commercial Record”, the overland edition of the \"Shanghai Recorder\". So we have perforce to rely mainly on the \"North China Herald\"; and, to be sure, a worse source can be imagined. In its pages at the least we find the facts about which plays were performed and what kind of musical entertainment was enjoyed. That is, until about the beginning of 1866, for after that date there is a noticeable decrease in theatrical notes. Then one has to resort to the Daily News.\n\nAll articles, which could be as long as a column, were anonymous, or, in a few cases, signed with an initial or a pseudonym. Not that it matters very much, for generally speaking the critic, if we may call him so, went to considerable lengths to avoid any harsh treatment of the amateurs on the stage. Apparently it was not deemed proper to pull the rug from under a handful of well-meaning gentlemen who devoted their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212391, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "310\n\nDr Elizabeth Sinn explained at intervals during the three-day trip something of the history of Amoy. Together with Ningpo, efforts were made by the British to establish the two towns as centres of trade before Canton secured commercial dominance in 1757. The Canton monopoly was broken in 1842, with the Treaty of Nanking, by the opening of not only Amoy and Ningpo but also the Treaty Ports of Foochow and Shanghai. From and to these ports, among other commodities, were shipped tea, silk, and opium.\n\nBut before then, in the late 17th century, Amoy had been the lair of freebooting, swashbuckling Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who not only drove the Dutch from Taiwan to make it an anti-Manchu base but also attempted to wrest power from the Qing Dynasty. Today, the People's Republic is trying to proclaim that Koxinga, who had a Japanese mother, was no common pirate but a national hero.\n\nAmoy also played a big part in the infamous, so-called in Chinese, 'pig business'. The first Chinese contract coolies left Canton in 1845, but they were soon being shipped from other ports in southern China. Recruiters frequently shanghaied labourers who departed for various countries, including Hawaii, Trinidad, British Guiana, Jamaica, and British Borneo. The journey to Peru or Cuba took about 130 days. Conditions aboard, because of overcrowding, were unimaginable. With a lack of food, unsanitary conditions, and harsh treatment, and 500 men crowded into a hull with barely room to lie down, riots and murders sometimes occurred. Over one-quarter of the labourers are said to have died aboard in their 'pens'.\n\nMany others, however, emigrated from Fujian under somewhat better conditions, and today most families in Xiamen have relatives living overseas. But the Province's most famous son has to be Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), well known for his philanthropy, which is evident in several parts of town, including Xiamen University. This was completed in 1919 on its 100-hectare campus. Tan (pronounced Chan in Cantonese) was born just north of Xiamen to a father who had emigrated to Singapore and was engaged in the rice, pineapple, and rubber business. At an early age, Tan Junior also transferred to the British Colony, as it was then, where he later had four wives and fathered 17 children. Although he spoke neither Mandarin nor English, for business convenience, he became a British subject in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212392, "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": 334, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "311\n\nspite of his deep love for his motherland.\n\nNaturally, his pictures take pride of place in the 'Overseas Chinese Museum' which has over 6,000 exhibits portraying the Ming and Qing diaspora. The building was completed in 1956, endowed by Tan and other overseas donors. Like most similar establishments in China, information is available in Chinese only. If the People's Republic really wishes to attract overseas visitors, is it too much to ask that literature and captions be printed in English as well?\n\nThe Group also made a visit to Huli Shan Fortress, completed in 1823, which protected the entrance to the fine, deep-sea port in the lead-up to the First Opium War. The island of Quemoy, from which the Nationalist Government relayed propaganda with loudspeakers during the 'cold war', lies only 2.4 kilometres off the Communist China Mainland near this fortress.\n\nThe RAS Party later went to the Nanputuo Temple, under the towering 'Five Old Men Peak', which is an architectural masterpiece and crammed with Buddhist statuary. Renovations were in progress. It was encouraging, too, to see the local People's Patriotic Church had recently been given a facelift by the provincial government.\n\nBut impressions lie in the senses of the beholder. Some RAS Members may especially remember Xiamen for its reasonably priced seafood available, with over 600 varieties of fish compared to Hong Kong, or the edible frogs or fine noodles. There was even champagne available with the buffet breakfast!\n\n―\n\nNevertheless, for the author, the most treasured recollections are of banyans and buildings. Some of the former, with labyrinths of contorting, twisting roots, were probably growing a century-and-a-half ago, before the island became a Treaty port. The town is also a 'museum' of vernacular and colonial architecture.\n\nWhether the vantage point is Bill Job's workshop or the hotel window, a vista of old, mellowed, orange, Chinese 'roll and trough' roof tiles, with some roofs of interlocking tiles, blend in reasonably well with new structures erected often from overseas remittances. Although the more ornate, gently sloping, swallow-tail roofs were traditionally reserved for temples, official buildings, and residences", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212472, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "6\n\nCantonese Compradors\n\nCanton, the first Chinese city opened for foreign trade, has a long history of interacting with the West. The Co-hong which was set up by the Qing government, had created a system of hong merchants, linguists and compradors in response to the quest for foreign trade. As William Hunter mentions, the position of a comprador in a foreign mercantile house was important. Almost everything around the house, varying from examining silver, internal accounting, employing servants, cooks and coolies, to interpreting and even mediating with Chinese merchants were the responsibility of the comprador. Though the Co-hong system was terminated after the first Opium War, compradors still survived and started a new era of development. It was natural that Cantonese compradors formed a dominant group at the beginning of the Canton system, since most of the Chinese foreign trade was conducted in Canton. However, to account for the rise of Cantonese compradors in modern China, several factors should not be ignored. First, recruitment of new compradors by personal or regional ties, when compradors became private merchants. Before 1843, compradors had been licensed by the government and guaranteed under the officially dictated hong merchant hierarchy. Second, the disappearance of the limited trading system in Canton and opening of Hong Kong and other Chinese coastal cities accelerated the increase in the number of Western mercantile firms. Third, Western merchants, particularly the British, relied upon Chinese compradors in conducting business.\n\nGuarantorship\n\nHow did a person qualify as a comprador? First, proficiency in English was preferred but business connection was considered more important by the Western merchants. Personal trust was usually critical. The Nanjing Treaty privatized Chinese foreign trade. Compradors replaced the hong merchants as agents for foreign firms and as guarantors for Chinese merchants doing business with foreign merchants. After 1842 with the abolition of the Co-hong system, some of the former hong merchants engaged in private tea or silk business, and compradors became private agents for foreign firms rather than government-mandated agents. Former linguists, after leaving the hong merchants, served mostly as clerks of the new maritime customs or as customs brokers. As scholars pointed out, more than a mere recommendation from a former hong merchant or another Cantonese known to the agency house, personal guarantee\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212710, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "4\n\noff with a whole pound, 'the foundation of his fortune' which induced him to go to sea as a sailor. He then sailed away, at the age of 12, and in the course of the next six years visited various parts of the world including Australia, Africa and the Americas before finally settling in China in 1860 during the last days of the Arrow War [better known perhaps as the Second Opium War].\n\nMesny arrived in China at the start of the era known to the Chinese as the 'post-unequal treaties', an extraordinary period of readjustment in Chinese thinking. He arrived in a China whose rulers were an alien dynasty, the non-Chinese Manchus from Manchuria whose dynasty, the Ch'ing, ruled China between 1644-1911. Mesny's era covered the gradual collapse of the dynasty and its fall, followed by the first years of the Republic.\n\nWilliam Mesny spent a total of 59 years in China during which time he first, for some thirteen years, led a life of high adventure and, later, one which he lived to the full but at the same time one which appears to have fluctuated between the verge of success and pathetic failure. As it stands the later years of Mesny's life, following his short military career, fall into four periods; first, trekking across China, second, his life in Shanghai whilst still hoping to make his fortune; third, his time there when that hope had all but disappeared and finally, his last days, apparently alone in Hankow. The story contains elements which can only be guessed by reading between the lines in his Miscellanies, sadly without the help of other written or oral records.\n\nI have attempted to provide a chronology of Mesny's life from the multitude of snippets and asides he provided in his Miscellanies. This will be found at Appendix B. The great majority of the research in the UK has been carried out by Dr R G Tiedemann of SOAS in the University of London to whom I am also greatly indebted for both his advice and comments, as I am too to Miss Lucie Mesny of St Lawrence in Jersey, for her memories and photographs. However, any errors are mine alone.\n\nApart from the autobiographical portions of the Miscellany we have to rely upon the tiny smattering of family memory still available, two obituaries from Shanghai English language newspapers and what little has been written about Mesny by others who knew him in China. It is unfortunate that other living descendants of William Mesny have fought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212859, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "153 \n\nwrote to Marshall, asking him to intervene on behalf of these Jews. Marshall spoke to Zhou Enlai and Zhou was able to release the Jews as a gesture to the Russians.\" In 1983, only one Jew, a 75-year old woman by the name of Agre, who was born in Russia but was officially listed as stateless, remained in China. The last Jewish resident in Shanghai, a Max Lieberman, died in 1982.\n\n12 \n\nSome Prominent Sephardic Jews in Shanghai \n\nThe first Sephardic Jews came to Shanghai to work for the Sassoon interests, then left to establish enterprises of their own. A number of them prospered and founded dynasties of their own, but I can only give account for a handful of them here.\n\n13 \n\nThe Sassoons \n\nDavid Sassoon was the first Jewish trader in China. The Old Chronicle of Hong Kong recorded Sassoon as 'the first Jewish merchant that set his foot at Canton.\" The Sassoons were Sephardic Jews who had been in Baghdad for several generations by the time David Sassoon was born in 1793. David left Baghdad in 1825 for Bombay where he organized a company to export raw cotton to China and Great Britain. At that time, the East India Company still maintained a monopoly on tea, but had adopted the practice of permitting their employees deck space on Company ships to carry private goods between India and China. People like Jardine and Matheson had used their allotted space to ship opium, which had been grown specifically in India for cash sale in China, despite the fact that opium was considered contraband by Chinese authorities. When the Company's monopoly ended in 1833, private traders began to trade on their own. Jardine, Matheson and Company dominated the opium trade until the 1870s.\n\ne moved from place to place, the responsible", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212931, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "225\n\nparallels Hong Kong's, petitioned the British government to acquire 'an insular possession near the coast of China... beyond the reach of future despotism and oppression,' Matheson, who did not have Hong Kong specifically in mind, thought of British merchants as 'princes of the earth,' and despised the Chinese, ‘a people characterized by marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy... [in] possession of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.'\n\nChinese officials were no less culture-bound: Commissioner Lin Zexu, the Emperor's man in Canton, confronted the British just before the 1839-1840 Opium War by burning 2,613,879 pounds of British opium, 'surely the largest drug haul ever collected,' says Welsh. The British had been smuggling opium into China, hoping to balance off the large amounts of money they were spending for tea and other products exported home to Britain. Lin Zexu advised punishing the British traders by withholding exports to them of rhubarb and tea, without which they could not exist. Because 'their legs were too tightly bound to permit them to box or wrestle,' British soldiers, he said, were not suited to fighting on shore. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their confiscation of opium was followed by attacks by British gunboats on their port cities. They were forced to open Shanghai and other coastal cities to the British and cede Hong Kong to them.\n\nNot until Chris Patten was appointed governor in 1992 did Hong Kong become a high British priority. While publicly demanding that the garrison lay down their lives for it, says Welsh, Churchill privately considered the colony not worth defending against the Japanese. During World War II, the Foreign Office regarded Hong Kong as 'something of a thorn in the side' - a view some of its diplomats still hold — and wanted to return it to China; the Americans wanted this too. In 1946, the first postwar governor, Sir Mark Young, drafted a plan for a 'Municipal Council' constituted on a fully representative basis, but this was consistently turned down. Later, the colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, commented, \"The electorate of Britain didn't care a brass farthing about Hong Kong.' Welsh says this remains true, but he also reminds us that, in 1992, Chris Patten was proposing a more democratically elected Legislative Council not for the British voters but for the people of Hong Kong. As Welsh suggests, in 1946 China would have been in no position to object. But Hong Kong has since become more valuable than anyone could have dreamed in 1946.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213122, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "172\n\nThe guesthouses (), lower down Wang Tau Street from the gambling house, were three-storeyed shop-houses. The ground floor was the residence of the owner; sometimes a small shop was run as well. Above, on the first floor, was a dormitory for villagers and poor travellers staying the night in town. A few large beds stood here - for one or two cents, you could share a bed with whoever else was looking for a place to stay. For the more fastidious and wealthy, small cubicles on the top floor offered privacy and an unshared bed. Military officers visiting the town would stay in these private cubicles. The guesthouses did not serve meals; guests took food at the adjacent noodle restaurant. The 'totally comfortless' guesthouse used by the Basel missionaries in 1859 must have been of this type.\n\nThere was only one full-time opium divan in the market, although opium could be taken in the prostitutes' houses as well. Up until 1917, there had also been several low-class opium divans in sheds in British Sha Tau Kok - these were closed in that year, as part of the agreement to end trade in opium between Hong Kong and China which, it was hoped, would allow the Chinese Government to end all opium imports, and to control the sale of opium in China. The chaos in the border area, however, made it impossible for the trade on the Chinese side of the frontier to be effectively controlled, and the Sha Tau Kok opium divan continued to trade unmolested until 1951. Opium could also be bought for home consumption from the two tobacco shops in the market. These shops were also heavily engaged in smuggling opium into Hong Kong.\n\nNext to the opium divan was the market barber. In 1853 there had only been itinerant barbers in the town. This shop should be seen, to a large degree, as one of the service trades attracted by the opportunities brought about by the new frontier and garrison, like the prostitutes and the gambling house.\n\nBeyond the guesthouses, near the sea, Wang Tau Street was occupied by the fish laans and the Kowloon Customs Station. The Customs Station was rebuilt several times during this period. The Station building in existence in the 1920s was a solidly built, European style, single-storey structure, with a verandah, built of brick and tile. One end was the residence of the Assistant Superintendent. In the middle were the offices, and the barrack quarters for the junior staff were at the further end. The Customs also rented some nearby houses for stores and quarters. After the Station", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213203, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "4\n\nincluded (CO129/414, p. 177).\n\nThe three German females in the 1921 census are mentioned in a report Canon Bannister sent to the Church Missionary Society in 1914. The Berlin Foundling House had 150 children and the two Blind Homes had 120 children. \"The Government has allowed three German ladies to remain in each home and the writer was asked to take general oversight”, (Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham, England, CH1/P/4 No. 149, Bannister, 5 Nov. 1914).\n\nThe German community gradually reestablished itself in Hong Kong, but in 1931 it was less than half of what it had been in 1911.\n\nHong Kong being a British colony, the British were the largest non-Chinese community. Next was the Macanese-Portuguese. The third were the Germans. They were followed by the Americans,\n\nGermans in the Canton trade\n\nGerman-speaking merchants participated in the China trade in the eighteenth century. The trade was confined to Canton. In 1729, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Austria, chartered the Imperial East India Company to trade in the East using the port of Ostend in the Netherlands as its home base. At that time Netherlands was a part of the Austrian Empire. This company did not use German ships, but chartered British vessels which were principally manned by British crews. This was a stratagem to get around the efforts of the British chartered East India Company to control the European trade with China. Over the years there were usually two or three ships each season from Bremen or Hamburg arriving at Canton.\n\nBritish free traders used the protection of the office of Consul for foreign states to acquire the privilege of permanent residence in China. These free traders were large importers of opium of India, a trade the British East India Company ships did not engage in as it was prescribed by Chinese Imperial Edict and the company wished to maintain a good relation with the Dragon Throne. It feared that if it was too closely identified with the opium trade the Chinese authorities would curtail the company's lucrative and traditional trade in tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213317, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "120\n\nThe First China War was the culmination of many years of irksome restraint. The British, as did other nations, objected strongly to being treated and listed with Burma, Vietnam and Korea as tribute bearers. The immediate cause was the destruction of all the opium in Canton brought in by foreigners and in 1840 the Chinese fleet attacked a British warship, followed by, amongst other incidents, Canton being bombarded by the British, and the war was on. Palmerston was Prime Minister in Britain during this, the First China War, now possibly better known as the first of the two Opium Wars. It began with a desultory naval engagement and little further happened until Major General Sir Hugh Gough arrived from Madras in March of 1841. The British plan was, first, to capture Chusan island off the coast of Chekiang to use as a pawn in the demand for Chinese agreements to British demands. This proved to be a futile gesture and during 1841 and 1842 British forces, with the continued aim of pressuring the Chinese into legitimising foreign trade within China, proceeded to attack several ports one after the other up the China coast, creeping ever further north towards the capital of Peking, causing the Chinese greater apprehension about the future. The campaign eventually ended with the imminent attack on Nanking, the former capital situated on the Yangtze in central China, avoided last minute by the agreement by the Chinese finally to the terms of a treaty signed in August 1842. One of the attacks on the China coast was on the then city of Chapu, which was to be followed up with an attack on Hangchou.\n\nChapu had a tolerable harbour, with a great rise and fall of tide, so much so that the smaller junks were left high and dry at low water. Together with its suburbs the town, perhaps five miles in circuit built in a square and intersected by numerous canals, lay about half a mile from the coast. The Reverend Gutzlaff in his third voyage up the China coast in January 1833 arrived in Chapu and described the surrounding countryside as the Chinese Arcadia with nothing able to exceed its beautiful and picturesque appearance. He further described the canals, neat roads, plantations and conspicuous buildings, adding that the whole country (of China) from the Yellow River south was flat until one came to the high lands which formed the harbour of Chapu city. The sea, he added, was receding from the land and flats had formed along the shore, visible at low water and constituting a barrier to the whole coast. Gutzlaff found nowhere so much openness and kindness, the (residents') intelligent questions respecting Britain were endless with them never seeming to be satiated with (British) company.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213826, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "151\n\nTHE HOUWANG CULT AND\n\nTUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE\n\nHON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO'\n\nWhile the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded.\n\nTung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages\n\nSituated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on\n\nPl", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213833, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "158\n\nof Ta-shih-wang E, the keeper of ghosts who maintained order, provided food and clothing to the hungry ghosts, and then took them back to the netherworld.\" Vegetarian fast was required during the chao period of three days and four nights. Puppet shows were also performed for several days to entertain both human and divine participants. Chanters hired from outside were responsible for the liturgy, which included scripture reciting, praying, and the burning of paper offerings. As for local villagers, they mainly came to enjoy the free vegetarian feasts and puppet shows. As pointed out by David Faure, the festival is an occasion for popular entertainment, as much as for worship.\"\n\nAn important ritual of the chiao ceremony was a gala parade called hsing-hsiang † (walking through a neighbourhood of villages) held on the third day. The image of Houwang was carried in the procession led by chanters and followed by male villagers. Firecrackers were set off to clear the road and when passing a village, joss sticks, candles, and paper offerings were burnt to expel all ghosts and leave the local population safe and flourishing with Houwang's blessings. \"As the principal local deity, Houwang obviously played a crucial role during the chiao festival. Deities from other districts, such as the Empress of Heaven from Ma Wan Island or Chak Lap Kok, were not invited to the ceremony.\" Thus, the parade embodied the strong territorial sense of the community, publicly affirming the hsiung as a neighbourhood of specific villages. Villages passed by paraders, including Shek Mun Kap, Mok Ka, Shek Lau Po, Ngau Au, Nim Yuen, San Tau, Ma Wan Chung, Ma Wan, Ling Pei, Wong Ka Wai, Lung Tseng Tau, and Ba Mei, were all considered members of the Tung Chung community. While village representatives took charge of preparations for the chao days, a body called the Chieh-fang-chu-hui (Neighbourhood Association) was assigned responsibility for the preparatory work for Houwang's Birthday Festival. From the mid-1920s, however, the Neighbourhood Association had to also assume responsibility for preparations for the chiao festival, replacing the village representatives. Concomitant with this change, Tung Chung Street, where the number of shops had increased with time, replaced Shek Mun Kap as the local social and economic centre. Various goods, including groceries, medicinal materials, cooked food, coffee and tea, coffins, and even opium, were now sold on Tung Chung Street. \"As the position of Shek Mun Kap and the role of village representatives in the chiao festival declined,\n\n36", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214829, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "211\n\n\"THAT SINGULAR AND HITHERTO ALMOST UNKNOWN COUNTRY\"; OPINIONS ON CHINA, THE CHINESE, AND THE \"OPIUM WAR” AMONG BRITISH NAVAL AND MILITARY OFFICERS WHO SERVED DURING HOSTILITIES THERE.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nIntroduction\n\nIn February 1840, the British Government advised the Qing authorities of the dispatch of an expeditionary force of troops and warships to the China Coast. Its purpose was to force the Chinese authorities to cease their harassment of British traders and officials resident in China, and to make reparation for goods and property taken from them. A blockade of China's principal ports was to be established, and one or two islands demanded as a place of residence and commerce for British subjects. A piece of Chinese territory was to be occupied, to be restored only when matters were settled to the British Government's satisfaction. Hostilities continued on and off until August 1842 when three specially appointed Chinese commissioners signed the treaty of Nanking on board a British warship in the Yangtse River.\n\nThis much is, of course, common knowledge. However, the subject matter of this paper is perhaps less well known. Among the by-products of the China Expedition were the books written by British naval and military officers about the War and their experiences in China. Some of the letters sent to family and friends at home have also found their way into print. Such books and letters, together with official papers, are used here to illustrate the sentiments, opinions and attitudes of the day towards China and the War, and I have occasionally quoted from them at length, in order to provide greater realism.\n\nScant Knowledge of China and the Chinese\n\nThis was the first time that British forces had fought in China. Consequently, there was no one with experience of conducting operations there on land or sea. Moreover, the higher levels of society to which the British officer corps mostly belonged - the aristocracy, the landed gentry and the professions - had little or no knowledge of China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214908, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 4, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "FROM THE HON. EDITOR\n\nThe publication of the fortieth Volume of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (and my tenth contribution) seems to merit a special mention by your Hon. Editor as, of course, it marks the fortieth anniversary of the rebirth of the Society. You \"saw\" the fortieth anniversary conference (in 2000), now read the book!\n\nAs you know, Council's instructions are for about 200 pages (Don't give 'em too much!) but I've strayed beyond that by about 50 per cent. Perhaps I can be forgiven, given the propitiousness of the occasion.\n\nOnce again, I've striven for variety and, as you will see, the contributors are both old and new. The distinguished Solomon Bard has come out of retirement to pen Tea and Opium, a wholly dispassionate look at a controversial subject. Brian Fawcett's The Chinese Labour Corps in France, 1917-1921 represents an enormous investment in time and I should imagine he knows France quite well now. The redoubtable Keith Stevens has contributed two articles including the long-awaited (for me) The Celestial Ministry of Time, a veritable Tour de force.\n\nReaders of Volume 38 - 66 our Y2K issue will recall the photograph of Tai Sui, the Goddess of Time, on the dust jacket, and so kindly provided by Jennifer Welch. What was not revealed at the time was that Keith Stevens and Jennifer Welch were writing The Celestial Ministry of Time and has lots of photographs of Tai Sui including the magnificent one of Jai Zi which adorns the dust jacket of this issue. I wanted it for Volume 38 but, understandably, Keith and Jennifer held out on me.\n\nOtherwise, the unflagging Dan Waters has almost single-handedly provided the Notes and Queries section but with most interesting contributions from Barbara Park and our man in Bondi Beach, James Hayes. Barbara has given us a perceptive glimpse of The Peak in \"the good old days.\" James keeps editors on their toes (\"Dear Peter, please find attached the fifteenth amendment to my article.\"). Jack Lao's 1954 photograph of the Harbour will bring back memories for many.\n\nI came into contact with Teresa Kowalska in Poland, and her exquisite...\n\nWhen I was researching the piece on A Many Splendoured Thing,\n\niii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214915, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ............................................................ XIV\n\nFRIENDS OF THE HKBRAS (UK) REPORT .......................... xxvii\n\nHON. AUDITOR'S REPORT ....................................................... xxx\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ................................................... xlii\n\nARTICLES\n\nSolomon Bard - Tea and Opium ............................................... 1\n\nTeresa Kowalska - Tea, Ivory and Ebony: Tracing Colonial Threads in the Inseparable Life and Literature of Han Suyin ........ 21\n\nBrian C. Fawcett - The Chinese Labour Corps in France, 1917-1921 ............................................................... 33\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - The Celestial Ministry of Time ............................................................... 113\n\nKeith Stevens - Images on Popular Religion Altars of the Heroes Involved in the Suppression of the An Lushan Rebellion (AD 755-763) ........................................................ 155\n\nDan Waters - The Two Obelisks at Tai Tam ....................... 185\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKeith Stevens - Patron Deity of Prostitutes: Zhu Bajie ........ 195\n\nBarbara Park - A Walk along Harlech and Lugard Roads ...... 197\n\nDan Waters - Designatory Letters after an RAS Member's Name ............................................................... 205\n\nDan Waters - Photographs from the HKBRAS Photographic Exhibition held in January 2001 at the City University ........ 207", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214950, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nTEA AND OPIUM\n\nSOLOMON BARD\n\n“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?\n\nHow did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”\n\nPreamble\n\nSidney Smith, clergyman and author (18th cent.)\n\n2\n\nThe tragic events and the underlying causes of the Anglo-Chinese Conflict of 1839-1860, known as the Opium Wars, have been analysed in many scholarly publications and debates from various, sometimes opposing viewpoints. To the Chinese, the opium question seemed its principal cause. For the British, opium was only an immediate pretext; the issues were much deeper, such as opening the gates more fully to all manner of foreign trade and forcing China to engage in commercial and diplomatic intercourse according to Western rules. The West sought after Chinese goods; in particular, the demand for tea and silk was immense, and China was for the present the sole source of tea. In return, the Chinese demand for British goods was insignificant. The resulting imbalance in trade was an unsound practice then as it would be today. The strength of this argument can be judged by the fact that Britain was prepared to go to war with China to force bilateral trade relations. India offered Britain a solution in the way of opium and, to a lesser extent, raw cotton, both accepted by the Chinese. Even when consideration is given to different knowledge existing at the time regarding the harmful effects of opium, it is clear that the opium trade, backed as it was by force, was evil and unjustified. By the end of the 18th century, the consumption of tea in Britain had become phenomenal. It has been pointed out on occasions that the value of tea exported from and of opium imported into China appeared to be linked. The critical role played by opium in the Anglo-Chinese conflict has never been in doubt. The role of tea, however, has been less obvious. It is intended in\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214951, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "2\n\nthis paper to examine the role of tea in relation to opium and the resulting conflict. For tea, too, was an addiction of sorts, though perhaps without all the deleterious effects of opium.\n\nTea and the Chinese\n\nThe origin of tea is hidden in the remote mists of antiquity and more than enough theories of its discovery exist, mostly legendary. One date keeps cropping up - 2737BC - the legendary year that attempts to pinpoint the discovery, and attribute it to the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, the Divine Healer. Like many great discoveries, it was reputedly made by chance. Shen Nung, concerned about hygiene, used to boil his water for drinking. One day, while boiling water, a gust of wind blew leaves from a branch burning under the pot into the water. A marvellous aroma overtook Shen Nung. The branches came from a tree whose formal name today is Camellia sinensis.\n\nWhile other theories may claim a different origin (a Buddhist connection has been suggested), no one questions that tea as an industry began in China. Did the plant originate in China? Chinese sources claim that the tea tree is indigenous to Hunan Province, in Southwest China, where it grew wild in the mountains, where no other plant could grow. Cultivation of tea, however, appears to have begun around 350AD along the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, spreading to Yunnan and through southwest China into the central provinces. By the 5th century AD, tea had joined other products as a popular article of trade. It is not surprising, therefore, that tea's excellent qualities were known to the Chinese since early times, and that drinking tea as a pleasurable pastime had spread throughout the country. A brief attempt to tax tea, in 780 AD, was met with wide public outcry and had to be rescinded. This was also the year in which the first book on tea was published - an important milestone in its history. It was a monumental work in which the author Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty dealt with tea in detail and from every possible aspect. One can only wonder at Lu Yu's deepest knowledge of the subject. His description of various shapes of different leaves verges on poetical. He described the code of conduct in relation to tea, from which the Japanese had probably derived their tea ceremony, and which in China had evolved into a social custom bordering on ritual. Some would assert that after the conquest of the Songs, at the end of the 13th century, the Tangs' romance of tea disappeared and tea", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214953, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "4\n\nand serve tea. Credit for initiating the custom of afternoon tea is generally given to Anna, Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861). The correct protocol states that tea should begin between 4 and 4.30 in the afternoon and should last just one hour.”\n\nTea had become so much the national drink that the East India Company was required by an Act of Parliament to keep a year's supply always in stock. For the British Exchequer, tax on tea brought revenue amounting, in the 1830s, to over three million pounds - an astonishing amount. Tea could be obtained only from China. Indian tea (or Ceylon tea) was still many years away. It had to be paid for, preferably not in silver coin, but by equitable trade exchange. China, however, while keen to export tea, wanted nothing in return except silver bullion. Faced with an alarming trade disadvantage, British merchants discovered that opium was one item by which they could balance the trade in tea. As addiction to tea, for that is what it was, could not be stopped, moral scruples did not prevent British traders from fostering opium, far more pernicious than tea, on China. It may be safely assumed therefore that had it not been for Britain's demand for increasing quantities of tea, China might never have been subjected to opium, which was grown in India under British supervision.\n\nOpium and the Chinese\n\nMany scholars and historians believe that mankind has known opium since prehistoric times. It was certainly known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, used extensively for medicinal purposes mainly as a remedy for pain and to induce sleep. Opium has been known in China at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD) and possibly much earlier, originally only for its medicinal value. It was derived from Papeverum somniferum, a species of poppy cultivated in India and Turkey. Although not indigenous to China, the opium-bearing poppy plant was cultivated in the western province of Yunnan to supplement opium imported overland from India. Trade with the Middle East and India flourished in the Tang Dynasty, but import of opium into China was comparatively small as homegrown opium supplied most of local needs. It would be surprising, however, if some non-medical use of the drug had not developed. M. Booth believes that such use was not widespread and was restricted to 'an upper-class elite'; the drug was probably eaten. This seems to be confirmed by the absence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214954, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "of any mention of the opium habit by the Jesuit missionaries and other travellers in China prior to the 17th century. It may therefore be concluded, with some degree of certainty, that there was no general use of opium before the introduction of opium smoking. Spanish tobacco introduced into China about 1620, probably from Philippines, gave rise to the habit of smoking, and later in the century tobacco and opium were smoked as a mixture to enhance the effect of both. The Chinese, on the whole, chose to smoke opium without tobacco. Moreover, while the use of opium as a smoke has been confined to China - elsewhere it is applied in other ways - smoking per se was introduced by the westerners.\n\nThe Chinese recognized early the potential harm of opium smoking: an Imperial Edict of 1729 prohibited entirely the use of opium, except as a medicine. When the import of opium had increased dramatically, another Edict was issued in 1799 prohibiting use of the drug, its importation, and its cultivation at home. Thenceforth opium became contraband, but while the East India Company, which by that time had full control of the Indian opium, and the Hong merchants in Guangzhou (Canton) heeded the Imperial ban, almost all the foreign traders did not, and even 'the Emperor's representatives continued to sanction it.' The illegal opium trade grew enormously. After 1830, for maximum profit and safety, chests of opium were delivered in a fleet of fast, well-armed clippers. It should be noted that these “opium clippers\" also carried tea on the return journey: sometimes engaging in \"tea races” to deliver tea quickly before its flavour was impaired. Again, it may be noted that the growth of opium trade with China was linked with another growing addiction, to tea. Detailed discussion of the opium trade is outside the scope of this paper. However, one point must be emphasised: the often forgotten distinction between Britain and British traders, and indeed, other foreign merchants with regards to the opium traffic. The British government's attitude to the opium trade was, characteristically, one of laissez faire; it was neither encouraged nor discouraged, claiming it was essentially a Chinese problem.\n\nChinese-British Relations\n\nIt is perhaps not to be wondered at that the two great nations at the opposite ends of the globe, totally different in their ways and customs, failed to understand each other; indeed, never truly tried, and finally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214955, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "6\n\nmet in armed conflict - futile and unnecessary. Ironically, both were strongly devoted to tea though their actual taste in tea may have been different.\n\nThe Chinese did not call their country China. To them it was the Middle Kingdom, the kingdom between heaven and earth, the Celestial Kingdom. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven who possessed divine powers. Their civilization was 5,000 years old, and for nearly half that period they lived in solid houses, dressed in silk, and produced works of art which are still admired today. Almost completely isolated from the western world since the Song Dynasty, China was oblivious to the achievements of the West in many fields. Proud and self-contained, China shunned outside contacts. In their self-proclaimed superiority, the Chinese in the 18th century still believed that only barbarians lived beyond their boundaries and that their countries were automatically vassal states of the Celestial Kingdom. Chinese contempt for foreigners persisted into the later periods, no doubt fuelled by the shameful behaviour of the foreign powers towards China, humbled and humiliated by the defeats in the Opium Wars. 'Barbarian devils' was a description often uttered even by relatively enlightened Chinese. Is it then any wonder that even in our time “Kwai Lo” (though no longer “Fan Kwai”) is still often heard, though perhaps more in jest, and used even by the foreigners themselves?\n\nBritain, on the other hand, in the early 19th century was opening one of the most glorious pages of its history. Napoleon was defeated and France was no longer a threat. The Royal Navy reigned supreme over the waves and Britain had become truly a great imperial power dominating huge areas of territory and much of the trade from the New World to the Far East. In 1837 the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne and a long period of British colonial rule had asserted itself. The British nation had every reason to feel proud and superior. But with superiority came also arrogance and a deep distrust of foreigners.\n\nWe live in a time when the world has discarded Imperialism and Colonialism, the right of strong nations to rule over weak ones, when some disputes at least are settled in a forum of nations, when the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognized. The latter is a recent principle: born of the Versailles Treaty, after the 1st World War, it has forged ahead without stopping. But in the 19th century, imperialism", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214957, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "8 \n\nposed as to whether the Chinese as a whole were \"anti-commercial\" or whether it was only the government. Greenberg believes that \"trade in the long run mattered little to the Chinese economy.\"2 A further factor contributing to distrust of foreigners and the consequent restriction in contacts and trade was fear of European expansionist policy apparent to the Chinese in Tibet, the East Indies, the Philippines, Burma, and Nepal. \n\nBy the 1830s British demand for tea had become enormous; tea worth twenty million pounds sterling was imported into Britain annually. It was paid for from huge profits made on the sale of smuggled opium. Many foreign firms in Guangzhou, other than British, had engaged in the lucrative trade, with two notable exceptions,13 Britain accounting for more than 80% of the trade. Dissatisfied with the capricious nature of its trade in Guangzhou, Britain made three high-level attempts to form full diplomatic relations with Beijing, sending embassies under Macartney in 1793, Amherst in 1816, and Napier in 1834; all failed. The last two reached no further than Guangzhou before being unceremoniously sent back. But it may be of interest to deal in some length with Macartney's Mission because it seemed to succeed; that it failed was the most significant disaster in relations between the two nations, eventually leading to war. \n\nAfter a long journey, Macartney's Embassy embarked on Chinese boats to proceed up Baihe (Peiho) River on the 9th of August 1793. The following day they reached Tianjin (Tientsin) where they met the Emperor's envoy at a formal ceremony, which, however, lasted a mere 20 minutes. After staying in Beijing for some two weeks, they set out for Chengde (Jehol) where, on the 30th of September, they met Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). Lord Macartney was graciously permitted to dispense with kowtow; it was agreed that the salutation was to be made on the right knee. According to Macartney, the Emperor was polite, and the conversation, conducted through interpreters, was lively and interesting. Moreover, the various scientific instruments, which were brought as gifts, were examined with obvious interest. The Embassy was told that they should depart on the 7th of October. Three days' grace was promised but immediately withdrawn, ostensibly because the Emperor was concerned that an early onset of cold weather would inconvenience the Ambassador. To reach their ships at Zhoushan (Chusan) Island, the Embassy had to travel across China, partly overland and partly by rivers - a journey that took nearly two months. It has", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214958, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "been claimed that during this journey Macartney tried to obtain information about tea growing in China but was unsuccessful. This is incorrect. In fact, he was allowed to collect shoots of tea plant. These were later carefully transported to Bengal with samples of soil where they flourished and very likely gave rise to present Indian tea. This was perhaps the only success of Macartney's Embassy.\n\n14\n\nWe know of Macartney's open instructions on his mission, which included negotiating opening ports for trade and establishing full diplomatic relations with China. There is also a strong conjecture that Macartney was authorised to offer the Chinese active British efforts to stop opium trade, if negotiations achieved their principal aims. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to obtain confirmation of this very important directive. Although Macartney's Embassy was unsuccessful, the Ambassador wrote a rosy account of the mission suggesting that it was not a total failure but had achieved a great deal of goodwill between the two nations. Not so, writes Dr. James Dinwiddie, member of the Embassy, whose official duties as astronomer and scientist were to demonstrate the scientific instruments brought as presents. If we are to believe this meticulous observer with scientific training, it became apparent early during their sojourn in Beijing, and later in Chengde, that the Chinese including the Emperor were not impressed either by the members of the mission or the elaborate scientific instruments offered as presents. \"These things are good enough to amuse children,' the Emperor was supposed to have said after briefly examining them. Their reception, wrote Dr. Dinwiddie, was at best perfunctorily polite, at worst impatient and abrupt. From the day they stepped onto Chinese territory, a feeling of fear and mistrust seemed to pervade the motions of Chinese officials who appeared to check every move of the members of the Embassy; soldiers constantly guarded the Embassy. They were warned, early during their stay in Beijing, that their visit would be terminated shortly, and it seemed clear to the good doctor that the mission was doomed from the start. Even if Dinwiddie was unduly sensitive to the attitude of their hosts, it seems clear that the Embassy had achieved little towards establishing friendly relations, or an atmosphere of mutual trust, between China and Britain. Macartney's mission has been aptly summed up by Peter Auber1 as 'Received with the utmost politeness, treated with the utmost hospitality, watched with the utmost vigilance, and dismissed with the utmost civility.' Subsequent embassies were not so well treated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214960, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "11\n\ncrisis, wrote in his diary: 'A fine day: wrote couplets on fans.'\n\nLin's letter drafted to Queen Victoria was a noble and convincing message. In it he points out that opium is forbidden in England and therefore the English know its harmful effects. 'As long as you do not take it yourselves but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own lives but careless of the lives of other people....such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and at variance with the Way of Heaven.' He further writes: 'Rather than waste your efforts on a hopeless endeavour, would it not be better to devise some other form of trade?' (author's italics); surely a hint that trade relations without opium could perhaps be established. Unfortunately the letter was never sent. One can only speculate what might have happened if the young Queen, barely two years on the throne, had received this letter.\n\nLin reminded the foreign traders that they were allowed to trade as a favour, because China was completely self-sufficient, while the foreigners, especially the British, could not live without tea and rhubarb. The belief was widely held in China that the English would die of constipation if they were deprived of rhubarb.' Lin later modified his statement omitting rhubarb but leaving tea as an absolute necessity' (author's italics). The existing opium stocks in the factories were surrendered and destroyed (in salt and lime; not burned as sometimes stated), and for a while it seemed as if Commissioner Lin might succeed in his task, but the confrontation led to an armed conflict, known as the First Opium War (1839-1842), in which the Chinese with their antiquated methods of warfare and ineffective weapons were defeated on land and at sea. It was ‘A conflict between ignorant weakness and conscious strength. It ended in the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking), by which terms China opened to foreigners the five ports of Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai as Treaty Ports, where they might reside and trade; an indemnity of 21 million dollars was exacted, and the Island of Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity to Britain. For China the war was a disaster and humiliation, the last vestiges of which were erased only a short time ago when Hong Kong was returned, in 1997, to its homeland. By contrast, Queen Victoria referred to the war in flippant tones. Writing to her uncle, the King of Belgium, in 1841, she states:- 'The Chinese business vexes us much, and Palmerston is deeply mortified at it. All", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214962, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "13\n\nslaughtering her citizens in a quarrel which could never have arisen if we had not been guilty of an international crime.' While Lord Shaftesbury,23 on the same occasion, declared:- 'I cannot rejoice in our successes; we had triumphed in one of the most lawless, unnecessary and unfair struggles in the records of history.'\n\nThe Alternative History\n\nThe facts of history cannot be altered. Is there then any profit in speculating what might have happened if certain events had or had not taken place? Perhaps, if there are lessons to be learned from such speculations for, after all, events of today will become history tomorrow, next year, or a century later.\n\n1) How would history have proceeded if Macartney's mission had succeeded and China had allowed the presence of a British minister in Beijing? There are strong reasons to believe that the British government would have co-operated effectively with the Chinese government in stopping, or at least greatly reducing the illegal opium trade. Trade might then have been channelled into other mutually beneficial commodities. Quite likely, a Chinese minister would have taken his place in London. The two nations would have learned a great deal more about each other, resulting in mutual respect, equal standing, and normal commercial intercourse. Above all, the tragic and largely unnecessary Opium Wars might have been averted.\n\n2) What course might history have taken if China, in defence of its anti-opium policy, stopped export of tea? The British government, which had generally adopted a laissez faire policy towards opium trade, claiming that it was up to the Chinese government to stop it, might have been forced to act: not by an act of war against China, but by using her Navy to stop the opium trade. Chinese merchants, who have always been eager to sell tea, might now have been persuaded to accept British goods in greater quantity to balance trade. Again, the Opium Wars might have been averted.\n\n3) What if the Imperial Throne had come down from its lofty position and negotiated with Britain on an equal basis? History might have proceeded as in 1).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214963, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "14\n\n4) Had Commissioner Lin adopted less drastic measures in suppressing the opium trade? A difficult course to predict. However, knowing Elliot's repugnance of the opium trade, it is possible the two might have joined forces in fighting the infamous trade. It was Lin's methods, in particular laying siege to the foreign factories, that alienated Elliot's respect, not the end he sought to gain by adopting them.\n\n5) If China had suddenly developed a strong interest in British goods? Tin, wool, and cotton were imported from Britain, but not in sufficient quantities to balance the export of tea. A strong public opinion against opium had been building up in Britain. A greater demand for British goods might have shifted the British official position from laissez faire to oppose opium, dealing a serious blow to the opium trade.\n\nNo doubt, many other alternative courses of history can be suggested, but the few above show how the two addictions—to opium and tea—had determined the course of history of that period and region, and how easily that course might have been altered, preventing the conflict, and possibly subsequent imperialist policy of western nations in China.\n\nConclusion\n\nOf all the foods, solid or liquid, tea has had great influence over the centuries around the world. It has played a part in history, medicine, politics, manners and customs. British interests in the 19th century kept the opium supply line open and the manufacture of opium in India solvent in order to pay for China's tea. Britain went to war with China to protect those interests. In this sense the war was also the Tea War. When Sir George Staunton, an authority on Chinese-British relations and a member of Macartney's mission to China in 1793 (aged 15, he went as a page-boy), declared in Parliament: 'If there had been no opium, there had been no war,' he might well have added: \"And if there had been no tea, there had been no war.\"\n\nSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nALLEN, N.:\n\nThe Opium Trade, Lowell (2nd Edition), U.S.A., 1983.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214964, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "15\n\nANON.:\n\nBARD. S.:\n\nBOOTH, M.:\n\nCHANG Hsin-ping:\n\nCHONG Su-see:\n\nFAIRBANK, J.K.:\n\nFORREST, D.:\n\nGREENBERG. M.:\n\nHUTCHEON, R.:\n\nINGLIS, B.:\n\nLAM Sai-chun:\n\nMORSE, H.B.:\n\nPEYREFITTE, A.:\n\nChina: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical, Henry G. Bohn, London, 1853.\n\nTraders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841-1899, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1993.\n\nOpium: A History, Simon & Shuster, London, 1996.\n\nCommissioner Lin and the Opium War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1964.\n\nThe Foreign Trade in China, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law; Vol.LXXXVII, Longman Green, 1919.\n\nTrade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, Stanford University Press, 1962\n\nTea for the British, Chatto & Windus, London, 1973.\n\nBritish Trade and the Opening of China 1800-42, Cambridge University Press, 1951.\n\nChina-Yellow, The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1996.\n\nThe Opium War, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1976.\n\nCommissioner Lin and the Opium War, History Critique Publication Studio, Hong Kong, 1984.\n\nTrade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, 1908.\n\nThe Collision of Two Civilisations, Harvill, London, 1993.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214965, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "PROUDFOOT, W.J.: Notes from Biographical Memoir of James Dinwiddie, LL.D, embracing his account of travels in China as a member of Macartney's Embassy, Edward Howell, Liverpool, 1886.\n\nWALEY, A.: The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes, Allen and Unwin, London, 1958.\n\nWONG, J.Y.: Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, 1998.\n\nWOODWARD, N.H.: Teas of the World, Collier Macmillan, London, 1980.\n\nThis paper was presented at the \"International Conference on Lin Zexu, the Opium War and Hong Kong,” held at the Hong Kong Museum of History in December 1998.\n\nAmong his many other accomplishments, Dr. S. M. Bard, OBE, ED, is also a historian.\n\nHis published works include the following: In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong (Urban Council Hong Kong 1988); Traders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841-1899 (Urban Council Hong Kong 1993); and Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley (Antiquities and Monuments Office, Hong Kong: Occasional Paper No. 4, 1997).\n\nSome scholars prefer to divide the Wars into the Opium War, 1839-1842, and the Arrow War, 1856-1860.\n\n* A Dutchman, Dr Cornelius Decker, advocated 40-50 cups a day.\n\nPortuguese Princess Catherine is credited with introducing tea to Britain when she married King Charles II.\n\nA story is told of German Radio, during the 2nd World War, which announced that due to shortage of tea in Britain, the British were ready to sue for peace, not having access to their 5-o'clock tea. It only served to amuse the British, for the Germans got the time wrong!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215236, "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-2001", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Elizabeth Teather - Deathspace in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Seoul: A Review of Recent Research, 1995-2001 .... \n\nChiu Hang Shi - Unicon Dancing in Pat Heung \n\n329 \n\n341 \n\nKeith Stevens - A Contentious Christian Missionary in Central China, 1887 \n\n353 \n\nKirsty Norman - Friends of the HKBRAS Trip to Cornwall....... 357 \n\nDavid Akers-Jones - Tea and Opium: Some Further Notes on Macartney's Role \n\n367 \n\nJennifer Welch - Coincidence? \n\n... 373 \n\nDan Waters - Another Donation to the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society \n\n375 \n\nRichard Garrett - Taipa Fort and a Nineteenth Century Cannon 379 \n\nPeter Halliday - More Thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing: A Tribute to Ian Morrison...... \n\n391 \n\nRosemary Lee and A.C. Bromfield - The Life and Times of Captain Samuel Cornel Plant \n\n407 \n\nAnon. - More on the Two Obelisks at Tai Tam \n\n417 \n\nBOOK REVIEWS \n\nDan Waters - Long Night's Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945 \n\n419 \n\nJames Hayes - Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away:Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton \n\n423 \n\nPatrick Hase - Hong Kong Metamorphosis \n\n427 \n\nPeter Halliday - Searching for Frederick and Adventures Along the \n\nWay. \n\n430 \n\nX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215555, "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-2001", "page_number": 332, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "282\n\nEgypt, which was built in the 3rd century B.C. - one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was an eight-sided tower on top of which was a cylinder that extended up to an open cupola where the fire that provided the light burned. On the roof of the cupola was a large statue of Poseidon (the Greek God of the Sea and Earthquakes) facing the sea, northward. It was said ships could detect the light from the tower at night or the smoke from the fire during the day up to 100 miles away. The lighthouse collapsed in the 14th century, probably as the result of an earthquake. The remains of Pharos are now at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Its name, however, has become the root of the word \"lighthouse\" in the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian languages.2\n\nModern navigation aids\n\nBy the 21st century traditional aids to navigation have already gradually taken over. These include satellite navigation systems in order to cope with the needs of high speed and the huge volume of modern sea transportation. Even more recent inventions like the Radio Beacon and the Decca Navigator System are now almost obsolete.\n\nThe Global Positioning System (GPS), provided by satellites, is now the primary position fixing system for marine navigation. A public Differential GPS service is able to enhance the accuracy of GPS signals to within 10 metres up to 50 nautical miles around the coasts off the United Kingdom and Ireland. This system assists the safe passage of all classes of vessels from cargo ships, cruise liners and fishing vessels to small yachts. As a back-up system to the GPS, chains of Loran C on land are also adopted.3\n\nNineteenth century Hong Kong\n\nIn Hong Kong, things were quite different. There was not much sea traffic going to China before the first Opium War (1839-42) because of the Chinese policy of keeping its doors closed to foreign trade. Canton (Guangzhou), in the Pearl River Delta, was the city where limited foreign trade was permitted under stringent conditions. Macao under Portuguese administration served well as a buffer for foreign merchants waiting for the start of the trading season. Only after the Treaties of Nanking, Peking and Tientsin (1842-1860) was China forced to open up more and more ports for trade. Hong Kong's Victoria harbour became", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215638, "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-2001", "page_number": 415, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "367\n\nTEA AND OPIUM:\n\nSOME FURTHER NOTES ON MACARTNEY'S\n\nROLE1\n\nDAVID AKERS-JONES\n\nMacartney's audience with the Emperor Qianlong recorded in the journal which the former wrote actually took place on 14th September 1793 (not on the 30th) at Jehol (Chengde) which is now about five hours journey by 'bus from Beijing. It took the Embassy six days. Macartney himself travelled in a post chaise which he had taken to China especially to ride about in, 'drawn by four little Tartar ponies.' His cavalcade amounted to seventy people of which forty composed the guard. He says that about two hundred porters were required to carry their baggage.\n\nThe great circular yurt where the audience subsequently took place is described in the journal as follows:\n\nThe Emperor's tented pavilion which is circular I should calculate to be about twenty or twenty-five yards in diameter and is supported by a number of pillars, either gilded or damasked according to their disposition....\n\nMacartney then gives a colourful account of the audience.\n\nHe was seated in an open palanquin carried by sixteen bearers attended by numbers of officers bearing flags, standards and umbrellas, and as he passed we paid him our compliments by kneeling on one knee, whilst all the Chinese made their usual prostrations. As soon as he had ascended his throne I came to the entrance of the tent, and, holding in both my hands a large box enriched with diamonds in which was enclosed the King's letter, I walked deliberately up, and ascending the side-steps of the throne, delivered it into the Emperor's own hands, who, having received it, passed it on to the Minister, by whom it was placed on the cushion. He then gave me as the first present from him to his Majesty the ju-eu-jou or giou-giou (a white jade sceptre) as the symbol of peace and prosperity, and expressed his hopes that my Sovereign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215642, "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-2001", "page_number": 419, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "371\n\ndescriptions of it paint a vivid picture in inland China, of towns, villages, farming and husbandry at the end of the eighteenth century and put life to the many pictures and engravings of that period.\n\nIt was on this inland journey that Macartney was able to collect his tea plants. He says in his own words:\n\nI must not omit that the Viceroy (they had been joined by the Viceroy from Canton) observing our curiosity about everything relative to natural history, allowed us to collect seeds and fossils as we came along, and to take up several tea plants in a growing state with large balls of earth adhering to them, which tea plants I flatter myself I shall be able to transmit to Bengal, where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success.\n\nNo doubt the hard balls of earth were wrapped in the same casings of matting in which plants arrive from China to this day.\n\nSo far as opium is concerned, rather oddly, I cannot find that it came up in conversation at all although by then the illicit trade was well established and its use had been banned by Imperial edict some sixty years before.\n\nDr. Dinwiddie, who had accompanied the Embassy to Peking, took the plants to India on Jackall, together with tallow and varnish plants as well as some silkworm eggs, all of which were delivered to Dr. Roxburgh, superintendent of the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Some years later indigenous tea plants were discovered growing in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea that we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say. Certainly Chinese tea retains its distinctive characteristics.\n\nThe journal of the Embassy's adventures in China is a fascinating and extraordinarily detailed account and description of a way of life and scenery which has largely disappeared. Present day Chengde is a shadow of the Jehol described by Macartney with pagodas, temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215643, "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-2001", "page_number": 420, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "372\n\nand pavilions at every turn. Now the summer residence of the Emperor consists of a series of grey-roofed and grey-walled pavilions connected by roofed corridors reaching down to the same willow-fringed lake seen by Macartney. In one of its chambers, on a brass plaque, is the following admonitory message for visitors: NOT FORGETTING THE NATIONAL HUMILIATION THE EMPEROR SIGNED THE BEIJING TREATY HERE ON OCTOBER 18 1860 (15th September by the Lunar Calendar). It was in the West Warm Chamber that the Emperor was forced to sign the Beijing Treaty with Britain, France and Russia which\n\nceded Kowloon to Britain.\n\nAt various places in his journal Macartney refers to differences arising between Manchu and Chinese officials and predicts the eventual demise of a regime which was observing the status quo and terrified of the change which foreigners would bring. The attitude to his Embassy by various officials and, indeed, the Emperor is therefore a mixture of showing the Embassy every courtesy commensurate with not letting good manners develop in friendly and warm relations. Not to let the British presume too much.\n\nREFERENCE\n\nCranmer-Byng, J.L. (Ed.). An Embassy to China: Lord Macartney's Journal 1793-1794, London: Longmans.\n\nNOTES\n\n[Ed. - See Solomon Bard's Tea and Opium, Vol. 40, JHKBRAS, pp. 1-201\n\nPage 420\n\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215706, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Publications\n\nEach member of the RAS receives a copy of our annual Journal, for which the society is well known. The journal contains a fascinating collection of articles on the history and culture of the region, written by experts in their field. Recent articles include those on Nga Tsin Wai Village, The Chinese Labour Corps in France, 1917-1921, and Tea and Opium. The RAS also publishes a number of books on different aspects of Hong Kong's history and culture. Please refer to our web site www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk for a list of our publications.\n\nMEMES it's People\n\nBeyond the Metropolis: VILLAGES IN HONG KONG\n\n刊物\n\n本會每年出版之年刊內容豐富，眾所周知。會員每年均可獲贈年刊乙冊。年刊內容以本港及鄰近地區之歷史文化為主，文章皆由資深研究人員或專家執筆，近期題目包括衙前圍歷史、1917至1921年間在法國的華籍勞工團和茶葉及鴉片貿易等。此外，本會亦出版有關香港歷史文化之書籍。近期出版書目可參閱本會網址www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215714, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1861) is both a tour de force and riveting, to boot. Ch'ëa was the keeper of a temple at Poklo. He was visited in 1856 by two colporteurs from Hong Kong who left him with a bible. On reading it, he was almost immediately converted to Christianity and was later baptised in Hong Kong becoming, essentially, a disciple of James Legge. He returned to Poklo where he pursued his faith with great, if not excessive, zeal, becoming an object of suspicion and hatred in many quarters. In October 1861 he was seized by a local vigilante squad, tortured, ordered to renounce his faith - which he refused to do - and was ultimately beheaded.\n\nStephen Selby's interesting account of archery in China from the pre-Shang period to the end of the 19th century mirrors the excellent address that he recently gave to the Society.\n\nThe indefatigable Keith Stevens takes us on a voyage of discovery into the history of Zhenjiang. As always the illustrations are wonderful.\n\nAnd Dan Waters reminisces about Hong Kong in the post-War years.\n\nThere are a total of 18 NOTES AND QUERIES on a wide variety of subjects. Paul Bolding gives us some insights into the life of the intrepid Belgium aviator, Louis de San - who he ultimately met in 1988 with some interesting photographs. There is an amusing 1905 Christmas card from Arnold Graham - that great benefactor of the HKBRAS Library - and an account of the Library by our Hon. Librarian, Julia Chan. Peter Hansell discusses the famous clock maker Douglas Lapraik. Paul Harrison writes penetratingly on the highly unusual subject of restoring artefacts for display in Hong Kong's museums. Bob Horsnell continues his highly interesting pieces on old military installations. David Mahoney provides further insights into the Chinese Labour Corps in France during World War I. Martin Merz adds another follow up to Solomon's Bard's TEA AND OPIUM advising that Chinese and Indian teas are, essentially, the same (we live and learn!). Robert Nield's beautiful photographs of Bhutan which I messed up in Volume 41 are now reproduced in all their glory. I'll leave you to read The wrestling princes by Keith Stevens (a little suspense will do no harm). Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey take us to St. John's (Shangchuan) Island to the southwest of Hong Kong where St. Francis Xavier died in 1552 (not, as I originally thought when skimming through the article,\n\niv", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215724, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nGliding: How Louis de San beat the Asian duration and altitude records in Chungking, China, in 1940, from the Belgian journal Aviation, Volume 2, Number 14, March 1946, translation by Paul Bolding\n\n345\n\nPaul Bolding - More on Louis de San\n\n357\n\nArnold Graham's Shanghai Christmas card, 1905\n\nJulia Chan - The Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society\n\n361\n\n373\n\nJames Hayes - Afterthoughts on South China Village Culture, Oxford University Press, 2001\n\n385\n\n393\n\nbecame Kalekie drzewo\n\nPeter Hansell - The colourful Douglas Lapraik (1818-1869)\n\nPaul Harrison - Introducing the Conservation Section of the Hong Kong Government\n\nPeter Halliday - Adventures in publishing: How The Crippled Tree\n\n377\n\n381\n\n...\n\nRobert Horsnell - A note on the Japanese gun emplacement at Tathong Point, Tung Lung Chau.........\n\n399\n\nDavid Mahoney - More on THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921: A new discovery\n\n....\n\n405\n\nDavid Mahoney - Yet more on THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN FRANCE, 1917-1921 ....\n\n411\n\nMartin Merz - Yet more on TEA AND OPIUM\n\n413\n\nFebruary 2002...\n\nRobert Nield - Photographs from the HKBRAS' visit to Bhutan,\n\nKeith Stevens - The wrestling princes\n\n417\n\n431\n\nxiv", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216098, "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": 397, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "331\n\nTram with an open-neck shirt and an off-white, wet-wash Saigon-linen suit. He had a necktie in his pocket to put on for meetings. He carried a Hong Kong (rattan) basket: no briefcase for him. One thing you did not do, in those days, was to mention the expiry of the lease and the hand back of the Territory to China in 1997, I did once, at a reception, and regretted it. You could hear a pin drop. It really was a 'borrowed place on borrowed time.'\n\nWhen I arrived conscription was still in force and every able-bodied British subject had to serve. If you were young, in your twenties, you usually joined the Regiment (the Volunteers). People like me, in my thirties, served in the Special Constabulary (in 1959 it became the Auxiliary Police). Those over 40 were drafted into Essential Services, such as air-raid warden duties. New recruits such as me, in the police European contingent, did three months basic training and 10 days at camp every year. At the latter the European contingent was grouped with the Portuguese and Eurasian contingent. There was a separate camp for Chinese. This was said to be largely for language reasons. Of course we all turned out during the five days of the 1956 riots. These were sparked when a junior civil servant pulled down a Nationalist flag, on the \"Double Tenth\" (10 October), from a Shek Kip Mei resettlement block in north Kowloon. The riots were very much Communists against Nationalists. Later, triads stepped in and took advantage of the situation.\n\nRoutinely, we Special Constables went on street patrol a couple of nights a month and raided opium dens and brothels. One of the interesting places we enjoyed going to was Circular Path, to the south of Queen's Road Central. With urban renewal this path has now disappeared. It contained, among other accommodation, a number of back-street workshops where reputedly stolen jade items and the like were \"re-worked.\"\n\n**\n\nI remember being on police patrol in Central, in April 1956, when we received news that the twice knighted, grand old man, Sir Robert Ho Tung, had passed away. He was 93, although for much of his life he did not enjoy good health. A Eurasian, he had \"gone the Chinese way.\" With his fabulous wealth he lived the life of a Chinese gentleman. It is sometimes said, 'All rivers which run into the China Sea turn salty.' In other words, all ethnic groups living in China get assimilated sooner or later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216180, "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": 479, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "YET MORE ON TEA AND OPIUM\n\nMARTIN MERZ\n\n413\n\nNotes on tea\n\nIn his article on tea and opium Solomon Bard states that during his fateful embassy to China in the late 18th century Macartney 'was allowed to collect shoots of tea plant. These were later carefully transported to Bengal with samples of soil where they flourished and very likely gave rise to present Indian tea'. In his follow-up notes in Vol. 41 of the RAS Journal David Akers-Jones quotes a passage from Macartney's journal about the acquisition of tea plants with the express purpose of transporting them to Bengal 'where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success'. The plants were delivered to the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Akers-Jones notes that some years later 'indigenous tea plants were discovered in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say.'\n\nAlthough tea became hugely popular soon after it was introduced to England in the 17th century details about the tea plant and its manufacture into a beverage remained a mystery for over two hundred years. The price of tea rapidly came down from sixty shillings a pound in 1666 (Leiper p.21) to five shillings a pound in 1750 (Wild p.40), a trend which continued as imports increased dramatically as exorbitant taxes came down and more players entered the field. By 1888 tea imports reached over twenty million pounds a year, 'producing more revenue than the whole of India'. (Wild p.40) There was a desire to unravel the secret of tea and further reduce costs as the beverage evolved from a luxury item of the elite to become the national drink of England. But the merchants who purchased tea in Canton had no opportunity to visit tea plantations and learn about its manufacture; and they seemed to lack any curiosity as long as they could engage in their business. The trade continued as a black box transaction from which the finished product appeared.\n\nIn 1763 John Bell wrote, 'Both the green and bohea [black tea]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216182, "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": 481, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "415\n\nAnd even after the first Opium War in 1841 the secret of tea remained an enigma. As it became possible to travel in China the Royal Horticultural Society of London sent botanist Robert Fortune to procure 'the finest varieties of the Tea-plant, as well as native manufacturers and implements, for the Government Tea plantations in the Himalayas.' (Goodwin p.12) Goodwin describes the torturous process that resulted in the first Assam tea reaching London in 1839. (Goodwin p.148) It was not a huge success, mainly because no one in India knew how to process tea.\n\nFinally, in 1848 Fortune determined that green and black tea came from the same plant, the only difference being in their manufacture. The secret was in a process referred to as fermentation, which is entirely unrelated to fermentation of sugars and starches to make alcohol. It is actually manipulation of the leaves to promote the oxidation of the leaves. (Goodwin p.132/3)\n\nportable greenhouses\n\nEmploying the latest technology Fortune successfully transported tens of thousands of Chinese tea plants to India. (Kit p.61) Goodwin describes this success as a 'mummy's curse' because Chinese teas crossed with Indian teas to ‘become a shrubby Frankenstein's monster, popping up all over the place and spoiling the planters' rest' (Goodwin p.121). Despite this unfortunate genetic engineering disaster by the 1880's Indian teas overtook Chinese teas in the ever-expanding British market. (Goodwin p.221) Initially Chinese teas were blended with Assam tea but ultimately Assam teas held their own. The massive outbound migrations of Fujianese on tea clippers were a direct result of the collapse of the tea industry in China, as the world markets became less dependent on Chinese tea. Hopefully the current intellectual property issues and trade imbalances between China and the USA will be resolved more amicably than those of the 19th century.\n\nWhile Chinese were reluctant to divulge details of the tea manufacturing process there were other sources of information. Lu Yu's Tea Classic of the Tang Dynasty describes the growing and manufacturing process in enough detail for practical purposes. Even if the book was not available in China it was in Japan where it formed the foundation of the tea ceremony. Japan, too, had a thriving tea industry. It is surprising the resourceful tea hunters did not try there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216183, "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": 482, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "416\n\nThere is one further chapter to the Assam tea story. In 1907 the Japanese introduced Assam tea to their colony of Taiwan in an effort to protect the Japanese green tea industry. This concern was justified; since the first shipment of oolong from Taiwan to the USA in 1869 Formosa's tea industry grew rapidly. (Zeng interview) Assam tea is still grown in northern Taiwan and consumed in the Chinese manner and has become a connoisseur's item for the modern Taiwanese Epicurean item with Fine Aged Assam Tea from Danshui [Tamshui] fetching high prices. (Ho interview)\n\nREFERENCES\n\nKit Chow and Ione Kramer, All the Tea in China, San Francisco, China Books and Periodicals, 1990. (Excellent reference with bilingual compendiums available at the Flagstaff Tea Museum)\n\nJason Goodwin, The Gunpowder Gardens; Travels through India and China in Search of Tea, Penguin, 2003 (Originally published in 1990 this entertaining and well researched travel book lacks end notes and an index)\n\nHo Chien, Ye Tang Tea Culture Research Institute, interview 8 Sept 03\n\nCharles Gutzlaff, China Opened; or, a display of the topography, history, customs, manners, arts, manufactures, commerce, literature, religion, jurisprudence, etc. of the Chinese Empire, London, Smith, Elder, 1838. (The Reverend Karl Frederick August Gutzlaff, for whom a street is named in Hong Kong, acted as a translator for Jardine's opium transactions up and down the China coast in exchange for being permitted to proselytize after hours.)\n\nSusan Leiper, Precious Cargo. Scots and the China trade, National Museums of Scotland Publishing, Edinburgh, 1997. (A beautifully illustrated panegyric)\n\nAnthony Wild, The East India Company, trade and conquest from 1600, London, HarperCollins illustrated, 1999\n\nZeng Zhixian, author and China Times tea correspondent, interview 8 Sept 03", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216323, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "31\n\nright, presently near a road bridge spanning the river at this point, has the picturesque name now, as it did then, of \"Lady's Slipper,\" in Cantonese Ah Niang Hai. The merchant ships had to anchor here and report themselves to the Chinese force guarding the passage, and show their permits. This done, they were on their way upstream to the Whampoa Anchorage, twelve miles from Canton.\n\nThe Whampoa Anchorage (Plate 3) was the furthest point to which merchant ships could come. It was a trans-shipment centre, a very busy place, year in year out, for centuries. Its warehouses, docks and repair yards, its hospital, its cemetery, all point to a long existence as the place in which - more than Canton itself - the real business of the China Trade was carried on. That is, other than at Lintin (“Solitary Nail,” a reference to its single peak), an island in the outer waters of the Delta which, since the 1820s, had become an opium depot and the port for a large volume of illegal trading, the amount (astonishingly enough) tripling the authorized regular trading conducted through the Co-hong, and under the official regulations.7\n\nWhampoa was the Chinese countryside beside the river, lush and heavily populated. The Daniells, English painters who visited the Whampoa anchorage twice, in 1785 and 1793, particularly noted ‘...its sweet, romantic scenery. Nothing indeed can exceed the beauty of the country in this vicinity.’ Another visitor wrote in 1848: \"Whampoa was beautiful. The vessels were displaying their different flags; Chinese boats were crossing and re-crossing in every direction, and the setting sun was shedding its gilded light on everything around, giving to the low, flat island, covered with rich, green-like velvet, the pagodas and the foliage of the trees, a touch of enchantment'. Above Canton, it was much the same story. \"The river sides were planted with orange-trees, plantains, and lychees; while nothing but rice fields appeared inland'.10\n\nWhampoa's famous seven-storey pagoda, built in the late Ming period, features in many China Trade paintings, and in paintings on porcelains and fans. The pagoda itself attracted the more energetic visitors. A 16 year old American girl who accompanied her sea captain father on his China voyage in 1856, climbed up the pagoda and wrote in her journal, '(after you arrive at the top, I found I was repaid for my trouble. Oh! There was such a beautiful view, for miles and miles I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216336, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "44\n\nthe Delta on fishermen going out to sea and returning with their catches, citing so-called 'watchmen's wages, registration charges and gifts of money to buy firecrackers and joss-sticks at festivals' and 'presents' of fish. The pressure had intensified after a soldier had fallen into the sea and drowned whilst collecting. Failure to pay led to their catches being speared with iron rods on the pretext of looking for contraband. It was recorded that a similar prohibition had been set up in 1801, but after being observed for a time had then been ignored by the garrisons and patrol boat crews.60\n\nThe prevailing climate of bad behaviour\n\nThe general expectation of the populace was that officials and their underlings at all levels of government would feather their nests whenever they could.\n\nEarly British consular reports after the Opium War reflect the condition of the people and the exactions of the mandarins.\n\nFirst, there was the general poverty. In his report for 1862, the British Consul at Canton described the people of the province as being 'a people among whom wealth is an exception and poverty a rule.'61\n\nNext, there were the reasons for it. A brother Consul at Tientsin attributed various causes and wrote that it is, no doubt, owing still more to the bad civil administration under which the people live,' adding: \"They generally content themselves with the acquisition merely of a moderate subsistence because wealth would be certain to lay them open to the extortions of the officials, with all the troubles which these involve. The Imperial Government, it is true, taxes lightly, but the rapacity of the civil officers discourages the accumulation of wealth in private hands, by subjecting its possessors to unmitigated oppression and spoliation.\"+62\n\nThirdly, there was the system. As reported by the British Consul at Amoy, another feature of administration was the farming out of collection duties, and the collusion between the farmers to whom the collection of taxes and duties were delegated ('who are people more or less connected with the mandarins') and the officials. The two shared 'the difference between the amount at which the revenue is let and that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216337, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "45\n\nwhich is actually levied,' and since the dealers believed the authorities to have been personally interested in these illegal transactions, they believed it would be useless to look to them for protection or redress'.\n\n63\n\nWhilst these passages are taken from early Treaty Port days, two decades after the Canton System had been replaced, they describe a world which had otherwise scarcely changed. It was still, in its essentials, the working milieu in which the Co-hong, the officials and their minions, both civil and military alike, and the people at large, on land and sea, had been obliged to exist; and with which, and with whom, the Western traders had to contend,\n\nRough treatment by the mandarins\n\nIt was also a milieu in which criminals, and anyone falling foul of officials would have a very bad time. The Chinese personnel of the Old China trade were no exceptions to the general rule, and could be very roughly treated by the mandarins when they chose to enforce the minute and graduated regulations that governed all and sundry throughout the Empire.“\n\n64\n\nA compradore was severely beaten and tortured and thrown into prison in 1816, because the EIC's ships' captains had presented a petition at a city gate over difficulties with obtaining a permit to load, with more beatings ordered for another compradore and two linguists, whilst the Company's head compradore had to leave hurriedly because police runners were looking for him. 65 In 1831, during the Canton Prefect's unannounced visit to the EIC's hall, a linguist was put in chains, taken away, and threatened with decapitation. 66\n\nThe officials, their courts and prisons were justly to be feared. Just how bad they could be was experienced at first hand by Captain Denham, shipwrecked on Formosa with his mixed crew of 55 Europeans, Chinese and Indians, and 2 passengers, in 1842. Perhaps because their brig, the Ann, had been an opium runner, they were treated like Chinese criminals, subject to the practices and procedures usual when men were imprisoned, tried, and condemned to execution, as indeed nearly all of them were. 67\n\nThe truth is, that the Chinese government was very severe with its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]