[ { "id": 204341, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n105\n\nBecause of their limited resources monasteries in Hong Kong have never been able to act as is'ung lam, that is, public monasteries which on the mainland made it their obligation to accept all wandering monks. There has been and is no religious obligation for Hong Kong monasteries to receive refugees or visitors. They are private institutions and a stranger, even though he is an ordained monk in good standing, can be refused admission. There have, however, been some monasteries here (notably the Tung Pu Toh) that did manage to shelter hundreds of refugee monks in the years immediately following 1950, and they have been much admired for so doing. Most of these monks have since emigrated to Taiwan.\n\nOne of the problems facing the Sangha in Hong Kong is how to maintain its size. While the number of lay Buddhists is growing, the Sangha is not. Only the Po Lin Tsz performs ordination. Other monasteries do not have the equipment and personnel required. The South China Buddhist Academy (at the Wong Faat Tsing She), which was the only seminary in the Colony, has ceased to function because there were not enough candidates for the rigorous training it offered. It may be that the atmosphere in Hong Kong does not favour the development of the attitudes that best lead a young man to take refuge in the Three Jewels. If his only reason for accepting the hardship of monastery life is to escape greater hardship outside the monastery, he is unlikely to have the diligence necessary for seeking enlightenment or to contribute much in the way of helping others to seek it. The Sangha faces the danger of decline both in size and quality.\n\nIV. GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION\n\nThe Chinese Temples Ordinance, passed in 1928 to protect the public from extortion and fraud which were then becoming more prevalent in the urban areas, deals with places of Chinese worship open to the public where fees or other charges are levied. Such temples are placed under the control of a statutory Chinese Temples Committee, consisting of leading Chinese citizens with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs as the chairman and the only government member. The Committee can require the transfer of any temple falling within the provisions of the Ordinance and all its property, without compensation, to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs' titular ownership. Five old temples are specifically excluded from the operations of this Ordinance; a sixth one, the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road, often used by film companies, has for over 50 years had a separate Ordinance of its own placing it under the control of the Tung Wah Hospitals; the administrative and financial supervision of seven others is delegated by the Temples Committee to the Tung Wah Hospitals. The Temples Committee at present directly administers 36 temples,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch \n\nRASHKB and author \n\n106 \n\nVol. 1 (1961) \n\nISSN 1991-7295 \n\nwhich include nearly all those not specifically exempted in the urban areas and the majority of better known temples outside the urban areas. The day to day operation of the Committee's temples is annually farmed out to the highest bidders, who collect as much as they can from the public on the sale of incense, fortune-telling tallies etc., and (as and when they can) by attempting to charge fees for admission. From these takings they have to pay quarterly rent, in advance, to the Committee and can pocket the rest. A keeper is not responsible for the maintenance of the building, but only for vacating it at the end of his twelve-month agreement, together with all furnishings in the same condition as he received them, normal wear and tear excepted.\n\nThe Chinese Temples Committee pools the rents from the temples it controls and is required by law to apply the proceeds first to the \"due observance of customary ceremonies\" (i.e., certain annual festivals) and second to the maintenance and repair of temple premises and property. They may then transfer surpluses from rents received and interest on invested capital to their General Chinese Charities Fund, from which they customarily make disbursements at their discretion to various Chinese charities in Hong Kong. In the year ending March 31, 1960 the Committee made grants totalling HK$304,270 in support of a wide field of educational, medical, cultural and welfare activities, after spending $75,800 on temple ceremonies and repairs.\n\nTheoretically, any Buddhist monastery or nunnery could be taken over by the Temples Committee in the same fashion as a temple to T'in Hau or T'aam Kung A. In practice,\n\nA however, this has never happened. Buddhist places of worship are registered under the Chinese Temples Ordinance (or, in a few cases, as societies or corporations), but are allowed to control their premises and administer their property without government interference. If one of them were to collect large sums from the public either in an improper manner or for improper purposes, it might well be taken over, and knowledge of this fact curbs the greed of the few \"slick operators\" in the Hong Kong Buddhist world. On the other hand, since most Buddhist institutions are away from centres of urban population and do not countenance the money-making practices of Chinese temples, their problem is a shortage of money rather than ill-gotten gains.\n\nNot only has there been little or no government interference in Buddhist activities, but there have been traditionally good relations between the Colonial Government, particularly the office of the Secretary of Chinese Affairs, and the leading Buddhist groups in the Colony. The two sides are in regular contact and cooperate on a number of welfare enterprises, as will become clear below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nNOTES\n\nThe notes are intended to amplify the text. The subjects of the longer notes are chosen rather arbitrarily and represent my particular interests,\n\nJ. W. H.\n\n1 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960) p. 88.\n\n2 Crown Rent Rolls, District Office Islands, New Territories Administration.\n\n* Under the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June, 1898,\n\n*Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, hereafter styled Sessional Papers. (Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., 1911) p. 103 (22) and (26). This article is mainly concerned with the land population, but for a good short description of the life, work and general background of the boat people, see G. N. Orme \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" in Sessional Papers 1912, pp. 53-55.\n\n5 The help of the Chairman, Vice-Chairmen and members of the Cheung Chau Rural Committee in tracing and gaining access to these tablets is gratefully acknowledged, and the great assistance given with transcription and translation by Messrs. LO Chi-chung, LEUNG Kun-siu and LEW Pang-fei, my former colleagues in the District Office.\n\n* I have translated shue-shat as study, rather than school, since it was intended for the private use of members and their children and not for outsiders. The association became known as the Tung Kwun Wui So on 16th September, 1926 (see Land Registers), previous to which it had been registered as the Po On Shue Shat. I have presumed that with such a name, a school was operated as well as the office and ancestral temple. (See note 26 and text to which it refers.) For the distinction between the names Po On and San On see Notes and Queries, p. 146 below. The character inscribed on this tablet is a simplified form of the character.\n\nLocal trades included shipbuilding: see Orme's report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 55.\n\n—\n\n* The number of Cheung Chau shops subscribing to the various schemes recorded on the tablets is as follows: Po On study (1866) 38; Defence Office (1863-70) 66; Fong Pin hospital (1878) 98, and Tin Hau temple (1879) 125, from the 200 odd mentioned in the Fong Pin preamble.\n\n* Many shops are mentioned on the tablets, but they are all listed by their business names and not by the names of the owners, in which custom the Chinese does not follow the English.\n\n10 The Tong has a substantial genealogical record, last produced between eighty and a hundred years ago and printed from stone blocks on hand-made bamboo paper. I am indebted to Mr. WONG Shing Yip of Cheung Chau who very kindly let me see his copy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205095, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "46\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nto \"Mui Tsai in Hong Kong\", the Report of the Committee appointed by the Governor, in Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1935.- \"The most careful inquiry shews that no male children are bought and sold here as slaves or servants. and confirms the statements in the Blue-book that 'Boys are sold to be sons. not slaves' and 'that no such thing as a slave-boy exists in Hong Kong\". It might too with truth have been added 'nor in Canton' \". The 1935 Report itself concludes that \"there is no evidence of slavery among Chinese males”. \n\n90 ***.\n\n91 蒙養學校.\n\n92 *.\n\n93 It is tempting to link this Sai Man surname with the original name of Kam Tin - Sham Lei - and to postulate a history of enslavement by 岑里 the Tangs of the original inhabitants. There is no evidence to support such a theory, however, and it must be put down to coincidence.\n\n94 趟。\n\n95 Anyway, since the vegetable-growers are mainly immigrants, indigenous men were freed from the land and looked elsewhere for income in addition to the rents from these fields.\n\n96 Perhaps the village of Tai Tau Leng ★★ may be taken as an example.\n\n97 See for instance Freedman, op. cit.; Hu Hsien-chin, The Common Descent Group in China and its Functions, New York, 1948; Arthur H. Smith, Village Life in China, New York, 1899; Lena E. Johnston, China and her Peoples, London, 1923; and many others.\n\n98. A.D. 1662-1723.\n\n99 For more details see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Hong Kong, 1963, (Chinese version 1960), chapter VI.\n\n100 Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and *, Governor of Kwangtung. For details see the Hsin-an Hsien-chih B of 1819; also Lo Hsiang-lin, op. cit., chapter VI.\n\n101 I have not seen this temple, and believe it to be on the mainland side of the border which runs through the town.\n\n102 It has become very much a part of village life, accommodating a school; while on the ten-yearly occasions of Kam Tin's Ta-chiu Festival it is the physical focus of the ceremonies, and also has importance in that Chau and Wong are the 'patron saints' of the festival,\n\n103 周王二院.\n\n104 In fact, it was only the Tang Clan which was not wholly involved in the venture---those of its lineages on the West side of the New Territories not being included. The whole of each of the other four clans took part.\n\n105 That is the Tangs of Tai Po Tau and Lung Kwat Tau.\n\n106 Burned down in the fire of 1954, and not yet rebuilt.\n\n107 深圳河.\n\n108 The Tangs of Lung Kwat Tau, the Haus and the Lius.\n\n109 The Tangs of Tai Po Tau, the Pangs, and the Mans of San Tin and Tai Hang.\n\n110 J. W. Hayes, op. cit., note 52.\n\n111 \"Despatches and other papers relating to the extension of the Colony of Hong Kong\", in Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1899.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205411, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nheld office for many years on the main advisory bodies representing the Chinese community in the Colony, including the District Watchmen's Committee, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee and the Po Leung Kuk.15\n\nSir Show-son CHOW's son, Mr. CHOW Yat-kwong, J.P. has kindly given permission for members to visit the house in the New Village which contains the family's ancestral hall,\n\nIII. THE Hung Shing Temple And AP LEI CHAU\n\nThe Hung Shing Temple, The Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau, judging by the temple bell, dates from the 18th century.16 It appears to have been enlarged in 1847 and some wall-tablets show that it was given a major repair in 1888. The present building dates from that time or earlier. Its origin is uncertain because it is not clear who built it in the first instance. Records show that the Ap Li Chau land population was \"no more than two or three families of Hakka grass cutters\" before 1841, so that we must look elsewhere for the builders. It could have only been built and supported by the joint efforts of the local (i.e. Aberdeen) land people and boat population. The former only amounted to a few hundreds before the British came, but the boat population was probably as considerable before 1841 as after, e.g. 415 boats and 2,243 persons at the 1856 census18 and 424 boats and 4,130 persons in 1866.19\n\nThe temple is interesting in that it has old-style flagpoles still standing in front of the building. Old prints frequently show this kind of pole; but though a few bases can still be seen nowadays in Hong Kong, Macau and the New Territories these could be the only ones left with the poles and their basket-like tops still in place.\n\nAp Lei Chau before 1911. The present land settlement on Ap Lei Chau was founded in the early decades of British rule. By the mid-1860's there were 60 houses there, which implies that several hundred residents were living on the island at that time.20 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123 rising to 1,437 at the Colony Census of 1911.21 This population gained its livelihood to a great extent from concerns directly associated with the fishing industry, such as boat-building yards, ship chandlers and rope and sail works, and from provision shops and general stores that also catered for the fishermen's daily needs.22 There was very", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205480, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n17\n\nboth officials and people were encouraged to participate in the rites associated with them.\n\nThese god-officials, housed in temples in the chief cities of districts, counties and provinces, were often former government officials who had worked in the locality and people were encouraged to help in their selection. The gods were expected to report social misdeeds — evasion of taxes for example — to higher gods who could punish offenders by bringing misfortune. It is said those not afraid to perjure themselves in court were often afraid to do so before the gods, and so such cults encouraged obedience to law and order.13\n\nWhen these cults worked well they focussed people's interests on the administrative area of which their village was part and at the same time emphasized the position of the local village unit in the larger territorial administration. But temple-keepers and yamen clerks are said to have embezzled funds set aside for the rites and performed them in a perfunctory manner. The influence of such cults over villages more remote from city centres would probably, as with the cults to local worthies described above, be less than over nearby villages.\n\nBut the village itself was usually more directly connected with another god, to some extent operating independently of this spiritual hierarchy and standing more for local interests. This was the earth god: protector, in some of his roles, of such places as graves, bridges, rivers and canals, but also protector of a village unit or sometimes a section of a village. It is said that the earth god was usually somebody who had rendered local public service in his former human life.14 The earth god's cult was more usually associated with an open shrine than a temple, with his image being placed on the ground. His festival commonly generated a great deal of group activity: various occupational groups in a village would collect money to contribute to the festival's religious and social functions and would “elect” one of their number to serve on the committee formed to organize the festival.\n\nWhile it appears unusual for the cult of the earth god to have become associated with a complex land owning organization with control over a village or village section as in the case of ancestral cults, cults to other popular gods sometimes did so. Temples built for gods who had special meaning in the life of a village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205503, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "40\n\nzation\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nsometimes helped to integrate groups of neighbouring communities who would be encouraged to form associations to resist their disruptive activities.\n\nReligion, then, was often a means of fortifying existing groups of people with common interests or roles in the community. It also sometimes brought organized groups into being among those already having common interests but no other form of organization. In certain circumstances it gave rise to organizations contributing to the integration of whole communities: when all individual members of a community had a status or interest in common. Ancestor worship did so when all villagers were kinsmen; temple organization might do so when it could appeal to all members of the community as residents, for whom a particular god had significance. In both cases wealth and education were needed to bring such organization to its highest development and were themselves factors limiting control. In certain circumstances secret organizations might provide some form of village cohesion: either through a common interest in resisting them, or, when economic and social conditions reduced the differences among members of a community, through common membership of such bodies. This kind of integration would probably last only as long as the conditions reducing differences among the community members lasted.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 This paper was prepared originally for a seminar on micro-social organization on China held at Cornell University in October 1962 and sponsored by the Sub-committee on Chinese Society of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. It has been slightly abridged and rearranged by me for publication here. I have been limited in my use of published material to works available to me in Hong Kong. The research notes to which I refer were collected during field studies in Singapore during the years 1951-52 and 1954-55, and during the early 1960's in Hong Kong.\n\n2 See his Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London, Athlone Press, 1958), and Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London, Athlone Press, 1966).\n\n3 See for example Hui-chen Wang Liu. \"An Analysis of Chinese Clan Rules: Confucian Theories in Action\", in Confucianism in Action, ed. David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1959) pp. 63-64.\n\n4 See his Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1960) p. 335.\n\n5 For example Hsiao, ibid., p. 329 and 359ff.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206124, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n197\n\ntook place locally, in the areas just across the Sino-British border at Sha Tau Kok. The villagers of these three places became alarmed for the fate of their cherished Tin Hau image and brought it into British territory for safety. They also brought back two incense burners (†) dated in the 2nd and 3rd years of Kuang Hsü (1876-78) that had been donated by local shops and fishermen in one case and by Lin Ma Hang (A) natives then in Australia (J).\n\nThe leaders of the three villages then combined to form the Sha Tau Kok Three Villages Tin Hau Temple Building Committee (沙頭角三鄉籌建天后廟委員會) and obtained a temporary building permit from the Tai Po District Office to erect a temple for the image. The temple is situated at map reference KV 140962 at the west end of Kong Ha Village in the Frontier Closed Area. It is under the management of a special trust, the Sam Wo Tong (*) constituting one manager each from Tong To, Tan Shui Hang and Sha Tsui villages.\n\nPhotographs of this new temple and of the Tin Hau image which inspired such devotion can be seen at Plates 30 and 31.\n\nPlace names used in this note can be found in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (H.K. Govt. Printer, n.d. but 1960) pp. 216-218.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nPILE HOUSES AT TAI O, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG,\n\n7TH JANUARY 1937\n\nEditor's Note\n\nThe following details of some of the interesting pile houses or matsheds on stilts that survive in considerable numbers in Tai O Creek to the present day are taken from one of Mr. Walter Schofield's notebooks, under the date given in the heading. Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) served in the Hong Kong Cadet (Administrative) Service between 1911-1938 in various posts, including those of District Officer South, Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs and First Police Magistrate. He was also a well-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206192, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "ترا \n\n11 May \n\n22 June \n\nDr. Hu Shiu-ying \n\n\"Flowering Plants of Hong Kong.” \n\nDr. Chiu Ling-yeong \n\n+4 \n\nTwo Views on the Modernization of \n\nChina.\" \n\n21 September Mr. Kwok On \n\n7 November \n\n12 December \n\n(Talk, Demonstration and Performances) \"Puppet Show.\" \n\nMr. James Hayes (Organiser) \n\nExcursion to Tung Lin Kok Yuen, the Tam Kung Temple, Happy Valley and the Tin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay, \n\nMr. David Gilkes (Organiser) \n\nExcursion to Tao Fong Shan, Shatin. (The Christian Mission to Buddhists). \n\nTaking into consideration the variation in the popularity of subjects and in the availability of lecturers, the lectures last year were on the whole as well attended as could be expected, and this raises two points of special interest to our Society. One is the availability of suitable halls at the times we want them, and the other the choice of subjects. \n\nRegarding the former, it is becoming more difficult to make short-notice bookings of lecture halls in Hong Kong and this is due partly to the increasing demand and partly to long-term block booking by some organizations. This is going to remain a permanent difficulty, and an increasing one too, and the only answer I can see to it is the ultimate acquisition of our own premises, which incidentally would solve one of our library problems as well. \n\nRegarding the choice of subjects, popularity of the subject is not the only point taken into consideration by your Committee when arranging the lecture programmes. Our chief aim is to cater during each year for as many tastes among our members as possible, and hence variety of subjects, rather than popularity, is the main criterion. A glance at the above list will, I think, convince you that that is what we are achieving. Your Committee would therefore welcome suggestions or requests from members", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206270, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n81\n\nshould be seized as a traitor by the Mandarins. In the end he settled at Hong Kong, where he is said to encourage disreputable characters by the loan of money, and in various ways to reap the proceeds of profligacy and crime.5\n\nLoo Aqui also appears in the records as Lo Aking 盧亞 or Sze Mun King [Lo] (King, the Gentleman). At the time of the Sino-British war he seems to have played both sides of the game. The Chinese government lured him back to Canton by offering him an official degree of the sixth rank. He accepted but did not stay long with the Chinese, as he was soon back in Hong Kong enjoying the rewards of his services as provisioner for the British forces. He seems to have had supporters in Hong Kong Government circles for he secured the grant of a large and valuable section of land behind the Marine Lots of the Lower Bazaar. This was the area between Queen's Road and Jervois Street extending from near its junction westward to Cleverly Street. He and his family also acquired a number of Marine Lots by grant or purchase. Of the twenty-seven signers of the petition of land owners in 1848, about one-fifth of them were members of the Loo clan. Soon after the settlement of Hong Kong Loo Aqui was operating a gambling establishment and brothels. In 1845 he built a theatre. For a time he held the opium monopoly, and when the residents of the Middle Bazaar were removed to the Tai Ping Shan area in 1844, he petitioned the Government for the privilege of operating a market for the inhabitants, agreeing to build a substantial market house at a cost of $2,500 and to pay a monthly rental to Government of $200 for a period of five years. Loo Aqui and Tam Achoy were recognized as the leaders of the Chinese community, for according to a Chinese account entitled \"Information as to the period of the formations of Districts in Hongkong and the alteration of the Character Wan—a bay to Wan—a circuit”, in 1847 they built the Man-Mo Temple on Hollywood Road and here \"they judged the people in public assembly\" until 1851 when the shopkeepers of the Lower Bazaar \"repaired to Man-Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest\".\n\nAside from Aqui's income from various business ventures, he had a steady income from his properties. In 1850 he was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206278, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n89\n\nFukienese merchants to settle in Hong Kong. Several other merchants appear on the earliest of the élite lists indicating their presence in the first decade of the Colony's history.\n\nIn 1852 \"Cun-wo A Kwi, merchant\" contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. This is Chow Aki* of the firm Cong-wo, which had been established in the Lower Bazaar in 1842, having a branch at Canton. In 1849 he bought the lease of the Central Market, holding it until 1857. He became a large investor in real estate, but sold out most of his property in 1866 and retired to Macao.\n\nA merchant who survived the pitfalls of commerce in early Hong Kong was Wong Ping1. He is named as a silk merchant on the land-owners' petition of 1848, but he was one of Hong Kong's first industrialists in that he owned a rope walk beyond the western end of the Lower Bazaar. He was one of three trustees to hold Inland Lot 361 in Taipingshan on behalf of the Chinese community. The lot was granted in 1851 and upon it was built a temple \"for the reception of Tablets to the memory of... deceased countrymen\".22 The building was used, however, not only for memorial tablets but also as a depository for those who were about to die, following established Chinese custom. When this use came to the notice of the European community it was shocked. The reaction and public discussion which followed resulted in Government allocating a grant from the revenues of the gambling monopoly to the Chinese community for the erection of a suitable hospital to be known as Tung Wah. Wong Ping was not a member of the Organizing Committee of the Hospital, though he was on the Kai Fong Committee for 1872. He died in 1887. Wong Yue Yee alias Wong Yick Bun, of the Chun Cheong Wing Nam Pak Hong, a Director of the Tung Wah in 1872, may have been a relative as Wong Ping is mentioned in 1881 as a managing partner of the Chun Cheung Hong for some twenty years. He also was associated with the Tsui Shing firm and the Tuck Mee Hong.\n\nIn the 1850s the Taiping Rebellion upset the social and economic structures of China. The changes in China were reflected in changes in Hong Kong. The Taiping threat upon Canton created a refugee group which sought in Hong Kong more stable conditions. Some were wealthy and brought their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206306, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A\n\n# THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n117\n\nquarrymen a lawless and potentially dangerous class of people. But Chinese on Hong Kong Island, like their fellow countrymen in Hsin-an hsien (a county which then comprised the future British Kowloon Peninsula and New Territories) formed a socially well-organised community, knit together by ties of family and kinship and involved, apart from the boat people, in wider forms of social organisation such as the clan and the lineage3. They were constrained by the type of in-built social controls found typically in any rural Chinese community. On the other hand, immigrant Chinese arriving after 1842, who came mostly from Canton and the delta counties, formed a purely urban population, lacking roots and sentiments of belonging: they had necessarily few attachments at first to their new area of residence. Congregated in the mushrooming city of Victoria and soon outnumbering the old, established Chinese population of the island, they were not subject to any in-built system of social control. The new population of urban Chinese from Kwangtung Province, like newly arrived Europeans, were faced with the problem of maintaining public order and protecting their families and properties. The better-off Chinese merchants and traders were soon compelled to employ their own guards and some householders and shopkeepers engaged their own street watchmen, either paid for by the individual householder or collectively by subscription.\n\nBy the 1850s Hong Kong Chinese had developed not only their own associations, such as Kaifong, but even a rudimentary system of self-government, if the evidence is to be believed. A note in the China Review claims, for example, that in 1851 the shopkeepers of Sheung Wan (i.e., the area of the Chinese 'Bazaar', west of the European central district) 'repaired the Man-mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein afterwards decided all cases of any public interest5'. The same writer also claims that in 1857 'the U-lan-shing-ui (a sworn mutual aid association) united Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan under one public committee, and these four districts were called the Sz-wan or four circuits'. Eitel states (but cites no authority) that around 1851 the Committee of the Man Mo Temple 'now rose into eminence as a sort of unrecognised and unofficial local-government board (principally made up by Nampak-hong or export merchants). This Committee secretly controlled native affairs, acted as commercial arbitrators, arranged for the due", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206324, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n135\n\n4 The first census of the Island in 1841 gave a population of 5,650. In 1844 the population was given as 19,009. See Historical and Statistical Abstract of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1841-1931, Hong Kong, Noronha, 1932. The validity of the first census has been questioned by G. R. Sayer in his Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 104.\n\n5 The China Review, vol. 1, 1872/73, p. 333.\n\n6 Ibid., p. 334.\n\n7 E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1895, p. 282. The Man Mo Temple stands at the western end of Hollywood Road. It was originally a shrine patronised mostly by fishermen before 1841. For a description of the temple see Charles J. H. Halcombe, The Mystic Flowery Land, London, Luzac and Co., 1896, ch. xxvii. The temple was run by a committee appointed by the Five Districts and the committee used to hold an annual ceremony at Mount Davis for the dead... in celebration of the gods of literature and war: see the Hongkong Government Gazette (henceforth cited as the Gazette), 12 February 1879, p. 52. The properties of the Man Mo Temple were transferred to the Tung Wah Hospital by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, No. 10 of 1908. Before the committee of the Tung Wah Hospital was organized, the Man Mo Temple Committee appears to have been recognised as representing the opinions of respectable Chinese.\n\n9 J. W. Norton Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1898, vol. 2, p. 86. See also the reports of the Registrar General for 1866 and 1867 in the Gazette.\n\n9 Ibid., p. 86.\n\n10 In 1867 the police force consisted of 89 Europeans, 377 Indians (chiefly Bombay sepoys) and 132 Chinese, many of whom were employed as marine police. See Eitel, op. cit., pp. 445-6.\n\nAs late as 1893 there were only two European policemen who could act as proper interpreters and only five who could speak some Chinese. See the Report of the Commission on the Po Leung Kuk, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1893, p. 81.\n\n12 Correspondence on Hong Kong Gambling Houses, London, H.M.S.O., 1869, p. 21.\n\n13 Eitel, op. cit., p. 447.\n\n14 Gazette, 6 January 1872. The Police Commission set up by MacDonnell was not unanimous: broadly it agreed to recommend an Anglo-Chinese police force. The recruitment of Chinese police had been strongly advocated by Dr. Legge, as most likely to bring good understanding between the government and respectable Chinese', G. B. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, London, Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 160.\n\n13 Osbert Chadwick, Reports on the Sanitary Conditions of Hong Kong, London, H.M.S.O., 1882, p. 42.\n\n16 'Registration of Chinese Partners', Hong Kong Sessional Papers (henceforth cited as Sessional Papers), No. 43 of 1901, p. 22. The text reads: 'Head and District Watchmen employed to patrol the streets by day and by night, are to be recommended by the Chinese themselves, because they know whether they are trustworthy or not. If these men, however, should fail to maintain their good character and should be found to be unfit for the post by the Chinese residents of the district to which they belong, they should be dismissed at any time, in order that they may have something to fear'. The translation is clearly a bad one.\n\n17 In 1883, the Registrar General, Frederick Stewart, used the district watchmen to conduct an enquiry into all Hong Kong schools. In the 1897", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206405, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "196\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge, old temples in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. it is not under the management of the Chinese Temples Committee but is exempted from the provisions of the Chinese Temples Ordinance No. 7 of 1928. At that time it was allowed to remain in the hands of the private family to eight of whose members a Crown Lease had been issued on 14th May, 1897. This was the Tai (...) clan formerly of Po Kong Village, Kowloon which was demolished during the Japanese occupation to make way for an extension to the Kai Tak airfield. The temple remains in the hands of their descendants to this day.\n\nJust when the Tai clan began the connection and whether they were responsible for the foundation and successive reconstruction cannot now be established for certain, as no written records remain. A document that might have helped, their clan record, (...) was lost during the Japanese occupation, and we are left with oral tradition. Conversations with the present manager and with an old village woman, a Tai, born in 1887 at Po Kong, gives information that the family are Hakkas from Tam Shui district, not far from Hong Kong. When they came to Po Kong to settle is not now known, but it was certainly before the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. The story goes that members of the family used to come over to Hong Kong Island to cut grass. They found an image of Tin Hau among rocks on the sea-shore where the temple now stands—the coast-line has since been altered by reclamation—and built a modest shelter for it. By degrees it became a popular shrine with boat people and others, especially at the goddess' birthday on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. A proper temple building was erected later by the Tai family who are said to have collected subscriptions for the purpose, leading in time to the major reconstruction of 1868.\n\n―\n\nThere is some doubt in my mind whether the bell now in the temple was cast specially for it. The Chinese characters on it do not mention that it was for the Tin Hau Temple. Alternatively, though the bell may have been made for this temple, the Tais may not have been the founders, despite their traditions, as not one of the five persons who presented it, and whose names appear on it, was a Tai.\n\nThe Crown Lease of 1897 was issued to eight persons, and from what the old lady has said it appears that this followed a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206646, "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-1972", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "188\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nthe 23rd day of the sixth lunar month. In Singapore and in Malaya the usual date is the 23rd of the seventh lunar month; but other comparatively common dates are the 6th of the third lunar month, the 18th of the fifth lunar month, the 26th of the sixth lunar month, and the 10th of the eighth lunar month.\n\nNames of his family\n\nFa Chu Kung's family name was Chang (**張**) and he was called Chang Kung (**昌公**). His two brothers are called variously:\n\na. Chang Kung (#2); red face; in Fukien temples\n\nb. Hsiau Kung(); pink face; in Fukien temples\n\na. Hung Kung (#2); pink face; in Fukien temples\n\nb. Hsiau Kung (2): white face; in Fukien temples\n\na. Chiang Chün Ye (*): red face; this last group was seen in a Cantonese temple in Seremban\n\nb. Fa Ch'ing(): white face; this last group was seen in a Cantonese temple in Seremban\n\nHis four assistants have been observed in one temple only, a Hengwa Fukien temple, and are called:\n\na. Liu 劉\n\nb. Lien 遵\n\nc. Chang 張\n\nd. ...\n\nHe has two main disciples:\n\nMa Ye: white faced; with a bell in right hand for punctuating prayers, and wearing a horse head hat.\n\nHu Ye: red faced; with a bottle in his left hand containing magic water for frightening demons, and wearing a tiger head hat.\n\nCommunity Groups worshipping Fa Chu Kung\n\nEach temple in which Fa Chu Kung has been observed has had a temple keeper, appointed by the temple committee or from whom he had purchased his franchise. The main community groups in which Fa Chu Kung is to be found are from the An Chi and Ying Ch'üen areas of Fukien province. Other community groups which have images to Fa Chu Kung are Foochow City, T'ung An and Heng Wa. He is to be seen in at least 34 temples in Singapore and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206864, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n135 \n\n(1847, or 26th year of To Kwang), Sz-man-king and one Tam-tsoi, built the Man Mo Miu, and here they \"judged the people\" in public assembly. In 30th year of To Kwang (1851) the shop keepers of Sheung Wan or Upper Bay ... repaired the Man Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest. \n\nBiographical notices of the two community leaders who built the temple are given in an article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong” in this Journal, vol. 11 (1971), pp. 80-82, 87-88. \n\nPrevious to the opening of the Man Mo Temple the Shing Wong Temple may have been used as a Chinese \"Town Hall\", for as we have noted only one such building is listed in 1845 and 1846, but two are listed in 1847, the date given for the erection of the Man Mo Temple. The two temples were quite close to each other. The Shing Wong Temple was on the western edge of the European part of Victoria and the Man Mo Temple on the eastern edge of the Chinese settlement. A steep and rocky hillside divided the two sections. \n\nConfirmation of the 1847 date given in the quoted Chinese account is supported both by the date, Tao Kuang 27th year, inscribed on the bell at the Man Mo Temple and the date of the Crown Lease for Inland Lot 338 upon which the Temple is built, which is 24 June, 1847. A letter dated 29 May 1847, from the Colonial Secretary authorized its issuance with the stipulation that the premises be used as a school. After the building was finished, however, it was used as a temple. In consequence, the Government in March 1848, began charging Crown Rent for the lot. It was then decided that the temple should be rebuilt on a larger scale reflecting the increasing affluence of the Chinese community. An account of the opening of the new building is reported in The Friend of China, 24 May, 1851: \n\nThe Chinese Community are now enjoying themselves in a way we have never seen before in this Colony, on the occasion of the opening of a spacious Heathen Temple in the Hollywood Road, a few hundred yards from the London Missionary Society's College and Chapel. The Temple is dedicated to a body of the civil and military Gods, and has cost nearly a thousand pounds sterling in erection,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206865, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "136\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA few months after the festive opening of the temple, \"The Joss House Committee\" received from Government the grant of a lot adjoining the temple for the erection of a school.\n\nSometime between 1860 and 1865 a small building was built on the rocky hillside just below the Man Mo Temple. It was near Circular Pathway and Ladder Street. In the Hong Kong Rate lists its name is given at one time as \"Sam Young” Miu and at another time as \"Sam Sing\" Miu. The 1878 Rate has the notation \"removed\". This is clearly another temple.\n\nEitel states that the Tai Wong Temple in Spring Gardens was in existence at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong. If so, title to the Queen's Road East property on which it is built was not obtained until 1847. Lee Fun-wei, a compradore, then obtained a Crown Lease for Inland Lot 257. In 1852, Lee Muy, \"carer of Joss House\", was witness to the transfer of a nearby house. He may be the same as Lee Amoy, \"formerly a butcher, but now of no occupation”, who obtained a court order in 1864 prohibiting Lee Fun-wei from selling or further mortgaging the temple property. In the following year the two parties exchanged properties. Lee Amoy conveyed to Lee Fun Wei a lot with five houses and in return received Inland Lot 257 with \"Joss House, dwelling house and building erected thereon\". Lee Amoy immediately mortgaged the temple property to Delfino Noronha, a Portuguese printer, for $1,500. The mortgage remained unpaid, and in 1869 Noronha sold the temple to a committee composed of Tam Achoy, Ho Asik, and Lee Yuk Hang. It thus passed out of the private ownership of the Lee family to the representatives of the Chinese community.\n\nIf Eitel's statement is correct, that the temple on Queen's Road East at Spring Gardens was in existence before the British occupation of the Island, its proprietors the Lee family may have been settled in the Spring Gardens area, now better known as Wanchai, before the occupation. When Crown Leases were issued for land in this area in 1847, several members of the Lee family secured lots.\n\nA notice of the Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau written by Mr. James Hayes appears in Vol. 7 of this Journal. The date of the bell in the temple is given as 1773. As we have noticed Eitel states the temple was built about 1770. Information on when and by whom it was built is given in a court case reported in The China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206866, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n137\n\nMail 17 May 1893. A representative of the Chan clan, which built the temple and claimed title to it as clan property, entered suit against the local Worship Committee of Ap Lei Chau which had tried to get possession of the management of the temple. The action had begun as a civil case when a dispossessed keeper of the temple tried to remove some effects, which he claimed as his own property but the Temple Committee claimed as temple property. Now the court was called upon to decide who was to be the legitimate managing committee for the temple.\n\nThe evidence set forth by the Chan clan claimed that about the year 1780, Chan U-ting, living in Little Hong Kong, having prospered, placed an image of the god Hung Shing on a small island between Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau and erected over it a small covering. He had five sons whose descendants formed the five branches (fong) of the Chan family. Through the years the family moved away from Little Hong Kong. The majority took up residence on Lamma Island; however, they retained possession of the temple and hired a caretaker. Some member of the Chan clan was entrusted with the oversight of the temple affairs and regularly received the fees collected by the temple keeper from the people who went there to worship. In 1888 there was a major renovation and enlargement of the temple. The costs were met by a public subscription obtained from Victoria, Canton, Macao, Yaumati and the vicinity, and not simply from the people of Ap Lei Chau who were now seeking to dispossess the Chan clan of their rights in the temple. The elder of the clan in 1893 was Chan Lui-hing, and the action against the Worship Committee was brought in his name on behalf of the clan. From time to time the clan hired a man to reside at the temple. From 1883 to 1893 the keeper was Chan A-kwai. He had succeeded his father in the position.\n\nRecently the worshippers had begun to complain that the charges made by the keeper were too high, so Chan Lui-hing, the temple's manager, asked him to leave and put in his place Chan Sik. The same day that the new keeper arrived to assume his duties he was driven away by the local Worship Committee. The plaintiff, Chan Lui-hing, alleged that the real reason for the complaints regarding high fees was his objection to the temple being used by certain actors for their theatrical performances. Hence, he had come into conflict with the Committee who were making the arrangements.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206867, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "138 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nThe question then arose as to what party had legal title to the land. Had the Government acquired title to the land by terms of the Cession of the Island of Hong Kong, or was the Government bound to recognize the title of the original Chinese owners? The island of Hong Kong had belonged to the Tang family, but the small island belonged to the Wong clan who gave it to the Chan clan and allowed them to erect the temple. Unfortunately all the ancient records and title deeds held by the Chan clan had been destroyed in the typhoon of 1874. \n\nApparently the temple had been repaired in 1877, for in that year the Public Works Department had given the caretaker permission to erect a temporary structure near the present temple to store images while repairs were going on. The Land Office had granted a squatter's license to the Worship Committee to occupy the site. \n\nOwing to the dispute which arose in 1893 between the Chan clan and the residents of Ap Lei Chau, the Worship Committee and the Kai Fong of Ap Lei Chau petitioned the Government for a grant of a Crown Lease for the site of the temple. The petition states, \n\nThat the Temple was established almost a hundred years ago and has conferred many benefits on the surrounding inhabitants... \n\nThat after restoration, the Temple was entrusted to the care of Chan Kwai [Chan A-kwai] by general consent. \n\nThat unwittingly this man turned out to be of a bad heart, unboundedly avaricious. \n\nThat he frequently exhorted [sic] the people who went to Worship, and for this he was expelled by consensus of the people at a Public Meeting. \n\nThat first before he was expelled he being aware of the attitude of the populace towards him, purloined goods belonging to the Temple, and took with him all the Squatter Licenses and went to live on Chinese soil. \n\nThat as the Temple was erected by the populace, Your Honour's humble petitioners venture to think that it should be managed by the voice of the populace..", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206868, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n139\n\nA translation of the original Chinese petition is in the Hong Kong Public Records Office, Colonial Secretary's Office File for 1893, No. 849. The petition naturally presented the views of the local population—or at any rate those of its leaders—and omitted any reference to the traditional relation of the Chan clan to the temple.\n\nThe matter was referred by the Magistrate to the Squatter's Commission. Its hearings are recorded in a Summary of Reports of Squatters' Commission, a manuscript volume in the Library of the Colonial Secretariat. The Commission effected a compromise. It recommended that Government grant a lease of the temple site to five persons, two to be nominated by the Chan clan, two by the Public Worship Committee of Ap Lei Chau and one by the Registrar General. The Ap Lei Chau Committee was permitted to retain the caretaker they had placed in charge after their expulsion of the caretaker employed by the Chan clan, but he had to share the income of the temple with the clan.\n\nThe former caretaker felt the decision was unjust. It kept preying on his mind until he became unbalanced. One day in November 1893, he left Ap Lei Chau in a small boat intending to visit the Land Office in Hong Kong to get satisfaction. Some of the villagers pursued him hoping to prevent him from reopening the case. As they neared his boat he jumped overboard and was not seen again. However, later, his body was washed up opposite the temple. As the account published in The China Mail, 10 November 1893, comments, it was \"a circumstance which is regarded as not a little strange\".\n\nHong Kong, October 1973.\n\nCARL T. SMITH", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207138, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n203\n\nAt this time the population of Ha Wan was 4861 (G.N. 21 of the Government gazette for 5th March 1859).\n\nObservation Point must be the Observation Place shown on the Map accompanying Mr. Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, published by the Colonial Office in 1882. The map shows Ha Wan as District No. 6 and Wanchai as District No. 7. This indicates that Wanchai was taken from it at some date between 1857 and 1882. Observation Place is shown at p. 46 of the Index to the Streets, House Nos., and Lots in the Colony of Hong Kong, 1903, and may be identified with the lower end of the present Tin Lok Lane, near its junction with Hennessy Road, then seashore.\n\nWanchai was one of the first districts to be developed after the British Occupation of the Island in 1841. The Reverend Carl T. Smith has kindly provided an account of this development, based on his original researches into Hong Kong records. This is attached as a separate Note.\n\nThe Itinerary and Places of Interest\n\nThe party will follow a circuitous route among the back streets, steps and terraces of old Wanchai between Monmouth Path in the west and Stone Nullah Lane on the east.\n\nAmong the places of interest to be visited are several Chinese temples and shrines as follows:\n\n1) The Pak Kung Shrine at the side of No. 7, Star Street. This was established before the War, probably upwards of 70 years ago. The shrine is a To Tei Miu (±普普) or altar to the earth god. The main festival of the year falls on the 2nd day of the second lunar month when the management committee of local residents organises a religious and social celebration.\n\n2) Hung Shing Temple, Queen's Road East. This temple is one of the oldest of the area and may even have existed as a shrine before the British Occupation of the Island. According to Carl Smith there was a small settlement nearby which may have provided the body of regular worshippers, along with visiting boat people.\n\nThe present structure dates from Hsien Feng 10th year (1860-61), repaired in T’ung Chih 6th year (1867-68) when the persons responsible are listed as 'the whole body of devout Hong Kong believers'. These dates point to an earlier origin, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207139, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "204 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nthere is a shrine at the rear inscribed Tao Kuang 27th year (1847-48). \n\nPoints of interest are the excellent granite work screen and balustrade along the whole front of the temple: the Shek Wan pottery decorations on the roof (Hsuan-Tung 1st year: 1908-09) and the large boulder inside the building which was probably the uncovered site of the original shrine. (There is a similar one inside the Lin Fa Kung temple at Tai Hang, which is of approximately the same age.) \n\n3) The Sui Tsing Pak temple at Tik Lung Lane. This is not housed in a temple building but in several houses in a terrace. The god is said to have been a man named Chan (**陈**) enobled as marquis (**侯**) who lived in the Sung dynasty and performed many good deeds. His title means the 'Pacifying Marquis' (**遂清侯**). The date of its establishment is not known, but several of the memorial boards inside the temple carry inscriptions in the late Kuang Hsü reign (1875-1908). Among them are boards presented by residents of 'The Thirty Houses' (the local Chinese name for Staunton Street, in Central District) and another by the community of Hung Hom village in Kowloon. \n\nThe upstairs rooms are devoted largely to the care and worship of memorial tablets, many with photographs of the deceased, placed there for a subscription by friends and relatives. This temple is of particular interest for the various art objects and antiquities kept inside the upper rooms, which make it almost a museum. They include paintings and porcelain. The interior decoration of the temple should also be noted especially the screens and fittings for the various altars upstairs which are probably at least 60 years old. \n\n4) Yuk Hai Kung Temple (**玉皇宫**), Stone Nullah Lane. This temple to Pak Tai, the god of the North (**北帝**), is again of early origin. According to an inscription above the entrance, the present structure dates from the first year of the T’ung Chih reign (1862-63). This is a large temple with side rooms which is still in an excellent state of repair. The building on the right of the temple is a public office or kung sor (**公所**) in which the temple management committee met to discuss the affairs of the temple and the neighbourhood. It was, as Carl Smith remarks, under the control of the Wanchai Kaifong from 1882 and before. \n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207142, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n207 \n\nAnother temple, that of Yuk Hui Kung, is on Lung On Street. It was probably built in the early 1860s. It is not listed in the 1860 Rates, but is on the next extant list, that of 1865. The 1882 Rates mention that the temple was managed by the Wanchai Kaifong.* The surrounding lots from Stone Nullah Lane to Kennedy Street were bought at government land sale in 1862 by the Pang and Chan families, who developed them for Chinese family houses. Lung On Street was originally called Fourth Street, being that number south of Queen's Road East. On First Street, now King Sing Street, a hospital was opened. It was built on a lot purchased by Leung King Ham, a government school teacher, under the name Tong Tuck Tong, in 1867. With the organisation of Tung Wah Hospital, Leung King Him (sic) and Leung Shun Ng petitioned in 1872 that the hospital be merged with the new Tung Wah.* A controversy arose, and the Leungs published a pamphlet charging Wong Fung Wan and Wong Yow Ho, members of the managing committee, with embezzling funds granted by Government to the Wanchai Hospital. This resulted in a libel case. The 1872 Rate names it as the Wah Tong Hospital with Leung Shan Ng and Leung Yung Choi as the resident doctors.\n\nTo the south of Queen's Road East between Monmouth Path and Wing Fung Street, the land was used as timber yards. To the east, on land now covered by Sun, Moon and Star Streets, was the first Protestant Cemetery in Hong Kong. As there was increasingly more building along Queen's Road, the situation was considered unsatisfactory and after 1845 burials were made in the newly opened Colonial Cemetery in Happy Valley.\n\nJust a bit to the east, near St. Francis Street was the Roman Catholic Cemetery. Here the Catholic Church built a hospital, a chapel, a Mission House, and day schools. Later the Canossian Sisters built a convent where they ministered to the sick, the poor, and the aged. These institutions attracted a number of poor Portuguese families and created a Chinese Roman Catholic population surrounding it. A piece of vacant land between the two cemeteries\n\nAn association of local residents, usually shopkeepers, commonly found in the commercial centres and market towns of the Hong Kong area.\n\n* The Tung Wah Hospital, established in 1870, for over 100 years the leading Chinese charitable institution in Hong Kong and now more flourishing than ever. See H. J. Lethbridge ‘A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: the Tung Wah' in Contributions to Asian Studies (Leiden) Vol. I (1971): 144-158.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207147, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsurvey. Sir E. Belcher, accordingly, landed on Monday, January 25, 1841, at the foot of Taipingshan, and on the hill, now occupied by the Chinese Recreation ground, Captain Belcher and his officers, considering themselves the bona fide first British possessors, drank Her Majesty's health with three cheers, the spot being thenceforth known as Possession Point. The Point remained an open space and came under the management of the Chinese Recreation Ground Committee created in 1890.\n\nIn 1887 there was a rearrangement of streets to the south of the Recreation Ground. With the change there was a renaming. The western terminus of Hollywood Road was shifted from the present Possession Street to what was known as Gap Street, so that Hollywood Road emptied into Queen's Road on the south side of the Recreation Ground rather than on its east side.\n\nOn the south side of old Gap Street across from the Chinese Recreation Ground the original St. Stephen's Anglican Church opened in 1866. Here also the Baxter Memorial School was built in 1872 in memory of Miss Sophia Harriet Baxter. She had come to Hong Kong in 1860 and until her death five years later established schools for Chinese, Eurasians and orphans. St. Matthew's Anglican Church now occupies a part of the original site granted to the Church in 1864.\n\nThe neighbourhood could have been regarded as a good missionary area for it was dominated by establishments devoted to pleasure. Nearby was a theatre, and the present Possession Street was lined with brothels in the nineteenth century. It was also, however, near a more sobering district.\n\nThe hillside between Possession Point and West Point was used as a Chinese burial ground. The I-tsz Temple, built to house commemorative tablets for Chinese residents who died without a family to remember them, and, temporarily, for those whose families were in their home villages in China, was behind Possession Point on Tai Ping Shan Street. It adjoined the burial ground and thus, in accordance with Chinese practice, was in a convenient location to be used as a depository for those who were about to die. Publicity regarding conditions at the temple started a movement to provide better medical services for the Chinese community. This resulted in the formation of Tung Wah Hospital. It was opened officially in 1872 across the street from the I-tsz Temple, occupying land that was a part of the old burial ground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207164, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n229 \n\nthe building was blessed. There were then 540 pupils in fourteen classes. The first matriculation class was formed in 1933.\n\nWith the beginning of the European War in 1939, the Government interned enemy aliens on the College premises. The Japanese used it as a hospital. The Brothers re-occupied the buildings after the liberation of Hong Kong, but from 1949 the British Army took it over for use as a hospital. During these periods the College was housed in temporary quarters.\n\nToday the school is under the direction of Brother Raphael Egan. There is a student body of some 1,500, the greater majority being Chinese, though there is still in the student body a number of Portuguese boys. They continue the contribution this part of Hong Kong's population has made to the history of the school.\n\nOther Schools in the Area\n\nNorth of Boundary Street between Waterloo Road and La Salle Road is Oxford Road. In one block there are six Middle Schools: Pui Shing Middle School, Tung Wah Hospital No. 1 College, Ying Wa College, Moral Training English School, Jockey Club Government Technical School, and Bishop Hall Jubilee School. Maryknoll Convent School opened in 1936 is nearby at the corner of Boundary Street and Waterloo Road.\n\nOf these schools, three have roots in Hong Kong's early history. While the association of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club with education through financial support is of recent origin, the Race Meets were a prominent feature of Hong Kong life from early days.\n\nYing Wa College continues the tradition of the Anglo-Chinese College established by the missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne at Malacca in 1819. In 1843 it was moved to Hong Kong by the Rev. James Legge. The school was closed in 1856. It had been organised and conducted by representatives of the London Missionary Society. In 1914 the Society opened a school in Kowloon bearing the Chinese version of the English name, of their former school: Ying Wah, that is 'Anglo-Chinese'.\n\nThe Tung Wah No. 1 College opened in 1962 is a part of Tung Wah Hospital efforts to provide education for under-privileged children. This programme began in 1880 when a Free Primary School was opened in the Chung Wah College premises adjoining the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. A school under the direction of the Temple Committee had been operated on these premises for many years previous. A lot had been granted by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207266, "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-1975", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "26\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nmanaged by members of one Chinese speech group, the Chiu-chow. The \"honorary\" committee members, the working committee members, the tan sang, and the kei tung are Chiu-chow. Observation of numerous possession ceremonies reveals that it is rare to discover a non-Chiu-chow among the worshippers. This de facto exclusivity is rendered more formal in a brochure advertising places for tablets of the deceased in the “Hall of 100 Surnames\" by the statement that the places are reserved for heung lei or fellow countrymen, i.e. fellow Chiu-chow.\n\nWhile from a ritual point of view Tai Wong Ye is correctly described as a spirit-medium temple, from a social point of view it is akin to a type which Feuchtwang2 designates a \"Compatriot” temple. It is a place where members of the Chiu-chow minority speech group can gather to converse freely in their native tongue, exchange useful information, and enjoy that sense of solidarity which Durkheim posits as the chief product of shared ritual. The low-keyedness of the ritual offerings is understandable when one realizes that the target population is one already predisposed by regional socialization to accept the reality and effectiveness of the kei tung's mediumship. Our conclusion therefore is that the success of the Kwun Tong spirit-medium temple is due more to the social selectivity of its appeal than to a heightened interest in spirits and their mediums on the part of the general population.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Firth 1959, p. 141.\n\n2 Feuchtwang, no reference details available.\n\n3 Elliott, 1955.\n\n4 Jordan, 1972.\n\n5 Ahern, 1973.\n\n6 Potter, 1974.\n\n7 This observation is based on casual questioning of Hong Kong residents over a three-year time period.\n\n8 Potter, op. cit.\n\n9 The Chiu-Chow and Hoi-Luk-Fung people's native regions are the eastern coastal counties of Kwangtung Province. The Hokkien are natives of Fukien Province which is immediately east of Kwangtung Province.\n\n10 Tak Kaau is a syncretic cult which claims tens of thousands of supporters from the Chiu-Chow communities in Southeast Asia. Although more ritual attention is awarded to Chinese deities the Tak Kaau pantheon includes Christ, Allah, and deities from the Hindu religion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207311, "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-1975", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA (MA)\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nMs. Helga Werle, whose article on Chiuchow (in Mandarin Chao-chou) puppets appeared in the 1973 Journal, describes two typical plays of the Chiuchow opera, and gives background information about this particular regional theatre of China. Ed.\n\nIn urbanized Hong Kong today one can see a performance of Chiuchow Opera at City Hall or Lee theatre two or three times a year, but the traditional purpose of this opera is the shen-kung hsi—a performance to celebrate the birthday of a deity. Many areas of Hong Kong have their organized Chiuchow communities centred upon the temple of a certain deity.\n\nThe Chiuchows have innumerable deities, often completely different from the Cantonese. Some of those worshipped in Hong Kong with temples erected in their names are:\n\nLi-shan lao-mu\nT'ai-i chen-ren\nLi lao-ch'un 李老君\nCh'i t'in ta-sheng\nSan-shan kuo-wang\nSan t'ai-tze lao-yeh\nMu-ch'a Chin-ch'a and No-ch'a called the three princes \"san t'ai-tze\", the three sons of Li Ching 李靖\nHan Chung-kung\n\nTo ensure the prosperity of each temple community the birthday of its deity must be properly celebrated. The most outstanding members of the community are chosen to form the prestigious festival committee, which has the duty to collect the necessary amount of money (between 50 and 100,000 HK$) to organize a worthy celebration. And what could rejoice a god's heart more than the luxury of a series of opera performances? After the dates are decided with the consent of the deity involved a large space is booked with a Government office (usually a public playground),\n\nPlates 5-12 at rear of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207312, "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-1975", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "72\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nand then a company is contracted to erect the temporary bamboo structures to house performances and ceremonies. The ideal is for the structures to be arranged in a square, the temple facing East and the stage opposite (i.e. West), so that the god is conveniently positioned to get the best view of the stage. The organizers are housed on one or both sides of the temple and on the sides of the square are exhibited the giant-sized dragon-robes, crowns and boots, all elaborately made of paper, which will be burnt and, in this way, sent as a birthday present to the god.\n\nAND RICE TO DONATE TO THE POOR EXHIBITION OF COLLECTED GOODS\n\nFESTIVAL\n\nTEIFLE\n\nCOMMITTEE\n\nHALL FOR CEREMONIES TO\n\nAPPEASE SOULS\n\n辉花\n\nROOF TO SHELTER AUDIENCE\n\n(FORMERLY OF NATTING, NOW TIN SHUI WAI)\n\nSTAGE\n\nKITCHEN\n\nEXHIBITION OF PAPER DRAGON ROBES\n\nChiuchow festival square (the layout is almost the same whether it is used for the celebration of god's birthdays pao-tan or for the appeasement of the hungry souls in the 7th month called Yu-lan-p'en).\n\nThe interior of the temporary temple is almost completely occupied by a large square table (about 4m x 4m) on which items donated by individuals of the community are displayed before they are auctioned off. Holding a microphone and a gong several auctioneers stand on a table in front of the temple and, competing with the loudspeakers amplifying the opera music, they promise prosperity and good fortune (in the traditional 4-character phrases) to the highest bidder. Bottles of brandy and whiskey, porcelain figures of immortals and deities, and colourful lamps and lanterns go for several hundred or thousands of dollars at a time. Although the successful bidder can take his acquisition home he does not pay the bid until the following festival. And especially if he is poor at the time, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207564, "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-1975", "page_number": 332, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n323 \n\nto the government for a lot on which to build a school. In granting the lot for charitable and educational purposes, it was stipulated that \"the school should be built on that portion of the ground furthest away from the front of the native temple which is opposite. The villagers have asked that no houses be erected immediately fronting the temple, but they could not object to a playground. The latter should be fenced around.” (C.S.O. No. 700 of 1885) In 1898, the Roman Catholic Church bought a large piece of land behind the village for a church and a school. The Canossian Sisters, however, already had two lots on Bulkely Street in 1894 where they conducted a school (No. 59 & 60).\n\n(c) The Kwun Yam (††) and Pak Tai (†) temples.\n\nAn old memorial board in the Kwun Yam Temple dated 1873-74 lists eleven individuals or shops who may tentatively be identified as the management committee.* I can only identify one, Li Shing Fat, listed as a rate-payer in 1875 and possibly as Lee A Fat on the 1867 squatter licence list. A Hop Shing shop is listed, and it is possible that the owner was Chan Hop Shing who appears on the 1873 rates list or Chang Hop Shing of the 1867 squatter list. Another possible identification might be the Kwong Lung shop with the Kwong \"Leong\" grocer in the 1884 Rate.\n\nIn 1896 the Temple Committee applied for the grant of a Crown Lease for the lot on which the building stood. It was noted that \"This Temple is a public temple, owned by the committee of Hung Hom. A notice was posted at Hung Hom on the 23rd (March, 1886) saying that anyone who objected to the issue of the proposed lease should report to the Registrar General within ten days. No communication has been made on the subject.... therefore recommend the issue of the lease.\" (C.S.O. No. 704 of 1896). In consequence, a lease was granted to Chung Kam Fuk, Chan Ying Cheung, and Ching Ki, Trustees. Of these, Chan Ying Cheung was a large property owner at Hung Hom who was also a wealthy contractor in Hong Kong. Upon his death, his will left his Hung Hom property to his sons.\n\nThe two named temples date from this early period and have survived: one of them in its original location and another on a new \n\n*The names are listed as follows:\n\n福隆號,兴有容,新順扣,勝扣廠,廣隆號,李富利,陳日新,怡興行,廣勝同,合勝號,李勝發。The board carries the large characters 法雨同沾and is dated 同治甲戌年仲春吉旦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207565, "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-1975", "page_number": 333, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "324\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsite to which it was removed in 1929. The first, and larger, of these was the Kwun Yam Temple already noted, with its associated public buildings. The bell and the earliest presentation boards (*) are dated 1873-74. The main entrance of the temple was rebuilt in 1889-90, and the undated Kung Sor (公所) or public office built onto one side of the central structure may also be attributed to this time. A separate clinic or public dispensary building was added in 1910, according to a memorial tablet of that year, which bears the names of very many subscribers.\n\nThe second of the Hung Hom temples is almost as old as the first. According to a plaque recently placed inside the building by the Chinese Temples Committee, this Pak Tai temple dates from the 2nd year of Kuang Hsü (1876-77) when it was built at the eastern end of Ching Chau Street, Hung Hom, but as stated above, was later removed for development. The oldest dated items in the present building are a bell dated 1893 presented by a Wo Hing Tong (*) and a set of incense burners dated 1901-02 presented by 'the whole community of Hung Hom Dockyard Village (紅磡澳通圍).\n\nThis temple development, and the basis it provided for local community effort, is reminiscent of the similar developments in Yau Ma Tei reported in this Journal some time ago.† The Kaifong (街坊) or neighbourhood organisation centering as in Yau Ma Tei on a local temple is credited with these community services; references to a Kaifong school and a volunteer fire brigade are also available. This self-help and enterprise of the local community, was, however, not a new phenomenon but one created to a pattern long familiar in Chinese urban communities. Hong Kong, 1976.\n\nCARL T. SMITH\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHONG KONG: TYPHOON PREPARATIONS IN 1903\n\nReaders will recall Mr. A. J. S. Lack's article 'Yaumatei Typhoon Shelter, Hong Kong, 1903-1915' in the 1973 Journal. The following description is of interest in this connection. It is taken from the Memoirs of Robert Dollar, pp. 55-56 published privately in America in 1927, and describes a visit to Hong Kong in 1903. Ed.\n\nCommonly styled in Cantonese,\n+ JHKBRAS, 6, 1966: pp. 129-131.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207700, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG\n\n73\n\nIn these examples, the very negative beliefs concerning Hoi Luk Fung are not applied to those Hoi Luk Fung that one knows, but rather to the unknown group as a whole. Stereotypes do, however, influence interaction in that unknown Hoi Luk Fung are likely to be treated with distrust; negative feelings resulting from interaction with Hoi Luk Fung also reinforce and verify the attitudes and beliefs.\n\nIt is difficult to explain why Teochiu and Hoi Luk Fung so heartily dislike one another. Part of the reason is demographic. Teochiu are a sizeable minority and are not in the position of having to combine with other related groups in confronting the discrimination of the majority group, Cantonese. And there are sufficient numbers of Hoi Luk Fung to support separate ethnic organizations and to maintain a separate ethnic identity. The group is thus directed into rivalry with competing ethnic groups, and particularly with the \"sister\" ethnic group which is much stronger and clearly the most dominant. If this reasoning is correct, the similarities of the two groups, their \"relatedness\", would thus become the essence of the differentiation process and would have to be counteracted and in effect re-defined in the ethnic ideologies of the two groups. Similarity is thus transformed into distinction which must be maintained in interaction and belief systems.\n\nLocal Kap Jih built and maintain a small temple overlooking the housing estate. This temple and its organizing committee were initially identified to me as being Hoi Luk Fung, and it was only later when I visited the temple that it became clear that it was run by Kap Jih. The founders of the temple are from one village which has over 100 descendants in Hong Kong, many of whom live in the estate. One of the officers of the temple organization is a Teochiu from Hui Lai who had been invited to participate in rituals for several years and had subsequently been selected as an officer. Of the 40-50 families involved in the temple, 6 or 7 are Teochiu and some of the Kap Jih are members of local Teochiu associations.\n\nOne of the founders of the temple explained to me that the village mentioned above is located near Hui Lai, and he claimed that the village was really part of Teochiu rather than Hoi Luk Fung. He said that his village was very prosperous and that there had been much conflict between Hui Lai and Hoi Luk Fung over jurisdiction of the village. It was further claimed that the village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207890, "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": 278, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n263\n\nChinese reports on e.g. the work and accounts of the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road which has long been associated with the Tung Wah Group. Also Chinese medical works and journals. Item (c) comprises photographs of Tung Wah occasions over the past seventy years and more; but mostly modern.\n\nItem (f) includes presentation items from directors and others, including pieces of stoneware and porcelain.\n\nAll told, though still not, in my view, fully representative of all Tung Wah activities over the past hundred years, the Museum contains an impressive and interesting collection of exhibits and reflects great credit on the Hospital.\n\nCarl T. Smith's notes of the history and work of the Hospital follow this brief introduction to the Museum and its contents.\n\nHong Kong, 1976,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nNOTES ON TUNG WAH HOSPITAL, HONG KONG\n\nThese notes are not a comprehensive history of the Tung Wah Hospital group. For this the reader is referred to the following books issued by the Directors: Development of the Tung Wah Hospitals 1870-1960; One Hundred Years of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals 1870-1970 and The History of Education of Tung Wah (1963). Of particular interest is Henry James Lethbridge's article, \"A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: The Tung Wah\", Contributions to Asian Studies, 10, 1973, pp. 144-158. In it he views the Hospital as an important social organization of the Chinese community and draws attention to the efforts of Government to relate to that community through the Hospital Committee. The present notes underline the thesis developed by Mr. Lethbridge.\n\nEvery community has certain institutions of particular significance in such areas as education, religion, culture, business, politics and society. Seldom perhaps has one institution overlapped so many of these areas as Tung Wah Hospital. It has been some 107 years since the first Chinese Hospital Committee was formed—during these years the Hospital has played varying roles. This means that it can be looked at in different ways. A past, present or expectant member of the Board of Directors might give one story of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207895, "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "268\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nin its power to promote harmony and to co-operate cordially with him.\n\nThe result of the Governor's notice was a general meeting called by the Tung Wah Committee to sanction appointment of a Chinese trained in western medicine. The representatives of the Kaifong had been invited to the meeting but none attended. The Committee felt it should not make a final decision until there was some agreement from the Kaifong, they therefore adjourned the meeting for a week. This did not please the Governor who wanted immediate action. He was in no mood to countenance stalling tactics. Fortunately there was a representation from the Kaifong at the next general meeting to consider the question. It was agreed that Dr. Chung King-u, a graduate of Viceroy Li's Imperial Medical College at Tientsin be appointed as a resident doctor, thus meeting the requirement of the Governor that there be a medical officer trained in western practice on duty for those who wished to avail themselves of his services. The Hospital Committee anticipated a reaction from the Kaifong to this appointment, hence one of the Directors moved that the proceedings be entered into the record \"so Kaifong people could not complain afterward\". Then on behalf of the Kaifong people Mr. Fung Wa-chuen thanked the Directors. All seemingly ended in peace.\n\nGradually through the succeeding years more and more Western medical practices were introduced into the hospital routine. The transition has not been without tension and controversy but today, in every respect, Tung Wah is recognized as a modern, well-equipped medical institution.\n\nThe series of traditional Chinese medical books on display in the Museum are reminders of the many years when patients were treated according to methods stemming from centuries of medical tradition in China. The facilities and equipment of the Hospital today represent the latest advances in modern medical science.\n\nTung Wah and Education\n\nTung Wah's direct interest in education began in 1880 when the Hospital Committee assumed responsibility for the management of the Chung Wah school which was attached to the Man Mo Temple. This appears to have been a natural result of the Hospital Committee's gradual assumption of the affairs of the Temple. This informal amalgamation of Temple and Hospital affairs was due to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207896, "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": 284, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n269 \n\nthe overlapping of Committee members for the two institutions. By 1908 eight such schools attached to temples were managed by the Hospital Committee. When in that year the Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council vesting the property of the Man Mo Temple in the Tung Wah Hospital, the schools became a legally recognized part of the Hospital's activity and responsibility. \n\nAfter the establishment of Kwong Wah Hospital it likewise assumed charge of the school attached to the Tin Hau Temple on the Public Square at Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon. \n\nAll of these schools were free schools for the poor. They provided a traditional Chinese basic primary education. With the gradual introduction of modern educational methods and text books into China, the schools operated by Tung Wah also changed, and eventually middle school education was offered. Tung Wah's contribution to education merits detailed study since it will shed useful light on the general history of education in Hong Kong. \n\nReligious aspects of Tung Wah \n\nFrom its foundation Tung Wah explicitly stated that it was not a religious institution, but on the other hand it had its religious aspect. This is in keeping with the fact that most areas of Chinese life are reinforced by some kind of transcendent authority. Or as it is expressed in the General Rules of the Hospital, \"Chinese in their custom generally respect spirits\". The Rules then proceed to state that patients expect the protection of spirits, and that hospital servants are made dutiful through fear of the spirits. \n\nMost trade and business guilds have a patron deity. As a medical institution Tung Wah gave place of honour to the patron of medicine. To honour him the Regulations of the Hospital contained the following provision: \n\n+ \n\nNo image \n\nAll members of all ranks in the Hospital shall be present in the Grand Hall between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on the 1st and 15th day of each month to worship the Patron Saint (Shen Nung), so as to show that they are pure, upright and honest. An image of him will be kept, and we shall only write and post up his title to show that we respect him as if he were there.* The meeting Hall of the Hospital was built along the traditional lines of a Chinese Temple, as witness the building we are visiting today. There was a central hall containing an altar table with \n\n* One Hundred Years of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals 1870-1970, Vol. 1, p.12, Rules 11 and 12.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207897, "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": 285, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "270 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nincense burners and vases placed before a scroll with an inscription honouring the deity. \n\nIn order to safeguard the claim that \"the Hospital is not for the purpose of worshipping gods\", the Rules stated that \"No other gods shall be worshipped in order to prevent superstition, and no outsiders shall be allowed to come to the Hospital to worship the Patron Saint which is simply an insult to him\". \n\nThe desire to give transcendent religious authority to the operation of the Hospital is clear from the provision that the Directors, the doctors, the Secretary, and the Steward, as well as all the servants of the Hospital, upon assuming their duties sign two declarations of loyalty and faithful service. One was burnt before the Patron Saint at the beginning of service, the other was burnt when the term of service was finished in order, as the Rule says \"to show their purity”. It was a form of sacred oath. \n\nAnother aspect of the religious connections of Tung Wah was its close association with the Man Mo Temple. This temple on Hollywood Road was regarded as a civic centre for the Chinese community. As the Emperor observed the Spring and Autumn Rites on behalf of the nation at the altars in Peking, so the recognized leaders of the community in Hong Kong observed similar rites at the Man Mo Temple. The Tung Wah Directors still meet annually and observe them at the Temple. \n\nThe committee members of the Temple, the Kai Fong and the Tung Wah Hospital overlapped, most of the members at some time served on all of these Boards. It was natural therefore that the affairs of the Hospital were closely related to those of the Temple. In time this natural association was officially confirmed by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, No. 10 of 1908, which placed the temple under the jurisdiction of the Tung Wah Committee. Representing this tradition is the figure of a god in the Museum's Collection which was placed on the roof of the Man Mo Temple during its construction or reconstruction. \n\nDeath and the burial of loved ones are usually associated with some form of religious belief. They are boundary experiences which tend to throw the mourner beyond his normal world. In the early years of its history, Tung Wah was regarded as the last resort of the dying by the local population, hence the mortality rate of its patients was extremely high. The Hospital saw its responsibility not only to provide care for the dying, but also to see that their remains\n\nPage 285\n\nPage 286", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207899, "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": 287, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "272\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTo assist in this side of the Hospital's services it maintained a Coffin Depository. The present one is at Sandy Bay. Perhaps at some future date the Society will arrange a visit to it.\n\nWe have noted that General Rule No. 11 begins with the statement, \"The Hospital is not for the purpose of worshipping gods\". This statement, however did not prevent the Hospital from performing many functions that had religious significance.\n\nThe Social Significance of Tung Wah\n\n \n Societies tend to organize social groups in which membership confers a prestige generally recognized by the community. Qualifications for membership in such groups may vary. In traditional China the system of honorary degrees based on achievement in literary examinations and on subsequent official service created an elite class. In Hong Kong this traditional method of acquiring prestige status was replaced by membership of certain Chinese community organizations — and later official Government bodies and committees. Wealth was an important qualification for election or appointment to these status conferring bodies, but wealth was expected to be accompanied by a concern for the general welfare of the community. In commenting on the Tung Wah Committee, the American Consul in a despatch to the U.S. Secretary of State in 1875 says that \"the Association is largely composed of, and is controlled by, rich and retired Chinese merchants, who are directing themselves to morals, charity and benevolence.”\n \n\nIn the early period of Hong Kong history the Temple Committee was the major organization within the Chinese community conferring prestige. As we have noted, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee eventually replaced the Man Mo Temple Committee. It also took over its prestige conferring function. The emergence of a Chinese elite as represented by the Tung Wah Committee is discussed in my article in JHKBRAS, 11 (1971), pp. 74-115. This social function of Tung Wah is also set forth in the article by H.J. Lethbridge mentioned at the beginning of these notes.\n\nAccording to a statement made by \"a member of the Chinese Community\" in a letter to the editor of the China Mail in 1875, the recognition given to the members of the Committee rested upon popular vote by the Chinese community, and “as Government has no means of knowing who is most influential or most respectable among the Chinese, it begins to regard the ballot as the basis of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207901, "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "274\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Wah as a Political-Judicial Institution\n\nThe Tung Wah Hospital Committee is of particular interest in the relation of a Chinese community to a Colonial Government. It performed an important function in providing self-identity to the community during the early years of the Hospital's history.\n\nThis function is related to the development of social control within Chinese society. In general, there are two levels of such control: central, from the top, represented by the Emperor and supported by the gentry and literati, and local control. In the countryside, local control was represented by clan organization and village councils. In mixed communities, such as cities, some market towns, and fishing villages (such as Cheung Chau - see J.W. Hayes, \"Cheung Chau, 1850-1898\", JHKBRAS, 3(1963), pp. 13-23), by Temple Committees and Kai Fongs.\n\nThe local village organization based upon clan could not be operative within urban Hong Kong with a mixed population drawn from various areas and Chinese language groups. Direct central control in the form of Mandarin officialdom was obviously impossible in a place under British control. To fill the vacuum, institutions grew up which were similar to those found in urban and commercial centres in China: commercial and craft guilds, street associations (Kai-fong), and temple committees. The 1872 Hong Kong Directory lists three Chinese organizations, possibly in the order of their importance: the Chinese Hospital Committee (Tung Wah), the Man-Mo Temple Committee (or, as given in the Chinese designation, the Kai-fong), and the U Lan Procession Committee.\n\nA Chinese article published in translation in 1876 (China Review) gives an account of the origin of these institutions. In 1847, only a few years after the establishment of Hong Kong as an urban centre, two wealthy and prominent members of the community, Loo Aking, the alleged leader of the major criminal syndicate in Hong Kong, and Tam Achoy, a respectable businessman who had lived previously in Singapore and acquired his wealth in Hong Kong initially as a contractor, were connected with the Man Mo Temple. Both had been in Hong Kong since shortly after its occupation by the British. Their association in the building of the Man Mo Temple illustrates the thesis set forth by Mr. Lethbridge that during the early years of Hong Kong's history, the presence of strong Triad Society organization served as a buffer against social control by a foreign government which often seemed to the Chinese as \"bizarre, erratic, at times even hostile, aggressive, and cruel\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207902, "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": 290, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n275 \n\n(Lethbridge, 1971, p. 147). It was only when a \"respectable\" class of rich Chinese merchants and compradores emerged that a group existed which the colonial authorities could properly recognize as speaking for the Chinese community. The Chinese account states that the two patrons of the Temple \"judge the people (there) in public assembly\". In 1851 a proper Temple Committee was elected. It met at the Kung Soh (Public Meeting Hall), attached to the Temple, where all cases of public interest were decided. This judicial function by a self-organized Chinese institution is confirmed by the British Magistrates sending complainants to the Temple authorities for their arbitration of the disputes. For instance, in 1870 a case is mentioned in which the Kai-fong had imposed a fine upon a coolie for breaking a pane of glass.\n\nA year after the opening of Tung Wah Hospital the judicial proceedings formerly held at the Kung Soh of the Temple were moved to the Hall of the Hospital. This is reported in an editorial comment in the Daily Press (Jan. 2, 1873):\n\nThe old Joss House Court the Kung Soh in the Hollywood Road has, we hear, been given up in favour of another building not far off, and it seems that there a vast number of disputes are settled, and that it is an understood rule that matters should be brought to the cognizance of the proper authorities only if they cannot be arranged in this manner. We understand the committee of the Chinese Hospital is the same body of men who head the Kaifong, and that they discuss municipal and semi-political matters in the hall of the Hospital.\n\nInasmuch as the two committees apparently overlapped and as the Hall of the new Hospital was more spacious and imposing than the Kung Soh, the transfer in Chinese eyes would seem appropriate. On a visit of the Governor to the Hall he remarked that it was a much better meeting place than the Council Chambers of the Hong Kong Government. Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop) the famous Victorian lady traveller who visited Hong Kong in 1879, describes the building:\n\nThe hall where the directors meet (has) one side open to the garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle with a handsome chair for the chairman and six carved ebony chairs on each side -- a most stately \"board room\".*\n\n* Photocopy of original manuscript letter in possession of John Murray, publishers, London.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207964, "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": 3, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "172\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nSixty-five years after the event, it is now quite difficult to capture the community spirit that was demonstrated in the renovation of the T'in Hau Temple that made it the centre of worship for much of this area. Apparently, the merchants of Sai Kung had just had two years of unexpected good fortune. At the outbreak of World War I, all vessels entering or leaving Hong Kong harbour were required by law to report to the Royal Navy's Examination Service. For reasons that can only be surmised, many junks that had previously gone to Hong Kong harbour approached Sai Kung Market for supplies, and as a result, Saam Shing and T'aai Shing especially made a substantial fortune.33 The two shops led in the renovation of the temple, paying a hundred dollars each.\n\nFollowing Saam Shing and T'aai Shing, Tak Shing donated seventy dollars, and San Shun Cheung, Fong T'ung Shing, Kwong Tak Lung, T'ung Hing, and Ts'ui Mau Fung all thirty dollars each. In addition, T'aai Shing and Saam Shing donated the couplets that were hung outside the doors of the temple. These were written by Chan Pak T'o, the much respected Tung Koon scholar who resided in Kowloon City and who was known to the Chans of Ho Chung. Several years later, Ling Shin Chung, owner of San Shun Cheung, also donated a wooden board to be hung in the centre of the main doorway.3\n\n34\n\nThe principal donors for the renovation of the T'in Hau Temple became the local body that was in charge of the affairs of the Market. The term kaifong was soon used for this organization. At one time, Lei Ling of T'aai Shing was the chairman. Ling Shin Chung was also chairman at another time. The chairman was assisted by a committee, the members of which were known as the chik lei. Whenever a meeting had to be called, the chairman asked the temple keeper of the T'in Hau Temple to distribute to the chik lei bamboo chits on which their names had been written. The meetings were held in the T'in Hau Temple.\n\nOne of the most important institutions of any Chinese rural market was the management body that was set up to keep the common scale. Every year, the kaifong committee auctioned the right to manage the scale. Subject to the payment of a fee to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207965, "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "173\n\nthe kaifong, which was fixed by auction, the keeper of the scale could keep the charges paid for the use of the scale by merchants. The fee was used for the management of the temple and the annual celebration of the birthday of T'in Hau, usually held towards the middle of the Fourth Lunar Month. To prepare for this festival, the committee had to arrange for donations from Sai Kung residents to make the necessary purchases and to contract with a troupe for the opera. Besides the birthday of T'in Hau, the kaifong also had to arrange for a puppet show at the Great King Earthgod's shrine, and the offering of a pig at the temple at the beginning of the year, on the day of the T'in Hau Festival, at the Kwan Tai Festival, and at the end of the year.35\n\nThe activities of the kaifong committee became routine. Some time in the 1930's, a younger generation of merchants in Sai Kung formed themselves into the Chamber of Commerce. The leader of this new body was Lei Shiu Yam, of Lan Nei Wan. When World War II broke out, it was this group that was the more active in Sai Kung Market.\n\nDAILY LIFE C. 1920\n\nPopulation\n\nThe census of 1911 counted 9,243 people in Sai Kung District, which at the time also included Shap Sz Heung and villages near Sham Chung and Pak Sha O. The same census reported that there were 2,633 Punti-speaking, 6,599 Hakka-speaking, and 11 Hoklo-speaking villagers in the district. It probably neglected the boat population, the size of which must now remain unknown. As recorded, the Sai Kung population amounted to 13.4 percent of the total population of the New Territories.\n\nVillage, lineage, and voluntary association\n\nThe reported population was distributed through 126 villages. The great majority of these had a smaller population than 100, and many could not have been more than isolated houses. By no means the smallest, Tin Ha Wan had 37 people, Mok Tse Che 51, Tai Nam Wu 33, Ma Lam Wat 43, and Tso Wo Hang 24. Only 21 villages in what is recognized now as Sai Kung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208075, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "98\n\nK. G. STEVENS\n\ncharm papers, some new, but mostly faded and tattered. The temple keeper said that supplicants had stuck these on to ward off demonic influences, each being a plea to Chao to order his tiger to devour baneful demons. This image is not in the Disaster Altar but its function is exactly as though it were. According to the temple keeper it is an old image, pre-1840.\n\nThe cut-out red and green charms, called Green Horse and Nobleman, should not be confused with yet other red paper charms with cut-out holes in them, which are pasted annually on lintels of altars, temple doorways and shrines, thus reconsecrating them. These are called slips (piao) (*) and come in three sizes, small, medium and large (1-✯✯). Most of them bear a small square of gold paper pasted on them.\n\nAlthough only Taoist popular religion temples have Under Altars, there is also a Buddha who comforts “in time of calamity”, Yao Shih Fo (***) (whose full title includes the phrase “disaster” “Hsiao Tsai Yen Shou” (5* £**). He never appears in Under Altars.\n\nAnother \"Under Altar\"\n\nAnother small inset Under Altar at ground level, which is nearly always central under the main altar, is the altar to the tutelary deity of the temple, Ti Chu Fang (H). It is often called the Prosperity Hall and is unconnected with our study. It consists of a tiny open fronted \"box”, lined with red or orange paper, containing only one or two small red plaques dedicated to the tutelary deity (£* 五土龍神;護廟地主財神),(五方五土地主財神) or (前後地主 神財).\n\nIn one temple only, in Wanchai, a second altar under yet another side altar, contains a large image of the local Earth God (No2) which is normally on a side altar or beside the temple entrance. Behind him is pasted an orange paper bearing black characters describing the Earth God as the Controller of Wealth, and naming in a parallel row of characters the other major Cantonese Wealth God \"Ts'ai Po Hsing Chun\" (# $ £*) who is not represented by an image in this instance. This is a rogue disposition, doubtless ordered by a well-meaning but ignorant temple committee.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208169, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "192\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nContinuously to the present, since elders in both communities were boys and reportedly before, worship of these heroes has been carried out twice a year, at the times of the first and second padi harvests (described as 春分*). It even continued throughout the Japanese Occupation, a hard time when traditional practices were sometimes dispensed with and not taken up again. Such practices, whilst tending to keep each community together, also had the effect of perpetuating a rift; and the existence of such shrines did nothing to reduce the endemic bickering that characterized much of local society at that time.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Sessional Papers 1928 (see the District Officer North's report which follows at Part C to the Notes for this Visit).\n\n2 See Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, n.d. but circa 1960): 148-152.\n\n3 Copies of genealogies of the Cheng (#) Tang (*) and some other local lineages have been recently deposited in the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong.\n\n4 They also went to Tai Po Market and to North West Kowloon.\n\n5 YEUNG Kwok-shui (#) of Yeung Uk, a small single lineage settled since the Ch'ien Lung period.\n\n6 Local place name of the district city of Hsin-an.\n\n7 Gazetteer: 154.\n\n* Gazetteer: 150. Lo Wai is claimed to be the oldest of the Tsuen Wan villages.\n\n9 See e.g. G. N. Orme's Report on the New Territory 1899-1912 in the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers 1912: paras 58-60; and the file CSD1903 Ext/17, minutes of 6 April and 5 May 1905 in Public Records Office of Hong Kong.\n\n10 Gazetteer: 150-151.\n\n11 GR.\n\n12 Shek Lei Pui (†) was the name of a village moved to Sha Tin in the 1920s to make way for an extension to the Kowloon Reservoir. See H.K. Government's Administrative Reports 1924, page Q146, para. 4.\n\n13 Gazetteer: 151.\n\n14 The Tin Hau Temple inscription says a wooden tablet, worshipped for 70 years.\n\n15 of Sam Tung Uk, Chairman of the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee and Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk, died 15th October, 1956: para. 119 of District Commissioner, New Territories' Annual Departmental Report 1956-57.\n\n16 From the names listed it seems likely that, as stated by informants, friends and relatives of the Shing Mun people from the Pat Heung (Gazetteer: 170) aided them in the war against Tsuen Wan.\n\n17 According to the Tsuen Wan tablet, the fighting took place with sharp weapons. (i).\n\n18 This name was a purely Shing Mun description and does not appear in Gazetteer which only refers to the other Pat Heung to the north.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208724, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "154\n\nproposed by Baity.\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nWhat is disappointing in the latter's book, is the lack of an attempt to define what the popular religion is, or how he sees it. He limits his discussion to temple types and their characteristics, but by this very fact cripples his argument: temples and temple types, once again, are not the only component of the folk religion: the basis is too narrow to define the religious system of the people.\n\nWhere the author discusses the ancestral cult and community cult (pp. 87-96 and 96-104), I feel that the contrast between them is over-emphasized. In fact, both are complementary rather than contradictory aspects of one reality. Both are expressions of the people's religion, just as family and community in general are two complementary social phenomena. Although tensions may arise, both aspects are equally necessary and have to be kept in balance.\n\nMoreover, in this important discussion, one looks in vain for a definition of community or community cult, community temple. Yet, this is a set of crucial concepts; if they are not defined, the sense of ambiguity keeps lingering on. The author occasionally comes close to a vague definition, as when he writes: \"The identification of the deity with the new geographical community is underlined by the frequent claim that the god belongs to them personally. Gods are not only identified with the villages, towns and cities they control, but the deity statues and sometimes the temples themselves are claimed to be public property belonging to the entire community.\" (p. 100). One can almost extract a definition from these lines: a community cult is the worship of a particular deity (deities) by a group of people forming a natural community, usually defined by geographical boundaries and by cultural homogeneity.\n\nThis worship normally leads to the construction of a temple in which the deity is enshrined. This temple is community property and is administered by a committee, appointed by the community (or by the deity). The deity chosen is one that reflects the ideals and needs of the particular community and serves as a unitive and protective symbol,\n\nThe geographical area in which the cult is centered is variable from small hamlets to villages and towns. Since in modern times the old patterns of community have greatly changed, there is naturally a change toward greater complexity in the community cults as well.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208744, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "174\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\n44\n\nAnother incorrectness is found on p. 273:\n\n... at the level of the town, the cult of the local people and the cult of the Confucian officialdom merged imperceptibly into one and the same figure that of the City God.\" This is a quite questionable statement: in many towns the City God temple is not the main deity of the community at all: Matsu is an example, Kuan-yin another one. I admit that officialdom made great efforts to positively control the community cults and promoted the City God temples, but I'd rather like to see examples of townships where his cult has become the main focus of worship. Moreover, City Gods do not seem to have arisen from so-called \"hungry ghosts\" but are rather deified men of great merit. The genesis of these gods does not fit in with the author's theory of deity formation.\n\nIn the latter part of Chapter 7, the author discusses cult leadership. There are several forms or patterns (i) the rotating pattern: all the heads of households in turn become \"stove-master\". (I'd prefer to call him 'incense-master', since in the Chinese term lu-chu the word lu means 'stove' in some contexts, but here it means incensor or incense container); (ii) election by divination (casting the divining blocks), usually for a limited term; (iii) appointment of a committee and chairman and often of a temple manager. Here the author is not clear as to how the appointments are made. If committees appoint chairmen and managers, by whom are the committees appointed? Very often larger temples elect wealthy local businessmen or politicians to their committee, and even in smaller temples local leaders often serve on the temple committee. Wealthy and influential personalities are hoped to guarantee the good luck of a temple in more than one way.\n\nIt is now time to recapitulate the main themes of the whole book: to point out its merits and its shortcomings. First of all, the book starts off with some kind of ambiguity concerning what the author's real objective is. On p. 1 he announces his intention as \"to develop a new analytical model to account for certain features of belief and behavior in Taiwanese temple cults, and to provide a classificatory framework for temple types in urban Taiwan\"; in particular he wishes to examine certain aspects of \"community religion\". What those \"certain aspects\" entail is not clear, but an indication is given when author says that his \"major goal is to classify temples”, (p. 4). On the other hand, he also seems to aim at revealing \"the systematic nature of the folk beliefs\" (p. 4), which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208754, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "184\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nusually built by the people of the local community by means of public subscription. Consequently, they are ruled by a locally selected committee headed by a chairman. Although on special occasions Taoist priests or Buddhist monks and nuns are invited to perform the appropriate rituals, still, these priests are outsiders and have no authority in running the temple affairs. They are paid for their services and once the rituals are over, they return home or to their own temple.16\n\nA large number of (smaller) temples in the cities and in the countryside have their own mediums, used by the locally worshipped gods. Their function in the local community varies, but is often very significant for the well-being of the whole group or of individual families.\n\nEach temple has its own yearly celebration (paipai) and occasionally a grandiose sequence of rituals: the chiao (rite of cosmic renewal). The latter takes place more often nowadays: some temples have it every 5 years. Many (usually smaller) temples organize yearly pilgrimages (chin-hsiang) to their mother-temple. Large temples, on the other hand, specialize in receiving these groups and have built accommodation facilities for their numerous pilgrims.\n\nBesides these special temple rituals, people may go and visit the temple at will. Some days there are numerous visitors (1st and 15th day of the month); at other times, the noise of falling divination blocks is only rarely heard in the shrine. The worship performed by individuals is standardized and appears as a purely ritualistic performance. Not often one sees people kneeling down and concentrated in mental prayer.\n\nTemple visits very often include consultations of the temple oracles or a person-to-person interview with a divination specialist having a small desk on the temple premises.\n\nAlthough the rise of an industrial society has greatly influenced all aspects of life in Taiwan, religious life in the countryside and in many urban centers still involves the whole local population. However, in many city temples, temple activities continue to flourish, but the people involved in worship are not necessarily living in the neighbourhood. The devotees of a Buddhist temple may be spread out in an even wider area: they visit the temples of their choice rather than the one that happens to be their own community temple.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208877, "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-1980", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n11\n\nThere are a dozen or so temples in Hong Kong the titles of which should leave one in no doubt that they are Buddhist. To highlight the problem of classifying temples by their religious affiliation, let us examine one in Lo Wai above Tsuen Wan which has a typically Buddhist name followed by the characters for \"Buddhist temple\". The staff consists of three laymen who run the vegetarian restaurant below the temple and the deities on the altar from senior to junior are Guan Di, Guan Yin, Lu Dong Bin, Dou Mu and Yao Shi Fo. Guan Yin and Yao Shi Fo are Buddhist, whilst the other three are Daoist folk religion deities. Opposite the main altar, on a secondary altar, are a Kitchen God and a Protector of the Law, both represented by framed prints; the first is a folk religion deity and the second Buddhist. And finally, on the table before the main altar is a red wooden rice bucket containing a peck of uncooked rice in which stand numerous items which have without doubt Daoist and not Buddhist origins. Despite the mixture, the three laymen were surprised that there was any doubt that their temple was Buddhist.\n\nConfucian and Daoist temples\n\nIn Hong Kong and Macau there are no Confucian temples as there were in China and still are in Taiwan. There are, however, Confucian Halls such as the one in a school sponsored by the Confucian Society at Caroline Hill, Hong Kong Island. Several Chinese societies in Hong Kong are understood to have private altars dedicated solely to Confucius.\n\nThe official state religion had its own rites and deities and involved the official bureaucracy and the gentry only. The nearest thing to a State temple in our two territories is the rural school at Fanling where an image of the Yellow Emperor (*) stands on an altar in the main hall, and the side hall of a Macau temple in which a school is held where on an altar there are full-size images of the inventors of ink and writing.\n\n\"Pure\" Daoist temples are rare, there appearing to be none in Macau and some two dozen in Hong Kong of which two are branches of two of the others. These two dozen contain distinct Daoist deities, are run by Daoist bodies represented by a committee, whilst Daoist lay priests and priestesses perform Daoist ceremonies.\n\n* Peng Lai Ge (**M**)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208892, "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-1980", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "26 \n\nKEITH G. STEVENS \n\ntyphoon and rebuilt some two centuries later on the site of the present Tian Hou temple in Joss House Bay,27 \n\nThere have been several apparent brief bursts of temple building in Hong Kong since the arrival of the British. One was in the early days of Hong Kong in the 1840's; another spurt during the period of growing prosperity in the 1870/1880's; another during the era of the plague (the 1890's); and another in the 1950's during the massive influx of refugees. Many temples were renovated during the latter days of the Qing dynasty, and by the Hong Kong government's Chinese Temples Committee since the second world war,28 \n\nTemples are expensive buildings and are built mainly in times of economic affluence. Although many temples are receiving less and less attention from keepers and grass grows high in temple yards, others are expanding and have been refurbished at great cost. \n\nOne should not be misled into believing a temple to be old by its condition, as the climate ages buildings very rapidly on the coast of China. The dilapidated state of some dozen or so traditional temples gives the impression of centuries of neglect, whereas most were working temples up to a decade or two ago. Others looking almost new are, in reality, traditional temples which have been rebuilt or refurbished with the assistance of large government subsidies. However, many modern renovations have changed the original character both of the altars and of the temples themselves. \n\nThe Hong Kong Government has been meticulous in providing assistance whenever it has needed to encroach upon temple property. One site in Lo Fu Hang between Castle Peak and Yuen Long where a government department authorised a quarry to be opened and in the process ordered the removal of three ramshackle huts termed \"temples\", one large and two small concrete and tile edifices were built nearby to rehouse the gods. \n\nChaozhou immigrants who settled in Hong Kong during the fifties and sixties quickly discovered that their shanty dwellings on hillsides, considered illegal by the Hong Kong Government, were torn down by officials. They also quickly discovered that British officials, fearing to tread on religious susceptibilities, were more lenient towards religious structures. The Chaozhou immigrants therefore built for themselves small, rough temples of corrugated iron and wood and, as an annex, a small living area, and more often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208897, "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-1980", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n31\n\nrural areas, and the very ancient agrarian cult, the God of the Harvest, Soil and Grain, She Ji(4) whose shrines are found usually at the edge of villages and, like those of the Earth God, are too numerous to count.\n\nThe only general conclusion to be drawn from all this suggests that the vitality of the cults of deities has in general declined, whereas a limited number, in squatter resettlement areas, continue to thrive by acting as a focus for the minority Chaozhou, Hakka and Minnan immigrants.\n\nNOTES AND REFERENCES\n\nThis is Hong Kong: Temples. By Joyce Savidge, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1977.\n\n2 Dong Fong Ri Bao.\n\n* In this article the English word \"temple\" is used to include uniquely Buddhist and uniquely Daoist temples and monasteries; popular or folk religion temples (which may or may not contain Buddhist and Daoist deities); community temples (both private and public), and ancestral or clan temples. A shrine is an open-fronted room or box-like construction, either at the wayside, under a tree, outside a temple or monastery or hanging on a wall. Outside permanent shrines are referred to in Hong Kong as \"Exposed temples\" (露天廟). They are by definition unmanned.\n\nA \"community temple\" is one built by funds raised within a limited community and administered by a committee, either of a city, village or suburb, or of an ethnic group of expatriates. Private temples are built by private bodies such as:\n\n(a) A family or clan.\n\n(b) An individual monk or nun who raises funds by subscription and who leaves the temple to an acolyte at his or her death.\n\n(c) A trade or profession.\n\nPrivate temples, despite being private and closed to outsiders, are also usually controlled by a committee. A few private temples continue to remain so but gradually most become public, particularly as the number of devotees and images of deities within the temple increase. Some Buddhist temples, privately owned with the affairs and finances in the hands of the owners, are usually also the home of the owners and the ancestral tablets of the owner's family appear on the altars with or beside the deities. Privately owned is not the same as being open or closed to the public. Some indeed may be closed, but the majority are open to the public.\n\nOnly very occasionally are icons or images of deities to be found in clan temples, whereas ancestral tablets are frequently to be seen in community temples. Advantage is taken in the latter of the duties performed by the temple keeper (which clan temples do not have) which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208898, "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-1980", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "32\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\ninclude the burning of incense every day. This amongst other things saves the individual having to perform the rite before his ancestral tablets daily.\n\n4 There are no Confucian temples in either Hong Kong or Macau.\n\n5 Although there are obvious and major differences between Daoism, Buddhism and Folk religion, their beliefs and practices are so interwoven and syncretized beyond description, that in practice there is almost a single religious scheme of things. A handful of folk religion temples, mostly in Chaozhou and Min An community resettlement areas, are also centres for spirit medium activity. Chaozhou and Min An people customarily communicate with the major gods through minor gods and spirit mediums, Folk religion is very occasionally referred to as \"Spirit worship” (Shen jiao), albeit more by foreigners than by Chinese.\n\nChaozhou and Min An spirit mediums are usually males who speak with the more junior gods, whilst Cantonese spirit mediums are normally female and speak with the spirits of the dead.\n\n* The natives in both Hong Kong and Macau are Cantonese. Immigrants over the centuries who brought their own cultural heritage with them are the Hakka, Min An, Hoklo, and Chaozhou. The Chaozhou are speakers of the Chaozhou (sometimes called Swatow) whose native area is eastern Guangdong province. In folk religion the Chaozhou have more in common with their immediate neighbours to the north, the Min An and other Fukienese rather than with their Cantonese neighbours.\n\nThe total of 450 temples reflects the number found and visited by the author. The total given by the Hong Kong Government Temples Committee of the Home Affairs Department of over 500 private temples registered in Hong Kong is misleading in that their total includes to the author's knowledge quite a number of small temples which have been destroyed, removed or closed down. The author's number of 450 is also inaccurate as there are bound to be a number of very small temples hidden away in residential blocks of flats which would defy discovery without a visit to every floor of every apartment building.\n\n* County towns were the centres for official, commercial and religious activities. Villages within present day Hong Kong before the arrival of the British came under the jurisdiction of the mandarin at the county town of Hsin An (present day Pao An), north of the Sino-Hong Kong border.\n\n* However, an engraved title can easily be superseded when a more popular deity has been promoted to the main altar, without the title over the entrance being changed.\n\n10 Images on, beside, before and under altars can be categorised into the deities themselves, and their disciples, guardians and attendants. There are also two other categories of figures, seen only on separate altars in some Buddhist temples. These are the likenesses of the founding Abbot and of major donors and their wives.\n\n11 Urban and rural are terms used for the areas where the temples were established, and many a rural temple is now lost in the centre of a vast modern housing estate. Urban temples do not include village temples, they do however include the temples of the market towns such as Taipo and Yuen Long.\n\n12 These \"pensioners\" are normally the most needy and worthy elderly males or females of the community, voted or appointed into the post and supported there by subscription.\n\n13 See Hong Kong 100 Years Ago (Hong Kong City Hall, 1970) on the sixth page of photographs, though under another titling.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208899, "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-1980", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n33\n\n14 Because of the exorbitant rents for such accommodation, temples in shop houses and flats in Hong Kong are few and far between. In Singapore and Malaysia, temples in shop houses are very common indeed, though they are becoming less so as the years pass and rents in urban areas rapidly rise.\n\n15 Occasionally such a temple may be a converted private house, as in the many examples in Lo Wai village, Tsuen Wan, but more often it is a purpose-built but inexpensive hut.\n\n18 Temples containing images of the Buddhist deities Di Zang Wang, Milofu, and Guan Yin are not necessarily specifically Buddhist, as all three of these deities nowadays are also extremely popular deities in folk religion temples.\n\n17 Mahayana is Northern Buddhism and Theravada or Hinayana is Southern Buddhism.\n\n18 \"Illegal\" is a Hong Kong term for buildings which have been built on Crown Land often by squatters without Government land control or planning permission, but which have been permitted to remain standing under sufferance. In practice, they are temporary structures put up without permission, occasionally ramshackle though more often they are well-built timber, weather-board, and corrugated iron buildings, clean and well-proportioned. (Illustration 17). Some have stood for such a length of time as to have been gradually converted to concrete and brick. All are labelled on the side in rough daubs of paint with the bureaucratic abbreviations and digits prefixed by \"TEM\" (= temporary) affixed by squatter control staff of the Housing Department.\n\n19 Demons are well known to Chinese to be unable to go around corners and must travel in straight lines, hence these inner doors to prevent the demons from entering the temple. The inner doors originally were opened exclusively for influential people.\n\n20 See also James Hayes' information at JHKBRAS 6 (1966): 129-130.\n\n21 In overseas Chinese areas, this kind of large street shrine is still very common and, in Singapore alone, some four to five hundred exist in all kinds of nooks and crannies. For a Hong Kong example, see JHKBRAS 14 (1974): 203.\n\n22 Chu is one of the 28 Constellations (= xiu).\n\n** See pp. 111-113 of the Hong Kong Government's publication Rural Architecture in Hong Kong (1979) for this pagoda.\n\n24 In Imperial times, such masts were always to be seen outside the local magistrate's yamen.\n\n25 Chinese bells have no internal tongue clapper, being tolled by an external blow with a wooden mallet.\n\n26 For the Evacuation of the Coast, see Lo Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, 1963) Chapter VI.\n\n27 For background, see Jen Yu-wen's article \"The Southern Sung stone-engraving at North Fu-t'ang\" in JHKBRAS 5 (1965): 65-68.\n\n28 Government action is through the Chinese Temples Committee, serviced by the Trust Funds Section of the Home Affairs Department.\n\n29 Temples according to this Ordinance include Miao (廟), Si (寺), Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, Guan (觀) and Dao Yuan (道院), and nunneries An (庵).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209453, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "88 \n\nELIZABETH SINN \n\nto keep their own people in order. Local headmen such as the Paou-chong E, and then the Tepo were used in the first two decades of British rule. In 1846 the Registrar-General became also the Protector of Chinese Inhabitants in the Colony, 88 \n\nBut the Registrar-General's office was small, and its function was very much one of liaison. It depended heavily on Chinese leadership groups to manage the native population, The Man-Mo Temple Committee was one of the first such groups to emerge, followed by the Nam Pak Hong and the Tung Wah Hospital, which since its inception in 1870, became the predominant institution of its kind, until the Chinese Chamber of Commerce began to share its status in the 20th Century.87 \n\nThe Tung Wah Hospital, like the rest, had functions beyond what its name might suggest. It was modelled upon traditional Chinese urban gentry organizations which provided relief of various types, arbitrated conflicts, sat in judgement over minor offences, ran schools, and occupied a privileged position between the officials and the common people. In short it provided in Hong Kong what the Chinese population expected from gentry organizations in China, and created in its merchant-members images of the gentry. \n\nIt may appear anomalous to describe the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong as shen (gentry). If defined as degree holders then certainly not many of the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong would qualify for the description of \"gentry\". Yet these men were consistently referred to by Chinese officials as shen-shang (gentry, merchant). Mariane Bastid raises the very interesting point about the transition over time of the expression shen-shang from denoting merchant and gentry to denoting merchant-gentry in China. This change, of course, reflects nothing less than the change in social composition in late Ch'ing China, and perhaps nowhere did this change take place more dramatically than in Hong Kong. The one important difference was that being in Hong Kong, the shen-shang had to act as a bridge, not only between the people and government of Hong Kong, but also between the Chinese of Hong Kong and the Chinese Government, and, in particular, the authorities in Canton. They stood in the midst of a complex net of interests, often clashing interests, and to accommodate all parties was a game of intricate manoeuvring,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209585, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "220 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\nestablished brothels, a gambling hall, opium divans, a temple, his family house and the Theatre. \n\nAs the location and arrangements of Acqui's Theatre were not very satisfactory, there was a movement to build something more suitable. Immediately after the first performance of the Amateurs, it was announced that plans for a new theatre were under consideration. The China Mail, 8 January 1846, gave its full support: \n\nWe are glad to learn there is at length a fair prospect of a Theatre being erected in Hong Kong. The project was suggested last year, and as it not only met with general approbation from the public, but received the sanction of His Excellency and the support of the civil and military servants of the Government, it is rather inexplicable how it was suffered to drop. We are indebted, we believe, to the same parties who lately favoured the public with an amateur performance in the Lower Bazaar, for taking the matter up again, and they seem now to have begun very properly by first testing the feelings of the middle classes upon the very important point of subscriptions. We are assured that the amount already subscribed for is more than half what will be required to erect a spacious building, adapted alike for the purposes of a Theatre and a Ballroom, or a hall for public meetings. With some proofs of support from the community at large, we trust the Governor's patronage will be continued, and the merchants and official gentlemen will take the matter up in good earnest, and complete what has already been auspiciously begun. When the plans are sufficiently matured we would suggest the propriety of bringing them before the public in a well-defined shape, by circular, or advertisement in the public papers. For this purpose our columns will be at the service of the committee gratuitously. \n\nA meeting to enlist shareholders was held at the house of Leonard Just, a watchmaker, in February 1846. The eventual outcome of the meeting was the erection of the Victoria Theatre on the hill behind the Hong Kong Club. The lot was up Wyndham Street somewhat to the south of Wellington Street.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209881, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "118\n\nsuccessful leadership was assessed by the smooth handling of the arrangements for celebrating the birthdays of the principal gods of the two local temples, Hung Shing and Kuan Yin, and the important festival of Hungry Ghosts in the seventh lunar month. Each Fong took its turn to be responsible for managing and financing the arrangements made on these ritual occasions, and by local custom, the leaders were not permitted to canvas funds outside their own Fong. It was this restriction which led to the amalgamation of the three old Fong organizations about 1930. The Fong serving the San On group had declined in numbers, and when it came to its turn, could no longer support the burden of financing the festival arrangements to the satisfaction of the community. The amalgamation was hardly a major innovation, in that the whole community, and the leaders of all three Fongs, had always combined together whenever it became necessary to repair the local temples. The hearing of 1893, referred to above, makes this clear. The Hung Shing temple had been given a major reconstruction in 1888. On that occasion the three Fongs appointed between 10-20 managers from among their leaders to share the work of collecting subscriptions and arranging for the building work to be done.\n\nThe record of the 1893 hearing shows that, in ordinary years, there were usually three members of the temple committee, called chik sze. (4) One of the current chik sze of 1893 described his duties. 'Our duties are to attend to the theatricals in the course of the year and to look after the interior fittings of the temple'. The evidence contains a passing reference to 'the three guilds'. Other facts stated in the record and discussed with old residents (born respectively in 1887, 1891 and 1897; and interviewed in 1966) shows that the three Fongs were meant. The implication is either that each Fong supplied one manager to the body of three who looked after the physical maintenance of the temple; or that as with the celebration of major festivals each Fong took it in turn to manage the temple for one year. I believe that the former was the case.\n\nI turn now to the leadership of the Fongs. Unfortunately the record of the hearing in the temple dispute does not help to explain how the leaders in each Fong came to be elected to their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209883, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "120\n\nin place at the shop premises of the leader concerned. In this way public recognition was given for services rendered to the community.10\n\nWith the passage of time, and the inadequacy of the written materials available, the information given above is not as explicit as we would wish. Therefore it may help the reader if the material to hand, and its implications, are summarized, as follows:\n\n(1) The community of Ap Lei Chau was formed of three groups. Each group was represented by a Fong, which had an organising committee of Chik Lei under a Chairman, the Tai Chik Lei.\n\n(2) Each Fong formed the committee for ritual and theatricals on an annually rotating basis.\n\n(3) Where the community as a whole was concerned, it was represented by the Kaifong, or Committee of \"Elders\". All the Chik Lei of all the Fongs were \"elders\" of the town. The Kaifong was usually represented by the three Tai Chik Lei of the Fongs,\n\n(4) Temple maintenance and repair was the responsibility of the Kaifong. The Temple Committee consisted of three Chik Sze, usually the same people as the three Tai Chik Lei of the Fongs.\n\n(5) The division of duties between Kaifong and Fong were not significant except in ritual matters. In secular matters individual elders, the committee of a Fong, or the Kaifong as a whole would act as seemed appropriate at the time.\n\nBy means of this summarization, the social implications of the Ap Lei Chau structure are made more explicit, showing that the town was able to provide communal structures both to represent the town as a whole and also each major segment of its society, and that all these structures were connected with the temple, which clearly dominated the traditional social structure.\n\nOne final point is worth noting in connection with the arrangements for these regular ritual occasions and the periodic", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209889, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "126\n\nmatters only. It was not a kaifong that looked after the general affairs of the area. This duty seems to have been performed in the early period by a committee of merchant and trade guild elite figures drawn from a wider area. This body sat in the Man Mo Temple in nearby Hollywood Road, and a special kung sor (kung so) or 'public affairs office' was built for its meetings in the first year of the T'ung Chih reign (1862-1863). This is the date of the inscription above the door of the building, which is still in existence. This Kaifong was later (from 1871) effectively subsumed in the Tung Wah Hospital Committee.”1\n\nThe Earth God Shrine at Li Po Lung Path, Kennedy Town\n\nThere was another, lesser Fuk Tak Kung shrine in an adjoining, equally old urban area at Li Po Lung Path, Kennedy Town. When I made enquiries in 1974, no one could tell the whole history of the shrine or in which year it was established.\n\nAccording to an old kaifong Mr. Chow Kwok-kwan, one of the former managers of the shrine, who was 90 years old in 1974, the shrine was already located on the slope behind 14 Li Po Lung Path when he first came to live in the district in 1914. At that time the shrine was only a wooden hut measuring about 12' x 5' with a height of about 8'. He was told by some elderly kaifongs that the shrine had been there for more than twenty years, which may link its origins to the great plague of 1894, as with the altar at Sheung Fung Lane. At first the shrine only housed the Sam Shing Kung, the deities representing Heaven, Earth and Man, the three Powers of Nature; another deity was added to the shrine: the Fuk Tak Kung or earth god (To Tei) who is responsible for the peace and prosperity of the district. Finally, an image of Kwun Yam, Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, was also placed there. In view of its shabby state, Mr. Chow himself reconstructed the temple as a brick structure of more or less the same size about the year 1940.\n\nLater\n\nIn June 1966 it was destroyed by torrential rain, but up to 1974, when I made my enquiries, none of the interested parties had come forward with a reconstruction or resiting project.\n\nSince 1940, it had been the regular practice for the residents of Kennedy Town to celebrate at the shrine annually, usually on...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209892, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "129\n\nBefore its first removal to permit further development of the area, the shrine is said to have been very popular with local villagers, shopkeepers and quarrymen. The whole village of Tsin Shui Ma Tau, to which my informants belonged, went down to the shrine on the god's birthday, and the customary dinner was held in the open near the pier. After its removal to another site, it was less popular with local people who apparently did not like the new location. This site was cleared in its turn in the mid 1960s, and the incense burner and other property were moved for safe-keeping to one of the Shau Kei Wan temples. Eventually, the committee gathered funds for a proper temple and for the first time in its history the god was housed in a permanent building and not, as previously, in the open or in a wooden hut. A brief account with excellent photographs appeared in The Star newspaper for 27 January, 1970.*\n\nIn the post-war period this shrine has been linked with the Nam On Fong Yue Lan (M) Festival Committee but before the war, and up to the time of its first removal, there was no such Yue Lan committee. Moreover, the annual celebration was not, as now, held during the Yue Lan festival in the 7th lunar month but took place on the earth god's birthday on the 2nd day of the 2nd month. The religious service was, at that date, always accompanied by a puppet show. The arrangements were in the hands of a group of village elders, later joined by local shopkeepers as the population grew. The local people visited it on the first and fifteenth days of each month, and offered a pig's head on the birth of a son and a chicken on the birth of a daughter. The change in the date of the main celebration came after the war, and the reason for it is said to have been the large number of deaths in the district during the Japanese Occupation, and the advisability of worshipping the unquiet spirits of the deceased lest they harm the living.\n\nIn the pre-war period the managers of this shrine, styled chik lei, came together through a combination of mutual acquaintance, accepted reliability, ability, willingness to donate a minimum level of funds towards the expenses of the festival costs,\n\n* These photographs are reproduced at plates 6-8.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209893, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "130\n\nand interest in the proceedings. There was no restriction on the number of chik lei and all could take part in the selection of the chief manager or chung lei. This was done before the shrine at an advertised time. A man with a gong called the chik lei together. One by one they threw the divining blocks. Three throws were made. The first to obtain three positive responses became the chung lei.\n\nAfter this, none of the persons who had still to throw could do so. The proceedings were over: the god had decided who should be chief manager for that year. I was told that anyone, regardless of which dialect group he belonged to, could become a chik lei, and had a chance of becoming chung lei. Boat people could become chik lei, and wealthy fishermen had performed the duties of the office. Once elected, it was up to the chief manager to select his assistants, who became tai chik lei or senior managers. They were usually his friends and business associates.\n\nwar.\n\nThe image was not at that date taken in procession, as it has been since the institution of the Yue Lan Festival Committee post-. Nor was it taken out even in a plague. On the last such occasion in Shau Kei Wan, about 1920, the image of Tam Kung from the main Tung Tai Kai temple, accompanied by a boy seated in a knife chair, who was thought to have received the spirit of the god, was paraded through all parts of Shau Kei Wan. The population fasted on vegetarian food and a black dog was sacrificed at a certain spot.38\n\n(2) Sai Wan Ho ()\n\nAt the other, or western, end of Shau Kei Wan, the Sai Wan Ho sub-district, with a village of that name having 420 inhabitants at the 1901 census, was the nucleus of another religious grouping.3 This was centred on another earth god shrine which, though now in a new location, is credited with having existed beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants. It was removed to its present site about 1949, when the present sub-divisional police station was built immediately behind the old shrine.\n\nThe group of local residents associated with the celebrations connected with this shrine do not hold their principal religious", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209895, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "132\n\nnames for temple business, many chik lei of this shrine (as in all the other cases detailed above) preferred to use their shop name. In such cases it was left to the owner of the shop to decide whether he, his wife, or an employee should attend any meetings and dinners held in connection with the selection of the principal leaders, or the arrangements for the celebrations and the squaring of accounts.\n\nThe leaders were chosen a year in advance, so that they had plenty of time to make the necessary arrangements. After settling the accounts, and posting them on the festival ground for all to see, the Chung Lei for that year would give a dinner party to consult the body of managers as to who would serve as Chung Lei for the following year. By that time the interested parties would have assessed their degree of interest and their financial position, and would be ready to name a sum. A decision would then be taken.\n\nNot all the funds required to hire the nam mo to and the puppet troupe, and to erect the matshed stage, were provided by the principal and assistant Chung Lei, although it was expected that they would make good any unexpected deficiency. Parties of managers, in threes and fours, wearing large straw hats bearing prominent characters with the name of the committee, would canvass local residents. In return they would receive slips to paste or put up in their premises. One manager collected the money, another recorded the sums in a book and one gave the traditional form of receipt. Proceeding together in groups besides showing solidarity and evincing the genuineness of the proceedings was also a way of deterring frauds.\n\nTaken from a number of different locations on Hong Kong Island, established early in its urban and suburban history, the accounts given above all serve to indicate the decentralized nature of their shrines and temples. Their importance for these local communities is underlined by the fact that they were provided by local initiative and managed by committees of local residents who organized and managed festival celebrations and protective rites on their behalf. These accounts also show the different ways in which the committees were renewed from year to year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209896, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "133\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See John A. Brim \"Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong\" in Arthur P. Wolf (ed) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974) pp. 93-103. More recently, David Faure has given examples from the eastern New Territories in articles published in this Journal. See pp. 76-85 of \"Hong Kong and China in the Village World” in Vol. 21(1981); pp. 172-179 of “Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\" in Vol. 22(1982); and his Note (with Lee Lai-mui) \"The Po Tak Temple in Sheung Shui Market\" in the same Volume, pp. 271-279. A book is forthcoming.\n\n2 This is the theme of my own studies, particularly in The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn, Archon Books with Dawson, Folkstone, 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983), hereafter Hayes 1977 and Hayes 1983.\n\n3 A study of one of the smaller villages of Hong Kong island, Tai Tam Tuk, is given at pp. 61-73 with 250-255 of Hayes 1983. This provides some information on the coastal market centre, Shau Kei Wan, to which the villagers went regularly (pp. 65-6 and 253) but, generally speaking, this entire subject is still badly under researched.\n\n4 The Hong Kong government's census returns, printed in the Hong Kong Government Gazette from 1853 (and before that in the China Mail into which government notifications were placed) show the rapid growth of population, almost all of it newly urbanized. G.B. Endacott's A History of Hong Kong (London, Oxford University Press, 1958) devotes half its length to the first thirty years and gives population figures at pp. 64-66, 85, 98, 116 and 125 for this period. The population rose from 20,338 in 1848 to 121,825 in 1865.\n\n5 See Revd. Carl T. Smith \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter JHKBRAS) 11(1971), pp. 74-115.\n\n6 The native place of the Chinese land population of the Colony was overwhelmingly Kwangtung province (227,615 out of 234,443 at the 1901 Census, with the population of the newly acquired New Territory taken separately. The Report was published in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) 1901, No. 39 of 1901. See paras. 23-24, and the detailed breakdown of origin by districts of the province at Table XI. This detail is not available for earlier printed reports and is included here to indicate the diverse origins of the urban population, most of whom may be presumed to have been from the rural countryside of Kwangtung.\n\n7 \"It is not regarded as a promising missionary station, because it is the resort of the lowest class of the natives\", wrote Revd. William Aitchison, a newly arrived American missionary to China, in 1854, a view imbibed from English and American Colleagues at Hong Kong, Revd. Charles P. Bush, Five Years in China The Life and Observations of Revd. William Aitchison, Late Missionary to China (Philadelphia, Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1865) pp. 91-2.\n\n8 Ap Lei Chau or Aberdeen Island () is an island, 0.455 square miles in area, on the southern side of Aberdeen Harbour—see the Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960) p. 97.\n\n9 Evidence given by a local inhabitant (b. 1815) in a hearing under the Squatter Ordinance 1890—see Notes of Proceedings of the Squatters", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209980, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "217\n\nwas great and must have left them with little time or money to spare for their ruined temple. Finally, and almost certainly the most seriously, the influx of a new population, and immense schemes of redevelopment completely altered the generally rural background of village and market town life that still characterised pre-war East Kowloon.\n\nThus, in the Tung Shan Temple we can see a temple, founded for purely rural reasons slowly growing until it became the predominant community temple of the whole of rural East Kowloon. During this period its management changed from a purely private, clan-based system to a typical community temple structure of committee members and chairman of a type typical not only of the rural community temples in the rest of the New Territories but also of those in urban Hong Kong at this date.\n\nFounded in a rural community this temple could, and did, develop both physically and in its management structure to reflect the needs of that community. It could not, however, survive the complete destruction of that community, and its ruination directly reflects the collapse of its founding community in the face of massive urbanisation, and the establishment of the new urban communities created by that urbanisation. The new urban communities have formed their own shrines, and their flourishing condition, alongside the continued ruin of the main temple of the defunct rural community, show more clearly than anything else can the essentially community basis of the temples of this area and their management groups.\n\nNOTES\n\nIn the 1904 Block Crown Lease for Survey District No. 3, New Kowloon, the ownership is recorded in the monk's name Shing Kin (Hsing Star Bridge) and the property is listed under Lot 1101 as temple 0.7 acres, house 0.2 acres, and potato ground 0.33 acres. An entry \"Kwun Yam Temple, Ngau Chi Wan\" had been crossed out by the Assistant Land Officer who recommended that a lease for the temple buildings and site be given to the Registrar General, 28 April 1904.\n\nFrom south-east Kowloon, Ngau Tau Kok and Cha Kwo Ling; from east Kowloon, Ngau Chi Wan, Ping Shek, Sha Tei Yuen, Upper and Lower Yuen Ling and Chu Shi Liu; from central Kowloon, Tai Hom, Po Kong, Nga Tsin Wai, Upper and Lower Sha Po, Nga Tsin Long and Kak Hang; from Kowloon City, the commercial areas, Sai Tau, Tung Tau and Hoklo Village.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210181, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "131\n\nalike, they made their own arrangements for self management in clan, village, sub-district, coastal centre and market town. So long as they paid their taxes and did not commit crimes or affrays they were left alone by the authorities. Being settled, in many cases, for so long, the inhabitants had intermarried over generations, sending their daughters to other villages and taking wives from neighbouring settlements as well as from further afield, from Kowloon and nearby places in the present New Territories. Some villages were linked by blood ties in the male line, as at Little Hong Kong and Pokfulam where the Chans and Chaus had settled or branched off, and some Wong Nei Chung clans had male cousins at Little Hong Kong. These links made it natural for the villages to join together in periodic communal protective rites like the ta chiu (打醮) which according to old residents still persisted into this century; whilst the temples attracted large gatherings at major festivals, especially on the birthdays of their patron deities.\n\nThis is not the place to provide yet another description of the forms which the local village communities used to provide for the regulation of their society. Full descriptions have been given elsewhere of the role of the clan, centred on the ancestral hall and the ancestral graves; of the village, centred on the earthgod shrines, village school, and the village fields and water supply; and of the market town and the nexus of villages it served, centred on the kaifong, the temple and its management committee, and the ta chiu.1 All that is needed here is the emphatic confirmation that all the parts of this traditional system, so well-known from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Territories, were present on Hong Kong Island in and before 1841.\n\n79\n\n80\n\nAncestral halls certainly existed in all the major and some of the minor villages although few now survive. Tai Tam Tuk and Law Uk (Chai Wan) both had one, and there were others at Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung, and the Tai Tam villagers had two, although it is likely that both were built after 1841. Earthgod shrines equally certainly existed - the very name of To Tei Wan village (\"Earthgod Bay\") suggests this, and we have seen that the Hung Shing Temple in Wanchai probably originated in an earthgod shrine. Several of the quarry hamlets in the Quarry Bay to Shaukeiwan area had shrines, and others survive built into the\n\nBL", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210182, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "132\n\ntemples.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThe village temples of Hong Kong Island were the centre of community activities at more than a single village level, as elsewhere in South China. A letter from Collinson of 29th April 1845 refers to:\n\n\"a great feast... celebrated in Chuck Chu [Stanley] for the last 3 days, which was nothing more or less than a fair in front of the principal Joss house.\"82\n\nThis \"fair\" was clearly celebrating the birthday of Tin Hau, which falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd moon, which in 1845 was 30th April. A temple fair to celebrate Tin Hau's birthday, still held on the land in front of the main Stanley temple, is still celebrated at that season each year. There can be no doubt, too, that the double festivities at Aberdeen, on the birthday of Tin Hau, and on that of Hung Shing (23rd of 3rd moon), on each of which celebrations the statue of the deity whose festival is not being celebrated is solemnly carried in procession to the other's temple “as a guest”, as a concrete demonstration of the local people's feeling that their prosperity and safety at sea depends on both deities, also date to before 1841.\n\nTemples required management committees, and it was usual for temple management committees to take on, as the Kaifong, the general oversight of the market towns or the community of villages in or near which they stood. The towns on Hong Kong island certainly had kaifongs. A couplet of 1820 in the Tin Hau temple at Stanley was given by the Chik-sze (managers)83 which certainly implies the existence of a management committee at that date. If the tradition that the Pak Tai temple was founded in 1803 by the Hoklo community of Stanley is correct, it is possible that the Kaifong was built around ethnic groups, as was almost certainly the case at that date in Cheung Chau, and which was common later. **Certainly the 1820 Chik-sze are typical of later kaifongs in that, of the eleven Chik-sze named, five certainly, and at least a further two in all probability, were names of commercial enterprises, showing dominance of the kaifong Temple Committee by the market shopkeepers. Equally typical was the likelihood that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210183, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "133\n\nthe Chik-sze were the larger and more prosperous commercial enterprises: three of the four Stanley shops whose scope of business and general prosperity were such that they felt inspired to donate to the restoration of the Hau Wong temple in Kowloon City in 1822 were included among the 1820 Chik-sze. These four Stanley shops were the only Hong Kong donors to this restoration.1 This kaifong continued to flourish: in 1847 it built, or rebuilt, an office for itself, a building which it still today used as the office of the local Kaifong.2\n\n85\n\nAt Shau Kei Wan, the evidence for the existence of a kaifong is equally compelling. The foundation of the Hoi Sam Temple in 1845 is presented as a community action on the foundation tablet, which states\n\n\"Therefore, the matter was discussed and a general agreement reached: everyone was happy to lend a hand to make a success of it. One man raised the suggestion, and it was unanimously acclaimed by the whole mass of the devout people.\"\n\nMoreover, the donors to the foundation are grouped into three groups: Managers (four in number) (3), \"Ritual Leaders\" (4), and \"Devout People\" (5). The mention of “Managers” makes it clear that, here again a management committee is in place, which, equally clearly, represents the community. As we have seen, quarry operators dominated the donors for the Hoi Sam temple, but there were other commercial groups there, too—only sixteen other commercial enterprises are identified as such, but others probably lie behind some of the 170 non-commercial donors listed. The management committee was here, too, therefore, probably dominated by the quarrymen, shopkeepers and other commercial men. This kaifong remained dominant in Shau Kei Wan affairs up to the last War, and it was the kaifong which founded the other Shau Kei Wan temples later in the nineteenth century.6 The Stanley Kaifong still retains control of the Stanley temples, but the Shau Kei Wan Kaifong lost control of the temples it had founded in 1928, when the Chinese Temples Ordinance was passed.\n\n87\n\nThere is no evidence for early kaifong groups in Aberdeen, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210281, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "231\n\nDuring the whole festival period, the main temple was the most neglected area, whilst the Ming-che area was always crowded with worshippers. Free vegetarian food was offered by the committee in the Association Hall for the whole period. The Association Hall and a room of the office of the Temple were used as temporary kitchens for preparing food and offerings.\n\nWorshippers seldom went to the main temple except for presenting incense sticks. Even though the Tao-ch'ang area was more spacious and was air-conditioned, worshippers seldom stayed long in the Tao-ch'ang area except on the last night, for the \"Great Offering\" ceremony. Worshippers seldom visited the Association Hall either except when they were giving donations or having their daily meals. The Ming-che area was the only place which was always crowded. There were people chatting, exchanging greetings, admiring and criticising every Ming-che (paper-made houses), folding paper-money and playing musical instruments and singing.\n\n5\n\nThe Tao-ch'ang area was seen as the most dangerous and frightening place for the worshippers because it was believed to be full of the hungry ghosts who came for the offerings. The Association Hall and the kitchens belonged to the hosts, the Hokkienese. Worshippers went first to the Tao-ch'ang area to offer foods to the spirits, and then to the Association Hall to accept meals from the hosts. In general, worshippers felt attracted to the Ming-che area because, while it was the area of their ancestors, yet the ancestors there were not frightening. The Ming-che area gave the worshippers the opportunity to be at the same time closer to their ancestors, and to build up relationships with other Chinese who lived far away. Non-Hokkienese worshippers seemed to avoid the Association Hall because of ethnic differences, and this brought them even closer to the Ming-che area. During the whole event, only 'Ancestor Worship' was emphasised by the worshippers.\n\nII. The Festival\n\nAccording to the figure-maker (Tze-shi) Mr. Lin Yau Chie (73 years old, Hokkienese), the preparation for each year's 'Yue Lan' starts from the end of the previous event. In other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210282, "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "232\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nwords, he starts to accept orders for making Ming-che\" from the middle of the 7th moon. However, not until the beginning of the year is any actual work done. The Association first elects a committee for the 'Yue Lan' festival during the feast for the Lantern Festival (15th of the 1st moon), and several donation-books (Yuan Bu*) are sent out to different places in Japan to collect donations from the Chinese. At about the same time (2nd of the 2nd moon), Mr. Lin starts to make figures, Ming-ches, Chos (paper-made houses for the gods and ancestors), gold and silver paper-made hills, direction flags, and other paraphernalia. Major figures are completed a month before the festival starts. Then, a priest is invited to open the eyes (Kai Kuan H or Kai Yen MIR) of the paper-made figures, and the statues of the Kwan-ti temple and the Tao-ch'ang. On the same day, a ‘Raising the Lantern of Heaven' (Chie T'ien Dan) ritual is done to invite all the spirits to the festival. The committee will then start to send invitation letters to the Chinese in Japan.\n\nThe festival lasted 4 nights and 5 days from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 (from 13th to 17th of the 7th moon), 1982.” According to a public notice, the rituals included: (i) a daily morning and a daily night ritual, (ii) praying for the reincarnation of the dead in the morning and afternoon, (iii) reporting to Heaven in the afternoon, (iv) offering to the hungry ghosts at night, and, (v) a lantern floating ceremony in the afternoon of Sept. 2.10 Table 1 shows, however, that the scheduled time-table was not strictly followed. For example, on the last morning of the festival, three rituals were performed to thank the gods of the Temple, to thank Heaven, and to offer to the ghosts which were supposed to be late or handicapped, instead of the previously advertised \"praying for reincarnation”.\n\nFrom my observation, it appeared that no one attended the 'Morning Lessons' (Morning ritual and prayer for reincarnation), and, except for the rituals for reporting to Heaven, the lantern floating ceremony and the last ‘Great Offering', there was less than ten persons who attended from start to finish. Besides the rituals for reporting to the Heaven, the three rituals held on the last day and the lantern floating ceremony, all other rituals took place at the 'Tao Ch'ang' area.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210285, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "20\n\n235\n\nhand-gestures implying that he was going to replace the ghosts who were suffering in Hell.\" After that, he threw six Man Taus as if he was offering millions of bread to the hungry ghosts who had been released from Hell. All three representative worshippers of the committee, each holding a small incense stick, attended each night offering ritual. During the last ‘Offering', the Tao Ch'ang area was crowded with worshippers who were mainly family members and relatives of the 'Newly Dead'. Everyone attending the last ‘Offering' held a small incense stick. According to the informants, the ‘Last Offering', different from the other offerings, was especially for the ancestors of the worshippers.\" After the ritual, all the paper-made figures, Chos, and Ming-ches were burnt with paper-made gold and silver hills, bundles of paper money, and fire crackers. As each Ming-che was burning, the family members and the relatives of the 'Newly Dead' bowed down to send it off. For most of the worshippers, the festival had now ended, and only the committee members attended the rituals held on the last morning.\n\nOn the last day, there was a ritual to (i) thank the temple god, Kwan-ti, (ii) thank Heaven, and (iii) give offerings to those handicapped ghosts who were supposed to have come late. For the first time in the whole festival, meat was presented at this ritual.” The festival ended with the priests' departure after the rituals. The Association held a feast in the afternoon of the last day to celebrate the successful completion of the festival.\n\nIII. Composition of the Participants\n\nFour categories of the participants should be specially mentioned. They are: (a) the priests, (b) the common worshippers, (c) the families of the \"Newly Dead,” and (d) the committee members and workers.\n\nA team of nine priests, including eight monks and one nun, were employed from the Huang Po (## Obakku in Japanese) Buddhist sect from the Wan Fu temple (万 Manfukuji in Japanese) in Uji (宇治), Kyoto.23 Although (as at least two informants told me) in the past the priests in this temple were mainly Chinese, they are now all Japanese. They used to have\n\n4:2", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210286, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "236\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\ntwelve to fifteen priests but according to a committee member, because of economic reasons, they decreased the number of the priests. They started to have a nun join the team since 1981. However, she makes no difference for the common worshippers. There was no special interaction between the common worshippers and the priests. Even in the rituals relating to the Ming-che, no one except the Japanese wife of a \"Newly Dead\" invited the Japanese priest to chant before the Ming-che. In place of priests, the Temple keeper (Chu-tzi), a Chinese man from Shantou (Swatow) was employed by the families of the 'Newly Dead' to chant before each Ming-che. The purpose of this ritual was to inform the 'Newly Dead' that the family will send (burn) a paper-made house (Ming-che) to the underworld and now they are going to send the \"Contract\" of the house, and with the 'Contract' the 'Newly Dead' can get the house after it has been sent.\" The Japanese priests who performed all the official rituals were respected by the common worshippers who kept their distance from them.\n\n24\n\nThe common worshippers came from various parts of Japan. Most of the informants claimed that there were no limitations, anybody could come to worship. There was no data referring to the origins and residential places of the worshippers. However, at least one man, a Hokkienese who is son-in-law of the chairman of the festival, came from Gunma Prefecture; several families came from Yokohama; a group of Hokkienese came from Shikoku (they came to worship a ‘Newly Dead' who helped them immigrate to Japan a few years ago); 2 related families came from Himeji; 3 from Osaka (2 are Hokkienese, the 3rd one immigrated to Japan in 1981, he was a Taoist from Peking); and one Hokkienese came from Kyoto (he was in charge of the Chinese Ghost Festival at Uji, Kyoto). As shown in table 2, the number of participants contributing 1000 yen or more numbered 708,\n\nHowever, if the tablets of the ancestors are taken as substitutes for family participation the number of the families involved should be more than the figure shown. Though the family segments into several economically and residentially separated households, the households always worship under the same ancestor-tablet as a religious family.\" One informant (a 32 yr. old Cantonese) told me that he had 7 siblings, the eldest died during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210289, "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "239\n\nseveral employed Japanese workers.\" The committee members were chosen from the Hokkienese Association. It is said that the head of the Association represents all the Chinese (in Japan) by 'leading' them in the festival.2\n\n28\n\nThe role of the Hokkienese is significant. It is said that only the Hokkienese represent and lead all the Chinese to serve the gods and to offer to the ghosts. The name list presented to Heaven had only the names of the Hokkienese, and the three representative worshippers of the daily rituals were all Hokkienese; moreover, only the Hokkienese attended the Lantern Floating ritual.\n\nIV. The Objects of Worship\n\nAccording to the committee members, the festival has no relationship with the gods of the temple. The reason it took place there was because there was space there. However, during the night rituals and the prayers for reincarnation the priests had to walk through the whole festival area and the chief priest had to bow to every altar and statue including those in the main temple. The purification ritual also included the main temple. On the last day, the committee thanked the gods of the temple with a half-cooked pig (Pai-chuu 白豬), raw meat, fish, and 10 bowls of vegetarian food. Moreover, during the festival, worshippers never forgot to present incense sticks to the temple gods, and the committee offered five cups of tea, five cups of wine and ten bowls of vegetarian food to the temple gods twice a day. The same treatment was given to the Japanese Earthgod (Chizo 地蔵). Although every statue, Chinese or Japanese, Buddhist or Taoist, within the festival area was not regarded as related to the festival they were treated equally by the worshippers and the committee members alike.\n\nThere were thirteen Ming-ches for the 'Newly Dead and a Cho (written as \"Ancestral Hall of the Chinese in Japan”#12 29 for the ancestor tablets of the families who donated money, in the Ming-che area. There were a total of 266 tablets. The tablets in the \"Ancestral Hall\" were different from the Ming-che which is for the 'Newly Dead', and included the ancestors of all generations of the family. Every Ming-che had a photo and a board with the surname of the dead.30 Plenty of paper money was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210293, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "243\n\nThe content of the invitation card is: \"The overseas Chinese in Japan will hold a 3-days-4-nights Pu Tu, for the sake of establishing luck by offering and helping all the imprisoned spirits of the water and the earth. The meeting will take place at the Kwan T'i Temple in Kobe city. Please come to the \"Tan\" (altar) to present incense sticks during the 14th, 15th, and 16th of the 7th moon. (1st, 2nd and 3rd of September 1982).” The card was red in colour.\n\n9\n\nThe 13th day and the 17th day of the 7th moon were not mentioned in the invitation card.\n\n10 The Lantern Floating ritual in Japanese is \"To Ro Nagashi', which means to float lanterns(s) (to the sea). During the Japanese Obon, lanterns are sent off on the last day of the festival. Through this, the ghosts and the ancestors are all sent back. During the Kobe festival, the ritual, according to the committee members, was to send off the \"wandering ghosts or those who are not worshipped by anyone (= Mu Zhi Kuai)\". However it seems confusing because after the floating ritual, they continued to give offering to the hungry ghosts as well as to the ancestors for two more nights, and the tablets of the wandering spirits were still inside the Tao Ch'ang. A similar ritual practised in Hong Kong during the Chiao festival is called 'Fong Shui Dang' (t, sending off the water lanterns), which is parallel with the 'Fong Luk Dang\" (PW10, put on the street lights) ritual. The rituals are to invite all the water and earth spirits to attend the offering during the Pu Tu or 'Sai Tai Yau* (*9A, to worship the numerous spirits) of the Chiao festival). The prayer book the Obaku Buddhists used for their morning and night rituals is \"Obaku Zenlin Choobo Kashoo\" (R). The priests called this daily work \"Zenlin Kashoo\" (M).\n\nSee below.\n\n12\n\nPlate 21.\n\n13\n\nPlates 22, 23.\n\n14 The \"Pang' was a book-form name-list in yellow. It had 8 pages with an introduction explaining the reason for holding a Pu Tu. (The introduction is printed in the Appendix).\n\n15 See the introduction to the Pang printed in the Appendix.\n\n16 The beach is at the western end of the Prefecture.\n\n17 Plate 24.\n\n18\n\nSee footnote 10.\n\n19\n\n20\n\nPlate 25.\n\nThe book used for the ritual was \"Yoga Enkoo Kahan\" (1⁄2μÅμ) which is similar to that used in Hong Kong during the 'Sai Tai Yau' ritual. According to an old taoist in Hong Kong, Mr. Lam Pui ( ), the gesture is called \"Poh Yuk” (Z, to break Hell), and through this the ghosts are released and able to come for reincarnation and cross over.\n\n21 Plates 26, 27, 28.\n\n22\n\nNo meat was allowed in the festival area. However, meat was presented at the Ming-che VII. One informant explained that it was because the dead like meat, and one committee member sighed and told me that \"We have no way, because they are from the other Provinces (of China) (##A)\".\n\n20 The sect started from Monk Yin Yuan (C) of Fu-ch'in (Mili), Hokkien. He was invited by the General of the Tokugawa Bankufu (UK) in 1654, In the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210752, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "86\n\nCHAN WING HOI\n\nevents of the festival. A committee consisting of the officers (lei-si) of the residents' association was set up to organize the celebration.\n\nIn the jiu festivals in the New Territories, only indigenous residents are eligible candidates who may be chosen to serve as ritual representatives. Sometimes in the New Territories each participating village has a quota of ritual representatives. Neither restriction applied in the Shek O celebration. More than 70 families, mainly those of Shek O, sent their members to compete for the places of yn-sau this time. The main yn-sau for this celebration had lived there for about 10 years. One of his deputies was a local Punti and the other a Chiu Chau. When I asked if three people were too few for the many tasks in the festival, the yn-sau replied that they did not have much to do. It was the priests who did things. The yn-saus had only to be present. I learned that the ritual representatives were not required to contribute more money. They were also given positions in the organizing committee.\n\nMany came to make offerings of incense at the temple and the different compartments of the temporary structure set up for the festival. Many of the older indigenous residents knew the names of the gods in paper images. A woman probably in her mid-sixties told her younger companions the names. She knew the name of Daai Si Wong, Yuk Wong and Yat Gin Fat Choi, and even though those names were indicated in characters she did not have to read them. She was illiterate. Descended from a Shek O family she was married to one of the newcomers to the village. She explained that this was the sixteenth celebration. They held the festival once in every ten years. Once they had had the first celebration, they had to do the same every ten years. The festival was a ping-on jiu. It was for the well-being (ping-on daai-gat) of everybody. For that purpose everyone abstained from meat during the festival. Those who could afford it bought new bowls and chopsticks to ensure a perfectly vegetarian diet.\n\nSpecial attention was given to the Daai Si Wong. I overheard one boy telling his companion to walk under the hips of the paper image. As a result, a child would “grow faster” (Faaigou jeungdaai).\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210766, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "100\n\nCHAN WING HOI\n\nNOTES\n\nBesides \"three-day jius\", there are more elaborate “five day jiu” celebrations in the New Territories.\n\nThe annual ritual takes place typically in Chiu Chau, Wai Chau and Hoklo settlements to make offerings to uncared-for dead spirits.\n\n1 The oldest dated object in the Tin Hau Temple, which housed the main god of the festival, was about one hundred years old. I shall refer to this again later.\n\n6\n\nThere could have been more than one \"chairman\".\n\nProbably part of the golf club, or otherwise a similar establishment.\n\nTanaka Issei 田仲一成, Chugoku saishi engeki kenkyū 中国祭祀演劇研究 (Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo 1981) p. 891.\n\n7 The Fuk-Wai-Chiu immigrants had their own gods and their operas in the Tin Hau festival. According to Tanaka, eleven or twelve gods other than Tin Hau were sacrificed to (op. cit., pp. 891-3). One of them, the Daai Wong Paak Gung of Naam Bin Chyn, is attributed by Tanaka to the Hoklo residents. Tanaka also points out that the Fuk-Wai-Chiu members of the organizing committee were alone responsible for a special part of the festival, that is, the performance of Wai Chau and Chiu Chau operas.\n\n8 Piu-sik are usually carried on frames at a height far above that of the audience in a parade. Because of the rain during the procession this time they stood in a lorry instead.\n\nAbout half of the gods sacrificed to in the Tin Hau Festival, including the Fuk-Wai-Chiu deity mentioned above, were not found among the spirit tablets in the jiu festival.\n\n10 \"Picking green\". In this case the two lions competed in capturing a bank note hanging near the entrance to the house.\n\nGlossary\n\nChoi Paak Lai 蔡伯勵\n\nchoi-cheng 採靑\n\nDai Wong (Ye) 大王(爺)\n\nba-wong-dei 霸王地\n\nChiu Chau 潮洲\n\nbaai-chaam 拜懺\n\nBaak Mou Seung 白無常\n\nBaak-gung 伯公\n\nBak Dai 北帝\n\nBao'an 寶安\n\nbui 杯\n\nbin-ngaak 匾額\n\nChai Wan 柴灣\n\nChan Wa 陳華\n\nCheung Chau 長洲\n\nDaai Si (Wong) 大士(王)\n\ndaai-gat 大吉\n\ndiu-lau 碉樓\n\nDongguan 東莞\n\nfa-laam 花籃\n\nfa-paai 花牌\n\nFaaigou jeungdaai ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210940, "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": 2, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "272\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthat one of these is an earlier version, including the annual accounts for only 1911 to 1913. A photocopy of this one was given to James Hayes by the Chairman of the Sheung Shui Rural Committee in 1972, and Dr. Hayes kindly made it available to the Oral History Project at the Chinese University. It is now incorporated into the volumes on Sheung Shui in the Project's Historical Literature of the New Territories. The other copy is held by the British Library, and includes the annual accounts from 1923 to 1960. The British Library also holds the only copy of the accounts of the New Alliance, on the cover of which is written: Temple celebration of the New Alliance, opened on the 1st of the Sixth Month in the 1st year of Hsüan-t'ung, Lung Yeuk Tau copy (新約會神誕,宣統元年歲次己酉六月初一日✰✰✰). It includes the annual accounts from 1906. Both copies held by the British Library are originals, not photocopies.\n\nAccording to these account books, member villages held shares in these alliances, managed the communal property by annual rotation among the shares, and participated in the annual sacrifices that were paid for from income derived from the communal property. The Old Alliance was made up of four shares and the New Alliance of six. The four villages of the Hau (侯) lineage (Kam Tsin, Ping Kong, Ho Sheung Heung, Yin Kong) together held one share in the Old Alliance, and so did the Liu (廖) lineage of Sheung Shui, the Wan Shing T'ong (雲升堂) of Sheung Shui (a sub-lineage trust of the Liu lineage), and the Tang (鄧) lineage of Lung Shaan, i.e. Lung Yeuk Tau. According to oral tradition in Sheung Shui, the Wan Shing T'ong bought its share from the Man (文) lineage. This is corroborated by an undated document entitled, \"Eulogy of the four surnames of Hau, Liu, Tang and Man on the foundation of the Po Tak Temple”(侯、廖、鄧、文四姓立報德祠頌詞) published in a recent commemorative volume (Liu Yun-sham, Commemorative Volume on the History of the Venerable Chau and Wong 廖潤深,周王二公史蹟紀念專輯 Hong Kong, 1982, p. 13). We have not seen the original of this document, but its title suggests that it was written for the Old Alliance at a time before the Man lineage sold its share to the Wan Shing T'ong. In the New Alliance, the four Hau villages, Sheung Shui, Lung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211156, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "functions.\n\nA nineteenth century Chinese account of the Chinese community in early Hongkong states that the donors, Loo King and Tam A-tsoi, \"judged the people in public assembly.\"\n\nIn 1851 the temple management was broadened. At that time the shopkeepers and firms subscribed to repair and probably to enlarge the structure. They elected a committee.\n\nFor some years the temple on Hollywood Road with its adjoining Kung Soh (public meeting hall) served as an official centre for the Chinese community. With the opening of Tung Wah Hospital in 1872 a new focal point for community identity emerged.\n\nTUNG WAH OFFICIALS UPSET EXPATS\n\nThe formal inauguration of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce Hall in 1895 was the culmination of many years of discussion and planning for a proper meeting place for the Chinese community to discuss matters affecting its welfare.\n\nFrom 1873 to 1895 these meetings had been held at the Tung Wah Hospital. Earlier still, community leaders had met at the Kung Soh or meeting hall beside the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road.\n\nA notice in the Daily Press of January 2, 1873, mentions the move to the new Hospital: \"The old Joss House Court the Kung Soh, in the Hollywood Road, — has, we hear, been given up in favour of another building not far off.\"\n\nThe article describes how the court functioned: \"It seems that there a vast number of disputes are settled, and that it is an understood rule that matters should be brought to the cognisance of the proper authorities only if they cannot be arranged in this manner.\n\nWe understand the committee of the Chinese hospital is the same body of men who head the kaifong, and that they discuss municipal and semi-political matters in the hall of the hospital.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211157, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "193\n\nThe new hall was a more impressive and comfortable meeting place for community leaders than the old Kung Soh which was not only rather small but was also beginning to show the marks of age.\n\nA famous Victorian lady traveller, Isabella Bird, has left an account of the Tung Wah hall which she visited in 1879;\n\n\"The building where the directors meet... (has) one side open to the garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle with a handsome chair for the chairman and six carved ebony chairs on each side—a most stately 'board room'.”\n\nThe furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon. They had encountered financial difficulties and the Chinese Government had seized their property for debt and sold it at a public auction. In this manner it found its way to Hongkong.\n\nThe activities of the hospital committee in affairs affecting the Chinese community were viewed with suspicion by Europeans in Hongkong.\n\nEven before the hospital was opened, the committee came under attack for interfering in a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States.\n\nThe Daily Advertiser said that members of the board of the hospital \"appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the Colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some time in the future.” As indeed there was.\n\nThe committee which oversaw the affairs of Tung Wah Hospital was elected annually from the most prominent members of the community.\n\nOstensibly their duties were to manage the hospital. Its members, however, also served as temple and kaifong directors. The jurisdiction of these bodies was not sharply defined.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211208, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "244\n\nMr. Fraser-Smith said that if there were any other suggestions, they should be presented before a vote was taken on any particular proposal. He thought Dr. Manson's sanitarium a good idea, that is, \"if nothing better was brought forward.\"\n\nThe chairman picked him up on this and said: \"Perhaps you would second it.\" To which Mr. Fraser-Smith replied: \"I would be very happy to do so if nothing better can be found.\" The scheme was not off to a very enthusiastic beginning.\n\nA lengthy discussion followed on details of Dr. Manson's scheme, particularly its cost. As there seemed no solid answers to the questions raised, Mr. McConachie proposed it would be well to adjourn the meeting until some firm facts were available about the cost and the support which could be expected from the Government.\n\nTo implement this suggestion, Mr. Francis moved that a committee of five be named to confer with Dr. Manson regarding detailed plans for the sanitarium. But before the motion was put to the meeting, Mr. MacEwen said it would be wise to determine if the plan really had the support of the meeting, or a committee would be so much wasted effort.\n\nMr. Crow, who had advanced his own scheme, opposed a vote on a specific plan and proposed instead the meeting be adjourned to permit people to consider the several plans. He himself would not press for a vote on his scheme at this meeting.\n\nIf his suggestion of adjournment had been accepted, the shambles into which the meeting continued to degenerate could have been avoided and lines less sharply drawn over jubilee plans.\n\n* There was a water storage tank near the junction of Caine Road and Caine Lane. The present Tank Lane, which is one street west of the Man Mo Temple, derives its name from the water storage tank. The Lane runs from Lower Lascar Row to Po Hing Fong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211645, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "35\n\nprotectors. The latter were either genuine princes and lords or folk heroes whose normal title would not include the term Wang Yeh. The best example of a Wang Yeh of the second category is the most famous of all Taiwanese protective folk deities, Koxinga who, when he appears on altars, is known by a great number of titles, the most common being \"The Lord who opened up Taiwan' (Kai T'ai Tsun Wang). One of his many other titles is 'Chu Wang Yeh' (His Excellency Chu). Chu, the surname of the Ming royal family, was awarded to Koxinga as a personal honour by the Ming, permitting him to adopt it as his surname. Thus, images of Koxinga in temples where he is known as Chu Wang Yeh cannot easily be differentiated from the images of the entirely different Chu Wang Yeh, the pestilence Wang Yeh with the same surname.\n\nAlthough one rule of thumb suggests that Pestilence Wang Yeh are to be seen in groups of three, five or seven on altars whilst non-Pestilence Wang Yeh appear singly, often the only way to identify a Wang Yeh precisely is to enquire of the temple keeper, identify the images colocated with the Wang Yeh, identify any unique iconographical features or identify the deity from the characters in the title on the front of the base of the image if and when these exist or on or above the altar itself or from over the temple's main entrance doorway. We shall examine titles later.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh normally have no unique and easily recognisable features. All Pestilence Wang Yeh are believed to have died violent deaths, none from natural causes: some were the victims of manslaughter, others committed suicide. Their effigies, often ferocious, consequently tend to solemn colours. Some are standard military mandarins and others civil; some have fierce faces, others normal and natural ones. It is quite common for the groups of Pestilence Wang Yeh to have different coloured faces. Examination has shown that a specific Wang Yeh in one area might have a red face whereas in another area it has a blue, yellow or green one. Others have striped faces, such as yellow on green or red on black. Some have red beards, others black and still others are clean shaven. The specific iconographical feature in each case depends upon the wish of the temple committee concerned who have requested guidance from the spirit of the Wang Yeh himself by means of “spirit communication' normally by means of throwing spirit blocks. In one book on Taiwanese deities a passing reference mentioned 'Wang Yeh crowns' without elaborating. A number of the Pestilence Wang Yeh do wear a normal coronet or what is possibly a tiara-shaped gilded coronet. These appear\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211648, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "38\n\none of the temple staff thought that Chih (b) bore the personal name Meng-piao (E).\n\nA very few deities, on the face of it Pestilence deities, in practice turn out to be protective Wang Yeh. One such example highlights the probability that local devotees in southern China some considerable time ago, perceiving that their local protective deity bore the title Wang Yeh, assumed that he must be a Pestilence Wang Yeh and treated him as such. This was in a temple in Tungkang, south of Kaohsiung, said in a guide book to have an impressive display of 80 to 90 images of Wang Yeh. It turned out to have but one major Wang Yeh, a protective hero, Wen Hung. Wen Hung, also known as Wen Wang Yeh, a title said to have been awarded him by a T'ang dynasty emperor for his services, lived during the seventh century AD. A dozen or so portable images of him also stood on the altar table before the main altar. A handbook presented by the temple committee not only provided Wen Hung's biography but also contained charts shewing the routes his images had been carried around the parish for five successive years during the annual 'pestilence festivals'. This suggests that two cults have been combined, the cult of the T'ang hero Wen Hung, known as Prince Wen (Wen Wang Yeh) and, almost certainly due to a misunderstanding, the cult of the Pestilence Wang Yeh. Wen Hung's image is taken out during the Pestilence festival during the fifth month but unlike Pestilence Wang Yeh, he also has his own and more important festival celebrated on his birthday during the eleventh lunar month. His original legend, over the years, has had added to it elements of the Pestilence Wang Yeh legend, and to add to the confusion he now has his own Pestilence Wang Yeh boat. Such cases of apparent Pestilence Wang Yeh having a specific and individual personality are not at all common though they have been noted in several other cults in Taiwan.\n\nAlthough there are four temples in Yunlin and one in Taipei county dedicated to ten specific Pestilence Wang Yeh, known always as the Five-Year Excellencies (†) or (EFE), the maximum number of images of Wang Yeh with different surnames seen by the author on any one altar is seven, the Ch'i Fu Ch'ien Sui (LT) in Tainan. In each of the temples dedicated to the Five-Year Excellencies images had been borrowed by devotees for private worship at home. The collective group of the Five-Year Excellencies each has an individual birthday though it was decided in 1662 that they would be feted on one day in a collective feast on the 29th of the tenth lunar month, with one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211657, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "47\n\nfourteen years. The spirit boat was first carried in procession before being set alight as it drifted out into the Straits of Malacca.\n\nModel junks, both wooden and paper ones, tend only to come into their own during the three, five or twelve yearly major sacrificial ceremonies (Wang Chiao) held when propitious or requested by the deities. The demonic spirits which are the cause of disease are lured aboard the paper-covered bamboo frame junk and either sent out to sea or burnt, a rite called \"The Despatch of Disease\", an exorcism which protects devotees from diseases.\n\nWang Yeh spirit boats, Wang Ch'uan, seen in temples in Taiwan are, in some places, the original boat which had drifted into the vicinity, or are new models placed into temples for the various ceremonies which involve moving the Pestilence Wang Yeh images (see Plate 10). The plague boats of paper which are pushed out to sea are a far cry from the large wooden model Wang Ch'uan one sees in temples, and it should be noted that not all Pestilence Wang Yeh temples have large model boats, in some cases as large as quarter life-size, whilst still fewer contain representative images of the soldiers (and sailors) of the Pestilence Wang Yeh's armies (see Plate 11).\n\nThe Wang Ch'uan are kept either in the temple or beside it, and are objects of worship. In some temples, there are models of the boats actually on the altar for worshippers to touch, a special characteristic of Pestilence Wang Yeh reverence. When a new temple is built, the images are taken there in a Wang Yeh spirit boat, on wheels. Wang Ch'uan are expensive to build and therefore quite often they are constructed well before the temple is finished. There are no set rules for size and quality of such boats, and they, like images, depend upon the availability of money. There is, however, a strict series of rules governing the construction of both wooden and paper boats, and each key stage must be strictly adhered to. When the boat is completed, the craftsmen have to decorate it to the satisfaction of the Wang Yehs. And when the Wang Ch'uan are ready to depart, the boatmen who will tow the boat are all dressed in clothes of the same colour, money for these being collected by the temple committee who also order the uniforms. The large wooden models are colourfully painted, complete with sails and, mounted on trailers, they are towed through the streets during pestilence festivals with the images of the Wang Yeh carried in palanquins behind.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211753, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "143\n\nwere maintained throughout the area. How long the watch on the Ta Kwu Ling was maintained is unclear, but a watch of some sort on the entrances to the area was kept up for a long time.\n\n33\n\nThe Shing Ping She was probably managed by a management committee, composed of one representative from each of the six Yeuk. The names of the committee appointed in 1924 survive. Below the management committee, there seems to have been a manager or managers for day-to-day activity.\n\n14\n\nThe villagers wanted spiritual protection as well as physical protection for the area. The Ping Yuen temple at Ping Che watched over the Ping Che road, and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz over the Miu Keng road. The Shing Ping She established a third temple, the Kim Ho Temple, between the two bridges, where the Sham Tsun road passes through the gorge. This temple was built where the extinct Cheung market had been, and may have been a re-foundation of an older temple, since most markets in the area had temples. The re-foundation or foundation would, in any case, have marked very clearly the ending of Cheung power in the area. The Kim Ho temple was a Tin Hau temple, and the divinity was invited to the new temple from the Ping Yuen temple. This linked the new temple with the old one. In addition, a nun was appointed to live in the Kim Ho temple and conduct Buddhist rituals in a side-hall. Thus the three main entrances to the Ta Kwu Ling area were well defended spiritually, and ritually connected together into one system.\n\nThe Shing Ping She also rebuilt the temple at Ping Che. It was rebuilt as a temple in two parts, the main worshipping hall, with the altar to Tin Hau, and its side-halls, and a second worshipping unit consisting of a Heroes Shrine, to commemorate the young men who had died in the fighting with Wong Pui Ling. After the rebuilding, the temple was returned to the Ping Yuen Hap Heung for management. The Heung continued to own the main worshipping hall, but the Shing Ping She owned the Heroes Shrine, as a couplet in the Shrine, commemorating a repair in 1915, confirms.\n\n15\n\nThe Shing Ping She worshipped communally at the Heroes Shrine at Ping Che at the Spring and Autumn Rituals, followed by a communal vegetarian meal in front of the temple. Similar rituals then took place at the Kim Ho temple.\n\n36", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211756, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "146\n\nthe client relationship Lung Yeuk Tau wanted them in. Loi Tung, despite its genealogical connection with Lung Yeuk Tau, was always regarded by Lung Yeuk Tau as a \"poor relation\", and classed with the \"small villages\". Lung Yeuk Tau was, in addition, a member of the Po Tak Temple (#) Old Alliance: this alliance was of the \"major lineages” of the area (Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui, Ho Sheung Heung, and Tai Hang), and was a specifically gentry body, whose influence was certainly antagonistic to the “small villages\". The Sze Yeuk, therefore, divided into Lung Yeuk Tau to the west, interested mostly in its enmity to Fan Ling, and an eastern group, which had interests to the north.\n\nIn the Shap Yeuk area, Man Uk Pin, the westernmost of the ten or eleven Yeuk of the Shap Yeuk, was also part of the Sze Yeuk, in which organisation it did not form a Yeuk by itself, but was merely a subordinate part of the Loi Tung Yeuk. Man Uk Pin was a long way from Sha Tau Kok market, and, again, looked in a different direction from most of the rest of the Shap Yeuk. To Man Uk Pin the road through the Miu Keng pass was essential, and the villages on the other side of the pass were, therefore, of more interest to it than would have been the case with the other Shap Yeuk villages.\n\nareas\n\n―\n\nPeripheral areas, on the boundaries of the Yeuk inter-village alliance areas, were always more conscious of interests outside the Yeuk areas than villages closer to the centre of local political activity. The Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz is built where the Luk Yeuk, Shap Yeuk, and Sze Yeuk meet. The area is peripheral to the centre of interest of all three Yeuk - the Law Fong bridge, the Sha Tau Kok market, and the river crossing between Lung Yeuk Tau and Fan Ling. The continuing existence of the nunnery committee, and the continuing inter-relationship of the villages holding the six shares of the nunnery, was a standing brake to any attempt by hot-heads to provoke enmity between the three Yeuk alliances as units; if such a thing had happened, the three groups of \"front-line\" villages would have been unlikely to have been very enthusiastic participants. It is probably this factor which led to there never being any outright fighting between these three alliance areas as a whole, despite the Sze Yeuk and Shap Yeuk friendliness with Wong Pui Ling. Equally, the capacity to look for support from outside the Yeuk area must have strengthened the position of Loi Tung, Man Uk Pin, and the Ping Yuen people within their respective Yeuk areas.\n\nThe influence of the Magistrate and the gentry in the area was minimal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211764, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "154\n\n19\n\n, at Law Fong) are believed to have entered the area after 1700. See Map of Ta Kwu Ling.\n\nIt is interesting to note that, of the 21 villages in the Ta Kwu Ling area, seven are purely Punti, nine are purely Hakka (including two of originally Punti but now Hakka speaking Mans), but five are of mixed Punti and Hakka residents, including the large village of Chau Tin (which has only a tiny handful of Hakka residents), Fung Wong Wu, Kan Tau Wai, and Law Fong, and Tong Fong which consists partly of Punti speaking Mans, and partly of Hakka speaking Mans.\n\n+\n\n1\n\nYeung, and Ng, at Fong Wong Wu; Siu, and Ho, at Chau Tin; Wong, at Kan Tau Wai; Pang, and Au, at Tai Po Tin; Fu Lau, (and others) at Wo Keng Shan; Yiut, at Chuk Yuen; Chan, and Yiu, at Law Fong (Luofang); Chau at Wang Kong Ha; Yeung, and Kwu, at Sai Ling Ha (Xilingxia), and others.\n\n21 The temple bell, of Chien Lung 21 (1756) was donated by \"all the faithful people of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung...\n\n...to stand for ever before the altar of the Lady Tin Hau*. Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 670. The only earlier dated item in the temple, a Cloud Gong of 1727, was donated by a single family from Ping Che, Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 661. The temple continued to be owned and controlled by this group of villages. Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Oxford Univ. Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p. 104 is incorrect in saying that the temple was owned by Ping Yeung. In the Block Crown Lease, the Manager of the temple was Man Shan-fung, of Ping Che. The Tong Fong people, although closely related genealogically to the Ping Che people, were not part of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, and did not take part in the Ta Tsiu.22 Faure, op. cit., p. 103.\n\n+\n\n+\n\n23 The four managers at the time of the Block Crown Lease were Tang Hung-wai (a houseowner of Loi Tung), Chan Shing-pong, called a houseowner of Ping Yeung in a District Office report of 1979), Man Ying-shau (probably a villager of Ping Che, a relative of the houseowners Man Ying-kei, Man Ying-wai, and Man Ying-fat), and Chung Choi-wah (a houseowner of Man Uk Pin). These died in 1938, 1926, 1925, and 1942 respectively, according to a report made to the District Office in 1979. The abbess, Wong Tik-yuen, was appointed a manager in 1926, but she died in 1931. After the War, the lack of managers caused trouble on a number of occasions. A temporary manager was appointed in 1968. In 1979 the Chairman of the Sha Tau Kok Rural Committee and others were appointed as managers, although he, as a Lin Ma Hang villager, had no connection with the nunnery. This seems to have been with a view to rebuilding the nunnery. This proposal has led to a string of vigorous complaints from the elders of the six villages with shares during the last three years, but the situation remains, at present (1991), unresolved.\n\n24 See Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 100-127, for a discussion of the Yeuk.\n\n25 The only alternative was a dangerous, difficult, and often impassable waist-deep ford, as the 1896 Kwong Fuk bridge tablet makes clear. See Faure, Luk and Ng, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 298.\n\n26 See Robert G. Groves, \"The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories\", Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Symposium Report, 1964, pp. 16-20, and Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha, \"Xianggang Xinjie xushi zhi xingqi yu shuailao: Dabuxu yanjiu\" [The Foundation and Decay of Market Towns in the New Territories of Hong Kong: A Study of Tai Po], in Chinese Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1985, pp. 633-655. The very widespread support for the Tsat Yeuk can be gathered from the list of donors shown on the Kwong Fuk bridge tablet, Faure, Luk and Ng, loc. cit.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211966, "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": 381, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "356\n\nvice-chairmen are the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives, and the other members of the committee the no. 16-60 ritual representatives.\n\nI saw parts of two of the Committee meetings, one before the festival and another before the Opera performance period. Both took place at the Jau and Wong Temple. There were about 60 men who attended the first meeting. At the end I noticed that a group of younger men (aged about forty) stayed on outside the temple and talked. They told one another that in this new era everything had to be done in accordance with the law. They also said that they should have invited the Governor of Hong Kong himself. But they should have made arrangements earlier. The second meeting was announced by notices on the village notice board as a meeting to discuss who was going to present \"coloured flags\" (formal tokens of thanks) on the main day of the opera performance. It mentioned that the original idea was to have the head of lineage do it, but he complained that he was too old to do so much walking. About 100 men were present. They first went through some ding-hau population records for each village, in all likelihood prepared for the festival. They probably used them for allocating seats in the theatre. Then they talked about the arrangements for Guests Seats on the main day of the performance.\n\nC. Leadership\n\nOne of the senior priests complained that in this festival nobody was able to take the responsibility for decisions, hence the confusion and additional trouble for the priests. I heard two of the ritual representatives making the same comment. I also have some firsthand experience of the state of near anarchy when I asked the chairman, Dang Saak-Luk, to whom the Museum's formal request for permission for video-taping should be addressed. He emphasized that the letter should be to all the members of the committee rather than to himself as Chairman.\n\nThe absence of authority probably had to do with the current situation of local politics rather than \"traditional ways\".\n\nBefore the opening ceremony a Liaison Officer from the District Office came with the Chairman of the Rural Committee to give an \"order\": seats reserved for the principal guest and nine other guests for the secular opening ceremony were to be labelled clearly. The Chairman of the Rural Committee, a man of about fifty, commented that now that he was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211967, "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": 382, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "357\n\ntaking care of that ceremony only, the others were making a mess of things. Now they would understand the importance of his work.\n\nA Shui Tau villager who talked to me about the organization of the festival had a different point of view. The jiu used to provide an opportunity for wealthy and influential people to show their power and prestige. They got the chairman titles. In previous celebrations, the participants had to pay the subscription out of their own pockets. What they paid for was less than the full cost, because the rich contributed more to the festival fund. Because of that the poor had to let the rich have their say. It was no longer the case this time. The subscriptions were paid from the income from ancestral funds, which was enough to cover all the expenses. The informant explained that the wealthy and influential people he was referring to were members of the Rural Committee. There were people who had tried in vain to get elected as Village Representative and enter the Rural Committee. They had their revenge now: they would not allow the Rural Committee people to dominate the festival. The Chairman of the Rural Committee was not even allowed to present the thanks-giving speech at the festival, and the First Vice-Chairman of the Rural Committee failed to get a post on the festival committee.\" As a result of the conflict many of the elder people did not come to the preparation work meetings.\n\nD. The role of woman\n\nOn the day before the opening rites, I stayed at the ritual site. I saw a large group of people decorating the room for Kat Hing Wai, and six doing the same for Wing Lung Wai. There were many people around. Some were decorating the platform for the secular opening ritual in the centre, some talking. All were men.\n\nThe first woman I saw in the area was burning paper offerings before the Jau and Wong altar in the temple while it was being decked out with the portraits of the two officials. Then I saw three women at the kitchen area (the right wing of the temple). They told me that they were washing the dishes only, the cooking would be done by cooks hired from a restaurant. The women were all old villagers of Kam Tin. They explained that as this was the \"ten-yearly happy occasion”, so they did the work without being paid. Later I saw the same group of women preparing the tables and chairs in the dining area. When I wrote down what they said, they jokingly protested, and told me that they knew nothing, I should", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211972, "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": 387, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "362\n\nassociated with lion dance groups. The ritual representatives held incense burners, but the joss sticks in them were not lighted from the beginning to the end of the procession.\n\nMr. Dang Jik-Wai, an elder of Tai Hong Wai, with an outsider who had lived in Kam Tin since shortly after the war and was employed by the rural committee, led the procession. Mr. Dang had a list on a piece of paper of the gods to worship. The procession left the main ritual area where the participants had been waiting since the end of the rite of posting the Memorial.\n\nThey first stopped at the Wa-Bou altar for the God of Earth and Grain at Shui Tau. From there they proceeded to the Tin-Hau Temple at Shui Mei and worshipped at the Temple, and two nearby altars for the God of Earth and Grain. The procession then turned south to Ching-Lok Ancestral Hall at Shui Tau, and worshipped at the Ancestral Hall, and at the Hung-Sing Temple. Next they worshipped at another altar for the God of Earth and Grain of Shui Tau, the Yi-Dai School (i.e. Man-Cheung Temple), and the altar for the God of Earth and Grain for the Mui Jai Yun section of the village.\n\nThey entered Kam Hing Wai and worshipped at the san-teng, the earth god's place at the former village gate, as well as the altar for the God of Earth and Grain.\n\nThe party proceeded to Kam Tin Shi, where they worshipped at an altar for the God of Earth and Grain. They intended to enter Yau-Leun Tong to worship too. But it was locked and no one in the procession had the key. So they made the offerings at the door. They then entered Sa Bui Leng and worshipped at the ruin of a former san-teng and the god of the well.\n\nThey continued the procession to Ko Po, where they worshipped the God of the well, the God of the village gate, and an altar for the God of Earth and Grain.\n\nThe procession turned back and continued towards Kat Hing Wai, where they worshipped at its altar for the God of Earth and Grain outside the village wall, and then entered the village and worshipped at the san-teng. The procession then took Kam Sheung Road to the san-teng (?) of Naam-Teng.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212389, "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": 331, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "308\n\nThe Dance is performed on three evenings. The official invited to officiate on the first evening is an officer of the civil authority (Man), whilst the official on the second evening is an officer of the military authority (Mo), represented by the Royal Hong Kong Police. The third evening is regarded as the Village's own celebration.\n\nThe Dragon is 220 feet long and has a team of 120 dancers. It consists of the head, body (32 segments), and tail and is preceded by two dancing Dragon Pearls (Lung Chu) whose purpose is to attract the Dragon forward. It is accompanied by a drum and clashing cymbals, as well as by banners and costumed children carrying lanterns. The dragon itself is composed of grass, the head being on a cane base, and it is liberally stuffed with burning incense sticks; the throwing of firecrackers ended with the 1967 ban on fireworks. The grass is 'pearl' grass, obtained these days from the New Territories. Incense sticks from the Dragon are taken home by the dancers to worship their Tai Hang ancestors who have previously taken part in the Dance. Dragon cakes from the Temple are taken home on the third day for the same purpose. The Dance ceremony starts with the decoration of the Dragon and its stuffing with incense sticks and continues throughout the evening through the streets of Tai Hang. At the end of the three days of celebrations the Dragon is thrown into the waters of the harbour.\n\nChinese Dragons are the essence of the Yang, or male, principle, and the Tai Hang Fire Dragon is no exception. Until recent years female participation was limited to the cutting of grass. Ladies were not allowed to touch the Dragon and they were not admitted during the Dragon's visit to the Lin Fa Kung Temple (sited to the east of Wun Sha Street and dedicated to Kwun Yum). Pregnant women with two daughters and no sons were, however, allowed to pass under the Dragon, with the intention of the birth of a son.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong is grateful for the assistance given with this visit and in the preparation of these notes by Mr Ho Choi-Chiu, Chairman of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association, and by Mr Chan Tak-Fai, of the Association's Dance Organising Committee.\n\nGEOFFREY ROPER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212944, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "6 November\n\n20 November\n\n18 December\n\n20 December\n\n1994\n\n18 January\n\n22 January\n\n19 March\n\nSwire Marine Laboratory, Cape D'Aguilar\n\nDiscovering Trim Sha Tsui- Historical Quiz\n\n-\n\nBattle of Hong Kong Walk - Wong Nei Chung to Tai Tam with visit to Sai Wan Commonwealth War Cemetery\n\nExhibition of Sand Mandala - Fung Ping Shan Museum, HK University\n\nThree Historic Buildings of Central (Helena May, Government House, Christian Science Church)\n\nExhibition of Archeological Discoveries of Ancient Yue Tribes in Southern China - Museum of History\n\nUniversity of Science and Technology and Tin Hau Temple, Joss House Bay\n\nVisits Outside Hong Kong\n\n1994\n\nDecember\n\nGuangzhou\n\nI expect many of you can think of several highlights, but for me the most significant and colourful event was the trip to Guangzhou and our trip on leaky sampans from one side of the Pearl River to the other, to look at Danes Island and the Military Academy at Whampoa; the whole trip was a memorable occasion and we have to thank Dr. Joseph Ting and our friends in Guangzhou for organising it so superbly. But none of these events could take place without some organisation behind them, and for this we have to thank the Programme Committee and particularly Mr. Peter Leeds, the Chairman. Peter used to be, I believe, in Transport; in fact, he gave a lecture to the Society about two years ago on the history of transport in Hong Kong. Clearly, anyone who has organised transport in Hong Kong has some very gifted organisational skills, and the Society has been very fortunate over the last three years to have him at the hub of the wheel, so to speak, of the Programme Committee. It is therefore with great regret that I have to report that due to his anticipated long period of absence from Hong Kong next year, he feels he will not be able to carry on his present role. Fortunately, however, I am pleased to report that Mrs. Rosemary Lee has agreed to take on the role, and I have promised her that she will obtain all the support the Council and I hope other members can give her.\n\nXI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213416, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "this Society's main objectives is to produce an annual journal. Contributions to the Journal from members are always very welcome and so please do contact our editor, Mr. Peter Halliday.\n\nOther Activities\n\nThe Society is fortunate in having a very outward and enthusiastic Activities Committee. For the first half of the year until her departure from Hong Kong Mrs. Rosemary Lee was the Chairman, and for the last few months, Mrs Anita Wilson has taken on this mantle, and more recently Mr. Geoffrey Roper has done so, and will be doing so in future. To all of them I would like to offer our sincere thanks. The Committee's efforts are there for all to see We have had 12 lectures at the City Hall:\n\n \n Date\n Title\n Lecturer\n \n \n 28 Apr 95\n A Fujian Hakka Village Temple Alliance\n Dr. John Lagerway\n \n \n 19 May 95\n Reflexivity in Research and a Question of Culture\n Dr Mary Pang (A study of Chinese in Britain)\n \n \n 23 Jun 95\n Contemporary Chinese Painting. Metamorphosis or Misrepresentation?\n Ms. Catherine Maudsley\n \n \n 7 Jul 95\n Fung Shui Woods of Hong Kong\n Mr. Richard Webb\n \n \n 15 Aug 95\n Liberation Evening (2 videos and brief talk) held at Royal HK Regiment Mess, Beaconsfield House\n Dr Elizabeth Sinn\n \n \n 29 Sep 95\n Hong Kong 1931-1941\n Ms. Mimi Chan\n \n \n 20 Oct 95\n A Guide to Hong Kong Literature\n \n \n \n 17 Nov 95\n Marine Bio-Diversity Protection in Hong Kong\n Prof. Brian Morton\n \n \n 15 Dec 95\n Hong Kong's Wild Places\n Mr Edward Stokes\n \n \n 12 Jan 96\n Hong Kong - A Woman's Place?\n Dr. Veronica Pearson\n \n\nxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "6\n\nfrequently in consultation with rural committees and village representatives.\" For example, during the year 1956-57, of 138 land disputes which the District Officers dealt with, 30 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 92 were settled out of court and 16 were decided in court.” And in the following year, of 112 land disputes, 19 were settled through rural committees or other local bodies, 70 were settled out of court and 23 were decided in court. The method of disposal of one such case is recounted in the District Commissioner's report for the year 1948-49:\n\n\"For the first time since 1913 a land dispute, which had dragged on for nearly a year, was resolved when one of the parties satisfied the District Officer Taipo of his good faith by decapitating a cock in a local temple, a supreme test of honesty. As the dispute was not formally heard under Part II of the Ordinance, the legality of this expedient will fortunately not be subject to review by a Judge.\n\n1920\n\nThirdly, the Full Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to entertain a further appeal from the decision of a judge of the Supreme Court under section 23 of the New Territories Regulation Ordinance, 1910,\n\nThere are, however, a further eight unreported cases of the Supreme Court sitting in its appellate jurisdiction from decisions of the land officer in land cases arising in the New Territories. The cases all date to the first post-war decennium until 1956. The pre-war records of the Supreme Court were destroyed during the Japanese occupation 1941-45; and since 1956 there has been no appellate proceeding of this type.\n\nWithout proof by evidence in court, it would clearly be dangerous to rely upon works describing customary law obtaining generally or in certain areas of China in the past, as information as to customary law obtaining in the New Territories for Chinese customary law \"is subject to divergencies not only from Province to Province but sometimes from clan to clan in the same neighbourhood.\" Such books may have some comparative value. It is, however, to be regretted that it is difficult in Hong Kong today to trace even one copy of those works written in English to which reference was made by the 1948 Committee.*2\n\nApart, then, from the Report of that Committee, which covers the wider field of Chinese customary law generally obtaining in Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213453, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Ancestral land is land that has been originally set apart for ancestral worship and is increased by purchase from time to time in the name of the deceased ancestor, in whose name also the Government taxes are paid. The rent of ancestral land is devoted to the upkeep of the ancestral temple, to the education of the members of the clan, to the education of the members of the clan, to the worship of ancestors, to the relief of poor members of the clan, to marriage expenses of those who require assistance and to the funeral expenses of those whose relations are poor. Such land is always held in the name of the ancestor who bequeathed the property, the land being nearly always leased to members of the clan who cultivate it and pay a yearly rent. Sometimes the different branches of a clan cultivate the land in rotation, the branch in occupation of the land being held responsible for the payment of the expenses incurred on account of the objects for which the land was originally transmitted. Clan land cannot be alienated without the consent of the representatives and elders of the whole clan. The rent roll is kept by a Committee of the clan.92\n\nThis type of ancestral land tenure is still in operation,\n\nTemple land or miu t'in existed also in the territories under Chinese custom as described in the Memorandum:-\n\n\"Temple land is devoted to the support and upkeep of a temple dedicated to the service of some specially selected idol in the name of which the land is held. Some of those who originally subscribed towards the erection of the temple or their descendants act as trustees and keep the rent roll and an account of current expenses. Certain land in Kam T'in and Tsiu Kwang is devoted to the support of a few nuns. The rent roll is kept by a trustee, the rent in grain being handed over to the nuns, who, in order to increase their meagre income, also go from village to village begging for alms from the inhabitants.”\n\nChinese temples throughout the New Territories, as in the Colony, are now governed by the Chinese Temples Ordinance, which requires their registration (s. 5) and places their \"revenues, funds, investments and properties\" under the absolute control of the Chinese Temples Committee (s. 8).\n\nThe next variety of tenure described in Lockhart's Memorandum", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "17\n\nis land held by associations of “Ui T'in\".\n\n\"China is a land of associations which are as numerous and the objects of which are as varied as the needs of man. Their formation is simple and easy. Certain villages, whatever their object may be, meet in a temple, ancestral hall or private house to deliberate over some scheme. If it is approved, a fund is raised to which the members contribute equally, their contributions being devoted to the purchase of a piece of land; landed property in China being considered the safest investment. The rent derived from this land may be used for the burial of a member of the association when he dies, or may be let out on interest, or may be used to assist members to emigrate to California and Australia, or for any other enterprise or good object that may be desired.\"\n\nThe 1948 Committee considered that this passage was still relevant.\n\nAs regards individual ownership of land the Memorandum states:-\n\n\"If any owner wishes to sell his land, he is supposed to offer such land in the first instance to his nearest relatives, and is not at liberty to sell to anyone outside of his clan, unless the nearest relatives are unwilling to purchase. In large clans transactions in land take place, as a rule, between different members of the clan without the property ever being disposed of to outsiders. In such transactions the deed of transfer is invariably worded as if it were a mortgage and no period for redemption is fixed, the vendor or mortgagor or his descendants thus having every opportunity to redeem the property at the original price even several generations after the transaction has been made. It is customary for the mortgagor to enter into possession so that a Chinese mortgage is often equivalent to a sale.\"\n\nAlthough the ancient customary law then put sanctions on the disposal of land in individual ownership, statutory provisions have ousted that customary law and have even given the manager entrusted with the control of clan land full power to dispose of such land as if he was the sole owner. As the 1948 Committee observed, there are other exceptions introduced by the Ordinance which regulate the customary law of land to be applied, notably the regulation of forms of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213841, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "166\n\nFor family members who have emigrated to the city or overseas, the annual festival offers the opportunity for reunion that they hesitate to miss. Visitors, tourists, researchers, and guests, including elders from other village alliances, and government representatives who come to observe the celebration and participate in the related activities, are also sources of information from outside. Tung Chung may be a secluded community, but it is certainly not totally insulated from the outside world. In fact, the government and the Rural Committee of the New Territories highly value the annual festival and send representatives to the district as congratulators, or even donors, during the festival season, which has also become a time for informal communication between the government and the local people.\n\n50\n\nWhat impresses the outside world here is Tung Chung's characteristic communal culture crystallized through the ages on the basis of the collective worship of the principal local deity. If the Houwang Temple plays a significant role in maintaining the village coalition system of the area, the territorial cult itself also operates as a system marked by its all-encompassing and pervasive influence on local life and its cyclical self-renewal. Through daily or seasonal rituals, individual or collective worship, ceremonies for invoking and repaying the god's blessings, and all the associated social activities in the year, community members are able to mark, in a concrete fashion, the rhythm of their religious life-cycle. With the annual god's feast day festival signifying the climax of the cycle, the system renews itself for another round of yearly operation. It is through this system of local deity worship that the Tung Chung community has become culturally self-sustaining and integrated.\n\nTo sum up, the religious, social, and entertaining rituals centering around the Houwang worship in Tung Chung have effectively maintained village cohesion, rejuvenated the system of cultural patterns, and served to show off the pride and glory of a local tradition. Via the annual celebration of the god's feast day, a set of customs which villagers consider their own is maintained and continues to represent a living community. Through the festival's ritual cycle, bonds between the deity and worshippers are renewed and ties between community members are reaffirmed. It is the community rituals that embody a universal body of knowledge, overarching territorial cohesion and communal solidarity. Compared to the chiao ceremony which was held", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213845, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "170\n\nIn the area surrounding the Houwang Temple, colourful embroidered banners and decorated archways are erected. Before the formal feast day, i.e., the 16th of the eighth lunar month, nuns from Tei Tong Tsai are invited to pray for a successful festival by reciting Buddhist scriptures and burning paper cloth. To raise funds for the ever-expanding scale of the celebration, a party is held on the 17th, where rocket association representatives come to bid for sacred relics, i.e., items such as idols, vases, ornaments, etc. blessed by the deity. This is another opportunity, in addition to the bidding for rockets, for better-off villagers to boast of their wealth.\n\n74\n\nIn recent years, expenses for the festival have increased to around HK$500,000, including $100,000 or more for building the matshed and $200,000 or more for hiring opera troupes. Participating rocket associations increased from about five in the 1960s to more than fifteen in recent years. Showing off their financial capacity, some nouveaux riches since the War have become festival sponsors. They are settlers in Ma Wan Chung, which replaced Tung Chung Street as the local business centre, after a pier was built in the village vicinity in 1958 and a road leading to the pier was constructed in the 1960s. With improvements in water and electricity supply, medical services, etc., two-storey new houses were built in the pier area of Ma Wan Chung, changing the physical and social landscape of Tung Chung.5\n\nWhen Tung Chung Street's economic status was taken over by Ma Wan Chung, the Neighbourhood Association became obsolete and a new body emerged, under the name of the Preparatory Committee for the Houwang's Birthday Festival. The Committee consists of more than ten members, including village representatives and volunteers.76 With chairman, vice-chairman, and treasurer, this organization seems to be a modernized one, though people with economic power—shopowners in the area of Ma Wan Chung this time—continue to hold important positions. Even the location of the bulletin, recording the list of money donors in support of the god's feast day celebration, has changed from the exterior wall of the Yao-ho Store on Tung Chung Street to that of the Shun-ch'ang Store at Ma Wan Chung.\n\nWorth noticing is the effect of demographic change in Tung Chung since the 1950s. A great number of new immigrants moved in and settled in the district, filling the gap left by the male population, who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213847, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "172\n\nmeans of legitimizing their permanent residency in the district and increasing their local influence and power. When some seamen returned home, after foreign steamships had significantly reduced the recruitment of sailors from Hong Kong in the 1950s, they had become so unfamiliar with local affairs, as a result of their long leave from home, that even if they were elected village representatives on the Tung Chung's Rural Committee established in 1950 under government auspices, they served mainly as liaison men. Newer settlers at Ma Wan Chung, with their wealth and their leading role in organizing activities to commemorate the Houwang's feast day festival, have actually been among the leading local social élites, though not necessarily holding formal official positions.\n\nAdaptability and Tenacity: The Tradition of the Houwang Worship\n\nIn effect, the Houwang worship transcends blood ties and bridges the gap between old and new settlers, and thus functions to maintain a strong village coalition in Tung Chung. As a multi-lineage community, Tung Chung can be used as a case to support Judith Strauch's argument that economic and ritual cooperation and overarching unity, implicit in shared \"native place,\" instead of constant internal conflict and all-round uneasiness, can prevail in a mix-surname settlement.** It also fits Burton Pasternak's model of “villages in which families of different surnames joined forces and played down agnatic differences for the sake of survival.\"84\n\nIt is indeed in the villagers' interest to accept newcomers to the community, in order to make up for shortages of material and human resources.\n\nThis receptive and inclusive feature of local culture also grew out of a universal cult centering around the village coalition temple. While ancestor worship is only an individual or family/lineage activity and the worship of the earth god and Hsuan-t'an is usually on an individual or village basis, religious and social rituals in honour of the Houwang involve mass participation by the territorial community and work to renew collective consciousness of local identity repeatedly and systematically. During the time when the chino was held in the area, the Houwang as the principal local deity also played a role in that large-scale communal festival. The Houwang worship continued to dominate local religious life, and was even promoted by concentrating\n\n|\n\n|", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213848, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "173\n\nfinancial resources in support of the god's feast day celebration, after the chiao ceremony had finally ceased to take place.\n\nOther religions such as Buddhism and Christianity did present themselves in Tung Chung in the post-War period and were not excluded by the local community, though they were not very popularly received. In the 1950s, a village called Tei Tong Tsai was established on the southern border of Tung Chung when a group of monasteries, nunneries, and Buddhist halls were built to provide monks and nuns with a self-sufficient retreat resort. Although monasteries are customarily institutions outside the village community, and the monks and nuns at Tei Tong Tsai seldom mingle with other villagers, the place is considered, officially and formally, part of the Tung Chung district. To fulfill the obligations of a community member, Tei Tong Tsai has to send its head monk to attend meetings of Tung Chung's Rural Committee. Monks and nuns also make voluntary donations to support the annual celebration of the Houwang's feast day. Before the festival begins, representative monks and nuns are sent from Tei Tong Tsai to chant Buddhist prayers and burn paper offerings at the Houwang Temple. In return for their service, they might receive courtesy recompense from the Preparatory Committee for the Houwang's Birthday Festival. Tei Tong Tsai's participation in the festival activities commemorating the principal local deity, however limited, manifests how essential the Houwang worship is for members of the Tung Chung community.\n\nAnother Buddhist monastery, the Lo-han Monastery (4), was built on the hillside at Shek Pik Au [!] in the 1970s. Outsiders, instead of local villagers, sponsored the construction and participated in worshipping activities there. The influence of the monastery on the religious belief of Tung Chung's residents is negligible. On the other hand, it is one of the regular donors supporting the annual celebration of the Houwang's feast day, as a means of demonstrating its membership in the Tung Chung community.\n\nAs for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries tried to establish bases in Tung Chung. For example, the Chous, of the San Tau village on the western border of the district, were converted to Catholicism under the influence of priests dispatched from Tai O. Nevertheless, missionary work has ceased since the beginning of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213855, "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "180\n\nThe\n\nIssei, \"The Jiao Festival in Hong Kong and the New Territories,\" in Julian F. Pas, ed., Turning of the Tides: Religion in China Today (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 271-298\n\nInterviews: K'ung Chao-hsiang (age 79), Lung Tseng Tau, Jul 6, 1991; Hsieh Ch'i, op. cit.\n\nInterview of Mo Shu-ling (age 65), Mok Ka, Jun 29, 1991\n\nInterview of Lo Ch'uan, op. cit., Jul 8, 1991\n\n[hid]\n\n\"Ho, op. cit.; while some villagers did not remember the role of the Houwang in the rituals, an old man, who had witnessed the festival three times, indicated that the Houwang idol would be \"invited\" from the temple and enshrined on an altar set up for the ceremony (Interview of Lo Ch'uan, op. cit., Chap Mun Tau, Jun 22, 1991)\n\n\"Tanaka, op. cit., pp. 273-274\n\n*Faure, 1986, op. cit., p. 84\n\n14\n\nJames Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 159-160\n\n\"Ho, op. cit., p. 6\n\n16\n\nInterviews: Cheng P'o, op. cit.; K'ung Chao-hsiang, op. cit.\n\n\"Interviews: Cheng Man-hung, op. cit.; the Tung Chung Public School, Jul 1991; Tseng Kuan-hsing (age 60+), Upper Ling Pei, Jul 12, 1991\n\n*Interview of K'ung Chao-hsiang, op. cit.\n\n14\n\nJCH\n\nIbid.; Interviews: \"Uncle Li\", op. cit.; Cheng Man-hung, op. cit.; the Tung Chung Rural Committee, Aug 12, 1991\n\nInterview of Feng Po (age 65), Ma Wan Chung, Jun 16, 1991\n\nBrum, op. cit.\n\n*James Hayes, \"Chinese Temples in the Local Setting,\" in Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, Week-end symposium, Oct 2, 1966, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, p. 92\n\n\"Faure, 1981, op. cit., p. 76\n\n**\"Ch'ung-hsiu Houwang-miao pei-chih,\" IV, 1910, collected in K'o Ta-wen, Lu Hung-chi, & Wu Lun Ni-hsia, comp., Hsiang-kang...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214133, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "172\n\nin the Colony), it could also be seen at Sha Tau Kok and at San Hui in Castle Peak Bay.7\n\nIn certain places along the route on our way to Huizhou, where there was apparently good fung shui, there were concentrations of graves and funerary urns, the latter, in Chinese, known as 'golden pagodas'. These contain human bones, placed in anatomical order, in the shape of a foetus, ready to 'return to the womb' for rebirth at reincarnation. Often, as one sometimes sees in Hong Kong's New Territories, small clusters of these urns were placed in tiny shelters. In some places however, along the road to Huizhou, these small structures were painted in garish colours.\n\nOften one would pass in China brick and tile kilns very similar to those simple kilns which one could find in the Castle Peak district of Hong Kong in the 1950s. A few years later these small firms were put out of business by less expensive clay, building-products which were imported into Hong Kong from Guangdong.\n\nThe author contrasts this visit to Huizhou, in beautiful short-sleeve-shirt weather, with a visit led by RAS Member Phillip Bruce, also undertaken in November, about a decade earlier. The previous visit took place on one of the coldest November days on record with temperatures down to freezing. The author wore a deerstalker hat with ear-flaps to protect him from the biting wind! At the time, limited development had taken place in Huizhou. It is surprising how things have changed.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nThe RASHKB is grateful to Geoffrey Roper and his Activities Committee members, and especially to Dr Joseph Ting and Peter Rull, for organising this visit. The author is also grateful to RAS Member Charles Slater for the three photographs which illustrate this article.\n\nNOTES\n\nPeter Rull and Joseph Ting, Outline Programme for RAS Huizhou Visit 15 and 16 November 1997, handout\n\nGeoffrey Roper, An Introduction to the Tan Gong (Tam Kung) Temple below the Julung", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214883, "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": 298, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "269\n\nFURTHER TALES OF THE MAN THE EMPEROR DECAPITATED\n\nP.H. HASE\n\nIn Vols 28, 29, and 34 of the Journal a series of folk-tales relating to Ho Chan, the Warlord of Canton in the late Yuan, and Earl of Tung Kuan under the first Ming Emperor were printed1. Recently a further version of one of the folk-tales has been seen, in the booklet issued by the Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple Restoration Committee to commemorate the re-opening of the Temple (March, 2000), and a translation of this version is given below. It will be seen that this is a version of the same story relayed by Tsim Fo-sang (Journal, Vol. 29), although it differs in a number of details: certain important details are also clearly related to parts of the story collected by Wong Wing-ho (Journal, Vol. 34). It seems likely that this story is essentially a boat-people's story from Kau Sai. Tsim Fo-sang in the years just before the coming of the Japanese used to carry fire-wood from his home village in Sha Tin across the mountains to sell to the boat-people in Sai Kung. It is likely that his version of the story was the one he heard in the late 1930s from his boat-people customers, the version given below is as the story is remembered today in Kau Sai2.\n\n“Talking about Tiu Chung Crag (吊鐘巖), the Sai Kung fisher-people have a strange folk-tale which has been handed down among them.\n\nIn the Tiu Chung Crag there is a cave. It has been handed down that when the first ray of dawn enters the cave, the cave discloses what seems to be a Golden Bell hanging in the air: the island is believed to take its name (Tiu Chung Chau, 吊鐘洲, “Hanging Bell Island\") from this.\n\nIt is said that, at the end of the Sung, there was an official called Ho, who loved walking in the mountains and admiring the sea views. He came to Tiu Chung Chau. He considered the scenery there to be very fine. There was an old banyan tree growing in the centre of the island then, with roots wriggling in every direction like a young dragon. In particular, there were two roots, as thick as a thumb, which pierced through the top of the Tiu Chung Crag.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214885, "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": 300, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "2\n\n271\n\nwould still grow back! After the master said this, the fisher-people were very despondent, but they continued to hope for a solution.\n\nOne day, the Fung Shui master saw his old dog, Ah Wong, dozing beside the door of his house, and he had a brain-wave, and at last came up with a clever solution. He quickly told the fisher-people what to do to implement his plan. That evening, after the fisher-people had all washed themselves, they returned home to rest until midnight, and then, in the dark, they sailed across to Tiu Chung Chau, and then, under the master's direction, before they cut the roots, they first of all took a large basin of the blood of a black dog, and sprinkled it over the roots. When the roots were then cut off, a great noise like a howl filled the valley. At the same time, the mountain shook. A huge gale sprang up. Sand fell out of the rocks, and the whole hillside collapsed. The old banyan tree fell, and a vast amount of sand and mud fell into the sea. Not long after, this official Ho lost his position, as a result of this. No-one knows where he fled to.\n\nThis story is widely known. Chu Wai-tak (*), in his book “New Views of Old Hong Kong\" () says, “I have attempted to locate this old grave, and have crossed to Tiu Chung Chau many times, going up to the summit of the crag. On the east side there remains the shape of a grave, although nothing is left of it, and so it seems to me that there is some basis for this story.”\n\nNg Chuen-hi (47) Chairman, Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple Restoration Committee”\n\nD. Faure, \"The Man the Emperor Decapitated”, Vol. 28, pp 198-203; P.H. Hase, \"More on the Man the Emperor Decapitated”, Vol. 29, pp 388-289; Wong Wing-ho, \"Yet More on the Man the Emperor Decapitated\", Vol. 34, pp 179-181.\n\nAny further versions of stories about Ho Chan would be very much welcomed.\n\nPage 300\n\nPage 301", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215063, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "116\n\nwhich tends to bewilder foreigners is the lone deity representing Taisui on one altar and images of his sixty forms on another. This appears to be due to a policy decision by the temple committee which decided that in addition to a lone Taisui, the whole group of sixty would be more appropriate and rather than replace the lone image they added the sixty on another altar. In other temples the Taisui group is represented merely by sixty almost identical heads affixed to individual wooden blocks that are covered in red paper or swathed in red ribbon. The range of images is quite wide with, for example, in a temple on Hong Kong island one of the sixty is an aged man with a long white beard. His image has as its neighbour a standing youth with one arm raised holding an axe.\n\nThe only image of the sixty which would seem to have a unique and extraordinary characteristic is the primary one of the sixty, Jiazi. It consists of two small arms in addition to his normal pair which emerge, one from each eye-socket, and stretch a short distance in front of his face with the forearms turned upwards at their elbows and the hands poised as if about to grasp something. Although his unique feature is to be seen in sketches in several 19th century western books, such as DuBose in 1885, his image depicted with his extraordinary feature has only been noticed on altars in three temples. All three are popular religion temples where all sixty images are arrayed along the walls of their side hall. In Pudong, across the river from Shanghai, he is portrayed as an ordinary male sitting on a bench, dressed in gilded robes, holding a small lion cub in his right hand. He has a black beard and eyebrows and with his unique feature. The Jiazi Taisui in the Taisui Hall in the temple at Song Shan in Taipei is wearing a blue outer robe decorated with gilded Daoist signs, and two large red roundels on his knees bearing the character Fu, for good fortune. He is holding two peaches in his left hand symbolising longevity, rather than a lion cub. An almost identical image is the initial Taisui of the set of sixty in the Taisui hall of the third temple, the Taipei Fazhu Gong Temple. However, this time the tiny arms and hands emerging from the eye sockets are much smaller than elsewhere. Nonetheless, the two sets in these Taipei temples have only been installed within the last decade and both sets appear to have been ordered from and carved on the mainland, possibly near Shanghai. These unique Taisui are obviously blind having these miniature arms and hands taking up their eye sockets, and temple custodians have no idea what these miniature arms signify. However, DuBose writing in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216310, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "18\n\nRestoring the damage done by the three years of Taiping destruction required a massive reconstruction project which lasted for nearly 30 years from 1871 to 1899. In addition to rebuilding the previous structures, several new halls which had not existed before were added during this time, including the Guest House (Ke Tang) and the Dining Hall (Zhai Tang) in 1887; the Goddess of Mercy Hall (Guan Yin Dian), Ancestors Hall (Zu Shi Dian), and the Kshitigarbha Hall (Di Zang Dian) in 1890; and finally the 500 Arhats Hall (Wu Bai Luohan Tang) in 1896.\n\nThe Republican era, 1911-1949\n\nAt the beginning of the Min Guo Republic (1912), all the monks were forced to move out by armed soldiers who moved in and used the temple as a barracks. The soldiers looted the golden statues from the temple, and wooden parts of the temple such as window frames were used by the soldiers to make cooking fires. However, in 1920 the temple and the pagoda were both repaired, and after being closed for a whole decade the temple finally officially reopened in 1922 when all the monks came back. Holmes Welch's otherwise authoritative 1967 study of Buddhism in China mistakenly stated that Longhua Temple was occupied by the Chinese military for the entire Min Guo period. Photos from D. C. Burn's brief 1926 study of the temple show that the Qing Dynasty 500 Arhat Hall (Wu Bai Luohan Tang) was still intact then, although it no longer exists now.\n\nLonghua Temple enjoyed 15 years of peace and tranquility until September 11, 1937 when the temple was badly damaged during the Japanese attack on Shanghai. Nine Japanese airplanes dropped 30 bombs on the Longhua area. Most likely they were targeting the nearby Longhua Airport and the Guomindang's Longhua Garrison military camp next door, but they accidentally caused severe damage to the temple. Before the attack there had been 80 monks living in the temple, but afterward there were only 7 monks remaining.\n\nDuring the first five years of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1942, the internal affairs of the temple were confused and disorganized, with rival masters claiming the post of Abbot, and unqualified persons claiming to be Buddhist monks for the sake of seeking safe haven in the temple. On September 9, 1942 a reorganization committee was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216311, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "19\n\nestablished to restore order within the temple's community of resident monks. In 1944 this committee restored the Da Xiong Bao Dian, and the next year, 1945, the Bao Ta. Once the Sino-Japanese War had ended, in 1946 life in the temple returned to a resemblance of its pre-war normalcy. However, the tranquility which existed within the temple for the next three years was suddenly disrupted when the Communist's captured Shanghai in May 1949 and proclaimed the People's Republic in October 1949. With all the disasters the temple had survived over the previous 900 years, the worst was yet to come.\n\nPeople's Republic, 1949-2003\n\nIn June 1949, one month after their capture of Shanghai, the new Communist government took over the temple, and on October 1, 1949, the day celebrating the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the Red flag of the P.R.C. was flown from the top of the pagoda. This unprecedented disrespect shown by the new regime to the temple by flying its flag from the pagoda was only the first in a series of incidents which illustrated the temple's now endangered status. The temple grounds were drastically reduced in size by at least two-thirds when their garden area was seized by the state and converted into Longhua Park in 1954. The temple's halls were temporarily appropriated by the government in January 1956 for a series of meetings held between local government officials and Chinese businessmen to explain and then celebrate the new policy of abolishing private enterprise in favor of a new system of joint private-state companies. The celebration involved a party for 2,000 people which undoubtedly included activities such as smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol which are contrary to the Buddhist faith. This temporary appropriation of the temple by the government for non-religious purposes was herald of worse things to come during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).\n\nIn the summer of 1966 Longhua Temple suffered a devastating series of events over a one month period which destroyed nearly all vestiges of its centuries old heritage. On August 24, 1966 a mob of more than 1,000 Red Guards (Hong Wei Bing) rushed into the temple and in one day destroyed all of the temple's Buddha statues, library of books, treasures, and art work. The next day, August 25, the Red Guards returned with the intention of destroying the Longhua Pagoda (Bao Ta), which we've seen had probably been built in the Northern Song", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]