[ { "id": 204840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "118\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\n14 They had every reason to be alarmed on account of the continual attacks from pirates on coastal villages in Kwangtung and other places during the period from about 1787 until 1810. See A. W. Hummel: Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 446-8. Also C. F. Neuman, History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810.\n\n15 Macartney took with him on the embassy a \"gardener and botanist”, David Stronach. For the botanical side of the embassy see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit., 317-19.\n\n16 These nets are known locally as \"stake nets\" or tsang pang are lowered and raised by means of a tackle. They are frequently used along the coasts of Kwangtung today. The fishing season is from February to mid-September,\n\n17 The island is now reasonably well covered with pine trees and there are a few small feng-shui woods of deciduous trees. A large number of kites have been observed using pine trees on a ridge in the centre of the island as a roost during the winter months.\n\n18 Parish knew the island, which he had been sent to reconnoitre, under the name of Cowhee. Now he learned that the inhabitants called it Toong Shing-ow-a. However, this name does not appear to have survived and the island is now always known as Ma Wan4 and was so called as far back as 1859. See Rev. Krone, op. cit. (note 8) p. 73. The word Cowhee was probably a phonetic rendering of the name of an island between Ping Chau island and Hong Kong island known as Kau I Chau 交椅洲.\n\n19 By the small island to the south-east Parish presumably meant Tang Lung Chau## which now has a small light-house on it. There is now a small harbour with a jetty at Ma Wan village, and this is the normal place for landing on the island today.\n\n20 This is a doubtful statement.\n\n21 The word as written in the manuscript report is clearly \"profil\". I can only suggest that Parish meant \"profile\", and was using it in a technical, military engineering sense, meaning \"outline\". A reading of Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth century books about sieges and defence works might give a clue to its technical meaning at that time,\n\n22 From the anchorage position marked on the chart this must refer to the bay of Tsing Lung Tau. Today Ma Wan is connected to the mainland by a regular ferry service running from the bay of Sham Tseng, where the Hong Kong Brewery is situated.\n\n23 By the word \"bay\" in this context Parish appears to refer to the wide bay formed by the northern coast of Lantao from its headland opposite Tsing Lung Tau to Chek Lap Kok opposite Tung Chung bay, but the wording is somewhat ambiguous at this point.\n\n24 Probably the western arm of Luk Kang\n\n-\n\n· + +\n\non Lantao.\n\n25 Tung Ku #island opposite Tap Siak Kok on the Castle Peak peninsula. It forms part of the Urmston Road.\n\n26 See Charles Tulse, Local Master's Handbook. Seamanship Illustrated (Hong Kong University Press, 1960).\n\n27 See photograph of the \"race\" between Ma Wan and Lantao on page\n\nIt is interesting to know that Professor Deryck Chesterman of the Department of Physics in the University of Hong Kong is carrying out research into the currents off Ma Wan and their effects on the sea bed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205354, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n109\n\nThe third remarkable mountain lies a few miles south of the district town, and is called \"Nam-shan\" — 南山 the Southern mountain. In a bay at the foot of this mountain is the famous temple of \"Teen-h'aou” — the Queen of Heaven at Chek-wan; and to the right and left of the entrance to this bay are two forts, now in ruins and unoccupied. A tolerably broad highway leads from the district town to this temple, and four or five rest-houses are erected along the road for the convenience of its devotees. Several altars exist on different parts of the mountain, and to these the Mandarins resort, to worship in times of scarcity or danger,\n\nLastly, is mentioned the mountain of Castlepeak, called by the Chinese \"Poe-lou-shan\" ✯✯J, on the western borders of the province, near the bay of Tun-wan. This mountain, remarkable for the fine view it affords, has near its summit a monastery occupied by Tauist priests. The mountain is reckoned one of the eight wonders of the Canton province. Some of its large granite boulders are said by the priests to represent various mythological monsters; and several springs well-up near the top, which are also esteemed supernatural wonders by the Chinese. The mountain is often visited by students and literati, and its wonders and beauties have been celebrated by them in many verses. The legends connected with the mountain seem not to be very clearly understood. The most remarkable of them is the following, which gave it the name it now bears: Hundreds of years ago there lived a renowned Buddhist priest who went by the name of \"Poi-tow,\" the Tea-cup Navigator. One night he took up his quarters in a certain house, and went away the next morning carrying with him the golden idol belonging to his host. This man started out in pursuit; but though he could see the priest before him, travelling on foot, apparently very leisurely, he could not, though he was on horseback, overtake him; and presently he saw the holy man carried over a river in a Tea-cup, and so gave up the pursuit as useless.\n\nSome time afterwards this priest effected the cure of a woman of rank, merely by writing a charm; often she had applied in vain to many doctors and sorcerers. Gratitude attached the whole family of the patient to him. Not long after this he died on his travels. Five years after his death he again appeared, and declared that he should now go into the Canton province, and accordingly he took up his residence on Castlepeak mountain; and being seen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205404, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n159 \n\nThe clan possesses a small ancestral hall in the second row of houses, and here are housed the ancestral tablets of the most important ancestors. \n\nThese tablets usually have a sliding wooden slot at the back on which is given a short biography of the person commemorated, usually his birth and death, and sometimes a geomantic description of his grave site. From these records and the recollections of the present generation, information was obtained about two of the more distinguished clansmen of recent times. \n\nCHAN Jit-meng (M) alias Tak-hang (7) of the 20th generation, was born on the 2nd day of the 10th month in the year of the Tao Kwang (†) (i.e. 1828) and died on the 3rd day of the 12th month in the year of Kwang Hsü (**) (i.e. 1891). \n\nHe was a successful businessman who had a shop at Fat Shan (#) near Canton and a large cargo junk with which he traded to and from the Kowloon area. With the trading junk he brought a large amount of stone and building materials to the Tseung Kwan O area and is said to have been responsible for many public works: the village school, the pier at Hang Hau market (},□) nearby and the stone paved paths up the valley to Tseng Lan Shue and along the line of the present Clear Water Bay Road. \n\nHe also owned a shop called Yi Hing (M) just outside Kowloon City. He was a member of the Kowloon City Kaifong and one of the founder members of the Lok Sing Tong (#44) in 1879. This was an association of local gentry and leading villagers from the surrounding areas. \n\nIn later life, he bought the degree of Kwok Hok Shang (M *) in Canton, \n\nAccording to his ancestral tablet he had a wife NG (A) and a concubine WONG (£). \n\nCHAN Kwok-yan (RQ) alias Wai Tong (†) son of the above. This man's ancestral tablet does not show his dates of birth and death, but these are thought to be 1872-1933. As his father CHAN Jit-meng was a fairly rich man, he had a middle school education in Canton or Fat Shan. At some time in his career he met Sir Cecil Clementi (✯✯) the future Governor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206382, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n173\n\na Convention between Captain Elliott, who was then our plenipotentiary, and the Chinese commissioner Ke-shen; and some adventurous spirits had soon after located themselves on it. Ke-shen got into disgrace with his government for the cession; but it was fully confirmed by the subsequent treaty, and the island received the status of a Colony from an order in Council dated the 5th April, 1843, its principal town to be dignified with the name of our Queen. When I arrived, it was under the government of Sir Henry Pottinger, who had brought the war to a successful close.\n\nTo give you an idea of the place as I first saw it, I had proposed to take a walk with you along the Queen's Road from the west to the east, but I found that that would take too much time. That road was marked out, in many places imperfectly, from Sae-wan on towards Aberdeen, the waters of the bay, from which so much land has since been taken, coming, in the greater part of its course between East and West points, up to it on the north, Hollywood Road, and the streets running down from it to the Queen's Road, were also indicated in a rudimentary fashion. A little beyond the present Sailors' Home, were the Naval Stores, and, south of them, all the indentation of the hill where the Reformatory now stands was occupied with tents and huts peopled by the 55th Regiment. From that eastwards all was blank to the bluff where the Civil Hospital rises, and on which was a bungalow built by Jamieson, How & Co., and occupied by Mr. Edger, belonging to that firm, and in later years a member of the Legislative Council. On the other side of the road were some godowns of the same firm, washed by the sea. The next European buildings were Gibb, Livingston & Co.'s premises, enclosed within a ring fence, and where partners and employés all managed to reside, with none of the massive godowns which now seem to serve as buttresses to the offices. Up and down, and athwart, T'ae-p'ing-shan, were thread-like paths, with a Chinese house here and there, but the ground was mainly boulder and sandy gravel. Turning to the west, where Wellington Street runs into Queen's Road, you could see a few Chinese houses on either side of the latter, and Jervois Street was in course of formation, the houses on the north side of it having the waters of the bay washing about among them. Eastwards from the same point on to Pottinger Street, Queen's Road was pretty well lined with Chinese houses;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207141, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge dwellings and godowns. It was a pleasant area. Two of the properties were especially noted for their gardens. A Parsee merchant, Framjee Jamsetjee, in advertising his property for sale in 1845, stated that it was \"beautifully situated by the water side with a fine view of the Bay, surrounded by a garden, stocked with the choicest plants which have been imported at great expense, and now is in a flourishing condition.\" The other gardened property was called Spring Gardens, and for a number of the years the name was applied to the area. The name is preserved today by Spring Gardens Lane which marks the eastern boundary of the original property. The dwelling was also known as \"Old Government House\" for at one time it had been the residence of Governor Bonham [1848-1854]. Advertisements mention its \"ornamental grounds\" and \"fine well of spring water with powerful iron pump\".\n\nWhen the military gradually bought up and occupied the area between Central District and Wanchai in the 1840s and 1850s, the two sections were separated and Spring Gardens area lost most of its commercial activity. Decline set in, reinforced by a business depression, and a number of godowns and dwellings stood empty. Several of the properties reverted to Government through non-payment of Crown rents. Others were foreclosed by mortgagees. The military took advantage of the empty premises to use them as barracks and officers' quarters.\n\nPoor Chinese settled as squatters both on the west and east fringes of Victoria. To accommodate these on the east the Government put up for sale in 1847 a range of lots at the foot of Hospital Hill along the present Wanchai Road. These were used for small shops, trades, and family residences. The population, however, tended to remain poor and unruly. With the influx of displaced people during the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1850s several of the European properties were redeveloped with Chinese housing.\n\nThe area near Queen's Road East and Ship Street was probably the site of a small settlement before the British occupation of the Island. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong states that the Hung Shing Temple on Queen's Road East existed before the cession. The pattern of the lots also suggests that there may have been previous occupants. When the military rented some vacant properties nearby for barracks, several brothels were established on Ship Street north of Queen's Road East. To the south, up the hill on Ship Street, there were several small dairies operated by Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207146, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n211\n\nNote the offices of the Nam-pak Hong Association on the left-hand side of Bonham Strand; the divided shops of the Chun Lung Sang porcelain business (1878) and the bamboo and rattan ware dealers further along, also the frontage of the Ping Heung Tea-house next to Ching Wah Kok.\n\nDuring this visit Members are advised to look around them, up as well as down, because there are all sorts of interesting little vistas to have had, often revealed by the removal of a house for redevelopment.\n\nFootnote:\n\n1) We will not be going to the Shun Tak District Commercial Association at 67, Queen's Road, West, as hoped, because a terrible blow; the furniture and fittings have already been cleared out prior to demolition of the building.\n\n2) The Tung Kwun District Commercial Association was founded as the Tung Yee Hop Tong in 1893 for charitable, including educational, work among persons of that district resident in Hong Kong. The present premises were purchased about 40 years ago. There is an interesting commemorative board above the window in the main hall presented by four shops in Liu Po New Market, Tung Kwun in 1912 in appreciation of flood relief work and settlement of disputes and of a defamation case by the Hong Kong Chamber. This shows that its influence extended beyond Hong Kong.\n\n3) The Nam-pak Hong Association in Bonham Strand, though in new premises that are of no appeal, is of great interest. This powerful commercial association was established in 1868 by merchants from different parts of China together with Chinese merchants from South-east Asia. This explains the name of the association which, in Chinese, means South-North Firms' Public Office.\n\nAdditional Notes for the Visit to Old Western District Carl T. Smith\n\n(a) The Development of West Point\n\nThe area we are visiting today was formerly dominated by two points of land. After the British occupation of Hong Kong they became known as Possession Point and West Point. Between the two was a steep hillside with a bay at its foot. The present Ko Shing Street approximates the original beach.\n\nDr. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, pp. 123-124, gives an account of the event which gave Possession Point its name:\n\nOn January 24, 1841, Commodore Bremer, having arrived at Lantao, directed Captain Belcher, in command of H.M.S. Sulphur, to proceed forthwith to Hongkong and commence its occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208625, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n55\n\nexpected at any minute, especially when we passed a level spot of ground, to be ordered to turn around and face a firing squad. Half way down our driveway a plane was heard overhead and our guards herded us over to the bank at the side of the road so as to be out of sight of the aviator. Here, while waiting for the plane to disappear, our guards noticed two watches. Mine was one and its small chain was dangling from my pocket. The guard came over, pulled out the watch, looked at it, hesitated (for it was not a wrist watch and they were more in demand) and then deciding it might do, yanked it free from its clasp and resumed his post.\n\nThe plane by this time having disappeared, the guards marshalled us in line again and off we started, wondering where we were bound for and what was going to happen to us. Some thought we were going to be taken to Repulse Bay for internment, but as we got to the foot of our hill we turned not left, but right, towards Stanley Village, but instead of continuing on we were routed up a small driveway which led to an unused road just behind the Carmelite Convent. As we passed an open space where a number of soldiers were standing, I again thought of a firing squad, but we kept marching on until turning up another bypath, we were told to halt. This dead end of the road had been cut out of the hill and we were thus pretty well protected from flying bullets, for the fighting was still going on, at least sporadically.\n\nHere we noticed a higher ranking officer than we had hitherto seen, and he had with him a portable radio or telephone set, probably the latter as wires were in evidence along the ground. We were ordered to sit or squat down—it was most awkward to sit and to rise with our hands tied behind our backs, but we had to do so again and again. The officer then, using a very few English words, questioned us. We tried to make him understand that we were \"church\" people, and though puzzled he finally seemed to grasp the significance of this word. After making us sit and rise repeatedly to indicate our nationality—there were in our ranks Americans, British, Canadian, Irish, Polish and Russian, for in addition to us Maryknollers, there were Bishop O'Gara, and Father Charles Murphy, Canadians; Mr. Brown previously mentioned, British (or rather Australian); Brother Bernard the Salesian, Irish; Father Szeliga, Salesian, Polish and a Russian, whom we called Michael, who also had been in the employ of the British. Incidentally, Father", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208638, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "68\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nonly the masonry shell of a building stood, mute witness to the horrors of war. Whenever a building was left untenanted, it suffered this same fate. The area around St. Paul's Hospital was pretty badly scarred, and the Hospital itself received many direct shell hits. A few Jesuits and some Salesians were kept prisoners for a while close to the Hospital, but were released after a few days. While engaged in driving an ambulance in the city, one of the Christian Brothers, Brother Peter, was killed; otherwise, the clergy and religious of Hong Kong were uninjured, though I believe Father Tournier, Assistant French Procurator, was slightly wounded. One shell hit the Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon, and though the Sisters had a trying time, they were unmolested.\n\nAfter the armistice, the Japanese began immediately collecting all vehicles, cars and trucks. Along the road at Stanley, on our return from the garage, we saw a number of trucks and cars on the road, either having been damaged by machine-gun fire, or abandoned by their drivers. These were all towed into town, in many cases by British army trucks which had been captured, and hundreds and perhaps thousands of cars, trucks and buses were corraled on the Happy Valley and Deep Water Bay recreation grounds. It is also thought that the Japanese took many of these vehicles to Japan, as it is reported that they took food supplies out of the Colony to Japan.\n\nGradually, a few bus lines were started up, as was a ferry or two to Kowloon, but the only cars on the road were Japanese trucks and official cars. All business was at a standstill; shops and department stores were closed and boarded up; what business there was, was done by hawkers on the streets. All foreign enemy property was promptly taken over by the Japanese and strips of wood with Chinese characters painted or stenciled on them bore the motto: \"Imperial Japanese Government Property.\" Our house at Stanley was likewise placarded and Father Troesch was appointed guardian for the Japanese Government.\n\nThe French Fathers at Pokfulam were treated rather roughly, and were kept in a small room for several days, while their buildings were ransacked and looted. The Christian Brothers' College suffered the same fate, even though they were of mixed nationality and their head an Irishman. The Jesuits lost Ricci Hall but managed to keep Wah Yan College and the Seminary at Aberdeen. The beautiful French Procure was finally confiscated and the Fathers had to move", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208641, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n71\n\nOn the eighteenth, two Japanese officers called and we entertained them with tea. They were pleasant enough, but had little to say. Soldiers and officers have come almost every day, either for a courtesy call or out of mere curiosity. One officer especially has been very friendly with Father Toomey, and has brought him cigarettes and milk. Others seem rather arrogant and haughty. Of course, we in turn are mild and meek for we don't like bayonets. Today, finally, our Ford V-8 was towed away down the hill.\n\nShortly after our return from the garage, we witnessed a rather sorrowful scene and one which will long remain in our memories. It was when, a few days after the signing of the armistice, the British and Indian soldiers marched out of the fort on the hill and took the winding road down through Stanley and to Hong Kong and to internment in Kowloon. There must have been at least a thousand, if not more men, disarmed and dejected, and passing just below our hill we watched them as they went by under the victorious Japanese flag hung across the road. As we stood on our hilltop and saw that mournful column passing along silently, we thought of the glories and peace of Hong Kong which had been and now everywhere is desolation and despair. The victors are despoiling the city; they have ruthlessly dethroned the foreigner and humiliated him in the eyes of the Chinese; they have destroyed overnight, as it were, the work of decades; they have completely disrupted the organization of a huge modern city, and starvation faces the populace. The Japanese have learned their lessons well from the West, and the West is now reaping the harvest of what it has sown. Poor Hong Kong! which had to be one of the first victims.\n\nAfter tiffin on the 20th, we received final word to leave Maryknoll House, now His Imperial Majesty's property, for our new home in the Prison Warders' Apartments attached to the Prison at Stanley. We are to be interned, not as the Italian Fathers were, in the Prison itself, but in modern apartments, these having been built only a few years ago. We hastily summoned our coolies, and the vanguard soon got under way. We walked in advance, each with a suitcase or bag in each hand and a bundle of bedding on his back, the coolies bringing up the rear with the heavier and more awkward bundles. Twenty-four priests and Brothers, and as many more coolies made quite a cavalcade, and looking back, it seems that we have been able to move all that Father Troesch and Father Meyer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208695, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n125\n\nThis literally took the wind out of our sails and we were in the doldrums. Bishop Valtorta also interviewed Mr. Oda on our behalf but received the same categorical answer. However, Sister Paul made application about this time for Sisters Marie Regis and Dorothy, the former having been released from the Camp on a third national status, but the latter with us. As a result, Sister Regis was allowed to board the boat but Sister Dorothy was turned back. So we returned to Bethany, sadder but wiser.\n\nOur status in Hong Kong now being determined for us, we began to think about resuming Language Classes, and looked around for some teachers. We found one for the Mandarin and one for the Cantonese, but could not easily get a suitable one for the Hakka-ites.\n\nFrom the 11th to the 15th of October we went on Retreat, it being conducted by Father McCarthy, S.J., from Wah Yan College. About this time, Father Knotek's electrical ability having been discovered, his services were much in demand, both at Carmel and at St. Paul's Hospital, Causeway Bay.\n\nIt may be of interest here to describe briefly Hong Kong, as we saw it, some eight or nine months after its capitulation. The downtown section, at least along Queens Road Central, was fairly normal, and business seemed to be going on as usual, that is, on the surface, but actually business was pretty poor. All the stores had long since reopened; the larger foreign stores, of course, being taken over by the Japanese, and prices were on the military yen basis. The Chinese department stores were likewise open, but their stock seemed to be depleted, and not only were prices high, but it was difficult and even impossible to purchase many articles, especially of clothing. In many cases, about all that was left were extra large sizes of things. Along the streets in many places, and just outside of the department stores, sat vendors of various small articles. On the streets, the crowds seemed to mill about almost as in normal times, but little money changed hands. There were only the strictly necessary purchases made. Even for the Chinese populace, rice, oil, and firewood were rationed and on certain days, the purchasers had to line up and wait their turn at depots in various parts of the city. The Gloucester Hotel is now the Matsubara Hotel, and is open for business, but of course, mostly Japanese business. The Japanese Army and Navy have taken over almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209318, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nHong Kong, Then and Now (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 1981)\n\nSeveral years ago the SCMP published on Sundays the 'Then & Now' series. Each article shows an old view of Hong Kong and a recent shot taken from the same viewpoint, if ascertainable. This juxtaposition dramatically shows the gross physical changes which had taken place at certain well-known localities.\n\nHowever, even with supplementary historical notes, which were not noted for their accuracy, this method was rather crude. In my opinion, it did not adequately reveal the detailed changes – vertical and horizontal – which constitute the change in the impact of the street scene upon the passer-by, as for example, along Queen's Road Central.\n\nOf course, change in urban Hong Kong is so rapid and the transitory results so compressed in scale that it is extremely difficult by the photographic medium to illustrate these changes in the street scene.\n\nThere is another dimension, too, to this historical conundrum: the modern face of Hong Kong is perpetually being projected upwards from the sea; in other words, by reclamation. In fact, this is a process of change which began in the 1840's with the building and draining of Causeway Bay, right up to the present time when the New Territories, New Towns are coming into being. (Even with the aid of aerial photographs, it is extremely difficult to locate former well-known spots which have either been submerged by the flow of concrete or have disappeared completely. Try, for instance, finding the old floating fish stalls at Sam Shing, Tuen Mun.)\n\nAnd, of course, it would be extremely instructive if the historical geographer could trace the physical development of different districts of Hong Kong by means of photographs of different periods.\n\nBut Then & Now is not this, although, quite possibly the original compiler of this book, Dee Gibney (not acknowledged as the author of the historical introduction to these pictures) might have hoped it would turn out so.\n\nUnfortunately, this project was incomplete when she left and, with consequent delay, and with continuing change, even the original 'Now' photographs were outdated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209676, "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": 333, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n311\n\nfrom 5 million\n\nShanghai, despite its recent prolific growth to 1 million in recent years straddling along the banks of the Huangpu river is, for the visitor, the oldest Treaty Port of China. The tourist does not see and probably is not particularly interested in seeing the ring of satellite suburbs around the commercial city of the 1930's.\n\nShanghai is, for the traveller, the mile long Bund with the famous landmark of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building, the former Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel), the British consular gardens and the famous Shanghai Club (now the Dong Feng Hotel whose notorious long bar room is now used for wedding receptions).\n\nAnd, even though the Nanking Road does not exactly convey the excitement of the heady decadent atmosphere of the night club haunts of the champagne-swilling, déraciné White Russian dance hostesses of the Bubbling Well Road of the 1930s; nevertheless, even today, one can still buy the cream cakes and coffee in the cafés and cake shops of the area houses of consumerism among the deserts of the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 departmental stores of the socialist regime.\n\nThe outstanding merit of this book is that it is much more than a guide to the tourist wishing to find the whereabouts of the old landmarks of Shanghai. In fact, it is a very attractive presentation of the well-known (e.g. the life of luxury) and of the lesser-known (e.g. the intellectual and political life) aspects of Shanghai's social history in the modern period. The style is simple and clear and the balance of the treatment of subjects is perfect. (Consider for instance, the account of Shanghai's contributors to the Chinese film industry. This gives an extra dimension to Laida's history of the Chinese cinema and its thesis of the silver screen as the projection of Chinese politics.)\n\nFinally, reading this nostalgic and informative re-creation of Old Shanghai makes me, at least, wish that the same kind of thing could be done for Hong Kong. But, probably, we shall have to wait till after 1997 for that suitable opportunity to recapture the essence of a city, when progress and change comes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209766, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "In fact a pair of monkeys liked the place and seemed to want to join up. They would scamper all around the house as if they owned it. However, as they were not housebroken they were a nuisance. One day a very religious monkey was found in the chapel. He ran into the sacristy and the door was slammed on him. Then the tennis net was brought up to capture him. The door was flung open, and in charged the priests with the net flying. The monkey was so frightened that he smashed right through the window and disappeared in the woods. Apparently he had decided he didn't want to be a monk after all.\n\nThere were no great incidents at the house till the war came in 1941. Incidentally, I was ordained in 1941 and arrived in Hong Kong the night before Pearl Harbor on the last of the Pan Am Flying Clippers. And today happens to be the anniversary of the starting of the war!\n\nIt was dusk on that Dec. 7th as we drove from the airfield out to Stanley, so we didn't see much of the city. Next morning when I was saying Mass in the lower chapel, there were big explosions and the altar jumping around. I thought this is probably the way they start every day in the East. Then when I came down to breakfast, the news had been received on the radio that the Japanese were attacking Hong Kong. We also got the first uncensored reports on Pearl Harbor. As the Japanese army gradually conquered Hong Kong Island, many refugees came to take shelter in the house. The Salesian Fathers had brought out a group of orphans and taken over a part of the house. Some military were also quartered in the house. With us nine new arrivals, the staff etc. there were some thirty people. The war started on Monday, so on Tuesday we as aliens had to go downtown to register. The bus went through Aberdeen, right past Mt. Davis, a big British military installation. The Japanese were bombing this all day, and so we spent practically all day jumping on and off buses, diving into the gutters along the roadside or darting into air raid shelters. We arrived in town just in time to catch the last bus home. However, after dark, the bus only went as far as Repulse Bay and we had to walk the rest of the way. With us were two Carmelite Sisters who had been to town to buy provisions for the siege. As we came down the road into Stanley", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209869, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "106 \n\na boarding house where Europeans can put up at cheap rates on the \"Peak\". \n\nAn interesting feature of the island is that nearly all the land is owned by a family association called the Wong Wai Tsak Tong, which has its headquarters in Namtau21. All the buildings, however, are owned by the people who built them, or their modern representatives, who pay a small ground rent to the Tong for their sites. Most of the European houses are on hills, and so are on Crown land, unclaimed by the Tong in 1905 when the land settlement was made. This system of ground landlordism is found very rarely now elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is a relic of the system of paying land tax in distant Namtau by deputy, as happened before 1898, when the Territories were leased. \n\nTo the north-east of Cheung Chau is Neikwuchau (“Nun Island\"). This island once had three villages on it: but two are deserted; the third (Ngau Tau Tong, Cow's Head Pond) still flourishes.22 Pak Pai took its name from the high white rock in the bay off it; Kwo Lo Wan (\"The Bay Along the Road\") is where the limekiln used to be, Chau Kong (\"Old Man Chau\") 28 is a small island lying off Neikwuchau opposite Kwo Lo Wan. It is practically a desert island. I have never seen anyone on it. \n\nFurther to the north-east, beyond Neikwuchau is Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). Pingchau is another dumb-bell island, its houses being built on the isthmus, with limekilns thick along the western and southern shores, facing sheltered water. An industry not mentioned so far is gambling, which flourishes vigorously in the large, long shops fronting on the main street. As no Police live on Pingchau, nothing serious can be done to stop it. The island is full of Hakkas and Hoklos, who have little in common save mutual dislike. I once had a very bad riot case to try, in which a man had been killed by someone unknown, and the only thing I could do was to bind everyone over to keep the peace. The chief point is that to my amazement they did so! \n\nLeaving Pingchau and travelling east we first come to a group of small uninhabited islands. The first of these, Kau Yi Tsai (\"Little Armchair\")24 is a little desolate island, chiefly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210716, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "50\n\nSTEPHEN SELBY\n\nPlanning maps for that time show extensive plans for dwelling houses along the alignment of Prince Edward Road out to East Kowloon and the reclamation works undertaken by Ho Kai and Yau Tak (the Kai Tak residential development at Kowloon Bay) were under planning. The plans even show the proposed alignment of a branch railway to Ngau Tau Kok which is very close to the present-day MTR alignment.\n\nJackman was promoted to Assistant Director of Public Works on 1 June 1921 at a salary of £1,000; he had acted in the post for much of the previous year. His responsibilities included overseeing the planning of the Kowloon urban layouts and their implementation, including negotiation over resumption of private building and agricultural lots and arbitrations over difficult cases. In the mid-twenties, the Kai Tak residential development plan failed and the Government took back the partly-reclaimed area in order to form a commercial aerodrome using material dredged from the Harbour. The aerodrome came into use in 1928, although the flying club occupied a corner (as it does now) from about 1925.\n\nIn 1922, Jackman acted Director of Public Works during the sickness of the substantive incumbent, and from 15 May to 29 August of the following year, he again acted during his superior's leave. As DPW, Jackman also served as vice-president of the Sanitary Board and member of both the Legislative and Executive Councils. He was member of the Court and Council of the University of Hong Kong. The period of the mid-1920's was an unsettled one in Hong Kong, reflecting political events in China. A number of seamen's strikes and general labourers' strikes took place causing much uncertainty in the commercial sector and the Government.\n\nH. T. Jackman acted DPW for most of 1927, but at that time was already suffering from ill health. He was seriously ill at the end of the year, and at the St. George's Ball on 7 January 1928 he was invited to the official supper party, but only his wife could attend. On medical advice, he retired at the age of 54 (one year early) on 3 July 1928. He and his wife were given a farewell reception by the Acting Governor, W. T. Southorn, at Government House. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211742, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "132\n\nand then went through Tan Tsz Hang to join the Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road just before the nunnery. The other went through Lung Yeuk Tau to Hung Leng, before turning north along a line close to that of the present-day Ta Kwu Ling road, to join the road from Sha Tau Kok at Kan Tau Wai.\n\nThe section of road past the nunnery, therefore, was part of the most important east-west route in the county, and at the same time part of one of the most important north-south routes, as well as being of great local significance.\n\nSha Tau Kok was, in effect, the port for Sham Tsun to the east. Most of the fish for Sham Tsun was landed at Sha Tau Kok and carried inland by coolies. The 19 acres of saltpans at Sha Tau Kok produced considerable quantities of salt, and most of it was, again, taken inland by coolies to Sham Tsun for sale in the town and from the town to the other markets further north. Excess rice, too, from the whole of the Mirs Bay area, was landed at Sha Tau Kok and sent to Sham Tsun, which was the centre of a rice shortage area. There was, therefore, in the early part of this century, a steady flow of people passing the nunnery, and eager to avail themselves of the rest and shelter it offered.\n\nThis traffic must, presumably, have been less in the eighteenth century, when local populations were much lower, and the infrastructure not yet fully developed - the saltpans, for instance, were only established in the years after 1825 - but was probably significant from early on. It remained significant right until the Law Fong bridge was effectively closed in 1950, although coolie traffic had by then been declining steadily for some time in favour of rail traffic over the Lo Wu bridge and truck traffic over the Man Kam To bridge, particularly after the opening of the Sha Tau Kok road in 1928. But at all dates from the late eighteenth century to 1950 the nunnery's shelter was a significant local factor.\n\nThe role of the nunnery as a place of shelter is stressed in the couplet placed at the main entrance to the monastery at its reconstruction in 1868. This reads:\n\n長亭惜別古道膽歧雨笠麈襟人日日\n\n山鳥鳴春寺公送曉煙鍾風我年年\n\n* Or, 長亭惜别占道臨歧雨等應襟人日日。山島鳴春寺聲送嶢煙鋪風磬我年年,\n\nSee A (Ming Pao) 10.10.1991.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212223, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "142 \n\nnumber of bicycles, and despite having to dismount frequently to cross ditches, alleged to be anti-tank but too narrow to be effective for the purpose, made forty miles in a day along the footpaths amongst the hills. \n\nTens of thousands of coolies were carrying loads over the track from Mirs Bay to the East River: it shewed what a large flow of supplies still entered China from Hongkong despite the Japanese blockade. I even saw the parts of wholly dismantled lorries being carried along, four coolies to each pole on the heavier loads, such as the frame. Unfortunately a cholera epidemic was raging, and the Chinese government appeared to have made no effort to provide medical and sanitary supervision, on what was one of the few remaining routes of entry into China. A plague of flies hovered over the human excreta which defiled the edges of the road along its whole length. Coolies were dying by the dozen. They would collapse by the side of the road and crawl off to expire in the scrub. In places the stench was so strong as to make you retch. On arrival next day at Mirs Bay we were offered tea at the little Chinese customs house, while waiting for the launch. As the bay was entirely inside Hongkong territorial waters, Japanese ships could not enter, and the launches ran twice a day with impunity. \n\nI stepped ashore at Taipo, a village in the New Territory, in time to catch the evening train from Fanling, but I was now feeling ill myself and half wondering whether I too had not caught cholera. I was unable to join the golfing fraternity in the saloon car to listen to the highlights of the day's sport, or to partake of refreshment, and on arrival at the Gloucester I retired to my bed. \n\nThe luxury, however, of a modern hotel soon put me on my legs, and I was further fortified by the comfort of a passage to Shanghai in one of the Canadian-Pacific Company's liners. \n\nIt was November. Many of the younger men had left to join up, either in Malaya or in India, where it was thought their services might prove more useful than in England. Nevertheless with the addition of the people who had been brought in from the outports, there was no shortage of staff in the offices; and the Clubs, if anything, appeared rather crowded. Owing to the stagnation in trade, people had not much to do. Yet managers seemed reluctant to release their young men, too many of whom, as it appeared to me, seemed quite content to stay; while, surprisingly, older middle-aged men were being allowed \n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212372, "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "third component [the yoke-pole: the end of this pole is in fact firmly joined to the sole-beam; it then bends up and is braced in place in the middle by the brace-bar]. This third component runs parallel to the sole-beam, but it goes further to the front. The draft animal is yoked to the front end of this third component. This instrument has to be carried by the farmer to the field while the draft animal runs ahead. The reason for this is partly because of the construction of the plough which cannot be pulled along a road, and partly because in China there are no roads, but only footpaths leading to the fields. Either a cow or a buffalo will be used as the draft animal. The furrows that can be made with this plough are not particularly regular; it is more suitable for tearing up the ground which the harrow has to smooth and even up afterwards. The harrow consists of a row of iron teeth on each side, i.e. one row in front and one behind it, and two iron uprights which are connected with each other by a transverse wooden bar. The harrow is held with both hands on the bar, and is pulled by one of the above-mentioned animals, or sometimes by the farmer in person.\n\nThe most important product that is cultivated is rice. Rice can only be planted when the field is under water, and it will only grow when it is continuously kept in water. The rice-fields are kept in this state partly through heavy rains, and partly through artificial irrigation. This can easily be done because the fields slope down from the mountains to the sea. If water is led down to the upper edge of the fields, then by opening a gap in the narrow, raised field-bund (these narrow, raised field bunds, with footpaths on, form the divisions between the tiny fields), the water can be diverted through and the whole of the rice fields can be covered with water.\n\nIn some years there is no rain at the time when the seeds are sown, and the water channels dry out, and then there is great hardship. Rice immediately then jumps to a high price, so that many people cannot afford the money for their daily rice. During such famine periods, people take refuge in theft, and thieves and robbers increase. Nowhere is safe from them any more. All the signs seemed last spring to\n\nPage 291", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212574, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "108\n\nAlthough one of the above six destinations is the normal fate of a person's heavenly soul, earthly souls reside in graves or ancestral tablets to be worshipped by descendants. Terrestrial souls can even be divided between tablets on altars in family members' homes and in ancestral halls. Views vary on this 'multiple-soul' principle. As do those from theologians, regarding life after death for a Christian.\n\nFor the Chinese, ancestral spirits, gods, devils and ghosts play important roles. Supernatural intervention and magical powers have to be reckoned with. Malevolent, wandering spirits that have no male descendants to worship them must be appeased or they can bring bad luck, sickness and death. Makeshift altars are sometimes set up in streets, joss sticks are burned and offerings made, especially on the 15th day of the Seventh Moon at the Hungry Ghosts Festival (Yu Lan). With the fundamental dualism of Chinese cosmology, devils and their cohorts are yin, ‘inauspicious and gloomy'. Conversely gods, idols and the like are yang and 'lucky and bright'.\n\nIn this study, father died in 1959. When windows rattled, doors opened mysteriously, or troubles befell the family, his spirit, rightly or wrongly, was at one time suspected. This had to be propitiated by visits to the temple. When death strikes, a family tends to become even more superstitious. Scissors and knives are hidden to avoid children cutting themselves and thereby inadvertently hurting the corpse. This is termed lei hei (##) meaning an edged tool or weapon which can injure.\n\nIn this study, a Buddhist prayer in plastic holders was placed in strategic positions around family members' homes, including on the eldest daughter's bedside table. Although a person is a Christian, there is nothing like hedging protection. One granddaughter who had yam ngaan (dark eyes), namely psychic powers, heard a woman ghost wailing at night. When she placed the prayer on her bedside table, it kept quiet. This prayer could be rendered ineffective if taken into a church. Chinese always seem much closer to the spirit world than the average Westerner. For example, some of the older drivers on late-night buses travelling along the Pok Fu Lam Road stop and open the door whether anyone is waiting there or not. This is said to be to allow wandering spirits to get on and go back to the cemetery for the night.\n\nChinese dislike people dying at home as it is considered 'unclean'. If they do, the body is removed as soon as possible, often in a woven,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212617, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "151\n\nalong the dismantled track ran no trains, under whose wheels we could get our dummy mines, as we had been able to do in Burma where the alarm created by their noisy, if harmless, explosions had often confused the Indian engine drivers.\n\nThe magistrate was helpful: he devoted two days to tramping round with us from village to village, until we could decide where accommodation for the school might be most suitable; and he promised to build a short length of road to connect the village finally selected with the motor road so that our lorries could drive right up to the door. The village was some miles outside a small country town; I shall call it Chin Ya, the Golden Duck.*\n\nNew Year's Eve fell while I was making these investigations. The local general, with that consideration which is the charming mark of Chinese breeding, fearing I should be lonely, invited me to dinner. Since arrival in the 3rd War Zone I had asked to be kept informed of any parties of foreigners escaping from Shanghai, but no news of any escapes had come through. It was accordingly with the greater pleasure, as we were sitting down to dinner, that I was surprised by the entry of a tall bearded figure, wearing a long Chinese gown, and heard myself addressed in English. He was the first foreigner to escape from Shanghai, an American, Mr. Hawkins, the manager of one of the branches of the big American bank which had offices in China.\n\nHe told us his story while we ate our dinner. Having only just returned from leave in the States, he was staying at an hotel, which happened to be near the Bund. Early on the morning of December 7th he was wakened by the sound of gunfire. He went out to investigate and found that Japanese destroyers were sinking H.M.S. Peterel in the Whangpoo River just off the Bund. He realised that war must have broken out and dashed round to his bank to 'phone his manager. He then returned to his hotel, packed a small bag, got into his car, and drove out to the stables in the western suburb, where a friend kept two ponies which he had permission to ride. He saddled the ponies, and riding the one while leading the other, passed through the gate at which a Japanese sentry stood guard where the road crossed the barbed wire barrier surrounding Shanghai. The barrier had originally been put up by the foreign troops holding the\n\n* It is in the Tianmushan mountains, near the border of Chekiang and Anhwei, near the country town Anchi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "166\n\nto lend them cooking pots for their rice, or to provide the few vegetables that flavour the rice. They sometimes break into the houses and help themselves to what they need. It is a vicious circle difficult to control. Fortunately we could see a crack of light at the back of the building where we had last stayed and, when the occupants who were hiding inside heard who we were, they let us in; there was nothing too much they could do for our comfort.\n\nThey told us that a large bridge some miles ahead, over a side stream which flowed into the Tsien Tang, was down and that we should be unable to get across. This sounded bad and I ordered a very early start. When we got to the bridge we found that a freshet after the heavy rain had weakened the wooden piers, and when a lorry overloaded with troops had gone over on the previous day, it had fallen through. A whole span had collapsed; soldiers were wading in the water searching for corpses and laying them along the bank. The bridge was high, the banks steep; it was obviously impossible for our lorry to get through. We returned to the village and 'phoned Chin Ya with a request that they would send a relief lorry down to meet us on the far side. We then set about unloading the lorry and ferrying our stores across in a small boat. When we had emptied the lorry the driver was ordered to take it back to Hunan; he was a man who had been lent us for the trip. He just got through before the road was cut.\n\nOn the way through Yingtan and Shangjao we had passed many refugees; on old charcoal lorries, rickshaws, wheelbarrows, and even chairs, but mostly on foot, escaping from the advancing Japanese. We heard afterwards that the driver on the return trip found some refugees who were willing to pay heavily for the privilege of a lift on our lorry; he made a \"squeeze\" of $30,000. That is the sort of thing we were up against.\n\nIn the afternoon a 'phone call came through to say that the relief lorry had reached within twenty kilometres of us, but had found another bridge down and had been unable to come further. By good chance we heard of a large junk, hiding in the Tsien Tang not far off our bridge in the hope of avoiding being commandeered. It was full of refugees who were escaping upriver from the Japanese. When we asked whether they would give us and our stores a passage for the next twenty kilometres they readily agreed; our presence would provide a sort of protection. I was careful not to explain too clearly the dangerous nature of our cargo. The Tsien Tang junks are long, rather narrow flat-bottomed boats, curved", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213105, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "155\n\nto the front of the school building, to double the defences of the bridge, probably some time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.\n\n27\n\nThe building of the gun-towers, the school, the Man Mo Temple and Meeting Hall, and the communal grave, is evidence for the prosperity and vitality of the town, and the village society in which it was set, in the later nineteenth century. By 1904, the market had about doubled in size, and in the number of shops operating, from its situation fifty years earlier. From its foundation in 1830-1835, in fact, the prosperity of the town seems to have increased steadily until 1898, with the only check being the very temporary set-back of the Taiping attack.\n\nThe Market and the New Frontier\n\nThe leasing of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898 was traumatic for the villagers of the Sha Tau Kok area. The line originally proposed for the new frontier would have run along the Sha Tau Kok River from source to sea. This would have put two of the eleven village alliance areas of the Shap Yeuk into China, the market and the other village alliance areas into the New Territories. This was unacceptable to the Chinese authorities, who were unwilling to allow so significant a place as Sha Tau Kok to become part of the area administered by Britain. Eventually it was agreed that the frontier should run along the Sha Tau Kok River from the source down to the Sha Tau Kok bridge, and then be diverted from the bridge down the centre of the bridge access road to the sluice at Yim Liu Ha, then in a straight line to the sea, and thence east along the high-water mark to the mouth of Mirs Bay.* This line was drawn very close to the northern and western edges of the market. As such it isolated the market from the rest of Chinese territory; its only access was either over the bridge, which was half in Hong Kong, or through Hong Kong territory, or by sea through Hong Kong waters.\n\nIn the late nineteenth century, China controlled imports and exports through customs regulations, enforced by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. By the drawing of the frontier where it eventually was, the normal, day-to-day trade of Sha Tau Kok market suddenly found itself\n\n* See Map 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213106, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "156\n\nbecoming \"import\" or \"export\", and subject to all these controls.\n\nVillagers from Wo Hang or Nam Chung buying a new plough animal, or seed-pig, were \"exporting live animals\"; if they bought a new plough, or reaping knife, they were \"exporting ironwork\"; if they took cloth to market to be made into a pair of trousers, or to be dyed, then they were \"importing cloth\" - duty in all these cases had to be paid. Traditionally, sugar was grown in this area, carried as cane to Sham Chun, pressed and refined there, and then carried back for sale in the New Territories markets. This now became “importing sugar” in the first instance, and “exporting sugar\" in the second.28 In the 1930s, the Chinese Government imposed a heavy import duty on fish, causing the very important carrying trade in fish from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Chun to face the same problems.29\n\nAs soon as the new frontier was established, the Kowloon Customs (the local division of the Imperial Maritime Customs) moved to control it. The Kowloon Customs was headquartered in Hong Kong, but established its new operational headquarters at Sham Chun. Below this, work was initially conducted through three Divisions: Duty Collection, Border Patrol, and Sea Patrol. The Border Patrol duties were conducted from Patrol Stations, which were arranged in Districts, with a Patrol District Headquarters in each District. Duty was collected at only a relatively few Duty Stations, which were the only places where dutiable imports and exports could legally be handled. The Kowloon Customs also had half a dozen steam launches as gun-boats: each had a Sea Patrol District to control, centred on a Sea Patrol District Headquarters.\n\nSha Tau Kok was chosen as the Patrol District Headquarters for the Patrol District running from Lin Ma Hang to Siu Mui Sha (Xiaomeisha), with sub-stations at Yim Tin (Yantian) and Chan Hang (Chenkeng). It was the Duty Station for the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay. It was also the Sea Patrol District Headquarters for the Mirs Bay Sea Patrol District. It was one of the centres of the Mounted Horse Patrols which, from 1932, patrolled the area behind the zone covered by the foot patrols of the Border Patrol staff. After 1934 it was one of the centres of the new Automobile Patrol, which patrolled the newly completed motor road along the frontier. The Customs Station at Sha Tau Kok was headed by an expatriate Assistant Superintendent of Customs. For most of the time, there were between 70 and 100 customs staff working in Sha Tau Kok.30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213114, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "164\n\nits foundation. There important roads used to meet near here. The most important was the main east-west road in the county, which connected the county city, Nam Tau (Nantou, ), with the Deputy Magistrate's city of Tai Pang (Dapeng, ), via the important market of Sham Chun. * Because of the greater desirability and comfort of water-borne traffic, the section of this road along the north shore of Mirs Bay was not much used. Instead, much of the traffic went by a ferry that ran parallel with the shore, from Sha Tau Kok to Sha Yue Chung.\n\nAt Wo Hang Au, a few miles west of Sha Tau Kok, the road was joined by another important east-west route. This was the road from Yuen Long to Sha Tau Kok via Tai Po.\n\nThe third route was the main road from Kowloon to the north-east. This road carried the traffic from Kowloon to Wai Chau. This road crossed Sha Tin Pass to reach the coast of Tolo Harbour at Yuen Chau Tsai. A ferry carried the traffic from Yuen Chau Tsai across Tolo Harbour to Ang Chung (Chung Mei, near Bride's Pool). From Ang Chung, the road climbed steeply past Bride's Pool and Ah Ma Wat, and then down to the shores of Starling Inlet at Kuk Po. Another ferry then took the traffic across Starling Inlet to Sha Tau Kok. There was also a road which ran from Ang Chung through Luk Keng and Nam Chung, to join the Nam Tau and Yuen Long roads at Shek Chung Au, thus avoiding the second ferry. From Sha Tau Kok the Wai Chau road crossed the shoulders of Ng Tung Shan, and so down to Wang Kong (Henggang, ), and thence to Wai Chau. A branch of this road ran from Sha Tau Kok to Po Kat (Buji, ). This Kowloon to Wai Chau road was more important than might be expected - the long ferry sectors made it more comfortable than the land-based alternatives. The Basel missionaries regularly used it when travelling between Hong Kong and Po Kat, for instance. 50\n\nThis system of roads and ferries was in existence from the Ming at the latest. It will be noticed that the roads do not cross at Sha Tau Kok. Sha Tau Kok stands, however, in the centre of the few miles of road where all the roads run together for a short distance. The site of the market, therefore, was a good one commercially.\n\n* See Map 3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213254, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "55\n\nThere were two attempts to escape from the Hung Hom Bay Camp. The first try was made by five prisoners. They were assigned to build a platform for concerts. The platform was near the barbed wire fence. It provided a shelter for them to tunnel to freedom and a storage place for the earth removed during their digging. Under cover of darkness, five crept through the tunnel; however, the last of the group was spotted by a sentry, who shouted the usual \"Halt or I shoot\". The escapee kept on going, and the sentry shot. The bullet hit the bag the prisoner was carrying, containing some of his gear, so he escaped injury, but he was overtaken and captured. Shortly after, another of the escaped internees was found in the hills of the New Territories. Several days later, the remaining three were rounded up near Sai Kung.\n\nSome time after this incident, another man arranged to accompany two other prisoners on a visit to a dentist in the Hong Kong Hotel. The dentist was only expecting two patients. He took these two into his surgery; one was to serve as an interpreter for the other. The third man, who had somehow arranged to come along, was left in the waiting room with a guard. He informed the guard he must go to the toilet. The guard accompanied him there; however, he did not go into the toilet as he wished to keep his eye on both the door of the dentist and the door of the toilet to ensure that none of his three prisoners escaped. The man in the toilet was able to escape through a window, but he was caught the same night and returned to the camp.\n\nThe patriotism aroused by war stirred up in a British colony much doubt, distrust of old friends, ill will, and harsh words. The clubs passed resolutions excluding enemy aliens; the ties of former friendship were severely strained and, in many cases, broken. Many in the Colony who frequently passed the former premises of the Deutsche Asiatische Bank on Queens Road, not far from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, were irritated by the continuing presence of the Prussian double-eagled ensign, an architectural feature of the building. Many indignant letters appeared in the correspondence column of the newspapers before the emblem was finally removed.\n\nSince my delivery of the talk upon which this paper is based, Anne Selby has published a well-researched article in the South China Morning Post on 25 June, 1988, entitled \"When Germans were unwelcome in HK\". She used many of the same sources as I have used in the Public Records Office. I would refer interested readers to her article for information I have not included in my account.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213292, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "94\n\ntoys. These can include handheld windmills and objects like whirligigs. For good business, chi must be stimulated. Along Lockhart Road, for instance, there is both a yin and a yang side. This affects all establishments (Kahn, 1985: 4). On the sunny side, business is usually brisk, while on the opposite side, it is normally quiet. Yin and yang are really like two poles and two aspects of hei shai. It all amounts to balance and complementariness of opposites. This helps promote and bring about harmony within that abstract thing which mankind calls nature.\n\nEitel described yin and yang as two 'magnetic' currents; the latter male, positive, and favourable; the former female, negative, and unfavourable (Eitel, 1984: 17). All sorts of things, situations, and movements stir up energy or chi, even, for example, a garbage chute constructed in a block of flats. Hong Kong's Mass Transit (underground) Railway has been likened to a dragon which can move vast amounts of chi. On the busy side of a street, business activity makes more business. Some commercial premises have a vehicular flyover constructed outside. This is described as a kam tu tai (gold waist belt) (...). The fung shui master who visited the business premises in question likes to position 'capstan timepieces', or clocks with moving parts such as pendulums. He is fond of utilising octagonally shaped clocks because they represent ba gua.\n\nTHE\n\nSuch methods, the fung shui expert in question claims, are based on 'his own theories'. He tends not to use octagonally shaped mirrors to bounce bad influences back to source, as do many other masters. An experienced fung shui consultant can, so they claim, 'see' chi, just as it can be 'sensed' in high places at dawn where there is an absence of structures. On such occasions, when the air is fresh, you feel better.\n\nWind chimes and Buddhist bells, which have become more popular in the West of late, are also supposed to be able to summon, redirect, or temper 'dragon energy' (namely chi) into domestic or commercial premises.\n\nOf the two major schools of fung shui (Lung, 1980: 84), the Fukien School places emphasis on the use of instruments, such as the compass (although each school has its own variation of the compass). The Kiangsi School, on the other hand, sometimes known as the 'School of Form', is more concerned with the numbers theory, the trigrams, and the 64 hexagrams. With the latter School, expressions like 'stirring up dangerous forces' or 'reaching a bottleneck' are not infrequently made. Astrological elements,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213605, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "173\n\nwith a strong visible presence along the colony's first line of defence.\n\nA very comprehensive description of the new observation posts was given in an article by Sub-Inspector M.E. Davis* which appeared in the HK Police Magazine in December 1953:\n\n\"The land frontier of the Colony of Hong Kong extends from Mirs Bay in the East, to Deep Bay in the West, following for the most part the tortuous course of the Shum Chun river. The country is intensely varied. The arable plain at Sha Tau Kok soon gives place to rugged mountains and deep gorges, which gradually fall away until the extensive marshy tracts near Mai Po are reached. Along the border for 16 miles of the length runs the frontier fence. It is, without any overstatement, difficult territory. The frontier area forms part of the New Territories Division of the Hong Kong Police Force, and is commanded by Mr. N.B. Fraser, M.B.E., Senior Superintendent of Police. One of the most important of the several methods of border control in effect in this area is the operation of a chain of Observation Posts\n\nThere are seven of these posts in the chain, covering the whole of the land frontier. Each is within sight of one or more of its neighbouring posts. All are accessible from the frontier road, or by means of jeep track from the roads. Most are located on prominent hill features which gives them an excellent field of observation. The elevation of the highest is over 700' above sea level. The frontier is divided into three sections, each with its complement of observation posts, which are controlled by a parent station in each section. From East to West the stations are Sha Tau Kok, Ta Ku Ling and Lok Ma Chau. The first has only one post, Pak Kung Au, under its control. Ta Ku Ling, the central and largest area has four, Kong Shan, Pak Fa Shan, Nga Yiu and Nam Hang. On the Western flank Ma Cho Lung and Pak Hok Chau posts are controlled by Lok Ma Chau\n\nThe posts are all almost identical in construction. Centrally there is a round, two storied, tower, and jutting from its sides are two long, one storied arms. The plan of the whole is roughly in the shape of a chevron. The upper storey of the tower is the Control Room, equipped\n\n* Deceased-Editor", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214053, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "88\n\nThe roads (some sections being only bridle paths) that followed included one from Shau Kei Wan to Sai Wan in 1845 and subsequently onto Stanley, another from Victoria to Aberdeen in 1846, one from Aberdeen to Stanley in 1848 and, at about the same time, another to Pok Fu Lam. These early roads and tracks were shown on the first contoured topographic survey (scale 4 inches to a mile, say 1:16,000, with 100ft contours) of Hong Kong Island which was carried out by Lieutenant Collinson of the Royal Engineers. The map was first published in 1845 and the quality was such that it remained in use, with periodic revisions, for some 50 years.\n\nAs might have been expected, the early roads were poorly constructed and often damaged in the summer rains with the wooden bridges being frequently washed away. Gradually the lesson was learnt and roads were surfaced and bridges constructed with masonry. Even so, as late as 1890, an editorial reported \"The recent rains once again worked up Queen's Road into a quagmire. Some months ago the road was re-metalled on a principle which it was believed would be sufficiently strong to withstand the wear and tear of jinricksha wheels, but it is now as bad as ever......... Until jinrickshas were introduced Queen's Road was always fairly clean, even in the wettest weather.\"\n\n**\n\nWhile the built-up areas were slowly expanding the road system was developing and, by 1908, Hong Kong could boast a network of 153 kilometres of roadways on the Island with cut hillside slopes typically being 75° and filling contained by masonry retaining walls. At this time a writer commented \"vehicular traffic is confined chiefly to handcarts, rickshaws and chairs suspended from poles borne on the shoulders of coolies, there being but a few pair-pony gharries and a Victoria or two used by the Chinese\". Around the turn of the century when Lugard and Harlech Roads were constructed encircling the Peak, local inhabitants were displeased - they thought it \"likened the effect of putting a halter around the neck of the Hill of Great Peace\". Fortunately no adverse consequences became apparent! The diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 was marked by a proposal to build a road around the Island; the scheme was opposed by the military and, after lengthy delays, the section below Mount Davis along the 45m contour (Victoria Road) was commenced.\n\nThe advent of the motor car stimulated upgrading the existing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214060, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "95\n\nwith impounded water being conveyed through a 2.2km-long 2.5m-diameter tunnel, mainly in granite, and by a 5km-long conduit winding along the northern shore of the Island beneath Bowen Road to the first two slow sand filter beds above the city, and thence into the service reservoir located at a lower level. The distribution system involved laying, between 1890 and 1892, some 30 kilometres of 75-350mm-diameter cast-iron mains together with the installation of a system of fire hydrants. Major fung shui problems were encountered during the tunnelling works, rumour being that children were to be selected for burial alive to ensure success; fortunately no ritual sacrifice was needed!\n\nOn an uncontoured 1895 version of Collinson's plan (1845), there is an interesting feature clearly marked “overhead tram\" extending 2.3 kilometres between Quarry Bay and Quarry Gap. It seems likely that it would have been used to transport materials and, perhaps, workmen associated with the early Tai Tam reservoir works. As part of the Tai Tam scheme a further small high-level reservoir at Wong Nei Chong was completed in 1899. Around this time the Braemar reservoir (now Choi Sai Woo Park) and further smaller reservoirs near Quarry Bay were built, primarily to meet the needs of the large commercial Tai Koo sugar refinery and dockyard complex.\n\nWith the population already rising to about half a million, three further concrete dams within the Tai Tam valley, the largest Tai Tam Tuk being 50m high, and associated reservoirs were completed between 1904 and 1917. The upper (42m high) and reconstructed lower (20m high) concrete dams, the latter being previously a privately-owned dam built in 1890 for a paper works, impounding the Aberdeen reservoirs were later finished in 1931 and 1932 respectively, thus completing the last economical water storage development on the Island.\n\nAfter the turn of the century engineers were already looking to the New Territories to increase the supply of water for Kowloon, which had hitherto been dependent on two wells located to the north of Yau Mai Tei. As a result, the 35m-high concrete dam for the Kowloon reservoir was completed in 1910 and three further reservoirs in the vicinity were completed during the period 1925-1931 by which time the population was already approaching a million. A commercial reservoir was also built early this century to the south of Lung Wo Tsuen to provide water for Rennie's cotton factory at Junk Bay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214105, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "142\n\nFor the first stage, the Macau Administration selected a team led by a Hong Kong-based planning practice, P&T Group, who teamed with Siza Vieira and Fernando Tavora of Portugal, to design the reclamation of the Porto Exterior, the outer harbour. This team submitted plans in 1984 consisting of a rectilinear urban grid of 144 m by 72 m, which can be seen, in the southeast portion of Figure 6. The plan consists of large blocks, four wide to the west and two wide to the east, six blocks deep on the north-south axis. A central reserve parts the east and west sections and is continued on to the shore to provide a visual connection. A park lies to the east, disconnected and inaccessible from the rest of Macau except through the new development. All this is placed on a podium created by separating the reclamation from the existing edge with a canal for surface water drainage. Thus, the result is distinct and different urban fabric from which has preceded it.\n\nThe second stage was the reclamation of the outer harbour beside the Praia Grande. This was conceived initially as simply a reclamation of the bay resulting in a straightened waterfront and a semi-circular flat plate of land on which to develop. After a competition, the winning scheme (by Manuel Vicente) was revealed to propose not to reclaim straight across the bay but to create instead two large pools of water and an island. The area is defined by a causeway in an arc that inverts the broad Praia Grande of the past and a second causeway linking around the Barra at the southern tip. Twelve blocks are positioned on the north-east edge of the ponds to create a clear urban edge to the water. The Praia itself is to be widened by reclaiming some space along the water's edge, restoring the grandeur of the avenue that has been eroded by traffic, parking and development. In 1991, the \"Reorganisation of the Praia Grande\" was gazetted with the following aims (Prescott 1993):\n\nFigure 6: 1996\n\n1. to reinforce the diverse economic base of Macau\n\n2. to create an image of the city to attract investment and an environment attractive to scientific personnel, technicians and managers all of whom form an indispensable necessity for the coherent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214132, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "The two walled villages that our Group did walk around, in this basically Hakka Chinese region, struck the author as being, both in layout and construction, similar to the Hakka Tsang Tai Uk walled village in Hong Kong's Sha Tin. All, for example, have communal soul tablets above their altars in their ancestral halls, unlike Cantonese ancestral halls which have individual soul tablets for passed leading members of the community. The walled villages we inspected also have wok i gables which are supposed to denote scholarship among the persons living there. In these walled villages in China, there was also the odd coffin or two stored in their ancestral halls. These are sometimes bought by old people and kept in storage ready for when the last trumpet call sounds. The author has read of coffins being bought and stored in this way but has never actually seen it practised in Hong Kong.\n\nExcept for bad pockets of pollution, including both dust from construction sites and smoke from factories, parts of the countryside in the Huizhou region reminded the author, very much, of the Hong Kong he knew in the 1950s. As we sped along a new highway with many tollgates and little traffic, a wide variety of vegetables were being grown occasionally by the People's Liberation Army which has to earn its keep. On one occasion, our minibus was held up by a column of ducks waddling, single file, across the road!\n\nBut, in addition, there was a great deal of paddy with rice harvesting in progress. Winnowing machines were being used similar to those you sometimes see today stored in ancestral halls in Hong Kong's New Territories where they are no longer required. Although there are some small tractors in the Huizhou Region, in the main, the water buffalo is still the beast of burden. On one occasion, the author counted a herd of over 20 out grazing.\n\nWe saw, of course, many fish ponds on our trip in 1997, and, although we did not see any salt-pans as one could see in Tai O, on Lantao, in the 1950s, and even up until the early 1960s, they still exist in out-of-the-way places in China. The small group of RAS members that visited this eastern Guangdong region, in 1995, did see salt being harvested at a place called Ping Hoi. Before World War Two, salt farming in Hong Kong was usually undertaken by Hakka Chinese, and, in addition to Tai O (previously the most important place for salt farming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "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": 214512, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 370, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "339\n\ncucumber. When we asked why we could not have stayed here as well, we were told that \"it would not be appropriate.\" Draw from that what you will.\n\nInstead we stayed at the adequate Pacific Ocean Hotel. Perhaps a better choice would have been the Yantai Marina Hotel on the eastern end of the sea front. This would have been nearer to the Chefoo School and the other main places of interest to us along the seafront.\n\nWeihaiwei - An Uncertain Possession\n\nThe pace never slackened for a minute. The following morning it was “all aboard” for another anachronistic piece of Britishness. On the way to Weihaiwei, about an hour's ride from Yantai, we received a briefing from Carol Tan on the background to Britain's involvement in this piece of territory that was leased by the British from 1898 to 1930.\n\nOne or two of the party, including myself, had been there before. Indeed, Jessie Stewart had lived there as a child in the 1930s. Gillian Sunderland's family had lived here many years ago, and Rowan Callick's grandfather had been a member of the Weihaiwei Masonic Lodge. But none of us had been to Liu Kung Island, the site of the naval base, and so this part of the journey was to be a bit of a challenge - not least for the \"organiser\".\n\nPort Edward\n\nany\n\nWhat we wanted to see in Weihaiwei fell into two areas: remains of the former Port Edward in the city itself and those on Liu Kung Island. Armed with a vast collection of old photographs from the early days of the British tenancy, thanks to Arthur Hacker, we went off in search of what we could find. The most likely area seemed to be the low hill rising at the north end of the bay around which the present-day city is clustered.\n\nUp above the small naval base, set off from the main road by a small garden, is a small but charming bungalow. Was this the former governor's residence? Some controversy here. The majority view was that the building was not grand enough. Perhaps it was the naval", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214516, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 374, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "343\n\nFurther west still, on the edge of Four Funnel Bay, is a fort containing a large gun emplacement (complete with large gun) and extensive underground magazines and chambers. South from here takes one along the former \"Queen's Road\" past a number of buildings including the former Royal Marines barracks and the officers mess.\n\nBack to the harbour front and the mass of naval storage and commercial buildings that we saw from the ferry. The map shows these as being the victualling store, the blacksmith's shop, the fire engine house and other evocative descriptions. Standing four-square with no obvious means of entry, and clearly visible from the sea as the tallest of the buildings, is the distillery - as vital to a naval station as any of the other facilities there. Running through the buildings and along the little streets are tram tracks. An extensive system used to enable goods to be unloaded at the end of the pier from incoming ships and moved for storage.\n\nA fascinating and well-preserved place to just “poke about,” Liu Kung Tau was a gem and a highlight of the trip.\n\nDalian - Far Away, by Whatever Name\n\nWe had been advised by the travel agent to cross to Dalian from Yantai rather than take the service from Weihai. The boats, we were told, are better and faster. Not many weeks after our trip we were to hear of the tragedy whereby almost 300 people lost their lives when one of the Yantai boats went down in heavy seas.\n\nOur three-hour crossing was relatively calm, although many of the local passengers spent most of the time being rather noisily “uncomfortable\" into plastic bags and other containers.\n\nThe first sight that greeted us at the dockside was a large banner in stirring Chinese characters, the sort that you always see in China extolling the virtues of this or that, or exhorting the people to even greater achievements. This one had an English translation that said something like: \"Make Dalian the successful tourist port with successful business and multifunction.\" I like to think that we lived up to this entreaty during our stay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214622, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "# ARTICLES\n\n# BESIDE THE YAMEN: NGA TSIN WAI VILLAGE\n\n# P.H. HASE\n\n## Topography and Early History of the Area\n\nThe north-east part of the Kowloon Peninsula was, before it became developed as part of the City, a broad flat plain, well watered by a series of streams coming down from the hills, and generally fertile. The coastline (running close to today's Prince Edward Road) was fronted by shallow water, with substantial areas of tidal marsh and mud flats offshore. The area was closed in by hills on all sides except that facing the sea: these hills were high and steep to the north and east, more broken and lower to the west and south, but everywhere formed a clear boundary to the area (see Map 1).\n\nThe first settlement of Han Chinese in this plain probably dates from the early second century BC. During this period (206-111 BC), the Kwangtung area formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanyueh (南越), centred on Canton. It is known that the Nanyueh Emperors established a Salt Monopoly within their Empire, and it is very likely (although there are no contemporary written records to substantiate this) that a Salt Sub-Intendancy office was founded at Kowloon City shortly after 200 BC, to supervise salt-fields established along the shores of Kowloon Bay and in Mirs Bay, supervised by a Salt Intendant whose office was probably at Nam Tau (Nantou, 南頭), just outside the area of today's New Territories, on Deep Bay2. The Salt Intendants and their subordinates all had garrisons of soldiers, to stop salt-smuggling, and Kowloon City would have become a military post from the date that it became a Salt Monopoly centre. The great tomb at Lei Cheng Uk, which dates to the Nanyueh period, is certainly that of a senior Nanyueh official, and the only senior officials of the Nanyueh at all likely to have been stationed in the Kowloon City area at that date would have been salt officials supervising salt-fields in the Kowloon City area.\n\nWhile there is no specific documentary evidence of salt-working in the Kowloon City area as early as the Nanyueh, a record from AD 265 specifically mentions salt-officials active in the general area east", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215675, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 452, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "404\n\nIan Morrison's Last Dispatch\n\nPOHANG IN HANDS OF\n\nNORTH KOREANS\n\nAnnex\n\nTOWN IN FLAMES\n\nFrom Our Special Correspondent\n\nBIHAR ARMY HEADQUARTERS, August 12 —\n\nA serious situation has developed at Pohang on the east coast. North Korean forces, who for several days past were known to be working their way south through mountainous country inland from the coast, and who yesterday were reported at a point seven miles north-west of Pohang, attacked the town early this morning and are now threatening the airfield five miles to the south-east. Fires are burning in the town and it may become necessary to evacuate the airfield.\n\nFor several weeks past the South Korean forces based on Pohang have been fighting in and around Yongdok, a small town 25 miles north of Pohang. Their supply line has been the road which runs along the coast. The mountains to the west are some of the steepest in Korea, but they have not deterred the North Koreans from making the obvious outflanking movement. The exact strength of the North Korean force is not known. Three days ago it was reported as two regiments. Probably it consists of a nucleus of regular troops and several hundred guerrilla troops who have long been established in these mountains.\n\nThe allied command apparently minimized their threat, because it was only yesterday that reinforcements were hurriedly rushed to this coastal sector. These consisted of South Korean infantry and a small American task force equipped with light tanks. Exactly what happened is still obscure, but the American convoy was ambushed soon after midnight on the main road 15 miles south of Pohang and pinned down until dawn. Air support was called for, which eventually drove off the North Koreans, believed to have been a number of guerrilla troops, and permitted the convoy to continue after considerable delay.\n\nMustangs were still using the airfield up to 5 o'clock this afternoon, and in some cases pilots were firing their guns only two or three minutes after taking off. The North Koreans had moved south of Yongdok, and pilots claimed to have destroyed two tanks, 10 vehicles, and two ammunition cars. Transport aircraft also were still flying into the airfield this evening and bringing out certain unessential staff such as ground engineers.\n\nAccording to these arrivals, North Korean mortar shells were landing in the general area of the airfield, but it was not under small arms fire. American gunners who have been supporting South Korean infantry in this coastal sector were shelling North Korean positions on the ridge about two miles north of the airfield between the airfield and the port. Large numbers of Korean civilians who had evacuated the town had gathered round the airfield, which is situated close to the shore of the bay, and two ships were standing by offshore in case evacuation should become necessary.\n\nLieutenant-General Walker, commander of the Eighth Army, and Major-General Partridge, commander of the Fifth Air Force, flew over the area this morning.\n\n97", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216097, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 396, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "330\n\nthe long queue. After a few words from him and a few glares from odd people lined up, formalities were completed. My barging in seemed, more or less, to have been accepted.\n\nIn January 1955, I remember going to a new workshop which was being built for the government Public Works Department at So Kon Po, on Hong Kong Island. There, old women were straightening nails, for reuse, which had been knocked out of timber formwork into which concrete was poured. They were paid $1.50 a day. Tradesmen were paid $5.00.\n\nWhat were my other impressions of the winter of 1954/55? I could not get over how crystal clear the sky was as I stood on Hong Kong Island gazing northward over the Kowloon foothills. Leading on, jumping to 1964, businessman K.A. Watson of the Traffic Advisory Committee, said: 'Hong Kong might one day have a smog problem as bad as Los Angeles unless action is taken to eliminate vehicle exhaust fumes.' No one took much notice.\n\nIn those days if one spoke of 'the Government' one meant the one in Whitehall. But if one wrote 'government,' with no definite article and a small 'g,' then one meant the administration in Hong Kong. Interestingly, during the 1957/58 legislative year, only one question was asked in the Legislative Council among the eight unofficial (non-government) Councillors and they only, between them, made a total of 12 speeches.\n\nHong Kong was a pretty colonial place in those days and there was always a military parade with bands marching along the streets of Kowloon on the morning of 21st April. It was a public holiday and the Queen's Birthday. It was a jingoistic occasion with a few Britons carrying furled umbrellas and wearing bowler hats. In the 1950s the Murray Parade Ground was regularly used, near the Garden Road-Queen's Road corner, opposite the cricket field where Chater Garden is situated today.\n\nWe went into \"whites\" on about 1st May and this, for most of us in government at least, meant shorts with shirts tucked in and knee-length socks. We changed back to heavy clothing on about 1st November. My old boss, typical of the more senior, used to come down on the Peak", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]