[ { "id": 204479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n15\n\nand not knowing what is to happen. At night the police cleared the Square and posted a strong guard.\n\nMarch 25\n\nForeigners employed in all the Factories cooking their own meals and preparing food for each other, some carrying provisions from one Factory to another, and others taking buckets to the river for water.\n\nSome sailors and lascars who happened to be here when the embargo commenced have been distributed amongst some of the residents to assist in cooking.\n\nWe have clubbed together all in our Hong, and make one mess, cooking by turns. We have Mr. Snow our Consul,1 Mr. Forbes2, Green3, Delano, Kings, Low, Spooner, Gilman, Miranda and Dasilva two Portuguese clerks in our office, natives of Macao, and myself, in all eleven.\n\nSome go and milk the cows who have been removed to the yard in front of the Danish [Factory], another cooks, while others wash the plates, knives, forks and so forth. We find it a great bore, while the moment one goes out of the Factory he is watched till he returns.\n\n26th* Mouqua4 tells us the cows shall be looked after today, he had them supplied with grass, and says a shed shall be erected to keep them from the sun.\n\nAt night the Chinese brought into the square all the boats belonging to English foreigners to prevent any escape.\n\nMarch 26, 1839\n\nThis morning a linguist purser10 from Ahtore's establishment brought in a Chinaman to act as cook and left us six loaves of bread which he had secreted in his sleeves.\n\nThe cows, having been compelled to stand in the Square opposite the Danish Hong with a hot sun pouring upon them, are becoming quite desperate. This morning on going there I found a Chinaman who had prepared for them some food and was on the point of giving it to them when the police came and drove him away.\n\n* Hunter wrote 26th at this point although he started another entry for 26th a few lines later.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205185, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n135\n\n24 With regard to the quantities of firewood brought on foot into Kowloon from as far afield as Sha Tin, see Sessional Papers 1903 p. 209 which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each estimated at 70 piculs (approx. 93 lbs.) as being carried over the hills in 1902. The Sham Shui Po Kaifong, through operating the Mo Tai (A†4) temple's public weighing scales, got its revenue from the vegetable and livestock market there. Much of the produce sold there crossed the harbour to Hong Kong. (See the Registrar General's Report for 1907 in Sessional Papers 1908, p. 194. Other information supplied by elders). I am also informed by Mr. WAI Tau Shue (b. 1885) that in his youth the Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in the Kowloon City market. In each case the proceeds were supposed to swell public funds for charitable work. For social advancement see the career of WONG Lan-shang described in this article.\n\n25 The Third or Kowloon Police Magistrate was not appointed until 1925 (Colonial Estimates 1924-1926). For an example of police assistance in an emergency see the press reports of the two big fires at Hung Hom village on 11 and 16 December 1884 (Hong Kong Daily Press).\n\n26 See Report from the Hong Kong Land Commission of 1886-87 on the History of the Sale, Tenure and Use of the Crown Land of the Colony published in Sessional Papers 1887 pp. XXVI-XXVII.\n\n27 Between 1853 and 1862 the Hong Kong government paid village elders as tepos (18) in an endeavour to enlist their services in the public interest. See G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong 1841-1962, Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong Press, 1964, pp. 37-38. The Colonial Estimates for the period, under Registrar General's department, show that payment was not extended to the elders of the Kowloon villages acquired in 1860.\n\n28 Eitel, p. 160.\n\n29 See, for instance, pp. 8 and 9 and note 40 of my typescript article \"Some villages in the North Western Part of the Kowloon Peninsula in 1898” presented to the International Conference on Asian History held at the University of Hong Kong, August 30-September 5, 1964. See also note 37 below.\n\n30 The temple was re-erected in Shantung Street Kowloon in 1927 on a site provided by Government which also gave a grant of $6,000 towards the reconstruction. The rest of the money required for the new building was supplied by the Kwong Wah (Tung Wah group) Hospital, to whom the management of the temple was entrusted.\n\n31 Shui Yuet Kung (KA) is an alternative name for a Kwan Yin temple. See S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, Canton; Office of the Chinese Repository, 1856, p. 650. See also E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, New York; The Julian Press, 1961, pp. 225-227.\n\n32 See E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese, London; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920, pp. 196-197, and S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary under p. 308 and p. 581 under A.\n\n33) E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London; T. Fisher Unwin, 1905, p. 86. See also W. Stanton, The Chinese Drama, Hong Kong; Kelly & Walsh, 1899, pp. 5-6 for a brief description of the position in \"China and in the villages of Hong Kong\".\n\n34 Robert Morrison, A View of China for Philological Purposes. Macao; Hon. E. I. C. Press, 1817, p. 105.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205597, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "134 \n\nJ. NACKEN \n\nanswer the purpose. The diamond gimlet especially is a treasure which is not known in Europe. Besides glass and China this simple looking spectacled old man will repair foreign umbrellas, clasps, and hinges, and mark China-ware. Another carries women's toilet boxes with him, which he exchanges for old ones if they are past mending. A third sharpens razors and whets scissors; then come the travelling smith, the cobbler, the tinker; one who hoops tubs and basins, and finally the repairer of mats.\n\nIn passing we may notice the familiar warning cry of our chairbearers 'Mái 'pin* “step aside,” and of the coolies in carrying loads 'T'ai keuk† or 'Hoi lot “look to your footing,” \"clear the road!” and then pass on to hear a few cries in connection with idolatry. Here is the hawker of joss paper, of incense sticks and of candles; there is a table, a chair and a picture of a man's head; a shrewd looking Chinaman has a crowd of eager listeners gathered around him, whilst with his persuasive tongue he tells his fortune to the one who for a few cash has engaged his services. He is a sort of phrenologist. His brother fortune-teller who has his stand at the next corner pretends to read a future happy fate by the lines of his customer's hand. Sometimes you may see an elderly woman with an open umbrella pacing along the sidewalk. Sün meng§ she calls out into the houses. Her prophesying apparatus consists of two tortoise shells. A happy day for a family festival or a felicitous name for a child she is sure to find. And if a child be sick she knows that the little one's spirit has been frightened away by a cat or a dog or something else. She will bargain for some twenty cash, take the child's jacket, light a fire in the street and call the frightened spirit back. After the jacket has been put on the child, the spirit is supposed to have taken up again its former abode within;\n\nand our last street crier walks on.\n\n**\n\n埋邊\n\n千睇脚\n\nL\n\nI BALAS\n\n§ to calculate destinies.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205649, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "186\n\nGILES, Herbert A.\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nChina and the Manchus. Cambridge, University Press, 1912. (Cambridge manuals of science and literature).\n\nGILES, Lionel.\n\nA gallery of Chinese immortals; selected biographies translated from Chinese sources. London, Murray, 1948.\n\nGODMAN, A., ed.\n\nThe attainment and ability of Hong Kong primary IV pupils: a first study. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964.\n\nGOODRICH, L. Carrington.\n\nA short history of the Chinese people. 2nd ed. London, Allen & Unwin, 1957 reprinted 1962.\n\nGRAHAM, Dorothy.\n\nThrough the moon door: the experiences of an American resident in Peking. New York, Sears, 1926.\n\nGRATTON, Henry Pearson, ed.\n\nAs a Chinaman saw us: passages from his letters to a friend at home. New York, Appleton, 1904 reprinted 1916.\n\nGRAY, Terence James Standus.\n\nAll else is bondage: non-volitional living [by] Wei Wu Wei [pseud.] Hong Kong, University Press, 1964.\n\nGRAY, Terence James Stannus.\n\nOpen secret [by] Wei Wu Wei [pseud.] Hong Kong, University Press, 1965.\n\nGRAY, Terence John Stannus.\n\nThe tenth man: the great joke (which made Lazarus laugh) [by] Wei Wu Wei [pseud.] Hong Kong, University Press, 1966.\n\nGRIFFIS, William Elliot.\n\nChina's story, in myth, legend, art and annals. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1901.\n\nGRUNWEDEL, Albert.\n\nMythologie du Buddhisme au Tibet et en Mongolie, basée sur la collection lamaïque du Prince Oukhtomsky. Traduit de l'allemand par Ivan Goldschmidt. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1900.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206538, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "80\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\n8 E. T. C. Werner, Autumn Leaves: An Autobiography, Shanghai, 1928, pp. 487-8. Werner, a student interpreter, studied Chinese in Peking in 1884. With him were two Hong Kong cadets -- Henry Francis May and Thomas Sercombe Smith. May became Governor of Hong Kong and Smith Puisne Judge in the Straits Settlements.\n\n6 E. H. Parker, John Chinaman and a Few Others, London, 1903, p. 210.\n\n7 Ibid., p. 211.\n\n8 Lockhart's preface to A Manual of Chinese Quotations, 1st edition, 1893, p. iii. Lockhart also states: 'my attention was first called to the Ch'êng Yu Kao by my late teacher Mr. Ou-yang Hui.... I commenced to translate it under his guidance.'\n\n9 A report of Ho Kai's speech is given in one of a series of articles called Old Hong Kong by 'Colonial', published by the South China Morning Post (June 17, 1933-April 13, 1935). Mimeographed copy, University of Hong Kong Library,\n\n10 See, for example, T. O. Ranger, ‘African Reactions to the Imposition of Colonial Rule in East and Central Africa', in L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan (eds.), Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960, Cambridge, England, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 293-324; Lord Hailey, An African Survey, 2nd edition, London, 1945, pp. 527-8; and also J. D. Legge, Britain in Fiji 1858-1880, London, 1958, especially his ch. ix, 'Native Authority Systems'.\n\n11 For a more detailed account of Lockhart's design see my article, \"The District Watch Committee: \"The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xi, 1971, pp. 116-141.\n\n12 Hong Kong Sessional Papers (cited henceforth as Sessional Papers), no. 26 of 1896, pp. 425-427.\n\n13 T. H. Whitehead (1851-1933). See obituaries in the Times of 17 May, 1933, and in the South China Morning Post of 18 May, 1933. He was from 1883 to 1902 manager of the Hong Kong office of the Chartered Bank. Whitehead, a great imperialist, was a member of the Royal Empire Society, the Fellowship of the British Empire, and the China Association. The Times speaks of him as a typical Scot, of rugged energy and determination, and of great intellectual force.... In the domestic politics of Hong Kong Colony he took an active, not to say aggressive part.... In his retirement he was active in promoting emigration to the Empire, especially of boy scouts.\n\n14 Sessional Papers, no. 26 of 1896, p. 431.\n\n15 Ibid., p. 428.\n\n16 Ibid., p. 429.\n\n17 Most of the clerks in the Registrar General's Office were recruited from Queen's College. 'In March 1900, at the Queen's College Prize Giving, the Hon. Stewart Lockhart, C.M.G., said: \"I do not know what the Government would have done if it had not had the College to turn to when it wanted a staff at work in the New Territory, and I cannot give them any higher praise than to say they are carrying on their duties in a manner worthy of the College in which they received their education.\" See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College, 1862-1962, Hong Kong, 1962, p. 66.\n\n18 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit. vol. 2, p. 461.\n\n+3\n\n19 See 'Extracts from a Report from Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 9 of 1899.\n\n20 Ibid., p. 198.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206617, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n159\n\nforces during hostilities against China to settle and allotted them small lots on the waterfront. The Upper Bazaar which lay in the area of Graham and Stanley Streets consisted also of relatively small areas granted to Chinese who were presumptively useful to the nascent colony as tradesmen. The Lower Bazaar was almost totally destroyed in the great fire at the end of 1851 and the Upper Bazaar was removed in 1844 and its inhabitants resettled in Taipingshan.\n\n3 See Gordon to Pottinger, 10 February 1844 [CO129/V/f.141].\n\n+ Evidence given by Colonel Malcolm to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commercial Relations with China, answer to question 4633.\n\n5 Davis sought to let as many monopolies go as possible to private individuals for what they were prepared to give. Thus, in addition to the markets, he let out also opium, salt, and quarrying monopolies.\n\n6 Lease Register Volume C, f.94. The lot was leased as Marine Lot 38. The lease registers referred to are the Registers of the Land Office in which all dealings in crown land were recorded. The actual transactions themselves are also recorded separately as 'Memorials' and reference is made to them by number. The numbering was done according to the order in which they were registered. I am indebted to the Registrar General of the Government of Hong Kong for allowing me access to the records of the Land Office and for permission to publish material derived from that source.\n\n7 Memorial 122.\n\n8 Memorial 143.\n\n9 Memorial 258.\n\n10 Friend of China, 7 July 1847.\n\n11 Memorial 383.\n\n12 In this article, the romanisations found in the Land Office records are used even where they do not correspond to those either in the Wade-Giles system or current usage.\n\n13 Memorial 304.\n\n14 Ibid.\n\n15 Memorial 345.\n\n16 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n17 Friend of China, 14 July 1847.\n\n18 And in so doing, incidentally, infringing the provision of the Treaty of Nanking, 1842, which allowed British subjects to proceed only to the \"Treaty Ports\" and to nowhere else in China.\n\n19 Friend of China, 14 July 1847. Tam Achoy's market was known as the Kwang Yuen and in the disastrous fire in December 1851, the fifty-one houses which comprised the market were destroyed: see Hong Kong Register, January 1852. Tam was referred to a few years later as the \"most respectable Chinaman\" who made a practice of going into the witness box to speak for the character of accused persons. He remained in Hong Kong until his death in the 1870's and was one of the founders of the Tung Wah organisation, a charitable body still functioning in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Hong Kong Register, 27 July 1847.\n\n21 Hong Kong Register, 19 October 1847; Friend of China, 23 October 1847 and 18 December 1847.\n\n22 The Editor of the Friend (John Carr) claimed to have seen Hwei's accounts and that they revealed the \"squeeze\" payment.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206881, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe making of verses was a gentlemanly pursuit in early Victorian days, encouraged of course by the system of classical education which emphasised translation from Latin and Greek and hence a detailed knowledge of the rules—or mechanics—of prosody. Mercer received such a traditional education: he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a B.A. degree, and for a time was at the Inner Temple, though he did not take the Bar examination. When he came to Hong Kong as his uncle's private secretary, he sought solace from the chores of day-to-day colonial administration in his poetic exercises and the result was Under the Peak.\n\nThere are five poems in this book—‘a string of sonnets’—which refer specifically to Hong Kong. They are, respectively: The Peak; The Bay; The Triads' Cave; The Water Fall; The Temple on Taplichow; The Pic Nic Cottage at Heong-Kong; and The Chinaman's Grave on the Lonely Hill Side. According to Mercer's note on the poem, The Triads' Cave, ‘a cavern romantically situated, has now disappeared before the utilitarian demand for granite. It was long the chosen resort of the members of the infamous San hop hwai, or Triad Society', where:\n\nThe robber horde oath-bound to mutual aid\n\nWould plan foul murder and unpitying raid\n\nO'er midnight counsel in their secret den?\n\nThe gem among these sonnets is without doubt The Chinaman's Grave, and should be given in extenso:\n\nOh Chow, or Wong! or by whatever name\n\nMen call'd thee, or the Gods may call thee now,\n\nWhy so extravagantly vast thy claim\n\nTo mortuary earth upon the brow\n\nOf yon fair hill? If all men spread as thou\n\nNo room for things created would be found\n\nThroughout the Seric land, but all the ground\n\nWould teem with graves, and well might it be said\n\nThat living ones were push'd from off their stools\n\nBy men all useless, now that they are dead\n\nAnd vanish'd. Did Confucius leave no rules\n\nTo bind a soul's ambition by the tomb?\n\nThen let survivors show themselves no fools,\n\nBut dig thy bones up to make elbow-room", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206973, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "38 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nsize—we hear the gong, and set off along its passages into the dining room. It is a regular hall, 50 or 60 yards long. The far side is broken by a row of French windows opening on to the stone verandah, which looks out over the harbour. A double row of great white punkahs, down the whole length of the place, swing slowly. The bright blazing sunshine outside is tempered by green blinds, let down over the arches of the verandah. Thirty or forty Chinese \"boys\" in complete and flowing white, keep up a perpetual come and go in their attendance on the tables. These suitably imposing surroundings became the setting for Mayréna's Hong Kong adventure.\n\nMayréna, the China Mail animadverted, ‘from an ardent pietist became a man of the world... He became an admirer of the opera and with royal prodigality distributed tickets to his friends'. The 'Queen' with her dames d'honneur were welcomed frequently at the Hotel, the 'Queen' arriving in a chair with four bearers, draped in regal sashes. Hong Kong, of course, was electrified by Mayréna's theatrical coups; but money was not forthcoming from the amused public. J.J. Francis, for example, was almost persuaded to finance a company for the working of the new kingdom but at the last moment backed out; other astute European businessmen refused to invest. But the King continued to make friends, to enchant his visitors, and to hold nightly revels in the public rooms and tap-rooms of the Hotel. After all, Mayréna, a great showman, provided splendid entertainment for a dull little Colony, accustomed to a stale diet of 'At Homes' and stodgy dinner-parties.\n\nUnluckily, Mayréna's waking hours were dogged by one Afong, a Chinese shopkeeper from Haiphong, who had supplied a large number of uniforms for the King's warrior hosts and had come to Hong Kong to present his bill. The jaunty Mayréna at first ‘gave it out that the Chinaman was a member of a syndicate that wished to advance him money; but as this story would hardly hold for long, the Chinaman was finally appeased'. It soon became clear, then, that Mayréna was not a man of substance, that his schemes were insubstantial, and that he was simply an amusing adventurer, good for a convivial debauch but hardly a sound partner in any serious business venture.\n\nIt was, however, the editor of the China Mail, George Murray Bain, who really brought about Mayréna's downfall by a systema-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207352, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "112\n\n10 Ibid., p. 31.\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\n11 Fifty Years of Progress: The Jubilee of Hongkong as a British Crown Colony, Hong Kong, Daily Press Office, 1891, p. 43.\n\n12 J. S. Thomson, op. cit., p. 8.\n\n13 Ibid., p. 54.\n\n14 Allister Macmillan, ed., Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 340.\n\n15 Information about Bridget Montague is to be found in contemporary Hong Kong newspapers and the Report on the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (see note 5).\n\n16 Alfred Weatherhead, Life in Hong Kong: 1856-1859. Typescript in the Library of the University of Hong Kong.\n\n17 W. A. Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle, London, 1885, p. 185.\n\n18 Capt. Gordon Casserly, The Land of the Boxers, London, 1903, p. 193.\n\n19 John Thomson, F.R.G.S., The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China, London, 1875, pp. 192-3.\n\n20 J. A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China, London (1894), pp. 108-9.\n\n21 See China Station 1859-1864: The Reminiscences of Walter White, London, National Maritime Museum, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No. 3, 1972.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 27.\n\n23 Major Henry Knollys, English Life in China, London, 1885, pp. 56-7.\n\n24 'Report of the Commission on Alcoholic Liquors', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1898, p. 1.\n\n25 E. J. Eitel, \"Treatment of Paupers in Hong Kong', Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1880, p. 470.\n\n26 Ibid., p. 469.\n\n27 The Kowloon British School was opened in 1902; before that some girls were educated at convent schools in Macau.\n\n28 Marjorie Topley, 'The Role of Savings and Wealth among Hong Kong Chinese', in L. C. Jarvie, ed., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 193.\n\n29 J. Thomson, op. cit., pp. 203 and 208.\n\n30 L. N. Wheeler, The Foreigner in China, Chicago, 1881, p. 242.\n\n31 Rev. E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London, n.d., p. 29.\n\n32 Leon Radzinowicz, Ideology and Crime, London, 1966, p. 38.\n\n33 Allister Macmillan, op. cit., p. 339.\n\n34 Op. cit., p. 151.\n\n35 Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, 1917, p. 437.\n\n36 W. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay, New York, 1900, p. 24.\n\n37 L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes, London, 1931, p. 151.\n\n38 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, 1958, p. 186.\n\n39 Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, London, 1908, p. 341.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207757, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "130\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\n4 London Missionary Society Archives, London, England (hereafter given as L.M.S.A.), South China Box 5, Folder 3, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 26 Sept., 1853, and Jacket D, Yearly Report of the Hong Kong Mission, 25 Jan., 1854. For a brief notice of Keuh A-gong see my article, \"A Register of Baptized Protestant Chinese 1813-1842, Chung Chi Bulletin, No. 48 (Dec., 1970), p. 24. For Ng Mun-sow see my article, \"Dr. Legge's Theological School\", ibid, No. 50 (June, 1971), pp. 16-22.\n\n5 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 28 Jan., 1869, and Folder 1, Jacket A, letter of Wong Foon, 8 May, 1857. Another missionary estimate of Hung Jen-kan is the testimonial the Rev. John Chalmers sent to the Rev. Rudolph Lechler, Basel Missionary Society Archives (hereafter given as B.M.S.A.), Vol. IV, 1857-1862, letter dated, London Mission House, Hong Kong, 24 Dec., 1857: “I have great pleasure in giving my testimony to the Christian character of Hung Jin, the relative of Hung Sew Tauen, who, since his return from Shanghai in the year 1854, has been in the employment of our mission; first as a Christian teacher, and afterwards as a preacher and assistant missionary. His general behaviour has been such as becomes the Gospel; the work which we have given him to do, he has always executed to our satisfaction and not only so, but his zeal for the promotion of the cause of Christ has been marked. He is a young man of superior abilities, and I hope he may yet be honoured to labour successfully in the preaching of the gospel to his countrymen for many years.\n\n6 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket B, letter of Chalmers, 5 June, 1858.\n\n7 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket C, letter of Legge and Chalmers, 11 Jan., 1859, with enclosure of translation of letter of Hung Jan: \"Translation of Hung Jan's last letter, sent from Shanghai by Mr. Muirhead, who received it from a Chinaman who had been with Lord Elgin's expedition up the Yangtze. He wrote in 170 or 180 miles on that river below Hankow.\" Letters from \"Shau Kwan, Nan Gan [both on the north boundary of Kwangtung], one from the capital of Keangse, one from imperialist camp at Yaou Chow [in north of Keangse]\" are mentioned as having been written by Hung Jen-kan.\n\n8 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 2, Jacket C, letter of Legge, 24 Aug., 1860, and Folder 3, Jacket B, letter of Legge, 14 Jan., 1861.\n\n9 L.M.S.A., South China, Box 6, Folder 1, Jacket A, letter of Legge and Chalmers, 14 Jan., 1857.\n\n10 L.M.S.A., Legge Family Papers, letter of 28 Mar., 1861 and 24 Mar., 1871.\n\n11 For identification of Hung K'uei Hsiu see Jen (Chien) Yu-wan “**太平£Ø*^£$*M”, (Record of Visit with Descendants of the Taiping Hung Family) ***@** (Taiping Kingdom Miscellany), No. 4, and * Lo Hsiang-lin, (Historical Sources for the Study of the Hakkas), (Hong Kong, 1965), p. 409,\n\n12 B.M.S.A., Hong Kong School Report, 14 Feb. 1875, \"Teacher Schui Thin will shortly change places with Fung Khui-syu in Tschong Hang Kang, because the last as a son of a Tai Ping Rebellion King, cannot stay anymore in the mainland without danger to the life of himself and family.\"\n\n13 B.M.S.A., Hong Kong School Report, 16 Apr. 1873, and Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Jan., 1866, letter of Lechler, 2 Oct, 1865.\n\n14 B.M.S.A., Chinese Mission Yearly Report 1885. The ship Dartmouth left Hong Kong 25 Dec., 1878 and arrived at Georgetown, British Guiana on 17 Mar., 1879. Among its 516 emigrants were seventy Christians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207900, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n273 \n\njudging a Chinaman's respectability. Hence it regards the Committee as a mouth piece of the people\". However, rabid critics of the Committee in the foreign population claimed membership on the Committee did not necessarily confer respectability or responsibility. It was claimed that \"it is undignified on the part of the Government to treat with the often illiterate managers of a Hospital fund as if they possessed official powers over their fellow countrymen\". (C.M. Dec. 3, 1875). The Governor Sir Arthur Kennedy was charged with extending to \"men whose positions were of the humblest nature, a sort of patronage which vastly inflated their self-conceit.\" (C.M. Nov. 8, 1875). \n\nThese criticisms, however, in no way affected the prestige status given to the Tung Wah Directors by the Chinese community. It recognized the men it elected as those who had fulfilled the achievement standards accepted by the community, \n\nIn time the exclusive prestige value of the Committee was diminished by Government appointment of Chinese representatives on the Legislative Council and the reorganization of the District Watchmen's Committee into a status group. See H.J. Lethbridge, \"The District Watch Committee: \"The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong'\", JHKBRAS 11 (1971), pp. 116-141. \n\nThe Tung Wah Committee became responsible on behalf of the Chinese Community for being host to visiting Chinese high officials. A number of the Directors had themselves acquired an imperial degree and hence were of a sufficiently elevated rank to mix socially with their guests. Several of the Directors later entered Chinese government service holding office in the diplomatic corps. \n\nYou will note in some of the museum's old photographs of the Tung Wah functions and in the reproduction of the pictures of the first Committee members that some are dressed in Mandarin costume, wearing the feathers and buttons of the appropriate degree. These they had purchased rather than earned through the literary examination system. Sometime the degree was awarded in recognition of some particularly generous contribution for the welfare of the people of China. Whatever the reason for the degree its recipient was given social deference. Those who had acquired such honours conferred status upon the Tung Wah Committee as a group. \n\nThough in Hong Kong today the Tung Wah Hospital Directorship is not so exclusively the status group of the Chinese community, it is still recognized as a mark of achievement to be sought after.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208152, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n175\n\nVisitors\n\n20. Mountains have always been favoured retreats, especially in the South. Herbert Giles wrote in 1911:\n\nMonasteries are built high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their funds by so doing. (Giles 1911: 9)\n\nIt seems that rich merchants from Hong Kong were among their number and have long been accustomed to take their ease, and perhaps salve their conscience, there. For 19th century examples reported by European travellers see Henry 1886:320, and Bourne (1895) who reported the death at one of these places of 'Lo Hok-pang, late Compradore of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank' (p. 35).\n\n21. The monasteries of Tai Mo Shan long benefitted from a similar connection. It is clear from the large buildings that have been erected before and after the Pacific War 1941-1945—in one case they include a splendid air-conditioned lecture hall—that they draw at least part of their financial support from a number of wealthy patrons; although the post-war urbanization of Tsuen Wan has probably reduced their attraction as places of refuge from the heat and bustle of the world.\n\n22. Over many years, such persons from Hong Kong, having no local connection other than an existing or sought-after grave for members of their family or even for themselves, have traversed the mountain's sides with geomancers and finally settled for good locations. Here a splendid grave has been constructed, and sometimes a pavilion also where the family can rest and eat during the arduous visits in successive grave worshipping seasons. In some cases only an empty grave and a ruined pavilion remain, showing that the descendants, concerned over business failures and reversals of family fortunes, have taken up the remains and placed them elsewhere, despite the heavy initial and subsequent cost necessitated by feeing the geomancer(s) and hiring mountain chairs for the party, and paying local labour to carry the construction materials.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208803, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n233\n\nview, states \"this volume will occupy an essential place . . . . in any library claiming to cover the affairs of the Far East in general and those of south-east Asia in particular\". He adds that it is “much more than a tale of crime. It touches unceasingly, and sometimes commandingly, the everyday life's economic activities and official governments of the Chinese population, incidentally throwing sharp lights and shades on the character, social organization, and politics of the Chinese A vivid piece of research not....\n\ndead history + 抒 + + a scrap of\n\nI am not an expert on secret societies, nor have much to offer by way of useful comment on the modern period of the book, but I am most impressed with the account given of Chinese associations in the early period of Chinese immigration and the reaction of the British Colonial authorities to the problems encountered in their train. They were dealing with an enigma and found it difficult to separate the clearly often respectable side of Chinese associations from the secret society or criminal aspect. Where they could be separated (which was not always the case) each type of society had yet come together for mutual self-help. Even the most criminal retained this feature which was so important and continuing a part of the movement. For me, interested in the association side of Chinese life at home and abroad — where, it is necessary to remind oneself, it had initially to operate against a background of all-male life in one or more alien cultures and a different climate — this confusion, the variety across the spectrum and the wealth of material provided in the book are more fascinating than the criminal involvement of certain societies and their leaders at different times.*\n\n* This confusion was noted by others in touch with Chinese in Colonial Society at the time. In this connection, the following extract from a work by an English Presbyterian missionary in Singapore (Archibald Lamont writing under the pseudonym \"John Coming Chinaman\" in Bright Celestials, The Chinaman of Home and Abroad (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1894)) may be of interest. At pp. 183-184 he relates a conversation by his hero, a Chinese emigrant who is discussing a secret society with his employer, a Dutch planter in the East Indies.\n\n'But although our Society has its dangerous and unworthy subsections and cliques, comprising men who use Society privileges for selfish and criminal ends,' said Tek Chiu, ‘our real aims are the highest and the best. And although there are bad men in our membership, the loyalty that we owe to the Society becomes all the greater. We who are free from crime act as a conscience to the blackguards, who, however bad they may be, will on account of the oath that binds them, do us no wrong. And on the other hand, we may do them much good in dissuading them from evil courses.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "234\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIn providing this detailed and thoughtful account, the writer has done an immense service to the present governments of Malaya and Singapore — indeed of the region — as well as to students of Chinese society old and new. It is of greater value because of his own personal involvement in the business of government and in the fact that, as stated in his preface (p. xiii), he had the enthusiastic support of police officers of all ranks and officers of the Chinese Affairs Department throughout Malaya and Singapore who conducted enquiries, collected information and translated documents. It is doubtful whether this work could be done again — it is mentioned that many of the police documents of the last colonial period have been destroyed and we should be deeply thankful that Blythe was available to undertake it at the time he did.\n\nT\n\nThe book is well produced, on good quality paper with solid binding and clear large type. The 18 illustrations are as notable as the contents.\n\nHong Kong, May, 1980.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n'Friendly Societies are very good,' said Mr. Van Dyke. “But I am referring to secret and dangerous Societies.\"\n\n'These qualifying names are purely arbitrary,' said Tek Chiu. “All Chinese Societies are professedly good, and they, all of them, are just what members choose to make them. There is no fixed principle according to which you can draw a distinction between those that are exclusively benevolent and friendly, and those that you call secret and dangerous societies.'\n\n'Is the Broken Coffin Society entitled to be called friendly, or is it justly designated secret and dangerous?'\n\n'It is justly designated secret and dangerous. It is the fault of our Triad Society, certainly, that such a dangerous and criminal clique is not exterminated at once. Such bad sets of men are like bad teeth that ought to be pulled out. But because a man has a bad tooth in his head, he should not be prohibited from eating.\"\n\nLamont continues: A Chinaman is a social being—a tool rather than a member of his community. If he were to cease living a social life, he would cease to be a Chinaman. The Chinaman abroad lives a large part of his being in the 'hoey. The hoey unites men more closely even than the sons of one father in a family. So powerful is the bond of this Freemasonry of China, that if two brothers in a family belong to different hoeys their relationship in such a set of circumstances is more distant than is that which subsists between those members of one hoey who are not relatives in the ordinary sense at all.\n\nTek Chiu's view, that Chinese societies are what members choose to make them, can also be found in Leong Gor Yun's Chinatown Inside Out (New York: Barrows Mussey, 1936), especially Chapter Two.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "189\n\nIt was not only the pious part of the community in San Francisco that noted the arrival of A-chick in 1852. His appearance brought forth press comment. He did not fit the general stereotype of the Chinese immigrant. The Alta California in May, 1852, headed an article: “An Educated Celestial.\" It began with the statement: \"A well-educated and intelligent Chinaman is a being rarely met with in this country, although the Chinese population is so large.\n\nThe article then mentioned the occasion on which A-chick attracted public notice and proceeded to introduce him to the reader.\n\nHis advent in California was important because of his fluency in English. The courts in San Francisco faced much the same problem as those in Hongkong in dealing with cases involving Chinese. There was no proper interpretation of evidence.\n\nThe paper noted: \"A great deal of difficulty has been occasioned by the want of a good interpreter and in many cases in which celestials were parties, it has been impossible to elicit the facts, for want of a person who is well versed in the language.”\n\nSuddenly A-chick appeared in court, an object of surprise and amazement, “speaking our language with remarkable correctness and fluency, and exhibiting the marks of a highly polished and refined education,”\n\nThe reason for his presence in court was the belligerent threats of one Mr. Simmons against him and a companion. Mr. Simmons had threatened “to stave in their heads and pull their pig tails out by the roots.\" The incident reflected the hostile treatment frequently experienced by a Chinese in those days.\n\nBut in A-chick Mr. Simmons had dealings with no ordinary Chinese. Knowing the workings of the law by reason of his employment in the Hongkong courts before coming to California, he was not to submit meekly to such bullying. He asked the court for an order against Mr. Simmons. In defence, Mr. Simmons said he had used abusive language because the two Chinese had been rude.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210859, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "193\n\nUS$3 a month on all non-American miners. The Chinese believed the legislature \"had spoken wisely. The Chinamen love to labour, but hate to fight. We will pay the tax willingly.\"\n\nAmerican xenophobia produced the charge that the Chinese were exporting vast amounts of gold. They replied: \"Why then is it that the Chinaman is so prosperous in this country? Because as we have told your Excellency before, he (the Chinaman) does not drink, gamble, or idle, or spend his money foolishly. Because he is thinking of his parents and his children, and the future, and works hard and saves what he makes.\" Perhaps a somewhat idealised version of Chinese life in California, but certainly it contained a degree of truth.\n\nThe letter also pointed out that mutual interchange would be beneficial to both Americans and Chinese. \"Our intercourse may benefit us both very much, and that will be better than quarrelling about our respective merits. Why should East quarrel with the West? God made them both, and placed the day between them, that the nations should use it in doing good works to one another.\"\n\nThe letter was signed by Tong K. A-chick of the Tun Wo company and Chun A-ching of the Sam Wo Company. Though the writer is not named it was probably composed by A-chick. Some of the sentiments, particularly those last quoted, reflected his missionary education.\n\nSeveral bills were introduced in the legislature in 1853 proposing that “no Asiatic or person of Asiatic descent or Chinese should be permitted to work in any mine in this state.\" The heads of the four Chinese associations testified at the hearings for the bills. Tong A-chick acted as their interpreter and presented the Chinese position.\n\nThe Rev. Mr. Speer remarks on the good work done by A-chick as the representative of the Chinese. \"This is the individual whose efforts on behalf of his countrymen were the chief means in turning the tide of public opinion in their favour, when those unfriendly to them made the attempt to expel them from the country. And if he remains here, there is no man whose influence will be more\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210893, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "227\n\nThe whole matter was one that was not really for public discussion and the chairman suggested it be dealt with by the Standing Committee of the chamber. After some discussion this mode of dealing with the matter was approved.\n\nHo A-mei may have been a little bold in speaking up at his first meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, but he was not one to shrink from expressing his opinions. His outspokenness received the approval of the press, which in its comments on the emigration resolution said: \"It was a novelty that it was put forward, not without ability, fluency and clearness by a Chinaman. The fact is reassuring, as an indication of the interest in public events which is being developed amongst the Chinese.\"\n\nHo A-mei, as \"a Chinaman,\" was to speak out about public questions on many other occasions.\n\nHO DABBLES IN THE REALTY BUSINESS\n\nHo A-mei's link with the distant past of Hongkong was a housing scheme he was promoting in 1895. The scheme was financed by the wealthy Li Sing family of Hongkong. They had purchased through a Hongkong-based company, Fuk Tin, the remaining rights of the Tang clan in the area between Laichikok and Shamshuipo. There are also references to the Fung Fuk and Tin Fuk firms in connection with the deal.\n\nThe Tang's claim to the land extended back many centuries, most likely to the Sung dynasty, when members of the family first came into the region. There is well-substantiated evidence that the family once owned Hongkong Island, British Kowloon, much of New Kowloon, Tsing Yi Island and a substantial part of the New Territories.\n\nThe original grant had been broken up through the centuries. It was divided among various branches of the clan, portions had been sold outright to others, certain tracts had been perpetually leased with the Tangs retaining their right to annual payments.\n\nThe Tang family received no compensation for their claim for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210902, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "236\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nan population towards him.\n\nThis hostility surfaced publicly in the convening of a meeting in 1878 to pass resolutions regarding the increase of crime. It was this meeting that provided an opportunity for Ho A-mei to place himself before the public through a letter he sent to the newspaper setting forth the Chinese side of the events which took place at the meeting.\n\nIn due time, we shall discuss this, but first as a general background for all A-mei's public activities, we might refer further to the letter of \"Chinese\" we previously quoted. The writer possibly might have been Ho A-mei himself, though his practice seems to have been to sign his own name to public letters. He was not the kind of person to hide his opinions behind a pen-name.\n\n\"Chinese\" maintained that the situation at the time he was writing (1878) was not quite as bad as he had described. There had been some changes of late years, for \"we are not handled so roughly as before.\"\n\nHe thought the changes were brought about by discussion in the press of the place of the Chinese in the Hongkong community and a growing sense of justice and fairplay displayed by government officials in their treatment of the Chinese.\n\nSuddenly, however, Chinese hopes for more improvements were given a dash of cold water by the remarks of Mr. Lowcock, an Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council.\n\nDuring a debate on the appointment of a Chinese as interpreter to the Governor and Colonial Secretary, he had said that “it would be almost dangerous for a Chinese to hold a confidential position.\" The \"Chinese\" writing the letter interpreted this to mean: \"We Chinese, without one exception, are all treacherous and dangerous.”\n\nThere was for him, however, one bright feature. Governor Hennessy had defended Chinese integrity. His Excellency observed: \"I should be very sorry, if because he is a Chinaman, a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210903, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "237\n\nChinaman living in his Colony who has become quite an Anglo-Chinese, it should be said to him, 'No', because you are a Chinaman, no matter how well you know English, you must take service under the Chinese Government... It was your misfortune to be born a Chinese.”\n\nThese sentiments were not welcomed by the majority of the foreign community. \"Truth,\" in replying to the letter written by “Chinese,” reminded the community that the Government was being paid by British taxpayers \"to represent British Imperial interest, not as your correspondent truly remarks, as a Chinese representative or to look at affairs from a Chinese point of view.”\n\nFrom the distance of years and changed attitudes, the Governor's remarks seem eminently fair and appropriate. But before they could be regarded as such the Chinese had to play a careful game, and the European community generally resisted any accommodation.\n\nThe European, though at the top of the heap, felt insecure and frightened. He was always suspecting some nefarious conspiracy was at work to topple him.\n\n“Truth” reflects this when he remarks on “the lengths to which a Chinaman will go, the stratagems to which he will resort, to cause injury to his opponents and the sleuth-hound like pertinacity with which he watches his every business and concern in order that he may cause him loss of name or money.”\n\nThere was always the fear the Chinese resident in Hongkong would be “got at\" by someone who would prod or intimidate him to challenge the position the foreigner had carved out for himself in China.\n\nWith this brief review of some of the tensions between the Chinese and foreign population in Hongkong, we can better understand the events of the public meeting of October 1878, and the activity of Ho A-mei as a public figure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210905, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 256, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "239\n\nChinese should have a more consultative role in government, class legislation should be abolished and Chinese leadership should be encouraged.\n\nThe Chinese feared the public meeting would be manipulated to openly condemn Sir John and thus impede the implementation of his policy. The anti-Hennessy group feared the Chinese would vote en bloc to frustrate their intended objective for the meeting.\n\nIn this atmosphere of mutual distrust it was inevitable the meeting would encounter difficulties unless handled in a fair and diplomatic manner. This did not happen, and the meeting deepened the mistrust between the two sides.\n\nThe affair aroused a great amount of newspaper comment. Ho A-mei presented the Chinese version in an attempt to balance that given by the colonialists. As an early presentation of the Chinese side of an issue appearing in the English language press it is worth quoting in full. It was published in the October 16, 1878 issue of the Daily Press.\n\nHo A-mei wrote: \"I would like to say a few words on the treatment I and the large number of Chinese received who were present at the public meeting on October 7.\n\n\"I wish also to point out that the Chinese who were there were not, as some people have said, ‘shop coolies’ and the like, but that nearly all of them belonged to the better classes and those who have large stakes in the welfare of the colony.\n\n\"On Europeans finding the City Hall nearly filled with Chinese, some of them called out ‘d...d Chinaman, turn them out’. I then heard some say, ‘Let us have the meeting elsewhere to prevent the Chinese coming’. After being formally opened, it moved to open air. There was a general struggle to get to the cricket ground and when we (Chinese) arrived there, we found a ring already formed of foreigners.\n\n\"Some of us attempted to get into the ring, but were roughly handled and pushed back. The promoters of the meeting were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210909, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "243\n\nAfter this complication was dealt with, a vote was called on Francis' amendment. Only the proposer and seconder voted for it. Then the original resolution was put to the meeting. To this there was one additional opposition vote; all others voted for it.\n\nAt this point, Ng Choy, speaking for the Chinese, called out: \"The Chinese cannot hear what is going on.” To which the chairman replied: \"Why do they not come forward? We must go on with the meeting,” ignoring the fact that there was no room for anyone to come forward.\n\nNg Choy then asked for the resolution to be put again. Again he was rebuffed, the chairman replying: \"I cannot put up a resolution which has been carried; we must go on with the meeting.\"\n\n\"It is not fair,\" protested Ng, \"the Chinese do not understand what is going on.” To which Lowcock, a member of the Legislative Council replied: “We cannot help it. I wish every Chinaman understood what was being said, but we cannot speak Chinese.”\n\nWith this the Chinese walked off the field.\n\nAfter their departure, Forbes proposed a resolution hitting more directly at the Governor's administration, stating: \"What is needed is firm and unfettered administration. Flogging in public is the only means of deterrent. It should be reinstated.'\n\n**\n\nGranville Sharp seconded the motion with a rambling, pompous and involuted speech. He thought the Chinese who had been present were not true representatives of their community. He said: \"I am able most thoroughly and heartily to protest against this party character being thrown into this loyal meeting. Gentlemen, I don't know of anyone in Hongkong who has had more to do with intelligent Chinese merchants than I up to within this day last month. I am able most thoroughly to say that resolution which was first proposed and the resolution which is now before you, have the entire and full concurrence of the most respectable and intelligent members of the Chinese community. It is quite right that in undertaking any inquiry of this kind we should guard against selfish motives.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211036, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "72\n\n40\n\nHong Kong Government Gazette, 6th May, 1899, p. 701. Mok Man Cheung's book, retailing at $8, was unusually expensive. There clearly was a market for books attempting to bridge the social and linguistic gap between the Chinese and British communities. Also in 1899, for instance, a Lo Sing-lau published his English Self Taught for Chinese at $1 per copy and this went into a second edition in 1904 and a third in 1905, 1904, the year in which Mok Man Cheung produced his English Made Easy, also witnessed the publication of Tang Chi Kun's A Step in English Tongue ($0.80),\n\n41 Letter to the Editor, signed by \"X\", Hong Kong Daily Press, Thursday, 17th January, 1901, p. 2.\n\n42 This assumption is further strengthened by the fact that he made out his will on 28th December, 1917, and that its Probate Number is No. 68 of 1918. I owe this information to Professor Dafydd Evans who also points out the relatively high proportion of \"death bed” wills among the Chinese in Hong Kong at this time. The will itself is serial no. 3135, deposit no. 4, in series 144. It confirms that one of Mok Man Cheung's aliases was Mok Cheuk Lim. An examination of the actual will shows that it was, indeed, a deathbed will and that Mok Man Cheung actually died on 30th December, 1917. The Declaration by Executor before Probate, dated 13th March, 1918, indicates that \"the whole of the personal estate of the said testator amounts in value to the sum of $21,075.53”, certainly no mean sum at the time.\n\n43\n\nThere appear to be no locally-published Chinese language newspapers extant for this period of time. Although the Wah Tsz Yat Po was certainly in operation, unfortunately there is a break in the surviving copies from 18th January, 1917 to 16th February, 1918.\n\n44 The acronym for Queen's College, which was (and is) the current name for the school Mok Man Cheung had attended as \"the Central School\".\n\n45 These are very clear and characteristic indications of his prominence in Hong Kong Chinese society. See, for example, H.J. Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Stability and Change, (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978), especially pp. 52-102, and Carl T. Smith (1985), especially pp. 139-171. Confirmatory evidence that he was a member of the Committee of the Po Leung Kuk, elected on 20th March, 1909, using his alias, Mok Yeuk Lim, is found in the Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for that year, p. C39. If one can assume that another of his aliases was Mok Yuk-chi, confirmatory evidence about his membership of the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospitals can be found in the Administrative Reports for 1913.\n\n46 Even though Mok Man Cheung was certainly successful in a material sense, his name appears neither in Arnold Wright's Twentieth Century Impressions nor in S.L. Woo, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Company, 1937) which, though written long after Mok Man Cheung's death, contained reference to several deceased merchants who had been born before 1865. Moreover, he does not appear to have been a member of the District Watch Committee, posited by Lethbridge as the Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong (Lethbridge 1978, pp. 104-129). On the other hand, Carl Smith's justly-famed index cards reveal that he was involved in many property deals and was, for example, co-proprietor, with Tang Lap Ting and Mok Kun Hiu, of the Wanchai Godown.\n\n47\n\nIn London, a Colonial Office minute in 1907, for example, declared that “I don't think that the fact that Mr. Hee has found an Englishwoman foolish enough to marry a Chinaman is an argument for increasing his salary [as Headmaster of Wanchai District School] (CO129/341, p. 342). In Hong Kong, the official defini-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211037, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "73\n\ntion of schools, contained in the Government Gazette, included: “An Upper Grade School means one in which at least part of the Staff is European. Lower Grade Schools are those under purely native management” (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30th June, 1905, p. 1023). Earlier, Bishop Hoare, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria and South China announced at the annual prize distribution of a school noted for its ethnically ‘mixed' admissions policy that he \"did not believe it was a good thing to put two races side by side in the school. He did not think they mixed. There was a gulf between the Chinaman as a Chinaman and an Englishman as an Englishman, and he did not think it was a good thing for Chinese boys to be educated side by side with English boys” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 30th January, 1901, p. 3). Amongst the largely supportive correspondence in the letters to the editor pages of the local press provoked by the report of Bishop Hoare's speech, there is a letter from a local Chinese resident, Wang Chung-yu, who argued, “Now, to exclude Chinese from certain schools means to go against the law of nature and to aggravate the hatred between Chinese and foreigners.... My experience goes to show that, as a rule, European boys in school generally depreciate things Chinese, and therefore there is no need to fear that European boys may learn any bad method of thinking peculiar to the Chinese.” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 7th February, 1901, p. 3).\n\n48 Sweeting (1983), p. 274.\n\n49 Despite the lack of warmth and closeness in the personal and social relations between the two communities, there was, in a sense, a reciprocal interest by certain Westerners for \"Things Chinese\". This interest was largely intellectual (anthropological and literary) and is, perhaps, best exemplified by Dyer Ball's large publication, which in later editions became increasingly larger, actually entitled Things Chinese. See the Introduction and Prefaces of J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press reprint, with Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge, 1982 of the 5th Edition revised by E. Chalmers Werner, 1925). Interestingly enough, Dyer Ball also published a book entitled Cantonese Made Easy, which by 1904 had reached its 3rd Edition.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211093, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "129\n\nand the perfect security they enjoy.”\n\nIn his opinion, Hongkong led the Empire in its fair treatment of a subject people. \"There is probably no possession in the whole world,\" he affirmed, “where so great an amount of freedom, compatible with safety and good government is enjoyed by a protected race.\n\n19\n\nThe editor also contended that \"the night pass system received the support of the well-disposed among the Chinese as well as the approval of the foreign community generally; and those enactments which may be said to owe their origin to the presence of the most ignorant mass of the native population there being no such class to legislate for among the foreigners cannot be regarded as 'class legislation' in any objectionable sense.\n\n—\n\nA European who signed himself “Sinensis” took exception to the opinion of the editor. In his view, it was indeed class legislation and, therefore, objectionable. He had been discussing the matter with a number of important Chinese and they shared his opinions.\n\nHe touched a sore spot in the relation between foreigners and Chinese when he wrote: \"I notice several letters have appeared in the Mail animadverting the conduct of our new Governor for being disposed to initiate a more liberal policy toward the Chinese, I am not surprised at this. It is the natural fear of a 'superior race' who do not wish to see the natives placed on a level with them.\"\n\nHe encouraged Governor Hennessy to remain true to his liberal convictions. “I trust, however, His Excellency will not be swayed by such remarks, but carry out his policy according to his best judgments.\"\n\nThe position of \"Sinensis\" was supported by a long letter on \"Flogging and Class Legislation\" by \"A Chinaman.\" The detailed knowledge of the laws of Hongkong and their implications indicate that the writer must have been the English-trained barrister Ng Choy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211101, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "137\n\npublic meetings, fomenting agitations in regard to liberty of the subject and such things as the average Chinaman will never be able to discuss with safe familiarity for several generations to come.\n\nHe admitted there might be exceptions to his sweeping indictment. “A few there are among the Chinese who are quite at home in these essentially Western matters; but very few indeed, and to their credit be it said they have discretion enough to see that their day is far off. These master-minds of regenerate China had no share in the ludicrous proceedings at the Tung Wah on Sunday.\" Did he specifically have in mind Dr. Ho Kai?\n\nAs for those who did \"speechify\" at the meeting, in the editor's opinion, they had made fools of themselves.\n\nThe paper called for stern action against the two main speakers. It took particular exception to the remark made by Ho A-mei that any legislation or Government action that is directed against the Chinese exclusively should be resisted. It suggested that “if the Government fails to make an example of a man who publicly promulgates this sweeping doctrine, then we shall consider that the Government fails in its duty. A maxim like that must be taken seriously and crushed forever.\" The writer sees in the words of Ho A-mei the seeds of revolt and the breakdown of British authority.\n\nIn his remarks, Ho A-mei had called for more police vigilance. It was not the light and pass regulations that were needed to prevent criminal activity, but more detection and prevention by the police. The China Mail rose to the defence of the law-enforcers and charged A-mei with \"laying calumnies against the police.\" In fact, according to the editor, \"there are mis-statements enough in his speech to brand him forever as a man not fit to be allowed to speak in public.”\n\nAnd as for Mr. Ho Tung, his speech \"should remove him from the roster of Justices of the Peace.\" The writer saw him as a dangerous rabble-rouser who should be checked before he caused greater damage to British authority. “Apart from the absurdities in which he wallowed, he gave utterance to sentiments which can", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211106, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "142\n\nThey had little power, other than that of the strike or riot. Such power was to be met not by reason but by force.\n\nSuch attitudes influenced the manner in which the Hongkong Government related to the Chinese community in the nineteenth century.\n\nThe Telegraph editor implied that the Governor used threats because he was dealing with Chinese, that he would not have treated the Europeans so.\n\nThe charge was that “he got out of his depth in a perfect torrent of assumed righteous indignation, because forsooth, a Chinaman had dared to speak in public against a galling ill-considered Government measure. Because a Chinese gentleman of the highest standing had the unparalleled audacity to object to being imprisoned and treated with all the indignities a clumsy policeman, dressed in a little brief authority, delighted to inflict on him for just taking a stroll in the cool of the evening, and because the above mentioned wicked and seditious Chinese arrogated to himself the right of thinking for himself like a man which the Government could not do if it tried — and because this celestial reprobate was so hardened in crime as to actually say what he thought with due moderation, for which under the circumstances, he should have had the highest credit as becomes a man who strives for the right and fights the cause of his unfortunate countrymen, and seeks to protect even the humble coolie from the tyrannical minions of the 'law!'”\n\nHaving defended the right of the Chinese to speak out on public questions, and particularly praising the forthrightness and courage of Ho Tung, the editor poured his sarcasm on Hongkong officialdom. He called it “a self-satisfied Government of imported incubuses from the Downing Street Museum of Fossils and Antiquities,” that is, the Colonial Office.\n\nThe editor had suggested that the Governor dared only to use threats against Chinese, not against Europeans. He further claimed that it would only be the Chinese who would be punished for their criticism of Government policies.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211905, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "295\n\nweather, in which it is impossible to study. Today and yesterday however I have brushed it up a little.\n\nI am looking forward with the most intense anxiety to get a letter from you at Hong Kong. Till then, unless our voyage is unexpectedly prolonged I shall write no more. I think that what I have already written will occupy many an hour to read; but if it interests or amuses, I shall consider the time spent in writing not to have been thrown away.\n\nSince the voyage has been unusually protracted from Batavia to China I must just describe the last few days. We had light winds all the way up the China Sea. Day after day we lay with scarcely a movement. Everything went on worse than ever, swearing increased fearfully. So we went along till Sunday evening, when a wind gradually began to blow, and took us along at a comfortable rate.\n\nOn Monday morning we took in a pilot about 60 miles from the Ladrone Islands. He was about as smart a fellow as ever I saw, and knew his business thoroughly. I was most thankful to see him, because I could not trust the captain. I could see he neither knew where he was, or what to do; and in a few more hours we must have been among the hundreds of islands, which to one that never saw them before, could never be navigated. I look upon the unusual fact of the pilot coming so far out to sea, as an interposition of Providence on our behalf. The wind increased and we went along famously. We were to get to Hong Kong early in the morning. I sat on deck watching the ship as it threaded its way among the groups of islands and rocks. At last I went down to my cabin, but there was no sleep. My mind was all activity.\n\nAt day break I went on deck, and there I saw the sight my eyes had so long desired to see. Hong Kong lay before me, and rising up the slope of its rocky sides stood Victoria. Everything looked green and flourishing. As I glanced round the town my eye rested on the Cathedral, and then there stood the college on the hill side, almost buried by the trees round it, and as much unlike the photograph I had, as winter is unlike the summer,\n\nI packed all up, and went to breakfast, but it was not till eleven o'clock that I could get on shore, since all the boats were gone. At last I got a chance, and went on shore with a very intelligent Chinaman, who cautioned me against the thieves and pickpockets. The heat was dreadful.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211906, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 321, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "296\n\nBut of course all the pathways are roofed over, and the people walk in the shade. Trees are also planted outside the path. The traffic in the streets equals that of London, and the noise far surpasses it.\n\nThe Chinaman directed me how to find the college, so I walked on, and came to a house on fire, which was quite a serious affair. After some few blunders and asking I was directed to the college, and wound round the hill. My feelings were indescribable. A thousand thoughts and feelings rushed in wild confusion through my brain, and this with the heat was rather enough to make one feel funny.\n\nAt last I spied the college and took a walk round it, incognito. Then I went to the hall, and with rather a fearful pull, rang the bell. I waited a few minutes, and a Chinese boy came to the door. Of course I wanted someone to introduce me and show me what was before me. The Chinese servant seemed to know nothing, and I waited and walked about a long time, till at last I found a gentleman, the Surveyor General of the island, who is for the present residing here. He informed me that Mr Beach was still here and would be in soon.\n\nI went into the Bishop's Drawing room and waited two hours, till Mr Beach arrived. He was rejoiced to see me, and we were soon on the best of terms. He gave me the letters that were here, and I need not say with what an appetite I devoured them all. They seemed to stir me up and did me no end of good to know all was going on well. For weeks I had dreamed every night of getting a bundle of letters. I had six. Two from Anna (poor little girl), one from George, one from Father, one from Jabey, and one from the bishop; and a paper from Tidcombe. It was like balm and honey after being shut up in prison so long.\n\nI felt so rejoiced that I wanted to shout, and sing, and laugh, and cry, and caper about, and jump over all the chairs and tables in the room, all in the same moment.\n\nI will just send you the Bishop's letter:\n\nDear Mr Fryer,\n\n\"Although I have scarcely anything to say, I cannot omit sending you a few lines to assure you how much you were in our thought and how regularly your name was mentioned", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212233, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "152\n\nnot do for a house to be very isolated, or it would be continually attacked by robbers. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is a fine building, and also the Governor's house. Just behind the College are some fine buildings.\n\nAnd now, after a glance at the island, I will go on to describe the inhabitants. Of course they are mostly Chinese; next come English, Parsees, Portuguese, Americans, Germans, French, and Arabs. Spaniards might also be mentioned. The Chinese are the working part of the population. Generally they are industrious and active. The lower classes however are dirty and degraded. The middle class are generally well informed and intellectual. Some hold very important situations. One striking feature in Chinese character is their don't care sort of feeling. If they can get out of doing anything they will, unless they see a chance of being well paid for it. Anything they do not want to understand, they pretend great ignorance of. In fact unless money is in the way, one would take them for a race of idiots. Never can you tell if they are pleased or angry. They are the most cold-hearted race that can be imagined. The men agree well together; never do I hear any quarrelling among them. They do not take wine or beer, and a drunken Chinese is as uncommon a thing here as a really honest one. One needs be very sharp to deal with them.\n\nI went to buy some earthenware, and it was as much as I could do to keep the fellows civil. A crowd always collects in a shop when they see an Englishman. I should have lost my watch, purse and umbrella twenty times over if I had not kept my eyes open. As pickpockets they beat London all to nothing. I had to keep my eye on the whole lot of them. They will even cut off the tail of one's coat and quietly walk off with it; and a few coat tails makes them a suit of clothes.\" One has to be all bluster, and to keep a walking stick or umbrella continually in motion, to keep pace with them. I being a stranger, perhaps they wanted to try my patience over what I was buying. It seems a favour for them to let you buy of them. In fact they never speak of the English but as fan-kwai, i.e. foreign devils. They are very hypocritical. There is no knowing their thoughts or intentions. In fact a Chinaman in Hongkong is quite a riddle.\n\nThey generally dress in white. All wear a sort of coat, and very full knee breeches and gaiters. Their shoes always look very neat, although the soles are above an inch thick. They are slippers in appearance rather than shoes. They never wear a hat except when they wish to keep off the sun, when they use one as big as an umbrella. A Chinaman ordinarily dressed, with his long pig-tail hanging down behind, does not look so bad after one is used to it. Some of the wealthy ones stalk about in the evening with all the dignity imaginable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212234, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "153\n\nAnd now we come to Mrs Chinaman. Of all the oddities in the world she is one. She wears a coat and trousers like the men, and you cannot tell them apart, except by the pigtail, which of course she does not possess. Her hair is combed back over the forehead, and all is twisted up in a great knot behind, which sticks out like a handle. Her pretty little feet however are the chief beauty. They very much resemble the hoof of a horse. Imagine the elegance of her gait. The first one I saw I mistook for an old sailor on wooden legs, in the distance, and wondered he did not get a pair of crutches to get on faster with. They move of course very slowly. Running is impossible. John Chinaman shows his wisdom in this particular. Without this restriction she would be quite unmanageable, and to live with her would be quite out of the question. If she does not behave herself, she gets a thrashing; and she cannot run away, or walk far, to go and gossip with neighbours. She just hobbles about the house, and that is all. The lower orders however do not carry it to quite such an extreme. Among them the women work like the men. In the boats you see the women sitting and rowing with perhaps only a loose pair of trousers upon them. They are not at all particular about decency. Twice I took a boat and went out to the ship, to bring my own and the Bishop's boxes: and the crew were mostly women that pulled the boat.\n\n―\n\nshe knows better\n\n―\n\nMrs Chinaman has a very shrill voice; in fact she is always a little piece of goods; but she is very quarrelsome, not however with the husband but with some others or men at all of her own sex. One of those little exchanges of compliments between them is enough to make anybody roar with laughter to see it, but the language they use, if any one understands it, is obscene and revolting in the extreme. The quarrel between them, as is the case with all the softer sex, generally springs from circumstances the most trivial. But at last they begin and the height of the engagement is only to be discerned by the height of the pitch of their melodious voices. You can hear them a quarter mile off distinctly. It is like a chorus of cats, at a nocturnal serenade, only ten times louder, and perhaps the music is conducted in rather quicker time. What surprises me is to hear how long the strain is kept up. If you pass the same place in an hour's time, you find the chorus still sustained in full vigour. To see them however is the best fun. They never look at one another, but always turn round, as if talking to a great audience, and though they toss their arms wildly about, and look like the incarnation of fury, they never so much as touch one another; and the quarrel always ends at last without a blow. They cannot swear, because their religion acknowledges no God whose name they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212235, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "1.54\n\ncan take in vain. So they make up for it in everything that a corrupt heart can imagine. Mr Beach gave me the translation of a few of those expressions, which I might perchance hear from the servants, or even from pupils who have just entered college, and have not forgotten the language of home. But let me hear the least sound of it, and I will send them off about their business pretty quick. But it is surprising the alteration that takes place in Mrs Chinaman when she is under the influence of Christian teaching and religion. The alteration is greater generally in them than in the men.\n\nMy headmaster is a married man; he was married a few months ago in the Cathedral and lives in the rooms under the Bp's Drawing and Dining Rooms! His wife, Mrs Hah-shoe, is quite a decent little body, and often toddles outside, and walks round the grounds at the back. She was trained up in a Christian family, and he was brought up by the Bp, whom he accompanied once to England.\n\nPopular opinion goes a great way with a Chinese. Rather than offend popular opinion, they will make any sacrifice. Only let a man get a bad name among the men, and then let him offend one of the women. The ladies know they may go any length with impunity, so they follow him, and mob him round the place, giving him every species of annoyance, and he dares not molest them for fear of his fellow men of the village and popular opinion. His only remedy in such a case is either to commit suicide, or to get off as far away as he can. Suicide among them is very common.\n\nThere is a custom among them that if one of a family gets a good berth, all his relations come and live upon him. Poor Hah-shoe has all his relations living upon him, which is a great drawback; but popular opinion compels him to submit to it. A child is only looked upon as a servant who is to help support his parents and relations. Few among the lower classes ever think of saving money for old age. Popular opinion also makes them continue the pig-tail, although they say it is a religious affair, by which, when they pass over a narrow slippery plank upon entering the regions of the dead, if their wickedness has been so great as to make them likely to fall off, there is a kind friend who catches them by the pig-tail, and hoists them safe over on the other side.\n\nAnd now having treated of the Chinese, I will go on to describe the remainder of the population. The English are generally rich, proud,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212245, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "164\n\nswing him about. He is a tall fellow, and when well rigged up, as he is when he attends on me, he does not cut a bad figure. He never was a personal servant before, and in fact never was with Europeans before. He consequently regarded me with almost as much amazement as I did him. He must have had queer ideas of what Englishmen eat, as well as the cook, who does not understand English cooking. Since I cannot explain what I want, for several days his blunders were very laughable. [I] gave him orders as I thought for a good breakfast. Went to sit down [and] found a strange medley; and had to make a meal of rice and potatoes. Told him to make some pork curry; so he and the cook got some fat pork, and stewed it in lard, and thus served it up. Now however he does very fairly. I cannot scold him, [and it is] well for him, for he would not understand me. However I am getting hold of the lingo and will soon give him the arrears, with interest. He seems desperately afraid of doing too much work, although I give him $5 a month.\n\nMy coolie is an old stager and has been employed in the college for several years. I have to rout him about pretty sharp, to keep everything clean and tidy. The cook I know but little about, except that he has the national characteristic of being a rascal. I know, as it is I have to keep the three of them nearly; and if I did not look precious sharp I might keep all their fathers and mothers. Things go no one knows how. The rats the other night went to the [meat-]safe, and ate up two pork chops, bones and all, after which they washed out the plate very clean, and put it away among the earthenware! Remarkably clever! However I told John Chinaman to tell the rats to come again, and eat as much as they thought proper, and welcome, for I should take the amount out of the wages at the end of the month. Strange to say the rats do not accept the invitation.\n\nMr Beach tells me the first few weeks will give me nothing but a continual battle with them, till they find out the depth of my purse. They always try and find out just how far you can afford to go. It costs a good deal to live here at all decently and properly. Yet I hope to be able to save money which I get quite to rights. My expenses this month have been heavy. Five pounds have had to go for clothes suitable to the climate; and I have only laid in a slender stock. People here dress almost entirely in white, since it is the coolest. Fancy me walking about with a white suit and helmet. It is rather expensive however as so much washing is required. The washing costs about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212736, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "30\n\nin 1886, a year after he had ended his service 'being retained by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung in Canton.' It would appear that he mistakenly claimed the seal bore the more senior rank.\n\nMesny - Neither Chinese nor Western: But Perhaps Both\n\nMesny lived within the two cultures to the extent that we are left in no doubt that he was able to see both the good and the bad in both. He criticised national traits of Chinese and westerners on numerous occasions, though despite the almost universal criticisms by western travellers in China of the dirt, personal filthiness, disregard for decency, boorishness and inquisitiveness, to say nothing of the incessant and noisy talk, Mesny never comments. Foreign travellers almost without exception comment on one or more of the following Chinese characteristics, their remarkable mechanical aptitude, with a delicacy of touch; a patience probably unrivalled in the world; adding however that their inability to draw the necessary inferences, and improving and inventing as they proceeded always surprises. The Chinese, they continue, are an intensely practical people who dislike doing anything for which there is no necessity; and finally, despite there being hardly a product which Chinese would not use, and with a hatred of waste that makes them utilise everything, westerners are always amazed that they should be so averse to milk and milk products. Mesny hardly touches any of these matters, possibly as they had either not crossed his mind or more likely because he saw no reason to add to the chorus.\n\nHe was not impervious to Chinese arrogance and occasionally added a barbed aside such as his reference to a non-Chinese tribe in southern China when he added, ... [the Chinese] are ever ready to apply the very opprobrious term of barbarian to every other people, but not their darling selves...' A more telling paragraph amidst the hundreds of snippets or topics, and pen pictures of things Chinese which were the primary fillers of his weekly Miscellanies, one written in February 1905, after forty-five years in China, and therefore presumably a distillation of his views, was a description of:\n\n'Chinamen [sic]. hua-jen #A, a Brilliant man, a Glorious or Elegant Person, a Chinaman.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213554, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "119\n\nadapted This pamphlet, costing a penny or two, was continually in the hands of servants, coolies and shopkeepers. The author was a Chinaman whose ingenuity should immortalize him. I have often wondered who the man was who first reduced the \"outlandish tongue\" to a current language. Red candles should be burnt on altars erected to his memory, and oblations of tea poured out before his image, placed among the wooden gods which in temples surround the shrine of a deified man of letters.\n\nF\n\nAccepting this widely-reported account of the \"Devil's Talk\" pamphlet to be correct, it is easy to understand how the vocabulary became established; after all, to the classically-trained Chinese mind, what appears in print becomes canon law. For fussy English-speakers to correct something which had been laid down in a Chinese textbook would have been no easy undertaking.\n\nBe quite clear on one point. Throughout the period of the Hong merchants and up to Treaty days, Pidgin English was not merely a means of communication between Europeans and their menials. It was a vital tool in a rapidly growing China trade in the southern Chinese ports. Hunter describes his discussions in Pidgin with the famous Hong merchants—How Qua, Ming Qua, and Pan Kei Qua—among the commercial elite of Canton. Hunter also describes one of the commanders of the Tai-Ping Rebels, Ho A-Luh, as speaking very good Pidgin English.\n\nBy the middle of the nineteenth century, China Coast Pidgin had become a well-established medium of communication. From the 1850s on, the restrictions to foreign trade and traders progressively broke down, so that the conditions which had made Pidgin's development a necessity disappeared. But the opportunities for contacts between European and Chinese people increased, and the conventions of the language were well enough engrained that it survived. The young makee-larns gradually progressed in their mastery of English, while the people with transient contacts—tradesmen and servants—picked up where they had left off. In his book “Rambles in Eastern Asia”, B. L. Ball records:\n\n“I saw a Chinaman who spoke good English, and appeared so polite that I stopped a while, and entered into conversation with him.\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213555, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "120\n\nHe told me his name was Ayou and that he had lived two years in Boston; that formerly he was a comprador to Mr. Cushing at Canton, and afterwards lived with him in America. Preferring his own country, he returned, and now has a large alum establishment, in which, he says, he is doing good business; he added that a Chinaman who speaks both English and Chinese can make \"plenty money\" in China.\n\nThe many critics of Pidgin have, I think, missed the point: Pidgin worked. It allowed people to communicate quite effectively in a situation where to learn or teach standard English would have been totally impractical. I believe that Pidgin had, in addition to the advantage of overcoming superficial communication problems, the subtle advantage of bringing together people from totally different socio-linguistic backgrounds to speak in a language that was native to neither—that was not a minefield of cultural conventions which could make normal communication break down.\n\nSources of Pidgin\n\nSome readers will, I am sure, have had personal experience of China Coast Pidgin. I am indebted to a number of old people who have told me anecdotes of Pidgin from before the Pacific War. Unfortunately, this anecdotal evidence is very limited. I have only been able to obtain it from Europeans: we have not yet come across a Chinese who still has a working knowledge of the language. What we have taken down from native English speakers has often been \"normalized\" towards standard English. We shall now take some time to cover some of the more important written sources available to us.\n\nThe most frequently cited sources for Pidgin are by native English speakers. W.C. Hunter's books, mentioned earlier on, quote extensively from conversations in Pidgin.\n\nHunter's quotations cover an early period (1806-1854) and are generally consistent in style. They are, however, part of two books written for the casual reader. All the spelling is normalized to standard English; but they form a useful source and I have found his quotations in Pidgin generally consistent with other, unrelated sources.\n\nAnother source with a quantity of quotations from Pidgin is B. L.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213556, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "121\n\nBall in his book “Rambles in Eastern Asia” (James French & Co. Boston 1855). It covers the years 1848-49. Like Hunter, his quotations are generally consistent with other accounts, although he has not adopted any system for spelling. But these people were travelogue writers, not philologists.\n\nWe now come to a renowned source which has been widely quoted: Charles G. Leland's book “Pidgin-English Sing-Song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect with a Vocabulary\" published by Trubner at London in 1876.\n\nThis little volume of 137 pages contains 22 \"ballads”, 10 stories and two parodies of English Romantic verse in China Coast Pidgin. At the end is a vocabulary of about 600 words and a list of Hongkong personal and place names. Leland mentions R. K. Douglas, H. A. Giles as well as Ng Choy in his introduction as having corrected the texts, and gives a basic description of the way Pidgin was spoken. Let me quote a short poem from Leland called “L'Oiseau”\n\nOne-tim two precee Flunsee walkee in Canton,\n\nLook-see one piecee culto-shop-first-chop nampa one.\n\nChinaman he show'um allo pukkha ting,\n\nBirdee paint top-sidee plate-makee fly with wing.\n\nFlunsee look-see birdee-Flunsee talk “oiseau;”\n\nChinaman he tinkee Flunsee ask \"Why so?\"\n\nHe no savvy Flunsee talk, so he makee tell\n\nTo 'um in he English-\"Why so? -makee sell.\"\n\nBy'mby on lacker-box all-same birdee playın',\n\nFlunsee-man look-see it, talk \"Oiseau” agam.\n\nChinaman he hear-lo-tink he savvy well,\n\nSo talkee all-same pidgin, \"why so?-makee sell.\"\n\nFlunsee tinkee sarıın he hab learnee word,\n\nTalk he flin r'hat maktsel be China for a bird.\n\nPidgin-English Sing-Song is a very amusing and enjoyable book. But although it contains much that is genuine Pidgin, both in vocabulary and in the manner of expression, it cannot be taken as a reliable source for a historical study.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213570, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "135 \n\nyou would know what to do?” to which he replied, \"Maskee! he call'um my. My no go.\" \n\n53 too muchee trub \n\n66 look see Joss Pigeon. \n\n90 All man savee you long time. \n\n101 King-Qua: ...he would guarantee \"My makee secure\" \n\nKing-Qua shook everyone by the hand in great glee, and as we left the consulate together, said, “Just now can do. Man-ta-le look see sealee he too muchee fear,\" meaning that the Mandarin would be in a mortal funk at the sight of the consul's official seal. \n\n105 Tai-ping rebel Ho-a-luh.... He spoke very good pigeon English. \"My lun way, my go Hong Kong\" ... \"No cuttee head, he all same my lun way,\" (1852-1854) \n\n++ \n\n169 Quan-Shing (silk merchant). Te-loo-ly No. 1 curio. Mei-se A-le-fan you book. Te-loo-le No. 1 curio, only my China hav got too muchee more curio \"Cunning\", Note: this word in pigeon English was invariably used in the sense of “clever”, “intelligent\" or \"wise” \n\n183 (1806-1836). Nankin Jack, Curio merchant; of a map: \"This have Cheena country. Topside got Pih-Ching - large emperor house - my have see he. Bottom side belong Canton - plenty tea, silk, foreign gentleman hav got. Before, my sell-um ten dollar; just now, as you are olo flen, my sellum you one dollar.\" \n\n193 (1841) Chinaman. \"My show you. My long you No. 1 good flen. What for fightce\" Large Man-ta-le makee fightee, he please; s'pose to molla hav got fightee, you no putee plum you gun, my no puttee plum my gun, puttee fire physic (powder) can do very well, makee plenty noise, makee plenty smoke. My no spilum you; you no spilum my!\".. \"My chin-chin you stop littee, my go odder (t'other) sy!” .. \"My puttee head insi (inside) holo” \n\n278 (1837), Howqua. \"More better no go.\", he said; if an accident occurred, \"Man-te-le bobbery mee too muchee\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "137\n\nRambles in Eastern Asia. B. L. Ball MD. Pb. James French & Co. Boston, 1855\n\n79 (1848) Capem, hab pilort? Capem, hab pilort?\n\n85 The Chinese servants are called \"boys\". It makes no difference if they are fifty years old; they are still called boys\n\n87 Boy, go catchee two piecey tea\n\n87 No can; that no my pigeon. My talkee that cooly man, he belong that pigeon... No can, no can I no sarvey that cooly man pigeon. I talkee he-he come chop-chop.\n\n91 I saw a Chinaman who spoke good English, and appeared so polite that I stopped a while, and entered into conversation with him. He told me his name was Ayou, and that he had lived two years in Boston; that formerly he was a comprador to Mr. Cushing at Canton, and afterwards lived with him in America. Preferring his own country, he returned, and now has a large alum establishment, in which, he says, he is doing good business; he added that a Chinaman who speaks both English and Chinese can make \"plenty money\" in China.\n\n95 Pay my money! Pay my money!\n\n100 Goo' morning, Sar! Kom in my shop? Have got plenty pooty things! Can sell um chipp! Kom make see, spose likee can do, spose no likee marsakec.\n\n107 Goo' morning, sair! How do, sair? Kum min' my shop now? Muchy curious thing, Ivery, motherer purl Kum make see litty!\n\n108 I no likey too muchy boberry my, I too muchy fear bad man have catchee you; hai ya, I too much glad you no makee spile 'um.\n\n118 Bum bye you kum my housy second teem. Two piecey man have got one teem. (there are two gentlemen together to see you.).\n\n127 I thinkee no makee boberry you, s'pose Cheenaman sarvey you. You `Mercky man; but no can sarvy true; alla same fashion, same facey, same closey, same lookey, no different fashion that Ingliss.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213810, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "134\n\njourney, and paid him 10 cash each for them, and then we came to the boat.\n\nIt was no easy thing to get on board, and as it was my first attempt at a Chinese craft, I was quite disgusted with the affair. After being on deck for a while, I found the two cabins which 5 men were to occupy. Each cabin was about the size of a chest of drawers, and cockroaches and smaller vermin revelled among the dirt. However, there was no help for it. Lechler, who has lived as a Chinaman and previously worn a tail for 10 years, took it all as a matter of course, and seemed quite at his ease. These boats are about 50 feet long, with the stern very high out of the water, and the bow very low. There is one principal mast and sail, which does all the work. In a minute the sail can be hoisted, and in 10 seconds can be lowered. Clumsy as it all is, it is surprising what good sailors Chinamen are. There is no danger if they are left to themselves. They can tack in less than no time. The \"shut kung\" calls out \"chun shun\" and the great sail sweeps round across the deck in a trice. All who are on deck must instantly stoop very low, or they will find themselves lying sprawling on the lee side.\n\nThe arrangements being made we started off in company with 8 other boats belonging to the same firm. Our ship was the chief one, and was named the \"Shoon-lay\" or \"good profit\"; all of them had names meaning gain and profit (all the Chinamen ever think about). We got out of the harbour by the use of the two immense oars or sweeps at the stern, which move the ship along tolerably fast. Then when we were clear of the harbour, we made for \"pirates bay\". The weather was delightful; the sea was very clear; and we went on charmingly with a brisk breeze. Hong Kong at a distance is certainly a fine place. The immense Peak behind the town is a grand spectacle, and the fast increasing colony, with its fine houses on the hillside are beautiful to look at, especially on a clear day, in the sunshine. We had no end of fun among ourselves, and kept a continual fire of jokes at Stringer's dog, which was condemned to be eaten on the voyage. I gave it to a Chinaman and told him to kill it and eat it; much to Stringer's dislike and our amusement.\n\nWe were each armed with a revolver, and each had a stick or something else in case of need; we had, moreover, two double-barrelled guns, with which we now and then let fly at the wild ducks. At three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213811, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "135 o'clock we had our dinner on the deck. Such fun and such make shifts. Our stock of portable soup was very good however, and what with venison pasties and other items we got a very comfortable dinner, much to the amusement of the Chinese passengers, about 20, and the sailors. My servant came in very handy, as he was the only professional cook of the party. Our food was cooked in the Chinese way, in a little earthenware stove, and a camp canteen kettle. The deck all the while was at a very considerable slope, so that it was necessary to mind one's p's and q's, in order to avoid catastrophies. Then when we were done and cleared away, the Celestials came forward and took the deck and began their meal. Each passenger pays 30 cash (not quite three halfpence) for his meal of rice and fish and little nic nacs: and as they only eat two meals a day, you may imagine that there is not much profit to be got out of it. They did walk into the rice and no mistake.\n\nOne little boy I took a fancy to: he was a friend of the owner of the ship and his father a rich man at Sam-tsun the place we were going to. I had a long talk with him, and we read some of the Pilgrim's Progress. He had been to school 6 years, and literally knew nothing after all. The Chinese system of education is the greatest folly imaginable: No Chinaman, in less than ten years is supposed to be able to know the meanings of the characters. Many learn 5 years and only know the sounds.\n\nHowever this little fellow and I got on very well together. He was much amused with Stringer's dog, and asked dozens of questions about it. Then I offered to sell it for a dollar, but the youngster said it was no good only to eat,\" and therefore was too dear. So I joked him that he had not a dollar belonging to him, whereupon he produced a handful of dollars from his purse, and showed me a bundle of paper which he said had 7 dollars inside. He seemed to have perfect confidence in us that we would not try to rob him. It was hard to talk with him, through his dialect. It was like a Londoner and Yorkshireman. “Tea” he called \"Chay-yup\" and we call it \"Chah-eep.\" About four o'clock we entered the “Kup shui moon\" a channel opening into the \"Bogue” or as English people say \"Bocca Tigris\" or \"tiger's mouth.\"\n\nHere we passed the Canton steamer going to Hong Kong. The people stared to see Europeans on board a Chinese craft. Towards evening the breeze dropped off, and at sunset there was quite a calm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213815, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "a fluvial plain nearly all fresh ploughed up. We were too late to see the paddy, or rice growing. Here and there were a few patches of barley, and now and then a field of hemp in full blossom that scented the air for a long way round. Often our road lay through fields of sugar cane. The canes grow about 7 or 8 feet high, and look very well with their green tops.\n\nThe highway road passing through these fields is a curiosity. It is raised a few feet above the field, and is about a yard wide on an average. On each side runs a ditch about a foot wide. Since these roads are only for foot passengers they answer very well. Remember there are no horses ever dreamt of, and only here and there a poor lean solitary Chinese cow, with a hump on his back on the hills. There are no hedges or fences, and thus it is all open country. The outside narrow ditches are all that separate the fields, and as most of the people are not troubled with shoes, a little mud and dirt is not minded.\n\nWe now and then passed a troupe of pedestrians on their way to the town to sell their produce and buy new supplies. Many of them had brown sugar in square cakes, and many more were loaded with oil, which is obtained from a kind of ground nut, largely grown in China. We often saw immense heaps of these nuts. All these things were carried in China fashion, with a pole, and a basket or bucket balanced on each side.\n\nEvery few miles we rested in a tea house, and in one, we got some preserved dates and plums. The dates were on strips of bamboo, three on each, and each string cost a cash. They and the plums were very good, especially to us who had been walking a great deal. We passed through Po-kuk - where Mr Lechler lived as a Chinaman for 5 years in one house which he showed us. He is a fine noble fellow and no mistake. Would that all our missionaries were like him. We were again on our route; and continually heard the sound of heavy firing at a distance. These towns and villages have continual animosity with each other, and are continually fighting. They can make their own clumsy cannon, and they pound away at each other finely, sometimes for weeks together. The different clans often get up a bit of a brush about something or other.\n\nOur road at length wound up a narrow pass between two hills, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214195, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "In the past the Pole, one frequently found, was the butt of many jokes in the United States. In England it was often the Irish, in Hawaii the Portuguese, and for the French the Belgian. Likewise, in Guangdong Province there is, some people will tell you, a pecking order of sorts for a few of the counties. Again, in Singapore, inter-racial and inter-sub-ethnic group humour is by no means uncommon, although much is given and accepted in good heart.\n\nLee Kuan Yew, senior statesman of Singapore, is purported to have said: \"I understand the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to the Welshman and the Scotsman. Deep here, I am a Chinaman. Yes, an uprooted Chinaman, transformed into a Singaporean\" (spoken in the Singaporean Parliament, 23 February 1977) (Minchin, 1986:254). One can detect, not surprisingly, a strain of western, self-mockery and sardonic wit in Lee's remark (Minchin, 1986:257). It comes out again in a speech by Lee in the Singaporean Parliament on 23 February 1977:\n\n\"I do not believe in telling university researchers where they go wrong. They write all kinds of spurious silly articles or books. They get MAs and PhDs for them... I laugh away. But I never tell them why they are wrong. Because I am an Asian. I am not a Westerner. This is an Asian situation and do not be clever. Be modest. Just keep quiet. If they want to be wrong-headed, wish them luck\" (Minchin, 1986:XV).\n\nThe overseas Chinese living in Malaysia for several generations have absorbed Malay culture making their customs different from Hong Kong Chinese. As a Malay-Chinese friend of the author explained, the Singaporeans have obviously not absorbed Malay customs to the same extent. But Singapore is very much a melting pot and cosmopolitan, and it has jettisoned only a certain amount of its inherited Chinese 'baggage' so that it remains trim, but it has become sufficiently westernised to become, some would say, more 'rational' - judging by western standards.\n\nThe Cantonese living in a more simple habitat, over in Guangdong Province in China, prefer more direct, less complex humour than their Hong Kong cousins who are still, in most cases, at heart, very Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214207, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "28\n\nso different Chinese ethnic sub-groups laugh at each other. In the early 1950s, when many Shanghainese came to Hong Kong from the Mainland, the sally going the rounds among the Cantonese was: First the Shanghainese travelled in a small car. Now they ride in a big car. For the Westerner who is slow on the uptake this means, when they first came to Hong Kong they drove a car. Later, they could not afford it so they travelled by bus.\n\nIn China too, at one stage there was a tendency, as in other societies years ago, to deride cripples and the mentally retarded (Sypher, 1956; 202). In England in the Middle Ages, a hunchback was expected to caper around and amuse others. Jews, the village idiot, and the 'Chinaman' with his pigtail were usually all good, certainly in the 19th century, for a giggle (Pan, 1990; 84). More recently, there was the case of the Duke of Edinburgh meeting some British students studying in China and the Duke saying to them: 'If you stay here too long you'll get \"slitty\" eyes.' Many people seemed to think it was an insensitive remark and in bad taste. A few however felt, no doubt like the Duke himself (and indeed a few Hong Kong Chinese), that it was all intended in good, clean fun.\n\nWe must not forget that a witch was burned alive in Sunderland, England, as late as 1722, which was an occasion of some merriment. Even today many children enjoy 'cruelty' in their humour, such as the slip on the banana skin or the bucket of water tipped on the head. The author recalls how a colleague, a Chinese teacher, was given the nickname of tsoh hau ue (left [sloping] mouth fish) (false halibut) in the 1950s. Although humour can conceal or even help to heal pain, there are people of all nationalities who delight in the misfortune of others, and, even today, a few get pleasure from stoning a hedgehog to death which is stuck in a hedge.\n\nFrequently one hears about oppressive authority in Chinese life and there are sometimes attempts to 'skewer' an incident, by the oppressed, with a good joke. Everyone loves to make the leaders look stupid.\n\nThere is the one about the three Chinese in a prison cell during the Cultural Revolution. The first said: 'I'm here because I supported Deng", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214236, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "57\n\nis the conservation or preservation of the divine order in the world. Despite being a major deity and having many incarnations, of which Rama is but one, he is not included within the 28 Deva seen in the Ta Pei Ssu. However, his wife Laksmi is included. Another Vedic deity not included in the groups of Devas in the Western Hills is Krishna probably because he is the eighth avatar of Vishnu.\n\nPopular Buddhist figures which, at first thought, we might have expected to see listed among the Deva would, however, not be eligible because they were purely Buddhist without a Brahmanist or Vedic origin, and were Indians who lived and died during the lifetime of the Buddha himself. These include, amongst others, Kasyapa, Ananda and Lochana.\n\nAlthough Ming iconography portrayed Indra and Brahma on many altars as Chinese figures; the question remains why are they, and in particular in these two temples in the Western Hills why are so many Vedic deities, portrayed as Chinese?\n\nTales of the Ta Pei Ssu\n\nAn off-beat description of the Ta Pei Ssu in 1884 describes its picturesque location and whilst not referring to the deities, least of all the Deva, it does provide two colourful vignettes. The first gave the reason for the main entrance to the temple being blocked. It was a punishment for the priests who had permitted a suicide to take place within the temple confines. One of the monks so the story went had greatly insulted a coolie and he, instead of attacking his persecutor, had “with the perverseness of your true Chinaman” had taken vengeance on him by committing suicide. The second told of the usual practice of the era when foreigners rented temples in the cool of the hills for the summer. Having read various bits of graffiti the 'Student-Interpreter' claimed that the temple must have been a favourite resort of members of the Russian Mission between 1828 and 1840.\n\nA Third Temple containing a Group of Deities with Sinicised Sanskrit Names\n\nYet another group of deities with sinicised Sanskrit names can be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214545, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 403, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "372\n\nAN IRISH FANTASY\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nA wooden effigy of a Chinese man stands above the front door of a pub called The Chinaman in Rathkeale in West Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. It is claimed by the publican to be a portrait image of the Chinese captain of a powerful sailing ship, 'The Mikado' which had brought a valuable cargo of tea to Foynes some time before 1743, the year when local people got together to honour Captain Wongyu.\n\nThe story goes that some of the Chinese crew were drinking in a wine and spirit store when one of the Chinese crew rushed in from Foynes and announced that a pirate ship had entered the Shannon Estuary and the pirates were plundering towns and villages along the shoreline. Captain Wongyu mustered more than one hundred locals and, together with his crew, they marched against the pirates. In a quick but fierce skirmish the pirates were defeated and the people of the area showed their gratitude by erecting an effigy of him over the door of the building where it stands today. Captain Wongyu died in 1789, some twenty-six years later but did not forget the people of Rathkeale. He is said to have made provision for a sum of money to be sent to the poor of Rathkeale.\n\nThe statue depicts a Chinese man but with a marked European face and beard, wearing a mandarin-style summer hat, and a half-length blue robe over a faded orange robe. I would guess that it was carved by a European who had never studied a Chinese but had seen some 18th or 19th century illustrations. A quite small round [un-Chinese] gilded medallion or disc hangs or is sewn on to the blue robe high up just below his beard, bearing an unintelligible character or squiggle.\n\nIt makes a good story but the Chinese did not sail the seven seas during the 18th century and should a junk have reached the British Isles at that time it would have made headline news. Chinese did not import tea into Britain nor, I suspect, would there have been a great market for tea on the west coast of Ireland at that era. Finally, Mikado", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 405, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "374\n\nThe Statue of the Chinaman at Rathkeale, West Limerick.Courtesy of J.R. Patterson (late Foreign & Commonwealth Office)\n\nPage 405\n\nPage 406", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214818, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "199\n\nfree of charge was considered as a meritorious deed, to be taken into numerical account in any reckoning in the world hereafter.\n\nHowever, any survey of books of this kind will reveal the confusion between titles that appear to deal with the same subject, as well as the difficulty of apportioning them to either Buddhism or Taoism. They could be, and often were, similar in content and belonged to both religions, their purposes being practically identical. H.A. Giles once stated in regard to the Yu Li Ch'ao Ch'uan, described by Fathers Wieger and Davrout (see note 13) as a Buddhist work but ascribed by him to Taoism, that:\n\n\"Modern Taoism had...borrowed so much material from its younger rival, that an ordinary Chinaman can hardly tell one from the other, and generally regards them as to all intents and purposes the same.\n\n**12\n\n“Moral tracts” per se are closely linked with the Buddhist and Taoist teachings in the books noted above. The Confucian ethics made a similar contribution in this wide field of instruction and admonition, but without the confusion seemingly inseparable from works of this sort in the other two religions.\"\n\nLastly, the popular literature was also used to convey the moralistic and admonitory messages of the tracts and teachings of Buddhism and Taoism and the hortative contents of the Confucian ethics. Many of the didactic themes of the Three Religions are to be found encapsulated in the novels and collections of short stories that were printed all over the country, and their influences can be traced in what were otherwise works intended for popular entertainment.\" These indirect forms of religious instruction also helped to shape the thoughts and actions of the population.\n\nThe cumulative result upon the people and culture of China is well expressed by Professor Francis C.M. Wei in his book The Spirit of Chinese Culture (1947). He explains that he is writing \"a study of the moral tradition and the religion of the Chinese people\" and is at pains to emphasise that \"particularly in the case of China does their culture develop from this background.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216052, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 351, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "285\n\nrowdies knew that no American official in all the ports of China has the means of checking outrages on the part of American citizens. Accordingly, whenever an English thug gets into a scrape he claims to be American. He then described a case in point 'the Captain of an American boat came to me bringing with him a Chinese who had been badly cut on the arm. He said that the wound had been inflicted by an Englishman, a passenger on his boat and that the Briton was a desperate character. I accordingly applied to Franklin, the Commander of the [British] gunboat lying here for assistance. He very soon had an armed boat alongside the Yankee craft and the swordsman was speedily hauled out and brought before me. I read the Chinaman's complaint to him and he in reply said he wanted to see the American Consul, I told him that as an American had handed him over to me as an Englishman I should deal with him unless he could prove his right to American protection. He defied me so I sent him a prisoner aboard the Banterer gunboat. On the day following I had no less than three witnesses that the scoundrel was an Englishman. At length when he saw his impudence would carry him no further he acknowledged himself to be a Britisher, He was tried accordingly and got six months in Hong Kong jail with hard labour, at the end of which, he is to be conveyed under arrest to England as being too dangerous a character for a quiet country like China'.\n\nIn another letter Adkins explained that 'I am making myself obnoxious and disagreeable to certain of my countrymen who think that Treaties are made that they might have the pleasure of breaking them. I have seized and confiscated three vessels for smuggling and have given a rascal three months hard labour for trading in salt. Really the Chinese have good reason for distrusting us. We sell arms to the Rebels and teach them how to build forts after making treaties of peace and friendship with the reigning power'.\n\nWhen E.H. Parker was Consul in about 1877 roads were just beginning to exist and the Municipal Council had succeeded in providing a respectable walk of three or four miles for exercise. However, a gigantic, old worm-eaten coffin had been left where it lay by the builders planted squarely in the middle of the fine new road, just where it left town. Rumour said it dated from the Mongol dynasty. No one dared touch it, and it was generally supposed that the 'owners were sitting tight and waiting for their chance. The Daotai said that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216081, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 380, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "314\n\n32T. Adkins joined the China Consular Service in 1854 and was the first Vice-Consul in Zhenjiang, being posted there in May of 1861, preceded by an assistant, Phillips, in February who had been sent to the ruined city to set up the Consulate in a ruined temple. Within a week of Adkins' arrival, he had moved the Consulate a mile down river to safer accommodation away from the Taiping fighting. He remained there, on an island, living a monotonous life alone as Phillips had been transferred elsewhere. He left Zhenjiang in poor health in February 1865 after serving there for three and a half years to return to the UK.\n\n33 This was the Cantonese title by which the bandits were known. In Mandarin it would be Shiwu Zi† £ 'The Fifteen Sons'.\n\n* Parker E.H. John Chinaman and a few others: John Murray: London: 1902\n\n35 Robert Anderson Mowatt, former consular official: acting Chief Justice and Acting Consul-General Shanghai, April - October 1891.\n\n* The Elder Brother Society (Gē Lǎo Huì): a secret society sworn to overthrow the Imperial government, the foreign Manchu Qing dynasty and replace it with a Chinese emperor.\n\nMesny's son would have been about six at the time of this story, whilst his only other child, his daughter, had not yet been born.\n\n**Mason, C. W. (1924) Chinese Confessions. London: Grant Richards Ltd\n\n\"Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson, ed (1975). The I.G. in Peking: Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press\n\n* Transit Passes are discussed in a separate chapter below.\n\n4\n\nAccording to Mason in his Confession, Croskey had told him that Croskey's father was an English baronet in business in Vancouver and his mother a Spanish Creole of San Diego in California.\n\n42 Parker, E.H. (1903) China Past and Present: Chapman and Hall Ltd: London\n\n\"Cook, Christopher (1982) The Lion and the Dragon - British Voices from the China Coast: London: Elm Tree Books.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "41\n\ngreat importance, and vastly superior to the old man to whom the boat belonged. He kept himself apart from the rest, maintained perfect silence and gravity, and seemed to find the greatest amusement in examining and re-examining his papers, and combing and plaiting his long black hair, with the assistance of a small fragment of looking-glass.47\n\nThe linguists\n\nEach foreign merchant ship arriving at Macau had to engage a linguist before it could proceed up-river to Whampoa.4\n\nA contemporary account states, \"The linguists were custom-house interpreters, who procured permits for delivering and taking in cargoes, transacted all the custom-house business, and kept account of the duties.'49\n\nDavis writes tartly that they were characterized 'on account of the absence, rather than the presence, of those accomplishments which are usually implied by the term; for these persons cannot write English at all, and speak it scarcely intelligibly.'50\n\nHe adds: 'Like the Hong merchants, the linguists are obliged to pay largely for their licences, and are besides liable to heavy exactions, chiefly from the underlings of office, as the Hong merchants are the prey of the higher officers,' and the merchants had to act as sureties before a licence could be obtained.\n\nThe compradors\n\n'At Macau, or later at Whampoa,' Morse explains, 'a ship's comprador must be employed, who has the sole right to purvey provisions and all other articles for the ship or her crew, at prices which were quite impossible to put any check.'51\n\nWe have a brief and tantalising pen portrait of one such at the Whampoa anchorage: 'Boston Jack, as he is called, a stout, portly Chinaman, who supplies most of the American ships lying here, with whatever they require.'52\n\nJust how successful and prosperous this person became, is revealed in an American visitor's letter of 1848:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216357, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "65\n\nshe continued to be kept i.e. paid ($30 a month) by me till I went home on leave in 1866, we never lived together afterwards and very rarely met. Between 1858 & 1864 she gave birth to three children. In 1866 the connection was dissolved and Ayaou was then presented with $3000 when she surrendered her children to my agent and herself married a Chinaman. The children were sent to England and it was arranged that W. Hutchins my lawyer should take charge of them: I then entrusted him with £6000 for their benefit. They were described as my wards and were named respectively Anna, Herbert and Arthur. At the time W. Hutchins took charge they were lodging with one of the employees of Smith, Elder & Co. Anna died some years ago: [,] Arthur went about the same time to Canada and recently Herbert left England to join him there. I never saw any of the children of Ayaou's since they left China, and, while in China, I believe I only saw Anna twice or three times, Herbert once, and Arthur never. As they were all born while Ayaou was kept by me I decided to provide them respectably, and did so, rather than leave them to their fate in China. Ayaou was a very good little girl & well-behaved but we were not married, and she was not my wife, and her children were illegitimate.\n\nI was married to Hester Jane Bredon in 1866: [,] she is my wife: [.] I was never married to any other: [,] her son Edgar Bruce is my only legitimate son, and is the legitimate heir to the Baronetcy!\n\nI certify the above statement to be true in every respect,\n\nRobert Hart (signature) Peitaiho, 19th August 1905\n\nDeclaration 2., Item 12:\n\n1. In the year 1857 when in China I formed a connection with a Chinese girl named Ayaon.* At that time it was a common practice", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216358, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "66\n\nfor unmarried Englishmen resident in China to keep a Chinese girl and I did as others did. Ayaon lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. Later in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom, though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. Between 1858 and 1864 she gave birth to three children. In 1866 I went home on leave and on that occasion the connection between Ayaon and myself was finally dissolved. I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars and she married a Chinaman. As all the children were born while Ayaon was being kept by me I decided to provide for them respectably and accordingly I made it part of the arrangement for separation that she should surrender her children to my Agent and she did so. I had the children sent to England to be educated and launched in the world and I settled a sum of six thousand pounds for their benefit which sum has long since been divided and distributed between them. Their names were Anna, Herbert and Arthur. To the best of my recollection and belief I have seen Anna twice or thrice only and Herbert once only. This was in China. I have never seen Arthur. Anna died some seventeen years ago and about the same time Arthur went to Canada, Herbert married and in or about the year 1905 went to Canada to join Arthur.\n\nHart's main purpose for producing the documents\n\nBetween 1904 and 1905, Hart was troubled by two of his children by Ayaou, Herbert and Arthur. The Court and Personal Column of the Morning Post for June 30, 1905, reported (ibid: 1480): \"Mr. Herbert Hart, eldest son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., of Hong Kong, together with Mrs Hart and their only son left Liverpool by the steamer Bavarian yesterday for Ontario, Canada”. Hart's wife, Lady Hart visited the Morning Post soon after she learnt the news and the next day the newspaper made the following correction (ibid): \"We find that the paragraph in our issue of yesterday announcing the departure of Mr Herbert Hart for Canada does not relate to the only son of Sir Robert Hart, Bart., Inspector General of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, Peking.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216372, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "80\n\nHart's arrangements for separation\n\nHow the relationship between Hart and Ayaou was terminated has long been a cause of speculation. L. K. Little, successor of Maze as I. G., writes in the introduction to \"The I.G. in Peking\" - \"In a private letter to me the late Stanley Wright, author of Hart and the Chinese Customs, wrote, 'Hart was married to a Chinese lady in his early days, but she was dead before his marriage to Miss Bredon,' (1975; Introduction). B. Wang, the author of the book \"Biography of Sir Robert Hart\" also suggested that Hart's happy personal life in China ceased in 1865 when Ayaou suddenly died, and this is the main reason for Hart's decision to return home on leave and find a girl to marry (2000: 97). However, the scholars, who edited Hart's early journals, noticed that Hart received letters from Ayaou in 1870 and 1872, and they noted that she \"later married a Chinese\" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner, 1991: 363).\n\n15\n\nIn Declaration 1, referring to his separation from Ayaou, Hart declares, “she was then presented with $3000 when she surrendered her children to my Agent and herself married a Chinaman.\" In Declaration 2, a similar statement is made: \"I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars1 and she married a Chinaman.”15 This confirms that Ayaou certainly did not die in 1865 but married a Chinaman after receipt of a large sum of money from Hart, a condition of their separation. Ayaou probably did not want to sever the connection with Hart even though she must now have realised it was inevitable. Hart, who by this time was no longer a young and inexperienced assistant for the British Consulate at Canton, but a powerful man in both the CIMC and the Qing government, had to resolve the problem by making an arrangement acceptable to Ayaou. Money must have been given serious consideration, as it would have been a precondition of the relationship for both sides in the first instance. As Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith suggest: (1986:153)\n\nThe girl Ayaou was not a solitary adventuress but came undoubtedly from a proper though lower-class background under the sponsorship of a compradore or other reliable party. Hart's upkeep of her must have included a regular monetary payment, a portion of which reimbursed her family.\n\nIn Hart's diaries requests for money from Ayaou appear frequently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]