[ { "id": 205996, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\n71\n\nwhich the European had no place and was not really expected to penetrate. Two Europeans (Richard Oswald and F. J. Porter) did apparently have lots there though how they came by them is not recorded, and the American Baptist Mission Board had a school house and small chapel.\n\nA third area was Tai Ping Shan where many Chinese lived in matsheds, but it is not known how many lived there in these early days.\n\nBut one inconvenient feature soon revealed itself as the demand for building land increased in the Colony on the establishment of regular government in the middle of 1843. The town was restricted in its possibilities of development to the east by the reservation of 'Government Hill' (the area on which the Government Offices now stand) for Government purposes only. Beyond Government Hill to the east lay the military cantonment and, since the main part of the town was now inevitably fixed where the present central district stands, the only possible direction which expansion could take, other, that is, than up the mountainside, was to the west. But, between Inland Lots 43 and 10 on the Queen's Road lay the Upper Bazaar, an uncomfortable fact which not only meant that there would be a large number of Chinese-type houses in the middle of the 'European' town (with their attendant rather greater risk of fire) but that their presence would interfere with the proper development of the area with drainage and streets and so on. In terms of extent, the Upper Bazaar was occupying almost 11 acres of valuable building land for which speculators would be willing to offer far higher Crown Rents than those which the then inhabitants were paying. So almost inevitably, the suggestion came to move the Upper Bazaar lot-holders away to another location.\n\nThe story of the removal of the Upper Bazaar is of interest on several counts: it is the first 'resumption' of land for public purposes in the history of Hong Kong, a process since employed on an ever increasing scale by the Government for the improvement and redevelopment of the environment. It provides us with an insight into government practices of the day and the cumbersome manner in which decisions could be taken and implemented, and also of the role of the Press at that time. Finally, it led to the establishment, as a matter of deliberate Government policy, of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206554, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "96\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nor family. The night soil coolies used to commence work at 1 a.m. in the Chinese quarters of the city, and each was equipped with a pair of buckets suspended from a bamboo pole. The pots were brought into the street and emptied into one of the buckets and then rinsed with water from a third bucket. The first rinsings were added to the night soil and the second rinsings were put back into the water bucket. When full, the buckets were taken to a junk. Fortunately, police regulations required the buckets to have covers.\n\nAs for the disposal of waste kitchen water, all that was provided was a rough earthenware pipe coated with plaster which delivered contents from the upper floors onto the floor of the cookhouse below. Commonly, drains ran from cookhouse to cookhouse under the party walls of adjoining tenements until they reached a public sewer. In some instances, drains traversed several lots under separate ownership, and in cases where there were no rights-of-way the rebuilding of one property in the row sometimes deprived other premises of an outlet. The upstairs residents had no means of disposing of rubbish other than by throwing it out the window or stuffing it into the downpipe from the kitchen; when this happened, the pipe became choked causing it to overflow and saturate the walls with filthy effluent.\n\nThe streets of the city were made of decomposed granite and this was rapidly formed into deep gulleys by torrential summer rains. Little thought was given to ensuring the reservation of adequate street widths, and in some cases the public right-of-way were so narrow that the bamboo poles used to hang out washing reached from side to side. The \"system\" of storm water drains was just as chaotic as the street network and drains were also inappropriately used as sewers which emptied directly into the sea. With few exceptions no attempt was made to carry out the effluent below low water mark, nor to select positions for outfalls where a strong tidal stream would carry it away. Consequently, there was an offensive smell at low tide along the whole waterfront. Worse still, none of the public drains had vents, so that uprising sewer gas had no means of escape except through untrapped house drains and gulley holes at the top end of the sewers.\n\nWater supplies in the dry season amounted to not more than 6 gallons per head per day, which was barely sufficient for cooking and drinking. Chadwick noted that \"to economise water, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207149, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "214\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ngood size bed rooms, with dressing and bath room to each; two servant's rooms; a front and back verandah, closed with venetians, each 100 feet long and 12 feet wide, flat roof convenient for exercise and affording a fine view of the harbour and its entrances. Commodious outbuildings for servants, store room and offices; a large compound, garden, etc., whole surrounded by a good fence. Situated on the ridge at West Point and now in occupation of Jamieson, How and Co.\n\nThere was not a ready sale. A business depression prevailed and the location was too remote from the European section of Victoria.\n\nBelow the bungalow Jamieson, How and Co. built a large godown on Marine Lot 57 in 1842. Ten years later this property was sold at auction. The premises on the Marine Lot were described as consisting of \"a costly and recently improved residence, granite godown, pier, outhouses, shrubbery\". The West Point Bungalow was described as beautifully situated immediately opposite on the hill. Both properties were bought by Yorick Jones Murrow.\n\nIn 1854 the West Point Bungalow was used as a military barracks. This left it the worse for wear. Because of its dilapidated condition the Rhenish Missionary Society was able to purchase the property at a reasonable price in 1857. They needed a centre in Hong Kong as they had been forced from their stations on the mainland by the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and China. In 1859 the Government repossessed the property as a site for a new Civil Hospital.\n\nThe area north of Queen's Road extending to Ko Shing Street was the original beach. The land between Queen Street on the east and Wilmer Street on the west can be divided into six main sections. The first (Marine Lot 68) is a rectangular lot three houses wide and bounded on the east by Queen Street. The second section (Marine Lots 68A, 69, 69A, and 70) is intersected by Tsung Sau Lanes East and West. The third section (Marine Lot 58) is the former Ko Shing Theatre property with Wo Fung and Kom Yu Streets. The fourth section (Marine Lot 57) is bounded on the west by Sutherland Street and contains In Ku Lane. The fifth section (Marine Lots 71, 71A, 72, 72A) lies east of Sutherland Street and is intersected by Li Sing Street. The sixth piece (Marine Lot 200) is a triangular lot with its narrow point on Queen's Road and its west boundary Wilmer Street.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207338, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "98\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nand debtors from Australia, as well as mercenaries and American deserters. The luckless ones became in time indistinguishable from beachcombers, the poor whites of the Colony.\n\nAt a rough estimate, about a third of the total European population (excluding soldiers, sailors, and seamen) would have been classified as working or lower class by the resident European middle class of merchants and government officials, and were treated as such by those implacably class-conscious Britons. In Hong Kong, the 'two nations'—of rich and poor Europeans—were not driven into social amalgamation by the fear of a common fate as aliens on the shores of far-away Cathay. A government clerk, who lived in Hong Kong in the 1850s, complained that:\n\nthe exclusiveness, jealousy and pride of 'caste' that have been so long and so justly attributed to our English brethren and sisters in our Indian possessions attain more luxuriant growth in China. The little community, far from being a band of brothers, is split up into numerous petty cliques or sets, the members of which never think of associating with those out of their immediate circle... Even here (England) one sees a somewhat similar state of society in many of our small country towns, where everyone knows everybody, and the minutest details of your neighbours' daily lives, manners and conversation, are noted with watchful assiduity. Anyone who has had the happiness to spend some time in one of these rural paradises can form a pretty good notion of the state of matters in an English colony, only that things are much worse.16\n\nIn 1885, an American found the same conditions prevailing, though possibly in a more exaggerated form:\n\nTo an American, it seems extremely silly for wholesale merchants and their clerks to hold themselves, socially, above the retail merchants and their clerks, regardless of the amount of business they do, and their moral and intellectual standing... Distance from Britain, far from loosening ties that bound Britons into a rigid world of class distinctions, tended to tighten them.17 The effects of these divisions will be discussed in a later section.\n\nSOCIAL LIFE OF THE EUROPEAN LOWER CLASS.\n\nUntil the cession of the Kowloon peninsula in 1860, most lower-class Europeans lived in the city of Victoria, especially in the streets", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208695, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n125\n\nThis literally took the wind out of our sails and we were in the doldrums. Bishop Valtorta also interviewed Mr. Oda on our behalf but received the same categorical answer. However, Sister Paul made application about this time for Sisters Marie Regis and Dorothy, the former having been released from the Camp on a third national status, but the latter with us. As a result, Sister Regis was allowed to board the boat but Sister Dorothy was turned back. So we returned to Bethany, sadder but wiser.\n\nOur status in Hong Kong now being determined for us, we began to think about resuming Language Classes, and looked around for some teachers. We found one for the Mandarin and one for the Cantonese, but could not easily get a suitable one for the Hakka-ites.\n\nFrom the 11th to the 15th of October we went on Retreat, it being conducted by Father McCarthy, S.J., from Wah Yan College. About this time, Father Knotek's electrical ability having been discovered, his services were much in demand, both at Carmel and at St. Paul's Hospital, Causeway Bay.\n\nIt may be of interest here to describe briefly Hong Kong, as we saw it, some eight or nine months after its capitulation. The downtown section, at least along Queens Road Central, was fairly normal, and business seemed to be going on as usual, that is, on the surface, but actually business was pretty poor. All the stores had long since reopened; the larger foreign stores, of course, being taken over by the Japanese, and prices were on the military yen basis. The Chinese department stores were likewise open, but their stock seemed to be depleted, and not only were prices high, but it was difficult and even impossible to purchase many articles, especially of clothing. In many cases, about all that was left were extra large sizes of things. Along the streets in many places, and just outside of the department stores, sat vendors of various small articles. On the streets, the crowds seemed to mill about almost as in normal times, but little money changed hands. There were only the strictly necessary purchases made. Even for the Chinese populace, rice, oil, and firewood were rationed and on certain days, the purchasers had to line up and wait their turn at depots in various parts of the city. The Gloucester Hotel is now the Matsubara Hotel, and is open for business, but of course, mostly Japanese business. The Japanese Army and Navy have taken over almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208700, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "130\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nIn the first raid, bombs fell on the Kowloon dock area, on Whitfield Barracks, on a Japanese army canteen on Nathan Road and a few in the streets of Kowloon. The second and midnight raid was on the lighting plant at North Point, but the bombs, fortunately for us, missed their target. On the third visit, a few bombs fell near the Kowloon shipbuilding yards. One unexploded bomb was said to have been found near the lighting plant, and it was marked \"Cleveland, Ohio.\"\n\nAs a consequence of these raids, the whole city was blacked out at night, all Japanese flags which had been so gaily flying from many buildings were hauled down, and for a month after, there were from two to a dozen Japanese planes in the air all day, flying at a great height looking for more visitors, no doubt.\n\nWith the advent of the month of November, we secured a Hakka teacher and our Language School was functioning, though not too briskly. Early in the month, Father Moore took to his bed with some ailment, which Dr. Samy diagnosed as a nervous stomach. Dr. Samy, by the way, is a neighbor of ours, and an Indian doctor, very prominent in Hong Kong. He has a very talented Chinese wife, and two daughters. He formerly lived near the Queen Mary Hospital, but the Japanese took over his home and, in exchange, gave him a house just below Bethany. Fathers Toomey and McKeirnan teach his children daily, and they often come to visit us. The doctor and his wife have been extremely kind to us and have offered to give us financial help if we find it necessary.\n\nWe mustered up enough courage again to approach the Foreign Office about permission to go to Kwangchauwan, but again came back a final \"NO!\" Since their release from the Camp, the Maryknoll Sisters have been living in Holy Spirit School on Caine Road, but now they are threatened with eviction, as some branch of the government wants the house for some purpose or other.\n\nDuring the month, Father Troesch secured permission to visit our House at Stanley, on pretext of getting some church goods which we needed. All together, we made five trips, two or three Fathers going each time, and each time bringing back a few suitcases full of odds and ends which we managed to salvage in the attic. A few of the extern Carmelite Sisters accompanied us, and they saved quite a number of things for us, which the Mother Superior kindly consented to keep in Carmel for us. Among the salvaged goods were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209898, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "135\n\n14.8.1897, all three Ap Lei Chau residents belonging to the old Luk Hing, Sau Hing, and Fuk Hing Tongs respectively. Their evidence enlarges and confirms the information obtained from the record of the Squatter Board's proceedings.\n\n\"Hayes 1977, pp. 99-101. The Tai O information is more explicit on this point, but the Cheung Chau practice was the same.\n\n** See E.G. Pryor, Housing in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1983) pp. 15-17. These new urban districts were very susceptible to contagious disease. It is well to recall Governor Des Voeux's report of 1889 in which, describing the City of Victoria, he wrote: \"Going ashore our visitor would see in the Chinese quarters houses, constructed after a pattern peculiar to China, of almost equally solid materials, but packed so closely together and thronged so densely as to be in this respect probably without parallel in the world.. It is believed that over 100,000 people live within a certain district of the City of Victoria not exceeding 1⁄2 square mile in area. It is known that 1,600 people live in the space of a single acre.\" (Sessional Papers 1889, pp. 303-304).\n\n15\n\n** Victoria had seven officially-approved sub-districts in 1857, as listed and described in the Hong Kong Government Gazette for 9 May 1857, GN No. 69. They included \"No. 1, or SEI-YING-POON — From the small village westward, called Cowee-wan, to the end of Circular Buildings, including all the houses on Bonham Strand, west of No. 1 Police Boat Station. The historical development of this area is given by Revd. Carl T. Smith's note at pp. 211-218 of JHKBRAS 14(1974) in \"Programme Notes for Visits to Older Parts of Hong Kong Island (Urban Areas....)\n\nSee also Chapter 3, Sheung Wan, of Frank Leeming's Street Studies in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1977) pp. 45-66.\n\n24\n\nSheung Fung Lane itself is situated between Second and Third Streets in that section bounded by Centre Street to the East and Western Street to the West.\n\n** An account of pao wui at the Tam Kung festival in Shau Kei Wan from a Secretariat for Chinese Affairs' file of 1958 is typical: \"There were about 15 Kaifong elders in the Tam Kung temple who were enrolling pao wui (K), there were about 18 pao wu's from the sea and about 10 from the land. The wul's who brought their own roast-pigs with them had to pay \"oil money\" and \"worshipping fees\" from $10 to $30 to the elders before entering the temple. It is learned that the worshippers have no objection to pay these fees. In addition the temple keeper also charged $5 or $10 for each roast-pig brought into the temple plus $5 to $10 \"oil money\".\n\n20 A recent account of the proceedings at Sheung Fung Lane is given in the article \"Everyone's festival\" in The Asia Magazine issued weekly by Asia Magazines Ltd., Hong Kong, Vol. 21, Number V7, 4th January 1981, pp. 3-6.\n\n3-6. For a very well illustrated account of a similar old neighbourhood in Singapore, and its community festivals, see \"Singapore's Vanishing Chinatown\" by Joan Ogden in The Asia Magazine 25th July 1976.\n\n* \"No. 3, or TAI-PING-SHAN From the end of Hollywood Road near Circular Buildings, to Gough Street steps, including all the houses on the south side of the Queen's Road between these two points.\" See the plan opposite p. 124 of Marjorie Topley (ed) Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch 1967). This was drawn in 1882 (ibid, pp. 123-124).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210921, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 272, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "255\n\nIf the man with the list was stopped, he could claim he had just picked it up on the street.\n\nThere would be a third officer of the society on the street with a porcelain box containing the winning character. In front of observers he would break the box, exhibit the paper and proclaim the winning character. The winner would receive $30 for every $1 he had wagered.\n\nWhile tse-fa could be conducted easily on the streets, fan-tan was usually played indoors. There would be agents about the entrance to the establishments to persuade the passer-by to try his luck. Strangers in the Colony were particular objects of solicitation. Once inside, every inducement would be made to keep the victim there. According to Dr. Ho Kai, the patron would be plied \"with tea heavily drugged, medicated tobacco and such fiendish devices.\"\n\nHe then went on to describe the effect of gambling on women. \"Speaking with all due respect, I cannot help thinking that the Chinese ladies are the most helpless of all human beings, this makes the sin of those who victimise them all the more hateful, and it behoves us as men to protect them as far as it is in our power from the pit-falls which those heartless wretches have prepared for their destruction. Most Chinese ladies are easily persuaded to vary their retired and monotonous life by a little excitement like gambling; but alas, little do they know, when they once begin to gamble, they are taking the first step forward on the road that leads to their ruin,”\n\nThe speaker graphically described how, having lost all their money, the women begin to borrow from friends and relatives using any excuse that might open purse-strings.\n\nAfter this source of funds has been exhausted through too frequent requests, the pawnbroker becomes the gambler's friend. To him she entrusts jewellery, clothing, furniture, anything she can get that has marketable value. But eventually the time of reckoning comes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212330, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 272, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "249\n\nand at six o'clock on December 1st, 1890, 50 electric lights were switched on in Queen's Road Central, Battery Path, and Upper Albert Road. All testing had been done in secret so nothing would mar the excitement of that first night. On the second night a fault put the electric lights out and sceptics were saying, 'I told you so!' A week later, during rain, the lights went out again, and they were not restored for two days. There were no more breakdowns from then on for 26 years.\n\nLater, all streets west as far as Bonham Strand and Caine Road at Mid-Levels, and, later still, along Queen's Road East and Wanchai Road to Mission Hospital Hill (the present site of Ruttonjee Sanitorium) were lit. Hong Kong and Shanghai were the first two Asian cities to have a public electricity supply, and Hong Kong Electric is the only surviving company of the many that pioneered electric power throughout the Far East. It is one of the oldest suppliers of electricity in the world.\n\nOf the three chief men who pioneered the Hong Kong Electric venture, Bendyshe Layton is credited with providing the momentum, and Sir Paul Chater, who was a director for 37 years, was responsible for finance. Capital amounted to $300,000, divided into 30,000 shares of which half were offered to the public. The third person was William Wickham the electrical engineer. He designed and supervised the building of the first power station and remained as manager of the company until 1910.\n\nInterest in electricity soon developed, and, in the 1890s, the first private homes were wired up and electric fans began to replace punkas. Also, by 1898, the first substation was constructed to service the new tall buildings, which had electric lifts (elevators), along the newly reclaimed waterfront. By 1905 the company was supplying power for 15 lifts, hundreds of fans, the equivalent of 34,500 lamps and street lighting. The Royal Naval Dockyard, near where Queensway now runs, was a blaze of light.\n\nPower was later extended, underground, to West Point, then the centre of the colony's busy night life. Subsequently electricity reached the Peak and Shau Kei Wan, and, by 1916, Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau were supplied. Gradually large organisations like Dairy Farm, Taikoo Docks, the Peak Tram and the University, which had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212389, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 331, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "308\n\nThe Dance is performed on three evenings. The official invited to officiate on the first evening is an officer of the civil authority (Man), whilst the official on the second evening is an officer of the military authority (Mo), represented by the Royal Hong Kong Police. The third evening is regarded as the Village's own celebration.\n\nThe Dragon is 220 feet long and has a team of 120 dancers. It consists of the head, body (32 segments), and tail and is preceded by two dancing Dragon Pearls (Lung Chu) whose purpose is to attract the Dragon forward. It is accompanied by a drum and clashing cymbals, as well as by banners and costumed children carrying lanterns. The dragon itself is composed of grass, the head being on a cane base, and it is liberally stuffed with burning incense sticks; the throwing of firecrackers ended with the 1967 ban on fireworks. The grass is 'pearl' grass, obtained these days from the New Territories. Incense sticks from the Dragon are taken home by the dancers to worship their Tai Hang ancestors who have previously taken part in the Dance. Dragon cakes from the Temple are taken home on the third day for the same purpose. The Dance ceremony starts with the decoration of the Dragon and its stuffing with incense sticks and continues throughout the evening through the streets of Tai Hang. At the end of the three days of celebrations the Dragon is thrown into the waters of the harbour.\n\nChinese Dragons are the essence of the Yang, or male, principle, and the Tai Hang Fire Dragon is no exception. Until recent years female participation was limited to the cutting of grass. Ladies were not allowed to touch the Dragon and they were not admitted during the Dragon's visit to the Lin Fa Kung Temple (sited to the east of Wun Sha Street and dedicated to Kwun Yum). Pregnant women with two daughters and no sons were, however, allowed to pass under the Dragon, with the intention of the birth of a son.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong is grateful for the assistance given with this visit and in the preparation of these notes by Mr Ho Choi-Chiu, Chairman of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association, and by Mr Chan Tak-Fai, of the Association's Dance Organising Committee.\n\nGEOFFREY ROPER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213505, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "69\n\ndue to high density made the spread of diseases rapid and easy. In 1888, a very serious epidemic of smallpox broke out among the inhabitants of the district. In 1894 Bubonic Plague fell upon the district with a vengeance.\n\nProbably the terrible disease was introduced into Hong Kong from Canton. Unfortunately, Hong Kong had for several months been suffering from excessive drought and consequently a very limited water supply. The local overcrowding and insanitary conditions tended to favour the spread of the disease. It was not surprising to learn that two or three days later after the first appearance of the plague (11th May 1894) it assumed an epidemic form.\n\nThe plague had gained a firm footing in the most densely populated districts of Hong Kong. In Sai Ying Pun, First, Second, and Third Streets were the most infected parts of Hong Kong. The disease in Sai Ying Pun was due possibly to the bad conditions of the latrines, especially the public ones. They were used by the bulk of the Chinese population. Few Chinese dwellings in the district were provided with facilities of this kind. The plague bacillus was abundantly found in the faeces. In those latrines, there was practically no disinfection of the faeces, and they were not cleaned out as regularly as they ought to have been. These latrines were often visited by plague-stricken people. The bacillus was probably borne by air and infected the neighbouring houses.\n\nFrom a letter of Dr. Lowson to the Colonial Surgeon, bearing the date 15th August 1894, we learn that:\n\n\"There is a licensed private latrine at 113 Second Street. At a casual glance, the shut-up houses all around bear eloquent testimony upon this point. Round this latrine, there is scarcely a house occupied.\n\nIn Centre Street, at the corner of Third Street, there is a latrine. On passing into Third Street to the South, numerous houses are shut up, and several cases have occurred in the neighbouring houses.\n\nAt 82 First Street, there is a latrine with an entrance at 91 Second Street. A very large number of cases occurred round this place. Around several other latrines, more especially at 29 First Street, numerous cases occurred. Sheung Fung Lane off Second Street and opposite to No. 91.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213506, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "70\n\nof that street is practically shut up. The mortality here was very great. The inhabitants were principally night-soil coolies and almost all died. The occupants of houses in Third Street, adjoining this were also numerously attacked \" (Lowson, 1895, P5)\n\nIn 1895, plague cases were found centred in First Street and several streets not far from the Civil Hospital. In 1902, a group of cases were discovered round Pokfulam Road and Second Street. Infected rats were also found in that area.\n\nAfter the breaking out of the plague, thousands of panic-stricken people began to leave Hong Kong. They left in every sort of conveyance: sampans, boats, junks, and river steamers. People of Sai Ying Pun could also leave by ambulance boats, which came to the China Merchants Wharf at 4 p.m. each day, on which the people were towed to Whampoa or Canton. At 1901, the population of the district was 44,722, a decrease of 848 people when compared with the 1897 figure.\n\nDr Lowson in 1895 and Dr Simpson in 1902 had both made a number of strong recommendations as to the measures which should be enforced to prevent further outbreaks of bubonic plague. According to them, back-to-back houses should be demolished. Basements should not be inhabited. Disinfected or rat-ridden houses should be either closed or walled in or thoroughly sprayed, fumigated, chlorinated, scrubbed, and lime-washed. Latrines and public markets should be maintained by the authorities in a clean condition.\n\nThe last recommendation was particularly important to the district. A latrine in the Sai Ying Pun Market was situated only three yards distant from a large quantity of meat which was often hanging for hours at a time. On the other hand, hot water tanks and bath houses, for the purposes of promoting cleanliness among the Chinese and thus preventing the spread of plague among them, were established in Second and Third Streets in 1903. A Public Health and Building Ordinance was passed in order to better sanitary conditions in Hong Kong. Unlike Tai Ping Shan district, Sai Ying Pun was excluded from schemes of resumption. However, at that time, most of the houses in Sai Ying Pun did need destruction and resumption rather than improvement of the sanitary arrangements. Actually, a few areas in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213971, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "course, think about The Little Man; it can't think about little men.\" This is not to decry what individual officers could, and usually did, do for personal complainants in specific cases.\n\nSir David Trench had his own ideas; thoughts from on high are less easily smothered than unsolicited disturbances from below. The received wisdom, which equally impressed most of the interlopers, was that since most of the population might want to return home across the border at some time, the electoral roll would be far too fluid to embrace a stable, identifiable and representable society; and that in any event direct elections to Legislative Council (Legco) were unthinkable, because they would be hi-jacked by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Kuomintang (KMT) from Taiwan; the fundamental Chinese political battle would then be fought out in the streets and on any hustings of Hong Kong, which the Chinese People's Republic (CPR) would never be willing to stand idly by and watch being conceivably won by Hong Kong Chinese Nationalist sympathisers. However Trench recognised that Legco was not the only possible forum for expression of popular feeling.\n\nTrench had no problems with sharing some of the lifestyle of the taipans and Chinese millionaires who were so noticeable among those traditionally appointed by governors to Exco and Legco, and whose nature he did little to change; despite the familiar jibe that he ranked third, after the taipan of the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Chairman of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, all knew that in the last resort he recommended the names of Executive Councillors to the Secretary of State. In his earlier days, however, he had preferred the raffish and disrespectful ambience of the multi-racial Foreign Correspondents' Club to that of the Hong Kong Club, Fanling [the Governor's official residence in the New Territories Hon. Editor] and the Jockey Club; while he enjoyed the actual sports of golf and racing for their own sakes; he never lost touch with his humbler post-war acquaintances in the Chinese community, such as his language teacher. He insisted that the introductory review chapter of one year's colonial annual report should spell out the wide sweep and valued authority of the great number of statutory, non-statutory and ad hoc committees which he believed to be a valid response to critics who would not understand why the people had no democratically elected voice in his councils. Yet his broad sympathies told him that, even so,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214771, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "150\n\nthrough. Get some soya beans which help the rice down. Junior falls down and nearly breaks his leg.\n\nSixteenth. Start Japanese lessons. Florrie arrives again and this time I'm lucky. Whimpey gets a blue mood and refuses to talk to anyone.\n\nSeventeenth. Florrie's amah arrives with more food.\n\nEighteenth. Sentries wire up streets facing camp and shoot a man and a woman for trying to sell food. Florrie turns up again but can't get her parcel through, what a girl. Two Chinese bodies washed up near fence. Everyone feeling weaker due to lack of proper food. Rumours and counter rumours so contradictory that I don't believe anything. Some real news would make such a difference.\n\nNineteenth. Now get three meals of rice a day but quantity the same. Rice by itself is awful muck, but we save our small stock of milk and sugar for our evening tea. Over hundred men arrive from Queen Mary's hospital.\n\nTwentieth. More men arrive in lorries, some unable to walk, and dressed only in pyjamas and socks. Troops give a concert including dance band. Cigarettes very scarce.\n\nTwenty first. Fight between Middlesex and Indians. Rice ration very short.\n\nTwenty second. All Indians moved out of camp. Canadians being moved tomorrow, destination unknown.\n\nTwenty third. Disturbed early by troops detailed for work at Kai Tak, a three-mile walk, wonder how they will make out on the diet.\n\nTwenty fourth. Navy are moved from the camp and we are going into Jubilee Buildings. Usual mad scramble for accommodation. Wing gets peeved with Brigadier McCleod and tells him a few things. News is that we have withdrawn in Malaya and that there's a rumpus at home about HK and Malaya, and quite rightly too as both places were very weak in defences, especially aircraft, and men have had to fight against overwhelming odds. We all hope these blunders will soon be rectified.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215326, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "31\n\nexecution of Qin Gui, the famous \"traitor,\" as well as Wang Lun and Sun Jin, and the hanging of their heads in the streets to show to the public. For this, he was demoted to a post in Fuzhou (in 1138), from where he was transferred to Xinzhou in Guangdong province in 1142. Six years later, he was falsely accused by a man called Zhang (a member of Qin Gui's 'Death clique'), because of a couplet he wrote called Haoshijin, and was moved to the Jiyang military district. He retired to the Pearl Cliff to write a manual for officials, and set up a school. After the accession of the new emperor, he returned to the fray, holding a number of important posts before retiring in 1171. He died in 1180 at the age of 78.\n\nZhao Ding was a Minister of State and a steadfast opponent of Qin Gui and his policy of making peace with the Tatars, for which he was banished to various places. He was born in Shanxi and died in a distant post at Jiyang, on the south-west tip of Hainan, in 1147.\n\nb] The Three Marquises, San Gong, is a separate group of deities, scholar-officials of the 9th and 10th centuries AD whose images or tablets have only been seen on altars in Hainanese temples on Hainan Island. The three are Li Deyu [one of the Five Marquises: q.v.], Lu Duoxun 廬多遜 and Ding Wei 丁謂,\n\nThe second of the Three, Lu Duoxun, also a senior official exiled to Hainan, died some 136 years after Li Deyu. He was born in Henan province and he too became President of the Board of War in 979. La served a later dynasty, the Northern Song, and was also banished to Hainan following court intrigue. His poetry achieved the distinction of being remembered and quoted.\n\nThe third, Ding Wei, was also a high official of the Song and the only one of the three to survive his banishment. He returned home from Hainan to die in 1040. Ding was born in Jiangsu province and rose to become a Minister of State. He was degraded and banished following accusations of witchcraft and of oppressive rule. He also wrote a large collection of poems whilst in Hainan.\n\nc] Su Shi is probably better known as Su Dongpo, and is referred to in Hainan as Su Gong. He is one of the eight famous men of letters of the Tang and Song eras and lived from AD 1036-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216420, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 179, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "129\n\nChemulpo (later Inchon). This would drive north along thawing and impassable roads, across the Yalu River into Manchuria, heading for Liaoyang and Mukden (now known as Shenyang) north of the Liaodong peninsula. Then, with what remained of the Russian fleet bottled up in the harbour at Port Arthur, the second and main force would be landed some thirty miles north of Dalny (Dairen to the Japanese and now known as Dalian) cutting off Port Arthur at the tip of the Liaodong peninsula. The final stage was the landing of a third Japanese army in January 1905 and its assault on Port Arthur. The war began as planned with a Japanese 'Pearl Harbor' bombardment at Port Arthur, taking the Russian fleet by surprise.\n\nAlthough the Japanese met with a number of set-backs their overall plan succeeded. The crowning moments were the Fall of Port Arthur at the beginning of January 1905 and the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, the titanic clash between the Japanese fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet, the latter having made its slow progress across the world from Latvia in October 1904 to Tsushima seven months later, and to its fate and destruction. News of the devastating Japanese victory alarmed a number of Chinese officials who, whilst they did not wish Japan to lose, had not wanted her to gain such an overwhelming victory.\n\nFinally, after the eighteen month campaign the land war ended with the destruction of the Russian army before Mukden. The succeeding months were a matter of Japanese mopping-up operations and the capture of Liaoyang and Mukden.\n\nDuring the final stages of the war the Japanese finally took the fighting on to 'sacred' Russian territory when they invaded the large island of Sakhalin. This was of great political importance as it was regarded as Russian territory and, with rioting on the streets of the Russian major cities, the Russians realised that they had lost. Also at that point, Japan now holding most of the cards, but militarily and financially exhausted, sought President Roosevelt's good offices to bring about a peace conference. This took place in September 1905 concluding with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States. The Russians ceded the Guandong peninsula (Chinese territory) and half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan but without having to pay any indemnity. The Russians, so the Japanese believed, had been allowed by the Americans to get away without paying any financial compensation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]