[
    {
        "id": 209660,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 317,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n295 \n\nstyled a kung shoh (ABT) with a 'lock-up' for offenders. They were located in some old houses with small windows, near the Tin Hau temple and inside the wall. According to elders born in the 1880s, the village had watchmen when they were young, even though there was still a moat round the village at that time, albeit used as a fishpond. A new office was built above the main entrance of the village in 1949, perhaps because the old was by then, and earlier, let to tenants. A list of the subscribers hangs in the office.\n\nThe village had street lighting supplied by a public utility company requested and paid for by the office. It had had this amenity even before the war, from about 1930, and got it before it got a piped water supply.\n\nAt the time of my enquiries, the village still employed watchmen, despite the small size of the enclosure. This was so not simply because it was a customary practice, but also because of the presence of many outsiders, in the village and the adjoining squatter areas. It was reported that there were 106 houses in the village, some of them occupied by several families. There were then said to be some 300 families in residence. About a hundred were outsiders, post-war arrivals who were mostly renting and sharing premises.\n\nThere was at some times only one watchman, but two or three at others, dependent upon the need, and also upon how much money was available to pay for their services. They were supposed to be village people, though this condition was loosely interpreted, and was usually fulfilled by at least ten years' residence. The longest serving watchman was then Ah Lung, aged over 50, who had served continuously for twenty years since the Second World War. Ah Chong had 8 or 9 years' service. Two others were mentioned, by then retired, one of whom had served for ten years just after the war and the other for just four, (1958---62). The pay was never high. In 1967 the watchmen were paid $350 per month.\n\nI interviewed one old watchman, born in the village about 1906-07. At the time of the Tung Tau squatter village fire in 1951 he was unemployed, so he became a watchman at nearby",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "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": 214675,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 90,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "54\n\nCity itself began at about the same time. The land south of the City Wall was cleared, and the land between today's Carpenter Road and Prince Edward Road, Grampian Road and Sa Po Road was developed. All this area was developed before the mid 1930s. Nga Tsin Long village disappeared at this date (it lay close to today's Nga Tsin Long Road). The old Market disappeared, too: it was cleared along with the villages nearby. By the middle 1930s, nothing at all was left of the old villages south of Kowloon City, with the exception of a few houses of Sai Tau near the Hau Wong Temple, and about a third of Sha Po, which remained, rather forlornly, on the eastern edge of this development area until the 1960s.\n\nFor the Nga Tsin Wai villagers, the problems this development caused were very great. For half-a-dozen years there was no Market at Kowloon City, effectively, at all. Half the League of Seven had disappeared within a couple of years. The economy and society of the area had thus been very seriously damaged. The shops and workshops owned by the villagers had to close: rental income was cut off.\n\nIn the later 1930s there was no further development in this area, because of fears caused by the steady growth of Japanese influence across the Border. However, these years saw a huge number of refugees fleeing from the Japanese into Hong Kong. Squatter huts were thrown up in the area around Kowloon City, both over the strip of land between the Walled City and Carpenter Road (this had been cleared for development in the mid 1930s, but left empty when development slowed down), and to the east of the City, around Tung Tau, and Nga Tsin Wai. The area north of Nga Tsin Wai village became full of squatter huts in this period. Squatters occupied many of the village fields, and the villagers were not usually able to get rent for them.\n\nAll these problems were shared with Po Kong. The Po Kong people, unable to understand why their comfortable life had suddenly shattered, put the blame on their Goddess. They took their Tin Hau and cast the image into a great fire. This sacrilege shocked the Nga Tsin Wai villagers greatly: not only was the Goddess thus dishonoured, but also the Po Kong people were the Goddess' own relatives (the Po Kong Lams come from the same village and clan as the Lady Lam who was later deified as the Goddess Tin Hau). The Nga Tsin Wai people retained their faith in the Goddess. The disasters which befell Po Kong over the next few\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]