[ { "id": 204379, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "Nevertheless the monthly meetings of the Society have been consistently well attended with audiences which often have more than filled this room and have averaged well over one hundred at each meeting. This regularity of attendance proves that there is in the Colony a reliable cross section of the community who appreciate what Professor Drake referred to in his inaugural lecture as the Study of Asia and our heritage.\n\nIn the earlier days of the Society up to 1859 when the Government of the Colony provided a home for the Society and its library it was honoured with the presence on its Council of the Governor, the Commander of the British Forces, the Chief Justice, the Bishop of Victoria, the Colonial Secretary, the Colonial Treasurer and the Attorney General, and it had the active support of the heads of the great merchant houses like Jardine, Matheson and Co. and Dent and Co. Although in these busier days we miss the successors of some of these eminent personages we are still honoured today by the patronage of His Excellency the Governor and the support of leading members of a more cosmopolitan community than in the earlier days. We particularly appreciate the keenness of the Hon. W. C. G. Knowles, who has recently joined the Council, and of the Honourable the Chief Justice whose athletic figure some of us recall striding along the slithery slopes of Lantao on the occasion of our archaeological excursion last year. We hope that this year we may provide a further opportunity for members who do not perhaps know one another as well as it might be desired, to join in a combined social and study expedition either to Lantao or elsewhere in the New Territories.\n\nDuring the year 1961 nine public meetings were held at which unusually interesting lectures were given, most of them illustrated with colour slides-\n\nJanuary 23rd\n\nJames Liu\n\n\"The Knight Errant in Chinese Literature\"\n\n\"Tibet As It Was (1936-1950)”\n\nFebruary 10th\n\nHugh Richardson\n\nApril 10th\n\nMay 13th\n\nMiss Mary Tregear\n\n\"Chinese Paintings in Formosa and America\"\n\nExpedition to Lantao to visit archaeological sites", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204985, "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-1965", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "84 \n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nHong Kong, than in the 1920's and 30's. The latter period came within the warlord era when the writ of the central government at Peking or Nanking sat very lightly, if at all, on the southern provinces. In 1925 and 1927, however, the Navy sent expeditions into Bias Bay, to destroy—if possible without damage to innocent lives and property—villages known to harbour pirates and pirate junks. The second expedition was undertaken in exasperation after the pirating of the Jardine steamer S.S. Hop Sang in March 1927.4 The official report issued after the expedition claimed that one hundred and thirty stone and mat shed huts were destroyed in the two villages attacked, and forty junks and sampans destroyed. The raid had been no surprise, and definite evidence was found that the villages had been implicated in recent piracies. These raids only caused a temporary lull in the pirates' activities.\n\nThe Navy had one notable success in the Irene piracy of October 1927, which illustrates the difficulties with which the Navy and the Hong Kong Government had to contend in their anti-piracy campaign. H.M.S. submarine L4 challenged the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company's Irene when entering Bias Bay without lights and in suspicious circumstances. When she refused to stop, and then ignored a warning shot fired across her bow, a live round was fired which still drew no response. The Irene's captain was navigating under the pirates' supervision, and tried to ring down to stop the engines, but was too late.\n\nThe next shot struck the Irene amidships on the waterline, disabling the engines, killing a pirate standing beside the chief engineer, and starting a fire which almost gutted the ship before she sank. L4 went alongside and rescued most of the crew, and 220 of the 248 passengers. Three other warships and the tug Alliance arrived later, but were unable to prevent the Irene from sinking. When L4 arrived at Hong Kong the crew and passengers of Irene were screened by the police, and three men were identified as being pirates. A few days later seven other men were arrested, and all ten eventually hanged, after a sensational attempt to break out of Hong Kong's Victoria Gaol. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company came under the control of the Chinese Government, and the Irene\n\n4 The only piracy of a Jardine ship in the modern era,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205171, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "122\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npermitted to settle there, and stringent measures will be taken to prevent its becoming as heretofore a resort for thieves and outlaws, who are hereby warned that they will be proceeded against with severity if they attempt to conceal themselves within the above-mentioned limits **6\n\nWho were these people? Most of the inhabitants of Old Kowloon at this time were Hakkas, whereas the earlier inhabitants of the flatter and more fertile areas of the peninsula, especially round Kowloon City, not far beyond the northern boundary of British territory, were Cantonese. The major Cantonese settlements in the area south of the Kowloon hills date back to the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368) and even before, whereas the Hakka settlers of the southern part of the Kowloon peninsula are of much more recent origin. Most of them appear to have come into the area in the first half of the 19th century, especially after 1841.\n\nSeveral factors can be said to have operated in bringing Hakkas into the area in the middle years of the 19th century. In the first place, there appears to have been a continuing movement of Hakkas early in the century, seeking to settle on new land. Then, after 1841, there was the attraction of nearby Hong Kong with its opportunities for work, and perhaps wealth. The development of Victoria, the capital city, brought a demand for granite and this was readily available in the rocky outcrops of Kowloon, from which it could conveniently be transported across the harbour to the new building sites. In 1871 there were no less than eighty-one stone quarries in Kowloon more than for the whole of Hong Kong island. Quarrying is traditionally work in which Hakkas engage: they pride themselves on their strength and ability to engage in such strenuous labour.10 Thirdly, the prolonged unrest of the Taiping Rebellion forced many individuals and even whole families to leave their homes and settle in British territory.\" One of the more picturesque settlers in Ho Man Tin Village in the 1860s was a Hakka who had allegedly been one of the Taiping generals and rejoiced in the nickname \"Seven Legged Heavenly Flying Tiger\".\n\nA contemporary observer who had spent nearly thirty years in South China described these people as follows: 12\n\nParties of tramps, called Hakkas or ‘guests' roamed over Kwangtung province squatting on vacant places along the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205519, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "56\n\nNOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\nH. A. RYDINGS*\n\nThose of us who have watched the rapid development of libraries of all kinds in Hong Kong since the new University Library building was opened in 1961 may sometimes think that there is no library history worth considering for the first hundred years of the existence of the Colony. Certainly an appeal to members of the Hong Kong Library Association, made some two years ago, for any information on the early history of Hong Kong libraries met with no immediate response. Later, however, my colleague Mr. G. W. Bonsall, in searching through local newspapers and other sources for information on other subjects, came across a number of items about libraries, which he kindly brought to my notice. The present article is based upon this, slightly augmented from other materials, and in no way purports to be a comprehensive history of Hong Kong libraries up to 1900. It is evident that much more remains to be found by the diligent searcher before such a history can be written. For the moment, however, this brief sketch based on what has so far come to light may be of interest as an introduction to Hong Kong's library history.\n\nForemost of the early libraries in the Colony is undoubtedly the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms. 'Colonial', writing in 1933, stated: “A privately organised library was established in Hong Kong as far back as 1848. A small library with attached reading rooms was run by this organisation for some years, and really formed the basis on which the City Hall library was subsequently established.\" Although 'Colonial' does not name the library, he goes on to say: “In 1871, probably in view of the coming into being of the public library, the original institution, retaining its more or less private character, was organised into a club, which was known as the Victoria Club.\" As will be seen later, this makes it certain that the reference is to the Victoria Library.\n\nThe next reference2 found to the Victoria Library & Reading Rooms is a report of the Annual General Meeting held on June\n\n* Mr. Rydings has been University Librarian at the University of Hong Kong since 1961. He is a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and is currently its Hon. Librarian.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205852, "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-1969", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nwhich they appear. We know, too, that the author did not go to the East until 1849 when he received the appointment of Her Majesty to be Consul in Canton.\n\nNow it is entirely possible that Bowring saw an illustration of the church somewhere. Mr. David Keir, author of THE BOWRING STORY (The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1962) to whom I submitted this problem, informs me that Bowring visited Portugal in 1815, and may have run across one there. But it is also possible that he had to go no farther than London. \"At the Hispano Portuguese Library in Belgrave Square,\" Keir writes, \"there is an illustration of the church.\" It \"is a high pagoda-like building, rising above many steps, with a Cross at its peak. As most churches have a cross on the roof somewhere, it is still inconclusive whether this was the church he had in mind.” “It is also possible (for instance),\" Mr. Keir continues, \"that he might have been inspired to write the hymn following his visit to the Pena Convent in Portugal - an experience which seems to have impressed him very much, for he writes in his Autobiographical Recollections:\n\n'I also went to the Pena Convent, which towers [note the use of this word] over the highest of the precipices. The rude path, which leads to it, winds round the rugged steep, and if ever there was a spot fitted for those who would withdraw from the world, it is this. Here might misanthropy revel in perfect abstraction for scarcely could any earthly idea enter into that secluded and weather-beaten temple....'\n\nCan any reader of the Journal offer any better hypothesis? Columbia University, 1969.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nBOOKS FROM THE VICTORIA LIBRARY\n\nAs a kind of postscript to \"Notes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century,\" which appeared in the last volume of this Journal between pp. 56-66, it may be of interest to record that two titles formerly the property of the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms (1848-1871) have come to light.\n\nThe first was bought by Mr. James Hayes, our Hon. Editor, from a 'fly-by-night' bookstall in Causeway Bay. This is:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "# THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n# 187\n\nAs I walked out, after the service, round the wall of the city, I had a singular and pleasing rencontre with a countryman and fellow-townsman of my own. Passing the quarters of the English troops, near the Five-storied Pagoda, a fine-looking fellow of the Engineers came panting up the hill, and addressing me, said, “Are you Mr. Legge of Hongkong?” \"Yes, but I do not know that ever I saw you before.\" \"But you have,\" said he, bursting into the sweet Aberdeenshire Doric; \"I cam oot for the wark here, and we hadna time to land at Hongkong, or I would hae come to see ye. Dinna ye ken the sma toon o' Huntly in Aberdeenshire?\" \"I know Huntly well, and so, I suppose, do you. Are you from Huntly?\" \"Eh! aye. D'ye mind the Piries at the brig-fitt?\" All I could do, I could not bring the Piries to my recollection; but this was one of them, John Pirie; and seeing that he had the Victoria Cross on his breast, I touched it, and said, \"Weel, I see you hae na been disgracing oor sma toon; what did ye get this for?\" \"It was a sma matter, and nae worth speaking about.\" \"But tell me what ye got it for.\" \"Weel, ye see, I was in the Crimea in the attack on the Redan. You ken it was a failure, an' we had to retreat, and many o' oor men were i' the open exposed to the fire o' the Russians. I was wounded mysel', but nae sae sair that I couldna keep the field, and I thought I would try and bring aff some o' these men. An' I did sae, an' they thought it was a brave thing, and gied me this cross for it. But it was a sma matter; I couldna but dee't.”\n\nOn returning from Canton, I started for a short visit to England by way of Calcutta. I reached that city on the day that news came down to it of the taking of Lucknow; and a few weeks after I sailed for home in the same steamer with Sir John Inglis, and many officers of the garrison of Lucknow, and many widows also whose husbands had died there. You may be sure the passage was not tedious with such companions, but I have not time to dwell on my intercourse with them, and many of the thrilling narratives about the siege which I received from their lips.\n\nIn September, 1859, I was back here again, and found that Sir Hercules Robinson had arrived a little before me as our new Governor. The news also greeted me of the violation of the T'ëentsin treaty by the Chinese, and of the defeat of our fleet at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207397, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n157\n\nIn the Colony trade went on and there was much talk of the value of Hong Kong to Great Britain as a provider of foreign currency through its commerce. The fine young men in civil life in Hong Kong, prevented from travelling to join the forces at home, like many others, found it hard to reconcile the argument in favour of acquiring foreign currency with their knowledge that a large proportion of the goods exported found its way to Japan. They were all keen members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. It may be claimed that our trading policy delayed Japan's entry into the war, but to many it seemed that economic and strategic considerations were at cross purposes.\n\nI came in contact with Indian troops in the Colony mainly in an individual professional capacity when my surgical services were needed, but I imagine they were subject to the same effects of garrison duty as were the British troops. Garrison duty has never in any army provided a satisfactory training for active service, and Hong Kong provided yet another example of the truth of this. Once the arrangements for manning the defences were mastered the Island and the New Territories gave little scope for the most ingenious commander or space in which he could exercise and retain the interest of his troops. This left sports to absorb, by no means completely, the youthful energies of strong young men. Many of these had been received as friends in families in Hong Kong, some had contracted stable relationships with women but many had little to occupy themselves when off duty. I well remember seeing men flushed from their games trying to get into the China Fleet Club on the Victoria waterfront. They were obliged to shoulder their way physically through the crowd of Chinese and Eurasian women seeking them as companions. Not all of these were attractive, but girls of these races are among the most beautifully shaped that, in a wide experience, I have ever met. Co-habitation with a high proportion of these girls led to venereal infection and some men sought satisfaction in their own sex. Alas, this did not safeguard them from infection. Another hazard was malaria. About October 1941 the army manned the defences in an exercise and following this a substantial number of soldiers contracted malaria and needed treatment in hospital. Before many had regained strength after the fever, the army was deployed during the phase which led to open war. I pay high tribute to the spirit and the readiness with which these men met the call. Everyone who was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207726, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n99\n\nkindly put me in communication with the British Minister in Rome so that I can command his good offices. . . . In the matter of decorations. Sir John ranks high among the Colonial Governors of England.\" And a Grand Cross of Kalakaua was later conferred on him.\n\nHong Kong Chinese merchants who traded with the people in Hawaii came to call on the King, and told him that their countrymen in his Kingdom appreciated the opportunities in the islands and were loyal to the Hawaiian government.\n\nAt the last State banquet in Hong Kong, as Armstrong reported, \"the lifeless air and heavy food made the King drowsy. The numerous receptions and late hours had deprived the King of sleep. His eyelids dropped . . . The Governor's wife was seated on the King's right, and I was seated next to her. I feared a nasal explosion if the King's doze should deepen, and devised ways of preventing it. It was a case of emergency. I whispered to the Governor's wife what my fears were, and asked her aid in preventing a loss of royal dignity. The clever wife of the Governor whispered to me, 'Will any special piece of music waken him up?' . . . She quietly called the majordomo, and in a minute the military band in the balcony filled the air with the music of 'Hawai'i Pono'i' (the Hawaiian National Anthem).\" The King woke up and the banquet ended.\n\nPage 100\n\nOn April 21, 1881, the Royal group left Hong Kong on the ship Killarney for Bangkok. Acting Consul General F. Bulkeley Johnson sent his report to W. L. Green, \"His Majesty the King and suite arrived here on the 12th [April] and left on the 21st April for Bangkok on a visit to the King of Siam.\"\n\nAnd the King and his party travelled to Singapore, Penang, Calcutta, Suez, Cairo, Rome, London, Brussels, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Lisbon. King Kalakaua, in his July 12, 1881 letter from London, wrote of his meeting with Queen Victoria, “She came up to me and took my hand and then sat on a sofa asking me to sit down on a chair facing the sofa near her. She said that I was making a very long tour. I answered very fluently asked particularly where I learnt English as my accent was perfect.\" \n\nHomeward bound, the group crossed the Atlantic on the S. S. Celtic to New York. Then to Philadelphia, Washington, where he called on President Chester A. Arthur, and overland to California", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209960, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "197\n\nFrom 1860 there is, firstly, a collection of China Medals and related items and eight drawings by a Royal Marines Light Infantry officer who served in the Second China War. There is also a vase and a gilded, seated, Buddha which were taken from the Summer Palace in that year.\n\nThe Marines were involved in the fighting occasioned by the Boxer uprising in 1900, and the Museum holds a number of relics of this involvement. A Boxer flag is, for instance, on display. This was captured by Sgt. Preston, Royal Marines Light Infantry, on the walls of Peking on July 14, 1900, an act for which he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. The notes explain that Preston kept the Boxers at bay while an American Marine seized the flag.\n\nA Victoria Cross was won at about the same date which is commemorated by the display of a large pike. This was captured by the RMLI detachment during the siege of the Legations. Captain L.S.T. Holliday led a sortie during which he had half a lung shot away. He later became Adjutant General of the Royal Marines and when he died in 1966 at the age of 95 he was the oldest holder of the VC. A squat, gape-mouthed, mortar about two feet high is also on show. This was seized at the capture of the Taku forts in 1900. A large brass shell case used by the Quick Firing guns at the Taku Forts is mounted in the museum as a gong. The case has the name Berndorfer stamped upon it, an Austrian firm.\n\nNext came a quick visit to the National Army Museum, in Chelsea, London. Among the items which I spotted there were the following, and I am sure there must be others which I missed.\n\nThere is a large, full-length, portrait of Sir Hugh Gough, by an unknown artist. He is shown with what looks to be an Indian servant buckling on his sword and is impressively bemedalled. A tall, slim, figure, with a white moustache, the General was in his fifties or sixties when the picture was painted. A silver model pagoda commemorating the Treaty of Nanking, August 1860, is on loan from the present Viscount Gough. It was made by Richard Hennell and is hallmarked London 1860-61.\n\nA long rampart gingall, manufactured at South Tientsin Arsenal in 1895 slants diagonally across a case which also features", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210625, "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-1985", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "213\n\nAs a result of the day's action, the Company was almost wiped out but with the odds heavily against it, it had covered itself in glory. But courage on its own, sadly, had not been enough.\n\nDetails of the Warrant Officer's exploits were not officially known until after the war. Even then records vary slightly, which is not surprising, as there is often some confusion in the heat of battle, and, afterwards, many were not left to tell the tale. However in this case one of the six survivors, speaking on behalf of the group, said it was hard to express how much they owed to Osborn's gallant sacrifice.\n\nOn 1st April 1946, the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross Britain's highest decoration for conspicuous bravery or devotion in the presence of the enemy was made to CSM H6008 John Robert Osborn.\n\nThe citation reads:\n\n“CSM Osborn was an inspiring example to all throughout the defence, which he assisted so magnificently in maintaining against an overwhelming enemy force, for eight and a half hours, and in his death he displayed the highest quality of heroism and self-sacrifice\".\n\nEx-Grenadier Harry Atkinson told me that Sergeant Pugsley, who is now dead, as well as Corporal Hall, were both there when Osborn threw himself on the grenade. Atkinson also said it was, in his opinion, a well deserved Victoria Cross and Osborn was a brave man.\n\nOsborn left a wife, Margaret Elizabeth, and a family who then lived at Saint Vital, Manitoba, Canada. Some members of the family now live in Winnipeg.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210626, "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-1985", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "214\n\nMuch later in 1958, Foulden learned of the Victoria Cross and the brave deeds of one of its sons, who had been born in a caravan, and who had become legend. However nothing appears to exist in writing in the village, and his name is not on the war memorial. Few people remember him. Nevertheless Mr. B.W. Billman, who was born in 1901 and is the oldest inhabitant, was proud to tell me:\n\n\"Of course I remember him! We sat in the same class. But I did not realise, at the time, he was so 'special'. He was just a quiet, likeable, country boy...\"\n\nWarrant Officer Osborn was officially listed as \"missing\" and there is no known grave.\n\nHis name does, however, appear on the memorial at Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery in Hong Kong. Also, on November 5th, 1981, a statue of a World War I soldier, which had formerly stood in the grounds of Eucliffe Castle, at Repulse Bay, the site of a brutal massacre of British and Canadian soldiers, in World War II, by the Japanese invaders, was unveiled in \"Osborn Barracks\" in Kowloon Tong. These barracks are named after Hong Kong's only recipient of the Victoria Cross.\n\nThe statue was donated by the Eu family, and the plaque, which was unveiled by Mr. Allen Kilpatrick, past Canadian High Commissioner, reads:\n\n\"Erected here in memory of WOII John Robert Osborn VC, Winnipeg Grenadiers, and through him all those men and women, service and civilian, and of every race, colour and creed, whose secret acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice in the defence of Hong Kong, December 1941, went unnoticed and unrecorded\".\n\nOf the Canadians I spoke to in early December 1985, who had returned to the scene of the battle, probably ex-Sergeant Robert (Bob) Manchester remembers Osborn best.\n\n\"He was a determined man and an experienced soldier.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211200, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "236\n\nOne correspondent devoted his letter to reasons why the park scheme was useless. He explained that had he been at the meeting: \"I might have been tempted to abandon my customary reserve and lift up my voice to protest.\" As an alternative, he was presenting his views in the correspondence column.\n\nHe objected to labelling the scheme a park: “A park without trees is an anachronism.\" But given the fact that it would be a vast lawn where cricket, football, and tennis could be played, the question remained as to who would use it.\n\nIn the writer's opinion, \"not the gilded youth of our gay city,\" why travel to Happy Valley when the cricket ground (now Chater Park across from the Hilton Hotel) was within steps of their offices? Furthermore, next to the cricket ground at the seaside was the Victoria Recreation Club with a gymnasium, facilities for swimming and boating, and, perhaps the greatest competitor to Happy Valley, \"the seductions of the Boathouse bar.\"\n\nHe did concede that the ground at Happy Valley might be used for the occasional game of football, but otherwise it was not likely to pull sportsmen away from their more convenient facilities in Central. Otherwise, what one could expect to see at play in Happy Valley was \"a handful of European schoolboys and a few ragamuffins of the lower order of Chinese.”\n\nThe ground would hardly see the swirling skirts of females playing games. In the first place, a genteel lady would not disport herself on a public playing field. And in the second place, they had had since 1884 their own Recreation Club on the Peak Road as well as the lawns of their own homes for games of tennis and croquet.\n\nUse of the proposed park by Chinese could be ruled out because, in the opinion of the writer, \"they are not a playing people as playing people are known in the West.\" The sporting activity of Europeans appeared to the Chinese to be undignified and not in keeping with propriety.\n\nAnyone who would expect to find “young Chinese gentlemen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211520, "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-1988", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "213\n\nThe bracelet itself is made of three silver wires, each about 2 mm. diameter, braided together. One of the ends is welded to a small cylindrical silver box while the other is free. Part of the free end has been cut off and what remains is 17.50 cm. long. The box is flat, about 2 cm. across by 8 mm. thick. On the upper surface is framed a silver coin with, in relief, a Greek head or bust, the Greek letters T A PA (Tara) and a zoomorphic figure representing a dolphin. On the opposite side of the box, the disc is plain except for the letters G.A.S. in a central cavity. Three scars are visible on the surface, caused by three pins welded to the coin below. Opposite to the joint of the wire, the box has a small opening obviously allowing the free end of the bracelet to be inserted into the box and locked. The box and bracelet are of recent, probably Indian manufacture, and the letters G.A.S. appearing in the box probably appeared in the scrap silver from which the box was made.\n\nA circular frame closes the box and keeps the coin in position. This ring can be removed, setting the coin free. On the back of the coin is, in relief, the figure of a riding horseman. In front of the figure is a sign like a thunderbolt with, below, the Greek letters AПOA. The coin, relatively well preserved, has been damaged by several incisions made with a sharp steel point and the welding of three pins at three equidistant points from the perimeter of the coin to keep it level with the surface of the box. There is also welded on the side of the coin, corresponding to the opening on the box, a small flat piece of silver with a little notch at the middle for the purpose of locking the free end of the bracelet. The clear centre of the disc inside the box may indicate that it contained some relics. At the centre of the disc the letter θ (th) seems to appear but it may simply be the ghost of the impression on the other side.\n\nThe Coin\n\nAccording to Mr. John P. Sharpley, Curator of Numismatics at the Museum of Victoria, \"The coin appears to be a very good silver copy of the gold stater* of Tarentum, Italy. It is believed that the original coins were struck between 344 and 334 B.C\".\n\n1\n\n* Stater or Sesterce, Sestertius: Contraction of semi-tertius i.e. 21⁄2 asses; a Roman silver coin equal to 1⁄4 of a denarius. Also Persian coin (stater), From ETATHP (ETA = base, to stand). See Plates 9 and 10.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211614, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Kong to be so), and it had a beautiful mosaic ceiling in the banking hall which was designed by Podgoursky, a Russian.\" The building was ahead of its time.\n\nIn 1954 a business associate, the late Harold Palmer, a surveyor and auctioneer in England, said to the author, \"When you get to Hong Kong see if the architectural practice started by my grandfather is still in existence\". In fact, Palmer and Turner designed the Hong Kong Bank building which was completed in 1935. However Clement Palmer, an early partner, worked with the firm in Hong Kong from about 1882 to 1909. He was responsible for such buildings as the Hong Kong Club (demolished and replaced in the 1980s) which was completed in 1897,9 Victoria Hospital (1903), and Rosary Church (1905), Chatham Road. According to Harold Palmer, his grandfather used to go from his home to his office everyday by boat (he lived in Kowloon perhaps?), and he retired to England in his later forties a rich man. He made his money by land sales rather than as an architect and he was in his nineties when he died.\n\nAfter the People's Republic came to power, in 1949, it gained in prestige locally when the new 17-storey Bank of China, completed in 1950, slightly overtopped the Hong Kong Bank. The Hong Kong Bank then erected a flagpole which gave it the necessary extra few feet!21 In 1959, however, the newly completed Chartered Bank rose about three metres above the Bank of China.\n\nNow, in the 1990s, history has partly repeated itself. The 40-storey Standard Chartered Bank looks down once again on the Hong Kong Bank, although the new 70-floor Bank of China is the tallest structure in Southeast Asia. Perhaps, with China taking over Hong Kong in 1997, this dominance is fitting.\n\nNevertheless the new, 52-storey Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Headquarters, with its striking prefabricated tubular design and its \"aeronautic\" technology, has made a major contribution to the skyline, and it has been described as the most innovative bank building in the world. It graced a recent Hong Kong postage stamp.\n\nWhile most of Hong Kong consists of standard, nondescript, concrete-framed buildings, occasionally you come across the unusual, such as the large external concrete trusses from which the roof of the State", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212192, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "transferred their activities elsewhere: the evil reputation of Bias Bay nearby is well known. But British influence made itself felt in other ways, too. The \"foreign devils\" not only brought security; they built houses, roads and dockyards, so that a very large number of Chinese found Hongkong preferable to their native districts and came there to live. By 1938 the population was over two millions, including twenty-four thousand foreigners. It is true, of the Chinese no less than one million were only transient inhabitants, refugees from the Japanese wrath which was spreading over China. To these wretched thousands, Hongkong, for a time, was a sanctuary: as later in another part of the world, was England to the French, Belgian, Dutch and Norwegian refugees, who were to escape from German occupied territory.\n\nBehind Victoria, the cramped commercial hub of the island, a funicular Peak Tramway rises steeply to serve the numerous mansions, erected at varying levels, for taipans, who hope vainly to avoid the moist clinging heat of the long Hongkong summer. Some of the mansions look out over Victoria at the twin city of Kowloon on the mainland across the harbour: others, on the reverse slope, look out to sea, to Lantao island, still barren, to Lamma, in the foreground, and to Cheung Chau in the middle distance.\n\nHongkong was crowded. The hotels were full and so when we arrived, some weeks after leaving Nanking, my wife and I took rooms at the small hotel which an enterprising English couple had opened on Cheung Chau island. A special ferry from Victoria did the trip several times a day in about half an hour. There was quite a large fishing village, the rendezvous for many of the junks that frequent these waters. We lived on fish and strolled amongst the stunted pines and the empty bungalows of the summer visitors waiting until we could find more convenient accommodation. It was a pleasant change from the vicissitudes of Nanking.\n\nEventually we were able to get rooms in the Repulse Bay Hotel, famous as a honeymoon resort. It is on the side of Hongkong facing the open sea, near what is perhaps the best known bathing beach. A winding road over the hill through the Wong Nei Chong gap leads to Victoria, and in Deepwater Bay round the point there is a small nine-hole golf course.\n\nI remember one day we took the bus up to the Gap and got out", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212194, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "113\n\nthe walla-walla men are\n\nwould be an argument about the fare surely descended from the original Hongkong pirates and, that settled, a slow journey across the harbour, followed by a walk home. Such conditions are discouraging to social intercourse. They tend to break the community up into cliques; into the circle who live on the Peak, the crowd down in Victoria, and the mob over in Kowloon.\n\nHow deep-seated was the snobbery amongst the few could be seen at a later date, when the remnants of the British community were interned by the Japanese. Many of the women still thought themselves too superior to keep company with their sisters in misfortune, and continued to carry their noses in the air, while living under the most dismal conditions, crowded cheek by jowl seven and eight to a small room.\n\nTo avoid overheating during the Hongkong summer called for a special technique. The idea was never to move rapidly in any direction; a slow steady advance got you there. If the advance took you past the stately building erected by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, so much the better. It was air-conditioned. You could look in on your friends, who had the good fortune to rent offices there, and while passing the time of day your body refreshed itself in the cool dry atmosphere.\n\nOwing to the discomfort of movement and the geographic complexities, on leaving office at noon most people did not return home to lunch. They either went to the Club, where the cuisine, it is unreliably claimed, compared with that of the Shanghai Club, or to the Hongkong or Gloucester Hotels. These rival but contiguous establishments were a local institution. What Shepherd's Hotel was in Cairo fifty years ago, the Hongkong Hotel was in the late 1930s; a place where wanderers met. You seldom entered the hotel lobby without running into someone you had not seen for years. It might be an official of Imperial Airways who had just flown in from India, via Rangoon and Bangkok, or an American news reporter leaving by Pan-American clipper for Manila. Both hotels provided excellent fare. Some favoured the one, some the other. At the Gloucester the dining room was eight floors up on the roof, with a view over the harbour; in the Hongkong Hotel it was at ground level with a view of the \"Grips\", the arena where the cosmopolitan crowd foxtrotted to the music of a Filipino orchestra.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212248, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n167\n\nFrom manuscripts in the John Fryer Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.\n\nThe title on the holograph was added in pencil at the top of the page and underlined; a pencil was used to cross out the salutation, probably at the time when the title was added prior to typing many years later. In transcribing this material I have followed the holograph document. Minor changes have been made to bring punctuation and use of numbers into conformity with modern usage and to improve readability. Editorial additions are in square brackets. Fryer tended to write run-on paragraphs; a caret indicates where long paragraphs have been broken up. Colons and semicolons are not easily distinguished in the holograph; Fryer was inconsistent in his use of the apostrophe.\n\n1\n\nFryer mentions below that it has been a fortnight since his arrival. This would place the date for this letter around August 13, 1861.\n\n4\n\nA sketch of the general plan of St. Paul's College, drawn in ink and tinted with watercolors by Fryer, accompanies the holograph document. See Plans in text, redrawn from Fryer's sketch plan.\n\n4 Fryer generally wrote \"&\" in his handwritten letters, but converted these to \"etc.\" and \"and\" in his typewritten transcriptions.\n\nFryer became engaged to Anna Roleston of Chudleigh, Devon, before embarking for Hong Kong,\n\nThe Second Anglo-Chinese War, 1858-1860, which led to a stoppage of much of the trade of Hong Kong with China to 1861.\n\n# This is one of the rare examples of Fryer's use of hyperbole; other examples can be detected below.\n\nHI\n\nThe Reverend George Smith, Bishop of Victoria.\n\nRev. William Roberts Beach arrived in Canton in 1853 sponsored by the Wesleyan Missionary Society. He joined the Church of England in 1855. In 1857 he became Warden of St. Paul's College and Chaplain to the Bishop of Victoria. His other appointments included a period in Macao as Missionary Chaplain in 1857, and service as Chaplain to the Forces under Sir Hope Grant in 1861. He was appointed Colonial Chaplain and Canon of St. John's Cathedral by the Rev. Alford, who in 1867 became \"Lord Bishop of the see of Victoria, and Warden (for the Church Missionary Society) of St. Paul's College'. (see E. J Bitel, Europe in China, Hong Kong: Kelley and Walsh, 1895. p. 466.) Alford was Principal of Highbury Training College, London, at the time when John Fryer was enlisted for work at St. Paul's College.\n\n|| This was the College in Staunton Street, later renamed St. Saviour's (1863), and then (1875) St. Joseph's.\n\nזן\n\nFryer travelled to Hong Kong on the sailing ship Prince Alfred.\n\nPublished in Volume 29 (1989) of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\n14\n\nSee Plans in Text.\n\n15\n\nSee Plates 2-4.\n\n16. Charles R. Alford; see note 10.\n\nדן\n\n* \"animals\" standard English school master-speech for \"schoolboys\".\n\nश्र\n\nPossibly the British Museum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212332, "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": 274, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "251\n\nbeing until this century. In the last decade of the 20th century, however, it provides three-quarters of the electricity consumed in Hong Kong. Not long after the Company placed what was reported to be the largest ever single order with British industry, in 1980, six members of the board were made Commanders of the British Empire. There have also been two Knighthoods in the Kadoorie family.\n\nTransport\n\nMotor transport was mainly introduced into Hong Kong in the present century, and, by 1909, the Colony boasted five private cars. Steam power was, however, used at sea before it was employed on land, and by 1876 there were nine steam launches operating in the harbour, and the first regular cross-harbour ferry, employing steam launches, commenced in 1880. In 1898, the Star Ferry was incorporated and took over from Dorabjee Nowrojee the previous ferry owner.\n\nBritish firms were, nonetheless, involved with transport, and a proposal was made by Jardine's, in 1881, for a system of trams on Hong Kong Island. The same year another proposal was made for a tramway to Victoria Gap, and in 1885 the original promoters sold their rights to Phineas Ryrie and Alexander Findlay Smith (Findlay Path on the Peak is named after him) for $2,000. The latter, a merchant who arrived in Hong Kong in the 1860s and who had been an employee of Scotland's Highland Railway, was the driving force. In 1881, it was he who requested approval from Sir John Pope-Hennessy, for this innovative scheme.\n\nAccording to Mrs Maud Grant-Smith, the Governor told her late husband's uncle, Findlay Smith:\n\n\"My dear chap, you are simply throwing your money down the drain. Do you imagine anyone wants to go to the top of the Peak?\"\n\nBecause His Excellency would not help, Smith brought his own engineers from Scotland. As early as the 1840s Doctor William Morrison, the Colonial Surgeon (1847 to 1859), recommended spending the summer on the Peak. He also suggested a sanatorium be built there to alleviate the effects of heat and humidity. This was constructed but by 1868 it had fallen into disrepair, and had been rebuilt as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212662, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "197\n\nA NOTE ON HONG KONG'S WILDLIFE\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nIn the mid-1960s, an Indian bird-watching friend counted 48 different species at King's Park, in the heart of Kowloon. In early 1955, when I first lived in Conduit Road, the western end resembled a delightful country lane and there you could occasionally hear barking deer call from Victoria Peak.\n\nSince late 1980 I have been going up and around the Peak regularly, four or five times a week. At first, I felt there was little wildlife left, but, more recently, largely because it is mainly nocturnal, my conclusions, agreeing with a second school of thought, are that there is far more than most people appreciate.\n\nOn 26 April, 1989, I saw a dead masked palm civet in Barker Road. This was followed, on 11 November, 1990, by a dead ferret badger on Plantation Road, and, on 17 November, 1991, another on Severn Road. All had blood on their snouts and had probably been struck by vehicles. The last two were seen at daybreak.\n\nThere are also 'good' years for snake sightings, and, in the autumn of 1991, I spotted a young cobra crossing Po Shan Road, near dwellings. The first snake I saw in 1992 was a cobra sunning itself, in mid March, on a hilly path off Hatton Road. Less frequently, one sees the odd fresh-water crab even as high up as Lugard Road, and blue-tailed skinks seem to appear in batches.\n\nAlthough not on the Peak, on the Royal Asiatic Society outing, on 4 March, 1989, high up near a plantation on Tai Mo Shan, RAS member Rosemary Lee and the son of Dr Elizabeth Sinn spotted what was believed to have been a crab-eating mongoose run across a track, off Route TWISK, in front of our coach. Patricia Marshall, in Wild Mammals of Hong Kong (1967), says, about the mongoose, 'Probably no longer exists in the Colony.' Nevertheless, according to a game warden at Mai Po Marshes, one was spotted by bird watchers at Tsim Bei Tsui at Christmas 1987.\n\nI have also been told of barking deer and porcupine being seen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212667, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "202\n\ndisappear so quickly.\n\nHalsey would have no truck with the second-in-command who was then escorted back to the waiting plane. The Japanese commander eventually appeared whereupon the surrender was signed later in the presence of the British admiral aboard HMS King George V.\n\nAt dawn the following day the whole fleet was placed in ‘line ahead' and we sailed up the Lei Yue Mun Channel, between Hong Kong and Kowloon. As we approached a gun emplacement set high in the rocks was spotted with the Japanese flag flying. The Japanese could be seen quite clearly on the ramparts of the fort. The order relayed to the King George V battleship was 'range broadside!' I never saw a flag come down so fast.\n\nWe anchored in an orderly fashion off the City of Victoria and in no time at all found ourselves surrounded by sampans and all sorts of other small boats. Royal marines armed with machine guns were stationed round the sides of the ship. After all, we just didn't know what to expect.\n\nWhile preparations were being made for the first landing party to go ashore naval officers selected the men. They questioned ratings how they felt about the task. One or two were rather brash in their manner and replies. They were rejected. Asked if I felt afraid I answered that I was a bit scared. 'Good,' said one of the officers, ‘A frightened man is a careful man!'\n\nIn the early afternoon I and nine other men, armed to the teeth, went ashore in a motorised cutter. The landing stage was free of booby traps and obstacles. We came ashore near the Star Ferry. All was very quiet. Even the sometimes boisterous Chinese were not self-evident. The Japanese had destroyed all the dwellings and buildings along the waterfront so they had an uninterrupted view of the sea lane.\n\nI was on shore patrol when we came across a mob of Chinese and, on investigation, we discovered a Japanese soldier had been strangled by a Chinese. I was told the Japanese had molested and raped the man's wife during the occupation. The man was later arrested, charged and, I believe, subsequently let off.\n\nOn another occasion I noticed two bodies in the harbour being swept down the straits. Who they were or what was going on I didn't know.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212731, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "25\n\nallowances of food, accommodation and bearers, twenty horses and eighty men to be supplied by the county magistrate through whose territory the recipient travelled. He described the order of the Pa-Tu-La (to give it its Chinese title) as 'similar to the Legion of Honour or the Victoria Cross, awarded on the strength of a recommendation of the highest provincial official for distinguished services.' He also claimed that although he had been recommended for it several times between 1868 to 1873 he had only received it in 1873 together with the rank of Brigadier-General.\n\nAccording to Mayers in his book 'The Chinese Government':\n\nPa-l'u-lu The Batʼuru distinction. The Military distinction called in Chinese Pa-t'u-lu (a representation of the Manchu word bat'uru, signifying ‘brave') is an institution dating from the early years of the present dynasty, and is conferred solely for active service in the field. It constitutes an order of merit partaking of some of the characteristics of the French Legion d'honneur, but its special feature of difference from European order consists of the fact that it has no outward mark of decoration to be worn by its possessor, in the place of which there can only be reckoned the distinguishing word (or title) which is assigned to each recipient on the bestowal of the order. These specific titles may be either Manchu, Mongolian or Chinese, the Manchu being considered the most honourable. Under this system an officer upon whom the distinction is conferred, might receive the designation Ti Yung Pa-t'u-lu, or 'Bat'uru with the title Magnanimous Brave', and so forth. The title carries with it the right to wear the peacock feather, although it seldom happens at the present day that the peacock feather, lavishly awarded as this decoration has been of late years, is not obtained previously to the bestowal of the batʼuru; and the allowances of the bearer, when employed on active service, are considerably enhanced in virtue of his possession of the title. The Bat'uru has been conferred upon at least one European, Mr W Mesny, a native of Jersey, for services rendered in the province of Kueichou.\n\nMesny commented in his Miscellany in 1896 that on several occasions during the early years of the Kueichou campaign he had been recommended to the Emperor for the bestowal of military rank and his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213705, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "## Step 1: Understand the task\nThe task is to proofread the given OCR output of a historical record related to Hong Kong, following specific rules to correct errors and format the text in Markdown.\n\n## Step 2: Identify the content\nThe given text appears to be a table or graph related to the 1911 Census data for the City of Victoria and Old Kowloon, showing population figures.\n\n## Step 3: Apply Rule 1 - Do not add or remove any words\nThe original text must be preserved word-for-word and line-for-line, except for corrections.\n\n## Step 4: Apply Rule 2 - Correct spelling errors\nThe text contains \"કહુંૐ\", which seems to be a non-English word or character and is likely an error or unrelated to the context. However, according to the rules, we should not remove or alter it unless it's a clear OCR error.\n\n## Step 5: Apply Rule 3 - Fix spacing issues\nThere are several spacing issues, such as \"Scale A\", \"Scale. B\", and \"8 8 8\" that need correction to \"ScaleA\" is not needed, but removing extra spaces is, e.g., \"8 8 8\" to \"888\".\n\n## Step 6: Apply Rule 4 - Rejoin broken sentences\nThere are no clear sentences broken across lines or columns that need rejoining.\n\n## Step 7: Apply Rule 5 - Restore paragraph breaks\nThe text does not clearly indicate merged or split paragraphs that need restoration.\n\n## Step 8: Apply Rule 6 - Indicate missing words\nThere are no clear indications of missing words due to OCR damage.\n\n## Step 9: Apply Rule 7 - Do not rephrase or rewrite\nThe text should not be rephrased or rewritten.\n\n## Step 10: Apply Rule 8 - Format in Markdown\nThe text should be formatted using standard Markdown syntax.\n\n## Step 11: Apply Rule 10 - Format of File Reference\nNot applicable as there's no file reference in the given text.\n\n## Step 12: Apply Rule 12 - Explanation\nNo explanation should be left in the return.\n\n## Step 13: Analyze the content for table reconstruction\nThe given text seems to represent data that could be part of a table or graph, specifically related to population data from the 1911 Census.\n\n## Step 14: Reconstruct the table\nTo reconstruct the table, we need to identify the headers and the corresponding data. The text mentions \"City of Victoria, Old Kowloon\", \"Males (Scale A)\", \"Male (Scale B)\", \"Females (Scale A)\", and \"Old Kowloon, Females (Scale B)\", indicating different categories.\n\n## Step 15: Format the data into a table\nLet's first clean up and understand the given data:\n- The numbers and labels suggest a graphical or tabular representation of population data.\n- \"Scale A\" and \"Scale B\" are used for different categories (Males and Females) in \"City of Victoria\" and \"Old Kowloon\".\n\nGiven the complexity and the specific numbers, let's directly format the given text into a more readable Markdown table or structure, correcting spacing and other issues as we go.\n\n## Step 16: Correct and format the text\nThe original text is:\n```\nScale A \nTable 10 \n1911 Census \nCity of Victoria, Old Kowloon \nLand Population \n6100 \n4800 \n4500 \n4200 \n3000 \n- City of Victoria, Males (Scale A) \n3000 \n3300 \nOld Kowloon. \n3000 \nMale (Scale B) \n# \n2700 \n2400 \n2100 \n1500 \n4 \nScale. B \nકહુંૐ \n1000 \n1100 \n700 \n500 \n1800 \nCity of Victoria, \nFemales (Scale A) \n500 \n1200 \n8 8 8 \n600 \n000 \n6 \n10 \nOld Kowloon, Females (Scale B) \n16 \n20 \n26 30 35 \n40 \n45 50 \n55 \n00 \n70 \n75 \n80 \n400 \n300 \n200 \n100 \n29\n```\n\nLet's correct spacing and format:\n```markdown\n### Table 10\n#### 1911 Census\n\n| Category | Values |\n|---------------------------------|-----------------------|\n| Land Population | 6100, 4800, 4500, 4200, 3000 |\n| City of Victoria, Males (Scale A)| 3000, 3300 |\n| Old Kowloon, Male (Scale B) | 3000, 2700, 2400, 2100, 1500 |\n| | 1000, 1100, 700, 500, 1800 |\n| City of Victoria, Females (Scale A)| 500, 1200, 888, 600, 000, 6, 10 |\n| Old Kowloon, Females (Scale B) | 16, 20, 26, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 00, 70, 75, 80, 400, 300, 200, 100, 29 |\n\n### Notes\n- \"Scale. B\" and \"કહુંૐ\" appear to be anomalies or unrelated to the numerical data presented.\n```\n\nHowever, directly converting the given text into a proper table or maintaining its original structure while correcting errors is the goal.\n\nThe best answer is Scale A\n\nTable 10\n\n1911 Census\n\nCity of Victoria, Old Kowloon\n\nLand Population\n\n6100\n\n4800\n\n4500\n\n4200\n\n3000\n\n- City of Victoria, Males (Scale A)\n\n3000\n\n3300\n\nOld Kowloon.\n\n3000\n\nMale (Scale B)\n\n#\n\n2700\n\n2400\n\n2100\n\n1500\n\n4\n\nScale B\n\nકહુંૐ\n\n1000\n\n1100\n\n700\n\n500\n\n1800\n\nCity of Victoria,\n\nFemales (Scale A)\n\n500\n\n1200\n\n888\n\n600\n\n000\n\n6\n\n10\n\nOld Kowloon, Females (Scale B)\n\n16\n\n20\n\n26 30 35\n\n40\n\n45 50\n\n55\n\n00\n\n70\n\n75\n\n80\n\n400\n\n300\n\n200\n\n100\n\n29\n\n.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214052, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "87\n\nof the Island This was completed in 1904, partly with filling material obtained from Chinese territory. The limits in Victoria of these two earlier major reclamations are marked by Des Voeux Road and Connaught Road respectively. During the next 30 years reclamation continued on the Island, the largest schemes being those at Tai Koo for the dockyard (21ha which included 13ha of land site formation, completed 1908), Wan Chai (36ha, completed 1929) and around North Point (nearly complete before the Pacific war), together with a smaller reclamation at Shau Kei Wan.\n\nSoon after the cession of Kowloon under the Convention of Peking in 1860 there was some reclamation adjoining deep water in Tsim Sha Tsui, primarily for wharfs, and at Hung Hom for the dockyard, to be followed by extensive reclamation in Tai Kok Tsui and Yau Ma Tei and, to a lesser extent, at To Kwa Wan, Sham Shui Po and Lai Chi Kok, the latter two both lying just to the north of Boundary Street. Subsequently an important reclamation was formed by the Kowloon-Canton Railway in Tsim Sha Tsui and Hung Hom bays (16ha, completed 1910) primarily for its own use which included three deep sea berths on the extreme south-east tip of the Kowloon peninsula. In the period after 1922 there was considerable reclamation in and near Kowloon just as there was in Wan Chai on the Island. Large areas were reclaimed at Sham Shui Po (26ha, completed 1928), Kai Tak (83ha, completed 1931) and Lai Chi Kok (c35ha), all these areas lying in the New Territories close to the old Kowloon/China boundary with much of the filling being obtained from Kowloon Tong, then being developed as a garden city. Just before the Pacific war, reclamations were also started in three other areas of Kowloon Bay, at Ma Tau Kok, Ngau Tau Kok and Kwun Tong.\n\nRoadworks\n\nConstruction of Queen's Road in Victoria was started in May 1841, only four months after the British landed on the Island, by the Royal Engineers following the alignment of a narrow bridle/tow path high above the beach which extended some 7 kilometres from the water's edge at Kennedy Town on the west to within a short distance of Happy Valley on the east. Another road, from Wong Nei Chong to Shau Kei Wan was built at the same time, a causeway with two bridges being constructed to carry it across what is now known as Causeway Bay.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214054, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "89\n\ncarriage roads and by the end of 1915 Pok Fu Lam, Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay were all accessible by car, to be followed by Repulse Bay in 1917, Shek O in 1923 and finally, in 1924, direct vehicle access to the Peak itself. After this date road construction on the Island was usually limited to road improvement, for instance to Kellett Road in 1928 and in the following year to Barker Road.\n\nThe timing of the development of much of the road network can be readily deduced from the names of streets named after Governors, military leaders and other prominent residents, for example on the Island Pottinger Street, Bonham Strand, and Kennedy, Hennessy, Chater, Sassoon and Stubbs Roads, and in Kowloon - Robinson (later renamed Nathan), Mody, Cameron and Ho Tung Roads, Kadoorie Avenue and Braga Circuit.\n\nIn Kowloon by 1887 a fairly comprehensive road system was in place south of Austin Road. The first 850 metres of the 30m-wide Robinson (Nathan) Road from Middle Road, some 1.1 kilometres of MacDonnell Road (later Canton Road), and Des Voeux Road (later Chatham Road) were all started. Many of the intersecting roads, for example Granville and Kimberley Roads, were already built. To the north of Austin Road the road network was concentrated in the southern Yau Ma Tei district with the 15m-wide 1.6km-long Station Road (later Shanghai Street) reaching Mong Kok Tsui. A small independent road system was already constructed in the Hung Hom area near the docks, for example Bulkeley Street and Gillies Avenue.\n\nBy the turn of the century there were some 35 kilometres of roads in Kowloon which included the first two original direct links into the newly-leased New Territories, that is those to Kowloon City and the Tong Mi area. In particular the road network in the new development at Yau Ma Tei was well under way and the Hung Hom road system had been enlarged and connected to the extension of Des Voeux (Chatham) Road. In order to relieve pressure on Victoria's densely built-up areas with their unhealthy conditions and at the same time to provide an easy access to facilitate opening up of the New Territories, the Harbour Master in 1901 proposed the construction of a cross-harbour bridge between Pottinger Street on the Island and Robinson (Nathan) Road, there being no engineering difficulty or \"any practical obstruction or even inconvenience to shipping\", the deck being 12 metres above high", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214406, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "230\n\nHONG KON\n\n(from the notes of a Russian traveller)\n\nOf the many islands, scattered along the shores of the extensive Chinese empire, the English selected for themselves a small island not particularly distinguishable for its fertility, almost bare, of little use to China; but with a good harbour and lying on the route from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean - hence very useful to them - and founded a city here, a depot for trade not only with China but with neighbouring islands. The city, whose proper name of Victoria is hardly known even to its own inhabitants, looks over the strait separating the island from the mainland, and consists of one main street following the course of the shore; it's called Queen's Road, although neither the present, nor any future queens of Great Britain are likely to travel on it; a number of other smaller streets run parallel to this main street or cross it at right angles. The latter rise up the mountain so steeply, that the houses behind stand a whole storey above the ones in front and that is why all of them have a wonderful view of the harbour and the picturesque shores of China. Magnificent too is the view of the city from the harbour. The houses, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre at the foot of the hill, are shaded by groups of trees; the main street is interrupted in the middle by an avenue, from which a garden with convenient, winding paths, runs further up the mountain, so that the mountain itself, previously completely bare is now covered to a certain level by shady bamboo lanes or groves of various trees. People building houses here mainly tried to shield themselves from the burning rays of the tropical sun, which is why the houses all have something in common: each one has, without fail, a covered balcony, and has some semi-dark hall through which the breeze blows; also shutters are an essential accessory of windows. The best building, in my opinion, is where the beautiful is united with the useful, which is - the barracks of the regiment stationed here. The two-storeyed peristyle surrounding it gives it the appearance of a Roman temple and shields it on all sides from the sun's rays. The Governor's House built recently on an elevated site in the middle of a newly cultivated garden, would have been one of Hong Kong's best adornments, were it not obstructed by extensions which completely obscure it. Other magnificent buildings I must include are the hospital, the club and many private homes. The western part was the first to be settled and is now nothing very much: - narrow streets with small houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214441, "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": 299, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "266\n\nThe origin of the name \"Gun Club Hill\" is uncertain, but it may be because a gun club was once based there. Shooting was a popular pastime with the army and Kowloon with its market gardens, streams and paddy fields would have provided good sport. Game would have included resident birds such as the Chinese francolin or partridge, and the spotted-neck dove, as well as migratory birds such as teal, duck, geese, quail, woodcock and snipe. The latter are winter visitors and still visit Hong Kong. The writer has observed snipe on two separate occasions in the Kowloon urban area, once in Gun Club Hill Barracks itself. Doves can also still be seen in the Barracks.\n\nThe name \"Gun Club\" may however also be derived from the firing range in King's Park which followed almost exactly the present line of Wylie Road. Old record maps in the Public Records Office show the range extending north from the firing points at Gun Club Hill across Gascoigne Road to the butts near the present site of the old British Military Hospital. A shorter range, to the west of the military range, on the present site of Queen Elizabeth Hospital was probably the police firing range or the Naval Association firing range.\n\nThe whole of this area, now known as King's Park, was reserved for rifle ranges, field firing and military exercises. At the north end of the park was a hill known as Danger Flag Hill where red warning flags were flown when firing was taking place. This hill is now the public open space known as King's Park Rise Garden. Steps wind up the hill past numerous benches and pergolas to the summit where there is a curious rock formation of huge boulders almost forming a natural redoubt. There is now no evidence of any military use, although originally there may have been a range warden's store for targets and flags. There is a good view from the summit looking south down Wylie Road to Gun Club Hill.\n\nThe cession of the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain opened up new areas of training for the military. Companies from units based at Murray and Victoria Barracks were sent to Kowloon on monthly rotation for firing and musket practice. Before the barracks were built the troops were quartered in tents. Early photographs of Kowloon show large tented encampments stretching right across the peninsula.\n\nMatsheds were also used to accommodate newly disembarked", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215012, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "64\n\nCharles Atkinson of the 171th Company, Labour Corps was attached to the CLC and died on 4th July 1919. Ptc. W. Brophy of the King's (Liverpool) Regiment transferred to the 43rd Company CLC and died on 10th December 1918. Pte. A. J. Davis of the Infantry Labour Company, Devonshire Regiment, transferred to the 116th Company CLC and died on 19th July 1918. Sgt. F. C. Legg of the London Regiment (the London Rifles) transferred to the 9th Company CLC and died on 9th November 1918.\n\nThe gravestones of the Chinese have names carved in English and not in Chinese and, surprisingly, all bear the same epitaph 'Faithful unto Death.' Amongst the CLC graves are those members who were shot at dawn. You Longxi [Yu Lung-hsi in Wade-Giles romanisation] [4976] was court-martialled and convicted of murdering two people and sentenced to death on 28th December 1918, but committed suicide on 29th January 1919 before his sentence could be carried out. On the same date [28th December 1918] Wang Fayou [Wang Fa-yu in Wade-Giles romanisation] [5884] was also sentenced for the same offence as Yu, and was shot on 15th February 1919. Hei Chi-ming [Chei Chi Ming on the headstone] [97170] and Kung Ching-hsing [44340] died on 21st February 1920, after both were convicted for wounding two French prostitutes and the murder of a British Army sergeant at a brothel near Le Havre.\n\nBefore becoming interested in the Chinese Labour Corps and whilst researching, especially, the Victoria Cross holders from my old school, I visited Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, near Folkestone in Kent, where I found six graves of labourers of the CLC, all having died in the Shorncliffe Military Hospital in 1917 and 1918. Folkestone area was used as a staging post with the camps located near Sugar Loaf Hill and Caesar's Camp. These gravestones are much larger, of a different material [slate?] and format to the usual CWGC gravestones. The tops are shaped similar to Dutch house roofs. The wording, however, is similar. Those buried here are Niu Yun-huei [24640], died 2nd July 1917; Chen Te-shan [11916], died 30th August 1917; Liu Ching-yi [37614], died 1st January 1918; Wang Chin-tien [109761], died 4th April 1918; Chiao Pi-cheng [105994] died 13th April 1918 and Yang Chi-chun [72367], died 30th April 1918.\n\nChinese labourers of the CLC are buried elsewhere in England, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216094, "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": 393, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "327\n\nin China. They did not complain. In any case Government did not answer letters written to newspapers but people did not generally criticise Government. That was why, when a column called \"Tiger Talk\" was written by an English solicitor in 1962 and published in the Sunday Tiger Standard, it attracted considerable attention.\n\nThe district of West Point, where legalised brothels for Chinese had been situated up to the mid-1930s, was still an important entertainment district in the mid-1950s, with restaurants with 100 or more Chinese tables capable of seating in excess of 1,200. Sing song girls, the Chinese version of the Japanese geisha, could still be found there.\n\nMy Chinese wife, born in 1936, lived in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. After the War Canadian Sergeant Major John Osborn, who was born in Norfolk, the same county where I was born and raised in England, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. It is the most prestigious British award for gallantry on the field of battle. It was the only such award ever made in the colony.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation my wife recalls seeing arms and legs lying in the streets first thing in the morning. Breakers of the curfew had been mauled by Japanese police dogs. Women did their best to make themselves look old, ugly and undesirable. People wandered the hillsides and seashores as hunters and gatherers looking for anything to eat. Occasionally, human flesh was on sale in butchers' shops, something sometimes denied today. As my wife's family owned a salt-fish shop they were better off than most. They had food and something to barter. My wife and her two sisters survived the occupation although their father never forgave them and his wife for not having a son to \"buy water\" for him at his funeral (Today a symbolic ceremony based on filial piety and the washing of the corpse by the eldest son.).\n\nWhen I arrived in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s conditions had already improved considerably. Although there was rationing still in Britain, you could buy just about anything in Hong Kong - provided you had the money. I stayed together with other government servants in Winner House, a small hotel at North Point, a district sometimes known as Little Shanghai. A number of Fukienese also lived there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216222, "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": 521, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "455\n\ncould sometimes hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. At the time one could still hire a sedan chair and four coolies to carry one up to Conduit Road. There were half a dozen or so parked regularly in Wyndham Street, in Central, up until the late 1950s. The fare was 30 cents for each 15 minutes with a 30 cents surcharge. The working life of a chair coolie was said to be eight years.\n\nAs with many houses in Conduit Road at the time, 41 Conduit Road had a superb view and, long before the days of cross-harbour tunnels, one of the pastimes of children was counting the number of ferries they could spot. Between the two World Wars an eccentric Englishman who lived in Robinson Road, not far away, did not own a clock. He used a telescope to tell the time from the clock tower then standing in Pedder Street. In the \"good old days,\" more than one British Governor used the activities in the harbour as a barometer of the strength of the economy. We are talking of times, up until the mid 1930s, when a cannon was fired from Blackhead Point, in Tsim Sha Tsui, to let residents know when a typhoon was approaching or, alternatively, the mail ship had arrived. Occasionally, inhabitants were not sure to which of the two events the firing referred!\n\nWhen the FCC vacated the premises the final days had come for the old mansion at 41 Conduit Road. In 1960, it was bought by Cheng Hing Realty and, in 1966, rebought by Court Properties. As with so much of Hong Kong it was a case of 'Hungry for the new forget the old.' The old building was demolished and the site remained empty for some time. The sale price was reputed to have been $13 million. The site was then redeveloped. In the summer of 1970, there were 1,200 applications to purchase the 400 flats at Realty Gardens. My wife and I were successful in the ballot and we took possession of our newly completed flat in Venice Court, for which we paid, in mid 1972, the princely sum of $114,000. Prices were still low after the property slump brought on largely by the drawn-out 1967 riots. My flat has been a splendid investment. We let it for the first four years, unfurnished, at $2,000 a month. We moved in ourselves on 1 March 1976.\n\nAlthough I can see a narrow strip of the harbour and Stonecutters Island (an island no longer) from my bedroom window, my flat at Realty Gardens in fact faces south. It is thus shielded from the cold north-easterly monsoon in the winter and receives the benefits of the cool", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]