[ { "id": 204756, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "48\n\nK. M. A. BARNETT\n\n17\n\nstrong corroboration of traditions, which might otherwise be thought apocryphal, of the disappearance of other villages, including the large village of Lik Yuen,84 half way down what is now Tide Cove.16 For all that, one cannot be absolutely sure. An old Hoklo155 boatman at Tai Po, who fortunately spoke reasonable Cantonese (for I cannot manage the Hoklo language) told me that \"fifty years before he was born, Hong Kong Island was joined to the mainland. It obviously was not. But remembering what has been observed by other field workers, that \"fifty years\" is commonly used to mean any time too long to be remembered, what the old man was passing on was clearly a tradition among the Hoklo that Tuk Ngo Kong45 a name for Victoria Harbour which apparently only the Hoklo language now preserves was long ago interrupted by a strip of land. It may well have been so, and I have provisionally marked it so. For if it were, it would tend to explain the curious demarcation of responsibility between the military commanders of Nam Tau and Tai Pang40 and the apparent fact that ships went through Sheung Sz Mun127 rather than through the present Hong Kong Harbour. It might also explain why Kwun Fu Cheung was more important for the collection of salt than for defence.\n\nThere is also some slight reason to believe that Ma Wan and Tsing Yi,13 which are now islands, were 1,000 years ago connected to the mainland and to one another, and that the channel between Chep Lap Kok1 and Tung Chung was considerably deeper than it now is.\n\nBut I must emphasize that the picture on the south and east side is still sketchy. It would greatly facilitate the work of the historian if his geological colleagues could be persuaded to take their eyes off remote aeons and fix them on to this comparatively recent period so as to obtain some degree of certainty regarding the position of the shore-line at the time of the first Chinese settlement.\n\nThe Missing Pieces. To move away from the shore up to the hills, the first thing that would strike the eye of any us, if he could be transported by time machine into the tenth century, would be the profusion of trees. A former Director of Agriculture told me that the remains of huge trees had been discovered some distance below ground during preparatory work for one of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204832, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nthe mainland. In this latter passage, up which the Jackall had to sail so slowly, there are vicious back-eddies along both shores and there is often no appreciable period of slack water at the turn of the tide. After heavy rains in the Pearl River, the ebb tide from west to east along this channel is particularly strong27. The coasts in general shelve steeply, with few good landing places and often with cliffs plunging straight down to the sea. The only large coastal plain which Parish saw during this survey was at Tung Chung, on the west coast of Lantao behind Chek Lap Kok island (Shatlapko on Parish's chart see note 9) but weather and timetable combined to prevent him from getting a close look at it. There is a general absence of good anchorages, except in the shallow waters between Chek Lap Kok and the coast of Lantao, and there is an 8-foot tidal range. The steep hillsides produce fluky gusts of wind in all but the calmest weather. It is surprising that Parish made such detailed observations in the face of these navigational hazards.\n\nParish's comments on Ma Wan itself are also a fair summary of its geographical limitations. The island is geologically complex, with an interesting variety of soils. The underlying rocks, however, are not sufficiently porous to hold large supplies of ground water, and the size of the island (less than a square mile) is too small to form an effective catchment. Any trading post established on Ma Wan would have been severely restricted in size by this problem. The two small settlements on the island have probably not grown appreciably since Parish's visit28. Perhaps it was fortunate that impressions of Ma Wan were coloured by his attempt to land at the most difficult and dangerous point on the coast.\n\nThe general elevation of Ma Wan is much lower than the hills of North Lantao or of the mainland opposite, and the island is so badly overlooked as to be indefensible. Parish was quite right in rejecting it as a potential site for a large trading settlement, and it is a pity that his orders did not permit him to stay longer on the coast of North Lantao. It is invidious to speculate on the course of history, but if the weather had been better his initial impression of the suitability of the west coast of North Lantao for settlement would no doubt have been confirmed. Possibly the first British trading post would have grown up on Lantao instead of on Hong Kong Island, and the city of Victoria would have looked out over the Pearl River estuary.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "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": 205353, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "108\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\n4,000 feet in height. It is a steep mountain, and its ascent in some parts is dangerous, - even in the commonly-used track, the coolies take off their sandals, and travel barefooted. Some hundred years ago, some rich people caused paved ways to be made to various parts of the mountain, but these paths are now in ruins. The mountain and its neighbourhood afford many plants esteemed by the Chinese which are not found in other parts of the districts, and particularly medicinal herbs, which are sought after by the Chinese doctors and apothecaries.\n\nYeong-toi-shan is reckoned the second mountain by the Chinese, and lies 30 le north of the district town; and, according to Chinese geomancy, its peculiar conformation shows that it exercises a beneficial influence over the district city. The ascent is neither steep nor difficult; the eastern side is almost entirely over-grown with underwood, and the rest of the mountain is covered with grass, among which thickets are interspersed. Regular employment is afforded to a number of Hakka people in collecting this grass and underwood, by which, with hard toil, they earn a scanty livelihood. From the summit of Yeong-toi one has an extended view, nearly the whole district of Sanon is seen, and one is astonished at the barren masses of hills, constituting a veritable sea of mountains, which covers nearly the whole district. In clear weather, Canton itself and Victoria Peak are visible. On the summit of the mountain there is an altar erected, and here the people are accustomed to congregate and offer up petitions for rain when they have been afflicted with an unusual drought.\n\nAbout four years ago I wished to ascend this mountain, but the Hakka people opposed my doing so, because they thought I must be seeking for precious stones; but at last I accomplished my object in the company of a collector of herbs, who interceded for me. Among the plants we gathered were the following,---\n\nUraria crinita, D. C.\n\nRosa nivea, D. C.\n\nQuamoclit vulgaris, Choisy.\n\nDicerma elegans, D. C. Ixora stricta, Roxb.\n\nClerodendron fragrans, Vent. Mussaenda pubescens, Aiton. Platanthera Susanna, Lindl. Osbeckia chinensis, Linn, Baeckia frutescens, L.\n\nRhodomyrtus tomentosa, Wight. Uvaria badiiflora, Hance. Clerodendron pentagonum, Hance. Melastoma candidum, D. Don. Melanthesa chinensis, Blume.\n\nHabenaria linguella, Lindl,\n\nBuchnera stricta, Ham,\n\nPteroloma triquetrum, Bth.\n\nStriga hirsuta, Bth. Vernonia congesta, Bth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205521, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "58\n\nH. A. RYDINGS\n\nA note in the Hongkong Recorder of 2nd July, and repeated in that already mentioned of 9th July, advised \"Captains of Vessels and Strangers visiting the Colony\" that they might be \"admitted gratis to the privileges of the Reading Rooms, on being introduced by a Member.\" There is evidence that these privileges were in fact used by appreciative visitors, though in one instance with near-fatal results. In 1853 a party of officers from an American naval vessel visited the Victoria Library \"to enjoy an hour's quiet reading.\" It is not stated by whom they had been introduced. The report continues:\n\n\"We were soon stretched out on easy chairs and couches conning our books. Having finished my examination of one pamphlet, I got up from my sofa on the verandah looking toward the harbor, to return it to a table spread with others some ten feet distant, and was returning to my seat with another when I saw the marble paved verandah falling in and my poor messmate, Winder, precipitated to the basement below, a distance of fourteen feet. He was completely covered and surrounded by the broken beams and masonry. My own feet were arrested on the very door sill from which the verandah separated, and I saw the sofa on which, but a moment before, I had been sitting, slide down into the abyss but, fortunately, it struck against a side wall and thus providentially covered and protected the head of my messmate from being broken. Had I been sitting on it that end must have fallen on his head and destroyed his life, if not my own; as it happened, his arm was broken by the marble squares of the pavement, and he did not escape without other bruises and scratches. LL. Jones, feeling his chair slipping, succeeded in springing from it into the room, and escaped. Imagine the breathless feeling with which I saw the floor give way to my very feet, and poor Winder falling.\"\n\n—\n\nIt appears that the cause of the accident was that the beams of the verandah had been eaten away by termites. Whether these creatures had also attacked the books is not stated, but no doubt at some period of its existence the books in the Victoria Library must have suffered from the ravages of insects, and probably also from mould, the twin pests of tropical libraries. Certainly some of the volumes in the Morrison Library, to which reference will be made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205614, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n151\n\nEnough has been said to demonstrate that East Point was not the Firm's first building site. This leads on to a further contention that it was not the original intention to site the main part of the new city of Victoria in the Happy Valley - though it is undeniable that that idea was mooted within a year or so and building did commence there after a very small number of individuals, most of them connected with Jardine, Matheson & Co., very quickly obtained grants of much of the best land in the area.\n\nHowever, one further circumstance suggests that the firm originally intended to have their Headquarters much nearer the centre of town than was later the case. Sometime in 1841, perhaps very soon after the sale of 14 June 1841, they obtained a transfer from a Captain Ramsay of what was then Town Lot 42, and there erected a large house of which the Canton Press caustically commented that \"on entering the harbour, you perceive the most commanding site, disfigured by a hybrid erection, half New South Wales and half native production, which is a foretaste of the architectural absurdities to be perpetrated on this island.\"\n\nBut Jardine, Matheson & Co. were unfortunate in their choice of this site for their headquarters on two counts. It was early decided that the hill to the west of the present Albany nullah (Garden Road) should be reserved for Government buildings only. Government correspondence was as early as November 1841 datelined ‘Government Hill’.\n\nThereby restricting the development of the town in that direction into the fairly wide and gently sloping valley behind the present Murray House. But even worse was the Military's insistence that the ridge and hillside to the east of the Albany nullah should be reserved for their use; this area covered the sites of both the firm's godowns and house. The house later became the residence of Lord Saltoun, Commander of British Forces in China during the war which ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The present Flagstaff or Headquarters House, built by 1846, now stands on this site.\"1\n\nThey were able to occupy neither building for long: early in 1842, Colonel Malcolm, Pottinger's secretary, wrote to them, extending an offer to compensate them for moving away to allow the area to be used by the Military. They would be allowed to choose marine lots in any part of the island not appropriated for any other purpose and would, in addition, be given $25,000 in cash for the buildings they had erected. They had, of course, no option, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205728, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "28 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nNOTES \n\n1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: \"For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty\n\nSee E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349.\n\n2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was \"educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)\". I find no evidence to support this.\n\n3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government.\n\n4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94.\n\n6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies.\n\n7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140.\n\n8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199.\n\n9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98.\n\n10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, \"Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205831, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "131\n\nTHE MAPPING OF HONG KONG\n\nLARGE-SCALE PLANS\n\nJ. T. COOPER*\n\nRapid and intense development requires accurate and up-to-date large-scale plans. This is equally true of large housing or engineering projects. Where such plans are not available, all detailed planning and design must await their completion. This is particularly true of Hong Kong, where the steep terrain usually requires extensive earthworks before construction of buildings or roads can commence.\n\nAnother factor adding to the necessity for accurate large-scale plans in the Colony is the high value of land, especially in the built-up areas, where a square foot of land can be worth $300 or more.\n\nThe Survey Branch of the Crown Lands & Survey Office (a sub-department of the Public Works Department) is responsible, not only for all land surveying and mapping in the Colony, but for the demarcation of all lot boundaries in the urban areas, and the implementation of town-planning layouts. Hong Kong is one of the few Commonwealth territories where there are no licensed land surveyors in private practice.\n\nWith the intense development which began in the nineteen-fifties, the staff of the Survey Branch became fully occupied with title surveys, the setting-out of lot boundaries, Government sites, roads, etc., and was unable either to produce large-scale plans of all the areas planned for new development or to keep up to date the plans in the older areas where re-development caused many changes.\n\nThe city areas of Victoria, and the northern part of Hong Kong Island, together with most of the Kowloon peninsula (south of Boundary Street) had been mapped at 1/600 scale (50 ft. to one inch) before the war, but the plans had been plotted onto linen-backed paper, and in the climatic conditions of Hong Kong, they had become distorted and inaccurate. None of these plans\n\n* Mr. Cooper is Assistant Superintendent (Survey), Crown Lands and Survey Office, Public Works Department, Hong Kong. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205842, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "142\n\nRONALD C. Y. NG\n\nits appearance, two copies of this significant contribution to the geographical world were presented to the Society by J. L. Southey in 1868, but for a century the authorship and the identity of this 'Italian missionary of the Propaganda' remained unknown.\n\nConsidering the difficulties presented by the rugged terrain and the unsettled times under which the observations were made, the map has a remarkable degree of accuracy and contains a wealth of information. Although it cannot be ascertained whether Mgr. Volonteri had received any cartographic training, either before or after he entered the priesthood, the map displays no sign of amateurism and, indeed, it won several enviable awards in various European exhibitions, including the Milan Cartographic Exhibition of 1894, in the years immediately following its appearance. Other things apart, the fact that it is probably the first ever bilingual map of its kind must place it in a class of its own.\n\nThere are several features of the map that merit close attention. The longitudes shown are reasonably accurate, but the latitudes are some 2 minutes north of their true positions. Apparently Mgr. Volonteri did not make the actual measurements himself, but had copied the grid from a previously existing source. It would be an impossible task to determine which particular version he adopted but it is fairly certain that it had not originated from British sources, for an official map of Hong Kong Island published twenty years earlier by the Government had the longitudes and latitudes in their correct positions. Naval charts might well have been consulted in the process of plotting the coastline because of the inclusion on the map of the depths of water - information which would obviously be of little relevance to the priest who must have compiled the map for some utilitarian purposes. The quality of the coastline has a great variation in accuracy. In spite of the highly irregular coast due to submergence, Mirs Bay, Tolo Harbour, Tide Cove, Hebe Haven and the eastern approaches of Victoria Harbour are not only packed with sounding records but are also depicted accurately down to the uninhabited islets. On the other hand, for the remainder of the map, the accuracy of the coastline is most disappointing. There could be two possible explanations for this. It was either that coastal charting was still in progress and had not yet covered the western parts or that Fr. Volonteri might have improved on an outline from an earlier smaller-scale map for the areas with which he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205994, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINATOWN IN HONG KONG:\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\nDAFYDD Emrys Evans\n\nIt seems unrealistic to talk of a 'Chinatown' in a place as obviously Chinese as Hong Kong. But for a very long time, there was indeed an area thought of by the Europeans as a part of the city into which they would not normally go. This area has, right from its inception, been known as \"Tai Ping Shan' or Mountain of Peace, after the Chinese name for the mountain the Europeans called Victoria Peak. When the British arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of 1841, the north shore of the island was substantially unoccupied, there being nothing more than scattered huts between the village of Sai Ying Pun in the west and Wong Nei Chung in the east. The principal site for the new city lay in the present Central District of Hong Kong, and the first areas built up by the Europeans (apart from the waterside godowns and houses which extended from the Central Market to Causeway Bay) lay around the present Central Magistracy but rapidly extended within the first three years of the Colony's existence east and west of that spot. Although a small number of Chinese obtained grants of land in this area it is true to say that the town was exclusively European (with, of course, a number of Parsee merchants from British India) from the line of the present Garden road as far as the present Aberdeen Street and up the hill to Hollywood Road. At the time of the Colony's inception there were never more than a few hundred Europeans contrasted with several thousand Chinese who came as tradesmen and artisans. Where, then, did the Chinese live?\n\nApart from the small town that Jardine, Matheson & Co. built out at East Point, there were three principal areas where the incoming Chinese settled at first. It is known that in the early days after June, 1841 a good many matshed huts sprang up on the hillside to the west of the area later to be the site of the main part of the town (and these were destroyed by the great typhoon in August, 1841) and one stretch of the waterfront was 'taken over'. As early as August 1841 the 'Lower Bazaar' was forming in the area of what later became Jervois Street and Bonham", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206312, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n123\n\nDistrict Watch Committee. In 1920 the post of Advisor (Ku Man) was created and the first occupant — and it would seem the only one — was the distinguished Sir Boshan Wei Yuk, the founding father of the Committee.\n\nBy the end of the nineteenth century, relations with the Police had improved. In 1897 the district watchmen on duty in Victoria were placed on police beats and subjected to the supervision of police inspectors and sergeants on patrol duty. This was done on the recommendation of the Captain Superintendent of Police, F. H. May (a Cadet Officer like Lockhart), who remarked in his annual report for that year that 'the object was to improve the efficiency of this very useful auxiliary Police Force, and to bring them into closer touch with the Police'. The reputation of the regular police had improved by that date and the Committee concurred with the innovation. The efficiency of the District Watch was further raised by the secondment in 1918 of a European police officer27 to take charge of and train the detective staff, a practice that continued until 1949. As a result of this change, the number of convictions obtained by the district watch detective force tended to rise from year to year. The force became steadily more professionalised, especially its detective branch. The Secretary for Chinese Affairs claimed in 1922 that 'the connection with the Regular Police has been effectively used to the advantage of both sides, and without interference with the essential character of the District Watch'; and in 1924 he wrote 'the Captain Superintendent of Police was on occasion present by invitation at the Councils of the Committee, and it is satisfactory to note the close co-operation between the two forces'. However, the force did not increase markedly in size over time — there were only 48 watchmen in 1891 and 120 in 194128 — although the area patrolled and the urban population both increased over this period. In 1910 it was found necessary to extend patrols further as the Chinese population spread up to the higher levels of the town; in 1913 the Committee was obliged to raise money for District Watchmen's Quarters in Kowloon; and by 1925 the districts of Yaumati and Mongkok were being patrolled; and by 1930, Shamshuipo. The rate of voluntary subscription was also raised slightly29.\n\nThe District Watch was a Chinese and not a European police force and its duties were more diverse than those normally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206384, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n175\n\non from them a little way was the Cemetery, still a small enclosed space, which, it had been thought, would be sufficient for the needs of the Colony. Hardly any one but myself, I suppose, ever thinks now of paying it a visit. Beyond that, hardly any buildings were met with, till we came to Spring Gardens, where two or three English firms had begun to occupy the ground on the left. Then came Hospital Hill, with diminutive buildings on it, devoted to the same purposes as the larger erections that now crown it; and Morrison Hill, where the school of the Morrison Education Society was in vigorous action, with the Hospital of the Medical Society, the foundations of which can hardly be traced now, but where I found hospitable quarters for several months. Arrived at the Happy Valley, there were to be seen only fields of rice and sweet potatoes. At the south end of it was the village of Wong-nei-ch'ung, just as at the present day, and on the heights above it were rising two or three foreign houses, with an imposing one on the east side of the valley, built by a Mr. Mercer of Jardine, Matheson and Co.'s House. All these proved homes of fever or death, and were soon abandoned.\n\nBeyond the Valley somewhere was a range of buildings, which had already become tabooed as unhealthy, and then came the offices of the great Firm, with the workmen still busy about them, and far from being what they are at the present day.\n\nIf I have omitted to mention in this retrospective view of Victoria as I first saw it any of the foreign houses then existing, they can only be a very few. When I contrast the single street, imperfectly lined with hastily raised houses, and a few sporadic buildings on the barren hill-side, with the city into which they have grown, with its praya, its imposing terraces, and many magnificent residences, I think one must travel far to find another spot where human energy and skill have triumphed to such an extent over difficulties of natural position. I sometimes fancy Britannia standing on the Peak, and looking down with an emotion of pride on the great Babylon which her sons have built.\n\nAlthough I was charmed with the general appearance of the place, and the energy that was manifest in laying out the ground and pushing on building, I found many of the residents oppressed with gloom because of its unhealthiness. 1843 was, no doubt, a very sickly year, more so, perhaps, than any one has been since. The left wing of the 55th Regiment lost a hundred men between", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "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": 206479, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON\n\n21\n\nXIV Mahometan pagoda & Belfry from W. gate Canton March 12 58\n\nView over roof-tops from a terrace. Tree-capped pagoda in distance.\n\nXVII Macao April 58\n\nView of sea-front, with sampans in foreground.\n\nXX Peiho River July 3rd 58\n\nSmall British gun-boat, no. 83, in the river with military figures on the banks.\n\nXXV North of Formosa Id. July 30th 1858\n\nJunk in rough seas off mountainous coast.\n\nXXVI Pagoda Chimmo Bay N. of Amoy Augst 3rd 58\n\nFigures in small boat with mountains and pagoda in the background.\n\nXXVII Victoria Hong Kong Augt 14 58\n\nHong Kong harbour, town and peak from Stonecutters Island.\n\nXXVIII In Tartar Yamun August 58\n\nRed-coated soldier in front of a hall, with a pagoda in background.\n\nXXXI Canton Septr 58\n\nMagazine Hill 5 storied pagoda N. Gate\n\nChinese carrying a load outside gate of Canton, with walls and features of the town visible in the background.\n\nXXXIII Honan Temple Octr 5th 58 GAS\n\nMain hall of temple with Chinese walking about.\n\nXXXV Canton Octr 58 E. Wall\n\nWalls, with a pagoda in the distance.\n\nXLIII Novr 18, 58. Gates of Confucius Temple\n\nThe College From S, Wall Canton\n\nEntrance gates in foreground, with temple buildings behind.\n\nXLV Howqua's Garden Dec 21 58 GAS\n\nPavillion in lake, with trees and other buildings around.\n\nUnnumbered Faint pencil inscription: Tombs in Canton(?)\n\nTombs and coffins in front of a Chinese temple, with a view of water in the background.\n\nThe sketches show a certain amateur artistic ability. Some of them are of views which were very popular among book illustrators", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206863, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "134\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof a new building for Queen's College. In January 1877, the Government advertised for sale at public auction the \"materials, bricks, stones, tiles, doors, windows, joists, floors, etc. of buildings on Inland Lots 55, 93, 91 and 91A—known as Rangel's Estate”. Among the properties was \"the Joss House, No. 10 Shing Wong Street\". Soon after, the wreckers moved in and the temple was no more. So passed what was presumably the first community project of the Chinese population of urban Hong Kong.\n\nIt is difficult to establish the exact date for the erection of the Temple from records now available. It is possible that a notice in The Chinese Repository, October 1843, (Vol. XII, p. 549) may refer to the Shing Wong Temple. \"A new Chinese temple is about to be undertaken [in Hong Kong]. Handbills and placards are out, for the purpose of raising money for the erection of the building\".\n\nThe references to Chinese temples in the Hong Kong Blue Books are confusing and difficult to interpret. In 1844 under the heading of Ecclesiastical Establishments there is listed:\n\nBuddhist in Victoria, W.D. [Western District]\n\nBuddhist in Chekchoo [now Stanley]\n\nBuddhist in Shekpaiwan [Aberdeen Harbour]\n\nBuddhist in Sookumpoo\n\nEstablished in 1842 Chinese\n\nIn 1845 it is stated that \"There are 17 Chinese Temples in the colony, dedicated with few exceptions to 'Tee-how-mong-mong' (the Queen of Heaven)\". In 1846 and 1847 it is stated that there are three small Chinese temples in Victoria, and in 1847 it is noted that there is \"a small one in each village\".\n\nUnder the Blue Book schedule of Chinese buildings a Chinese Town Hall is listed in 1845 and 1846. In 1847 two Town Halls are enumerated, with the addition of one Joss House. Was the Shing Wong building listed as a Town Hall? A statement made in a Chinese document entitled \"Information as to the period of the formation of Districts in Hongkong and the alteration of the Character Wan-a bay-to Wan—a circuit” translated and published in The China Review, Vol. I, p. 133 (1872-1873) suggests that the Town Halls were Temples.\n\nThis article also provides a date for the construction of the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road:\n\nIn 1843 one Sz-man-king opened a place for gambling. . Two years later, traders began to come, and two years after that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206864, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n135 \n\n(1847, or 26th year of To Kwang), Sz-man-king and one Tam-tsoi, built the Man Mo Miu, and here they \"judged the people\" in public assembly. In 30th year of To Kwang (1851) the shop keepers of Sheung Wan or Upper Bay ... repaired the Man Mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein decided all cases of any public interest. \n\nBiographical notices of the two community leaders who built the temple are given in an article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong” in this Journal, vol. 11 (1971), pp. 80-82, 87-88. \n\nPrevious to the opening of the Man Mo Temple the Shing Wong Temple may have been used as a Chinese \"Town Hall\", for as we have noted only one such building is listed in 1845 and 1846, but two are listed in 1847, the date given for the erection of the Man Mo Temple. The two temples were quite close to each other. The Shing Wong Temple was on the western edge of the European part of Victoria and the Man Mo Temple on the eastern edge of the Chinese settlement. A steep and rocky hillside divided the two sections. \n\nConfirmation of the 1847 date given in the quoted Chinese account is supported both by the date, Tao Kuang 27th year, inscribed on the bell at the Man Mo Temple and the date of the Crown Lease for Inland Lot 338 upon which the Temple is built, which is 24 June, 1847. A letter dated 29 May 1847, from the Colonial Secretary authorized its issuance with the stipulation that the premises be used as a school. After the building was finished, however, it was used as a temple. In consequence, the Government in March 1848, began charging Crown Rent for the lot. It was then decided that the temple should be rebuilt on a larger scale reflecting the increasing affluence of the Chinese community. An account of the opening of the new building is reported in The Friend of China, 24 May, 1851: \n\nThe Chinese Community are now enjoying themselves in a way we have never seen before in this Colony, on the occasion of the opening of a spacious Heathen Temple in the Hollywood Road, a few hundred yards from the London Missionary Society's College and Chapel. The Temple is dedicated to a body of the civil and military Gods, and has cost nearly a thousand pounds sterling in erection,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207132, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe purpose of the visit is to see\n\n197\n\n(a) the quiet residential terraces of this part of Kennedy Town, namely Tai Pak Terrace, Hee Wong Terrace, Ching Lin Terrace, To Li Terrace, and Hok Si Terrace;\n\n(b) the Lo Pan Temple which stands at the western end of\n\nChing Lin Terrace.\n\nKennedy Town was named after an early Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Arthur Kennedy in whose term of office, April 1872 - March 1877, the district was first developed. Kennedy ‘was genial, and possessed a great sense of humour, much common sense, and a strong Irish accent'. For a short but interesting and lively account of the events of his governorship see Endacott's History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 160-169),\n\nEndacott gives the following reason for the development of Kennedy Town, then located on the western fringe of the city of Victoria\n\nThe telegraph and the Suez Canal had brought changes in commercial practice; large stocks used to be kept by the European firms to meet any advantageous price changes; but now shipments could be arranged far more quickly. The result was that large godowns in the eastern district were no longer necessary, and coolies moved to the western part of the city in search of employment. To meet this change a new Chinese area was laid out on partly reclaimed land, and named Kennedy Town after the Governor.\n\nThe Five Terraces\n\nCarl Smith has very kindly provided the following information about the development of the particular section of Kennedy Town in which we are interested:\n\nThe area we are visiting today, lying between Pokfulam Road and the sea shore and from Holland Street to Sands Street, was the earliest development in what is now Kennedy Town. George Underhill Sands was granted a Crown Lease in 1873 for 330,634 square feet at Belcher's Bay. The lot was numbered Marine Lot 239. It not only had a sea frontage suitable for docks and a ship slipway, but it extended up the hillside toward Pokfulam Road. Sands died in 1877 and his executors sold the lot with its patent slips and shipways to the Hong Kong and Whampoa", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207331, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n91\n\nbetween those who were, and were not, socially acceptable. An inordinate degree of effort went into securing release from this social limbo. Release, when it occurred, was achieved in most cases by judicious entertaining, by obtaining entrée to the right clubs and associations, or by a change of occupation.\n\nThe Oxford English Dictionary defines a beachcomber as ‘a settler on the Pacific islands, living by pearl fishery, etc., or loafing about wharves and beaches' and as 'a white man in Pacific islands etc., who lives by collecting jetsam, longshore vagrant'. The term, a pejorative one in European circles in the East, in time was applied to all European vagrants by those in established positions and meant, simply, a loafer. It was difficult to survive on the beach in Hong Kong for the climate, with its cold winter months, did not provide the lush consolations of life on the Pacific islands; and the Chinese, the host population, whose traditions supported the values of hard work, frugality and sobriety, were not as easy-going as the denizens of the South Seas. Beachcombers in Hong Kong were defined as loafers, destitutes, down-and-outs, spongers, and paupers, and were referred to as such in the newspapers of the time. A news item in the China Mail of 1888 sheds light on contemporary attitudes toward beachcombers:\n\nA 'Dead-Beat' named George Smith was brought before Mr. Sercombe Smith, in the Police Court to-day, charged with being a rogue and vagabond and having no visible means of subsistence. Defendant, who admitted having no occupation, no money, and no place of abode, was sent to Gaol for a month's hard labour, during which time steps will be taken to procure a more desirable berth for him.3\n\nBeachcombers in Hong Kong were mostly discharged seamen, seamen who had jumped ship, or deserters from foreign navies, especially the American. A few were work-shy nomads who moved from port to port, waiting for something to turn up. Others adopted an itinerant mode of life because their capacity to work regularly had been undermined by drink, drugs, or debauchery in general. Some were escaping from a criminal past. All were objects of suspicion.\n\nA European constabulary had been recruited to police the city of Victoria and adjacent areas soon after the establishment of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207339, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n99\n\nadjacent to the European business centre, the so-called Central District (Chung Wan), or, eastwards along Queen's Road, in the district of Wan Chai.\" Once Kowloon was acquired, pong-paân were attracted to this new area of settlement because of low rents and the propinquity of the docks, wharves and godowns soon established there, which in time gave employment to numerous European overseers. At the end of the century, Kowloon had become the principal habitat of lower class Europeans. There were terraces of houses occupied solely by them. A witness wrote:\n\nThese are generally employees in the dockyards, or clerks, or the families of engineers and mates of the small steamers that have their headquarters in Hong Kong... Hong Kong looks down on Kowloon with all the well-bred contempt of Belgravia for Brixton. And even in the despised suburb on the mainland these social differences are not wanting. The wives of the superior dock employees are the leaders of Kowloon society; and the better half of a ship captain or marine engineer is only admitted on sufferance to their exclusive circle.18\n\nBut the part of Victoria most frequented, especially at night, by the European lower orders—soldiers, sailors, merchant seamen, beach-combers and others—was Tai Ping Shan, a densely populated Chinese residential area west of the Central District. In 1875 a visitor to Hong Kong wrote:\n\nPassing westward along Queen's Road, we come upon a quarter of the town much frequented by seamen of all nations. Here spirits are sold in nearly every second shop, and bands of common sailors may be seen spending their time and money on questionable drink in more questionable company, roaring out some rough sea-song in drunken chorus, or dancing to the time of a drum and flute, accordion or cornopean. The piles of Chinese houses which rise above this locality embrace Tai-Ping-Shan, or the hill of great peace. The name is a fine one, but a fine name will not hide the sins of the place. Tai-Ping-Shan is inhabited, for the most part, by Chinamen; but men are found there belonging to all the nations of the East. As for women, these are principally Chinese; they are numerous enough, but of the lowest type. There are strange hotels in this quarter,\n\n* There are a number of 19th century street maps available for early Hong Kong, held in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207341, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n101\n\nAt 5 A.M. he awakes with a soft punkah breeze fanning him. 5.15. Cup of cocoa and a biscuit brought to his bedside by a coolie. 5.30. The barber coolie shaves him, still in bed. 6. Bathing parade. 7.30. Breakfast, of which 1/2 lb. of beef-steak forms an invariable component. 8 to 11. Nothing whatever to do, and plenty to help him to do it—the everlasting coolies perform nearly all the cooking, sweeping, and cleaning up in barracks. 11. A short spell of school and theoretical instruction in gunnery. After dinner, unanimous repose on bamboo matting, as being cooler than a mattress. 5 P.M. One hour's easy gun-drill. 6 to 10. Sally forth to chaff the Chinese folk, try a trifle of 'samshu',* and practically ascertain that this potent rice spirit will prostrate with splitting headache the seasoned old soaker to whom a tumbler of brandy would be but as a glass of water. In fact, during the hot weather, he merely mounts guard, and is available for emergencies; in the cool season, he is of course made to rub up his drill. His idle life is not a happy one, destitute as it is to him of interest and active amusements, and in a very short time he becomes listless, depressed, and pulled down, contrasting painfully with his newly landed, fresh-looking comrades... I have known it asserted that no efforts of a commanding officer can keep European troops permanently stationed at Hong Kong in a state of military efficiency.23\n\nThe problem of drunkenness worried the naval, military, and civilian authorities in Hong Kong throughout the nineteenth century. In 1898, a commission to investigate the problem was set up because, as the preamble to the report states, there was a strong opinion in some quarters that deleterious liquors were being sold in the Colony, which were doing a great deal of mischief to soldiers and sailors.24 The commissioners discovered that although soldiers and sailors often drank samshu, a cheaper brew than Western spirits, the problem was not a simple one of 'deleterious liquors' incapacitating troops and naval ratings but rather that of excessive imbibing of all types of spirits, both Western and Chinese.\n\nIn 1898, there were 23 licensed public houses and bars in Victoria alone; 47 storekeepers were licensed to sell alcohol; and numerous Chinese shopkeepers sold samshu. A part of Upper Lascar\n\n* See Couling Encyclopaedia Sinica, 1967 reprint of the original edition of 1917, p. 497.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207408, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "168\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nthe administration of the hospital. Though his wife and family had been safely evacuated in 1940 he had continued to live in his house, and sometime after our surrender I well recall him telling me that he had never in his life felt more care-free, for having lost practically all his possessions he had little left to worry about.\n\nLieutenant Colonel Cedric Shackleton was a powerfully built man, not very tall but with strong facial features. He was polite enough to the Japanese but to me he always seemed to carry a “be damned to you\" expression. Much of this was simply natural to him as I recognised from having known him for years, but though I do not recall any incidents, I think the Japanese, sensitive as they were, may have felt that they had met a formidable character.\n\nSome dogs had been brought by V.A.D's and others when they mobilised for duty from their homes, and it was gradually borne in upon their owners that feeding and other problems made it undesirable to keep the animals and with one exception they were put down. The exception was a splendid Dobermann being cared for by our Corporal Thompson for a friend of his in Victoria. Thompson was on the quartermaster's staff and had a way of doing things with impunity for which less skilful men would have been soundly punished by the Japanese. We profited in our rations from this talent and eventually he got the dog back to its home in Victoria though I believe that few dogs survived long in civil life.\n\nOne of our own men returned to us gravely wounded very early in January 1942. Corporal Norman Leath had been working in the Army Medical Stores at Shau Ki Wan near the Japanese landing points on the Island. When the store was overrun the staff who remained were lined up on the steep hillside by their captors and used for sword practice. In most cases the men were killed outright. In the present case the blow aimed to cut off the victim's head was directed at the back of the neck. The force of it toppled him down hill off the track on which he was standing. Some time later he discovered to his surprise that he was still alive and could move, and after a time he crawled away unseen and reaching a road, was picked up in a car which took him to the Queen Mary Hospital in Pokfulam. There he was succoured and shortly afterwards was transferred to Bowen Road. His wound was both wide and deep and his spinal cord had escaped by a miracle. Major Anderson did a splendid job of surgical repair and in due course the victim returned to take charge of the hospital office until our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207724, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n97\n\nPeking. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company had been doing business with Hawaii. Their two steamers, the Ho-Chung ** and Mei-Foo, ✯✯ were used to transport Chinese laborers to Hawaii in 1879 and 1880.*\n\nIn Tientsin, King Kalakaua was received by Viceroy Li Hung-chang ✶ who asked penetrating questions about Hawaii: \"How many islands are there in your Kingdom? Do you have a Parliament? You have many Chinese in your country. Do you treat them well?\" The secretary and interpreter for the Viceroy was Li Sun (Tsang Lai-sun, a graduate of Hamilton College in New York.)\n\nThe King wrote back on April 6, 1881 to William L. Green, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, that he went to North China to see Li Hung-chang \"for the purposes I had in view: First, of stopping, if possible, further immigration of Chinese to the Islands [who came alone] without carrying their wives, and Secondly:--to secure for our government the same privileges as granted to the United States Government, the right at any time to restrict, return, or remove, the large influx of Chinese to our islands. On these two subjects our mission has been successful.”\n\nThe Royal party returned to Shanghai and embarked on the S. S. Thibet for Hong Kong, arriving on April 12, 1881. Already Hong Kong officials had been informed of the King's coming and were ready to extend a royal welcome. Owing to the considerable commerce between Hong Kong and Hawaii, the King was represented as Consul General by a British merchant of high standing William Keswick of Jardine, Matheson and Co. The twelve-oared barge of Sir John Pope Hennessy, the Colonial Governor, also appeared alongside with an invitation asking the King, in the name of Queen Victoria, to be his guest. The Hawaiian King had to adjust his schedule to accept the Governor's invitation for a royal reception at the Government House. As Armstrong recorded in his book, \"While we were taking coffee, the next morning, the forts, with seven warships, fired the usual salute of twenty-one guns. From the balcony of the Government House, high above the city, we looked down on a dense mass of smoke, rolling away to the mainland, pierced with the flashing of the guns, the Hawaiian flag", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "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": 208078, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND CEREMONIAL LIFE OF TWO MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES IN HOI-PING COUNTY, SOUTH CHINA, 1911-1949\n\nYUEN-FONG WOON*\n\nThe two villages to be discussed in this paper are: Na-loh Ts'uen (###) of Lo-yeung Heung (✯✯) and Lung-tsai She (** #) of Tsung-long Heung () both in Hoi-p'ing County (BI *) of Kwangtung Province in South China.1†\n\nNa-loh Ts'uen was a richer village and had a longer history of settlement. It was founded about 1350. This village was on the outskirt of the general area known as T'oh-fuk (4) which included four Heung—Lo-yeung, Chung-miu († $), Ling-uen (✯) and Ng-wing (). These four Heung were dominated numerically as well as economically by the Kwaan (§§) lineage,2 with its ritual centre at Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall (***) in the intermediate market-town of Che-hom (). Na-loh Tsuen itself was multi-surname: there were one hundred Kwaan families and sixty Oo (*) families in the village.\n\nLung-tsai She was separated from T’oh-fuk by six li (two miles) and was part of Ts'ung-long Heung. Between T’oh-fuk and this village were the Oo lineage of Ue-leung Heung (f), the Chau () lineage of Hin-kong Heung (L) and the Wong () lineage of Paak-hop Heung (). The village was founded about 1500. There were about 200 inhabitants: eighteen Kwaan families, twenty Wong families and four Tang (4) families. It was not known when the Tang and the Wong came, but the Kwaan founder was Yan-waang Kung (#) who came from Na-loh some 160-170 years ago when the latter village had become over-populated.\n\nBoth villages had ritual ties with the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall at Che-hom. The Kwaan at Na-loh had an ancestral hall of its own, but the elder members went to Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall to take part in the annual rites there. The Kwaan in Lung-tsai She did not have an ancestral hall of its own, but the elders also attended rites\n\n* Dr. Woon is on the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C.\n\n† The residents of both villages were Punti speakers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208086, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES\n\n109\n\n2 The two villages described in the paper have been based on my data of the Kwaan lineage. Na-loh Ts'uen was part of Lo-yeung Heung and Lung-tsai She was part of Tsung-long Heung. The county gazetteer, K'ai-p'ing Hsien-chih (Hong Kong, 1933) provides extracts of genealogies of the Kwaan and the Oo as well as other prominent lineages of Hoi-p'ing but does not mention Na-loh Ts'uen and Lung-tsai She.\n\nThe table at p. 111 shows the historical origin of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk. This account is based on personal communications from elderly informants. Again, Na-loh and Lung-tsai She were not mentioned. Much of the data used in this article was obtained from 14 Kwaan in Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. Canada 1973-74. They all came from Toh-fuk and Tsung-long areas. Of these six came from the two villages of Na-loh and Lung-tsai She as follows:-\n\n \n Name\n Birth Date\n Age\n Place of Origin\n Year Left Hoi-p'ing\n \n \n Kwaan F\n 1902\n 75\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1915\n \n \n Kwaan H\n 1911\n 66\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1927\n \n \n Kwaan I\n 1932\n 45\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1953\n \n \n Kwaan J\n 1941\n 36\n Na-loh Ts'uen\n 1951\n \n \n Kwaan K\n 1903\n 74\n Lung-tsai She\n 1920\n \n \n Kwaan L\n 1937\n 40\n Lung-tsai She\n 1949\n \n\nMy Ph.D. thesis (Social Organization in South China 1911-1949: The Case of the Kwaan Lineage of Hoi-ping) deals with the general area.*\n\n3 G. W. Skinner (\"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,\" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-65), 6-7, 20-31, 41-43) distinguishes between three types of periodic markets in traditional rural China: the standard market town, the intermediate market town and the central market town. The standard market town is a type of rural market which meets the normal trade needs of the peasant household. An intermediate market town serves the needs of the local elites of the standard market towns in the vicinity since it provides decorative items of quality which are inaccessible in the standard market towns. It serves as a centre for interclass dealings between the gentlemanly elite and the merchants of the market town itself. The central market town is normally situated at a strategic site in the transportation network and had important wholesale functions.\n\n4 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society in Fukien and Kwangtung (London, 1966, pp. 18-42) distinguishes between a localized lineage, a dispersed lineage and a higher-order lineage. A “localized” lineage denotes a group of agnates who live together in the same geographical area. The members claim to be descended from a common founder. They usually have ancestral halls to practise ancestral worship together.\n\nA \"dispersed lineage\" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. One group has an ancestral hall to practise ancestor worship. The members of other groups do not have a hall of their own. They would go to the first group to worship because it is believed that they were originally descendants of the first group but had at some point in time moved away from the parent settlement. A \"higher-order lineage\" denotes two or more groups of agnates with the same surname which are separated geographically. Each group has an ancestral hall of its own but there is also a common hall comprising all the members for the performance of ancestral worship together because it is believed that they were all descended from a common founder.\n\n5 I collected the marriage history of informants up to five generations. Whilst of interest in itself, it did not shed any light on village origins.\n\n* Now accepted for publication by the University of British Columbia Press.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208583, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n13\n\nTaking advantage of the changed American sentiments regarding China and the allied victory in Europe, Britain began an active propaganda programme to influence American public opinion concerning Britain's imperial and colonial attitudes and policies and the British Empire's contribution to the allied war effort. The British Information Services, an agency of the British government in New York, published numerous booklets for the purpose.$7\n\nHong Kong naturally figured prominently in these publications. In the booklet entitled \"Britain and Japan\", for instance, it is thus stated: \"When the Island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain one hundred years ago, it was almost uninhabited. Since then Britain has built on that island the beautiful city of Victoria. By 1941 Hong Kong had a population of 1,650,000, mostly Chinese; it was a trading center and a port for commercial shipping which had enriched the communities all around it. Students from China came to the University of Hong Kong to get degrees in Medicine, Engineering, Science and Arts, which were recognized in Britain as fully reaching British standards. During the long troubles of China, the island of Hong Kong, and the city of Victoria, became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of distressed Chinese.\" The message was clear: if the British colony of Hong Kong had been beneficial to Britain, it also had been as much so, if not more, to China.\n\nMeanwhile, events were leading to the last stages of the Pacific War. In September 1944 the Americans and the British reached a clear understanding which laid down the general principle that in the British Far Eastern territories which were in the American command, the policies to be followed on the liberation of those territories should be laid down by the British government and accepted by the American force commander.58 Late in February 1945 the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, instituted in December the previous year for the purpose of coordinating the Department of State and the War and Navy Departments, directed that its Subcommittee for the Far East maintain, as a general guide for its activities, a master list of Pacific-Far Eastern problems, arranged in appropriate order of priority. Also, before initiating action on any one of such problems the subcommittee should submit in each case to the main committee a detailed recommendation showing “(1) a statement of the problem (2) the agency or agencies to be charged with initiation of the basic documents involved, and (3) the method of processing and coordination thereof, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208872, "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-1980", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "6\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nAn example of the latter is the very recently established open-air shrine on a hillside, half way up, and some 120 steps above, the tarmac road of Black's Link on Hong Kong island. It consists of a small row of three shrines in one long concrete construction. Each is no bigger than 2' by 1'6\", and contains a printed and framed coloured icon, one Buddhist, and two of the folk religion. The title given to the whole is the Temple of the Three Immortals (49) The final character \"Miao\" (temple) normally gives the impression of roofed halls containing images and icons. However, the concept of the three altars of the Temple of the Three Immortals is no different from other temples with large altars, numerous images, high walls and a roof, which with all their other refinements in no way add to the power of the prayer of the devotee. There are, however, not many examples in Hong Kong of permanent outside shrines being referred to as a miao (temple).\n\nMonasteries were usually built away from the main centres of population, on hillsides backing on to slopes and facing downwards, overlooking wooded landscapes or the sea; whilst Daoist folk religion temples are to be found in population centres (especially where the centres existed a hundred or so years ago) and in sheltered coves at a convenient landing point.\n\nFishermen's folk religion temples may seem at times to be in isolated spots, but in practice they are near safe anchorages and just far enough from the next temple to be economically viable for the temple keeper. The pattern of fisherfolk temples, dedicated predominantly to Tian Hou (A) and Hong Sheng (), when plotted on a map, is quite distinctive, particularly in Wanchai and the centre of Victoria. The temples, now quite far inland, were originally built back a little from the original coastline and faced what then was the nearest stretch of water.\n\nUrban popular religion temples, built in traditional style in the early days of the two settlements, are usually simple folk religion establishments dedicated to the popular cults of Guan Di, Tian Hou and Wen Chang, whilst more modern temples built since the 1880's tend to be dedicated to less well-known deities who offer specialised services such as the plague deity, Sui Jingbo.\n\nOver the years a few temples have been closed down or moved elsewhere, from lack of patronage or because of reclamation, urban redevelopment and street widening. In one fell swoop a fisherman's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209590, "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "225\n\nmanagement. We hope they may not be out of pocket as the Garrison Company was last year.\n\nAfter the initial ballyhoo about the Committee, described as a \"scolding given in true washer-woman style\", which only amused the town, the season was a great success. A slightly sour note was injected into the 1862-63 season because only four performances were given, while it had been announced when advertising for subscriptions that there would be six. Complaints compounded in 1863-64 when prices were advanced to a sum which was thought to be \"just beyond the limit to which a class were prepared to pay for entertainment\". Consequently, the theatre for the first performance was only half filled.\n\nThe 1865-66 season also began inauspiciously. At a meeting in November to arrange for the coming season, there was such poor attendance that it was feared the Amateurs might have to give up.\n\nWhen the Amateur Dramatic Corps looked back on its history, it gave its founding date as 1860, however, in the announcements of the group in the 1860s it is called the Hong Kong Amateur Theatrical Society.\n\nTHE THEATRE ROYAL\n\nAmateur dramatics took on a new vigour with the organisation or reorganisation of the theatrical group in 1860. Revived interest emphasised the need of a suitable theatre. Until the opening of the Theatre Royal in the City Hall in 1869, various makeshift arrangements had to be made after the Victoria Theatre was closed in the 1850s.\n\nIn 1861, the China Mail looked toward the future:\n\nWe hope the time is not distant when a neat permanent building constructed on the best known principles of acoustics will take the place of the temporary mat sheds, which need so much exertion on the performers' part, and indulgence on that of the audience. The acoustics are bad. Now that the capability of having these entertainments annually is beginning to be procured, it would be well to take measures soon, to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210155, "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-1984", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "105\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND BEFORE 1841\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHail, little isle! and Hong's fair haven, hail!\n\nFirst-fruits of China to the ocean-queen! New orient realms, new navies' embryo sail Glass'd in thy shifting horoscope are seen. May British virtue shine, in thee confest; And in her colony be Britain blest!'*\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong evoked different feelings in both China and Britain. In China, needless to say, there was scarcely rejoicing. The sixty-year-old Tao Kuang emperor, monarch of China since 1820, when asked to sanction the proposed Treaty of Peace that granted Hong Kong to Britain, spent the rest of the day and most of the night pacing up and down the corridor of his Palace, deep in anxious thought. Several times he was heard to mutter \"impossible\" and to sigh deeply. At last, at 3 a.m., he stamped his foot and proceeded to the audience chamber where he affixed the \"vermilion pencil\" to the draft. One of his subjects, the great Chinese statesman Tso Tsung-tang (1812-1885), then an unknown and rather unsuccessful scholar, wrote four poems in which he expressed grief and indignation when he heard that the British had taken over Hong Kong; and when he learned the final terms of the peace he was so overcome that he thought seriously of retiring to some lonely mountain retreat for the rest of his days.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nIn England the young Queen Victoria, twenty-two years old and married with a baby daughter wrote to her uncle, the king of the Belgians, \"Albert is so much amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong and we think Victoria ought to be called Princess of Hong Kong in addition to Princess Royal\".2\n\nHer Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was not amused. He received the news of the Chuenpi agreement (January 1841) between Captain Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary, and the Imperial Commissioner Kishen, with disappointment and disapproval.\n\n* See Plates 1-3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210475, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "63\n\nwhat Skinner (1964) has called a standard market area. However, certain considerations both of fact and point of view make me hesitate to use this term here. First as to fact: the above are not the only differences that make it less than useful to regard this area as being centred upon a market town like a wheel upon its hub. As far as markets were concerned, it had, as we have just seen, two centres. As far as the Kau Sai fishermen recognized temple festivals, however, it had at least three, none of them lying in either market town. (This situation is further complicated by the fact that both the market towns and one other fishing village in the area also organised annual temple festivals, which some Kau Sai people did attend but irregularly and idiosyncratically). In the third place, both Sai Kung and Shaukiwan acted also as market centres and anchorages for large numbers of junks which ranged much further afield, either because they were deep-sea craft with a wider range of occupational movement than the inshore boats of Kau Sai and its neighbours, or seasonally. Both towns were also centres for quite large land populations; Shaukiwan being in fact a rapidly expanding industrial suburb of Victoria City on Hong Kong island.\n\nIt is likely that most of the peculiarities of this kind of market situation are to be explained by the extreme mobility of the boat population and the proximity of the great conurbations of Victoria (Hong Kong) and Kowloon. (Regarded from the point of view of the local land dwellers Sai Kung does fall neatly into the standard market category and Shaukiwan drops out of the picture altogether). It remains true, however, that in this study I am not taking a \"market centred\" point of view. For the fishermen of Kau Sai, Kau Sai was the centre of the Universe. Markets at Sai Kung and Shaukiwan, temple festivals at Pak Sha Wan and Lung Shuen Wan, were important, but peripheral. Moreover, mobility was such that every part of the Port Shelter-Rocky Harbour area was freely accessible and frequently visited, And all parts of it contained fish. Borrowing a term from Zoology, the area is from this point of view perhaps more usefully thought of as a \"territory\" than as a market area. Like herds of impala the fishermen of Port Shelter and Rocky Harbour, including those domiciled in Kau Sai, roamed their territory and exploited their niche in it, regardless of the fact that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210477, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "65\n\nand landsmen as \"people of our bay\".\n\nThe significance of these differences will have to be discussed at length in later chapters. For the present it is simply a matter of record that, whereas both liners and seiners claimed to be domiciled in Kau Sai, the seiners were the more obvious and effective residents.3\n\nMost of the Hakka speakers moved in a totally different sphere. Their places of work being in the cities of Hong Kong (Victoria) and Kowloon where they spent by far the major portion of their time, the men were in no way connected with the territory in which all Kau Sai's (Cantonese) Boat People passed their lives. Their women stayed in the village, oriented almost exclusively towards it, to their memories of their natal homes (which they never visited) and to their absent husbands and children. There were one or two old men in much the same position. Only in the case of the so-called \"headman\" and his shopkeeper brother did the spheres of movement of landsmen partially overlap those of the Boat People. Like the Hakka women they lived in Kau Sai (or at least stayed there very frequently) and like the fishermen they looked to the market town of Sai Kung. Neither of them was oriented at all towards the other market, Shaukiwan, however, nor, before the move which took them and all the other landsmen to Pak Sha Wan, did they have relationships within the fishermen's territory as a whole. Like the other land villagers of the Sai Kung peninsula and islands, their movements are most usefully to be understood in terms of Skinner's now classic model of a standard market area: they were villagers exploiting a fixed resource (land and house property) and travelling at intervals between their place of residence (Kau Sai) and the market town (Sai Kung) in which nearly all their significant extra-village social contacts were made (including those with other villages).\n\nA comparison between Hakka patterns of spatial mobility and the fishermen's patterns will at once make it obvious that interaction between members of the land and water sections of Kau Sai's population as they existed in the early 'fifties (and for at least a century before) was likely to be limited.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210820, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "154\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nCanton and Macau. In Macau he was a close friend of the eccentric painter George Chinnery. In one of Chinnery's paintings, Hunter appears in a group of men gathered informally on the verandah of the mansion occupied by the English firm of Dent and Co on the Praia Grande at Macau. Along with two other old friends of Chinnery's, Hunter maintained a watch beside the artist's bed the night of his death in 1852. He also helped to take charge of the deceased's effects. It is from Hunter that we have a number of interesting anecdotes about Chinnery.\n\nAfter Hunter left Russell and Company he did business on his own and connections with American firms, particularly Augustine Heard and Co, for whom he handled some of their Macau affairs.\n\nFrom 1864 to 1868, Hunter lived in Hongkong. During this time he was a member of the Heard firm. But in 1868, he retired and moved to Paris. In 1859 he was appointed French Consul at Macau.\n\nAs he grew older he suffered poor health. In 1886, it was thought his death was imminent. Notice was sent to his children and three of his daughters set sail for France. Their ship, the Victoria, went down at sea. One of the daughters drowned, the two others were rescued. The daughter who drowned was still single. This suggests that she may have been the crippled daughter mentioned by Lieut Preble in 1855. She had been taken to Hongkong by her mother for a series of operations to cut the tendons in her foot, which turned inward, so that it could resume a more normal position. At the time Preble mentioned the operations their ultimate success was not yet assured.\n\nWilliam Hunter survived the crisis which had summoned his daughters to his supposed death-bed for another five years. He died at Nice in 1891 aged about 80.\n\nWHEN LEGGE TOOK OVER ANGLO-CHINESE COLLEGE\n\nThe Rev. Dr. James Legge, famous for his translation of the Chinese Classics into English, moved the Anglo Chinese College from Malacca to Hongkong in 1843,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211087, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "123\n\nburned in December 1856. Trade stopped and the merchants retired to Hongkong.\n\nTwo days after the burning of the foreign \"factory\" area the Hongkong Government issued a notification that Chinese must carry a lantern when out after dark, and from 10 at night till the morning gun was fired they would be “taken up” unless on an errand for their employer, in which case they must have a pass.\n\nThree weeks later an ordinance (No 2 of 1857) was enacted \"for the better securing the peace of the Colony.” It incorporated the provisions of the earlier notification. It also laid down the penalties for not having a pass between the hours of eight in the evening and sunrise. The magistrate in giving sentence had a number of alternatives, a fine not exceeding $50, imprisonment with hard labour for not more than 14 days, public whipping of not more than 20 strokes or exposure in the stocks for not more than two hours.\n\nAnother article of the ordinance required of all citizens compulsory co-operation with the Fire Brigade. Here the penalties were different for Europeans and Chinese. Both could be fined up to $50, but for the Chinese only there was an alternative of flogging. Behind this discrimination was the conviction that the public whipping of a European would have lowered the dignity of all foreigners in the sight of the Chinese.\n\nThe ordinance was immediately followed by three police orders. All persons without employment or who could find no one to guarantee their good conduct were to leave the Colony or suffer deportation. During the approaching Chinese New Year festival there would be no relaxation of the light and pass requirements.\n\nIn case of fire, the police were to be notified by the inhabitants of the building, but people in adjoining premises must remain in them until the police arrived at the scene. No crowds would be permitted to gather. The last order was to meet the threat of incendiarism. Rumours were circulating that agents would be sent from Canton to burn Victoria in the same manner as the foreign settlements at Canton and Whampoa had been fired.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211168, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "204\n\nendow a high class school and call it the Victoria Female College.\" And lastly, the possibility of a statue was advanced.\n\nAlready seeds were sown for divided opinions and each little group pushing its own project. Out of the resulting confusion, the Chinese emerged with their own scheme, a hall for a Chinese Chamber of Commerce.\n\nJUBILEE PLANS COMPETE WITH RACING\n\nThe manner in which Hongkong should observe the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was publicly launched when Mr. C. P. Chater raised the question at a Legislative Council meeting on February 11, 1887.\n\nHis preliminary remarks reflected the sentiments prevalent among colonials in a period when the British Empire was in its unchallenged glory. They were proud of the widespread dominion of their native country.\n\nMr. Chater began thus: \"Sir, the question I am about to ask, though neither of state importance, nor materially affecting the interests of the Colony, touches upon a subject which at the moment is appealing to the loyal feelings of millions of Her Majesty's subjects all over the world.\n\n\"This year Her Most Gracious Majesty celebrates the 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne of that great empire, the Government of which she has so ably administered; and throughout her vast dominions rejoicings are to be the order of the day.\n\n\"And her subjects, of whatever race they may be, are anxious to celebrate the occasion in a manner befitting its exceptional and gratifying nature.”\n\nHongkong, said Mr. Chater, was eager to participate in the general rejoicings.\n\n\"This Colony does not wish to be behind in anything, more especially in a matter of this sort.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211182, "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "218 \n\nresolution specifying a permanent memorial would be introduced.\n\nThe memorial, which had been approved by a small majority of the planning committee, was the one Mr. Chater had mentioned in his remarks to the Legislative Council in February when he first raised the question of what Hongkong should do. He suggested that the improvement of Wongneichong Valley would make a suitable memorial.\n\nMr. Chater had the honour at the public meeting to table the resolution that the Hongkong community express its regard for their sovereign by creating a park to be called Victoria Park. He was quite aware there were those who opposed the scheme but felt there was enough support to carry the resolution.\n\nInfluential people were behind the scheme. The leaders were those who had occasion to frequent the Valley for racing. Any improvement to the surroundings would make their visits more pleasant.\n\nMr. Chater, of all Hongkong residents, was perhaps the most loyal supporter of the Jockey Club. East Point was nearby. Any enhancement of the valley would please Jardines. It was always well to have the support of the princely Hong.\n\nThe idea of improving the Valley was not new. The need to do something about it was clear almost as soon as the town of Victoria was established.\n\nThe Valley contained the largest area of level ground on the north side of Hongkong Island. To some it seemed the ideal site for the business centre of the new settlement.\n\nIt was soon found, however, to be a death trap for Europeans. Those who chose to build there were decimated by fever and soon the houses on the hills around were abandoned.\n\nThe fever was attributed to \"miasma\" rising from the low-lying damp ground in the valley. Today we know the cause was the bite of the malaria-carrying mosquito which bred in the stagnant pools", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211188, "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "224\n\nturned the soil in the Wongneichong Valley for a park. The incipient park already bore his name.\n\nGovernor Bowen was one of Hongkong's unpopular administrators. He was regarded as pompous with an over-developed sense of his own importance.\n\nThis antagonism towards him may possibly have been one reason why the park had received support as a memorial gesture. It would be an indirect expression of the public's disapproval of its late administrator if he were deprived of having his name perpetuated in Hongkong by a public amenity.\n\nDr. Ho Kai reminded the meeting that if looked at in another way the change of the name from Bowen to Victoria was not entirely complimentary to Her Majesty. It was rather like, as he expressed it, offering her \"cast off shoes.\" This remark was greeted with loud applause.\n\nDr. Ho Kai reserved his most serious objection last. It was he said \"a class objection.\" The park would not be welcomed by the Chinese.\n\nThough he did not say so openly, it meant that the community could not expect the Chinese to assist in this aspect of the plans for the jubilee.\n\nThe park would be too far from the centre of town. Not only the Chinese but other less affluent sections of the population would find it too remote.\n\nDr. Ho Kai admitted that for residents near the park and those who liked to take long walks the park would meet a need, but, on the other hand, for the great majority of people living in the town the park would be quite useless, at least for some time to come.\n\nThere were suggestions that circumstances might change. “We speak of having tramways, of the Praya extension, and of connecting east and west, but in regard to this I may use the words of Mr. Chater and say that Government does not undertake these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211190, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "226\n\nquestion was asked, where then would the memorial be to mark the fact the Golden Jubilee was celebrated in 1887.\n\nIt was suggested that if the plan was executed some special object such as a pillar, gateway or statue should be put up. If the public did not take up the suggestion \"perhaps one of our merchant Princes might in the course of time, be moved to complete the scheme of the Park by their crowning it with the representation of the Royal Lady whose name it bears, and whose name is also borne by the city in which we live.”\n\nIt is interesting to note that today a statue of Queen Victoria stands in Victoria Park.\n\nCOMMITTEE STEPS DOWN\n\nFollowing the public meeting of March 2, 1887, an editorial in the China Mail noted that, “a large section of the residents of Hongkong seems to have gone quite crazy over the Queen's Jubilee celebrations.”\n\nAs evidence of the public lunacy it pointed to the absurdity of everyone promoting his own pet scheme. None of them, in its view, was properly thought through or presented with sufficient detail. It characterised them as \"humorous and perplexing, as well as ill-timed and ill-digested.\"\n\nThere was little enthusiasm for the decision of the meeting in raise money for the formation of a park in the Wongneichong Valley to be named after the Queen. Proposals were still being thrust upon the public in the hope that the park scheme would be dropped.\n\nThe correspondence columns of the newspapers were flooded with letters on the topic. There were calls for a new public meeting in order to rescind the decision of the recent meeting. The charge was made the voting had not been representative of public opinion as a substantial number of those attending had abstained from casting their vote.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "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": 211617, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "7\n\n1966. One of the few changes that have taken place over the centuries in methods of scaffolding was that, until the 1970s, bamboo poles were lashed together with “slivers” from the sheath of bamboo, each about one metre long. Since the 1970s, plastic binding has been employed.\n\nV Hong Kong Going and Gone, Western Victoria, Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society (1980); and Tom Briggs and Colin Crisswell, Hong Kong: The Vanishing City (1977); and Tom Briggs and Colin Crisswell, Hong Kong, The Vanishing City, vol. II (1978); and Hong Kong, Then and Now, South China Morning Post (1982).\n\n10 Solomon Bard, In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong (1988). Saul Lockhart, \"How Long Can Hong Kong's Heritage Last? What Goes Up... Must Come Down\", The Asia Magazine (26 April 1981), pp. 3 to 8.\n\n12\n\n\"Landmarks safe from demolition”, South China Morning Post (9 June 1990).\n\n**Stanley's historical landmark** South China Morning Post (1 October 1983).\n\n13\n\n14 Alice Greenway, \"Post Office wins reprieve”, South China Morning Post (11 October 1986).\n\n15 \"Landmarks safe from demolition\" loc. cit.\n\n16 Michael Chugani, \"Hope fades for Murray House rebuilding plan\" South China Morning Post (1 July 1985).\n\nPaul Gillingham, At the Peak, Hong Kong Between the Wars (1983), pp. 162 to 166.\n\nMalcolm Purvis, Tall Storeys, Palmer and Turner Architects & Engineers: The First 100 Years (1985), passim.\n\n19 Lockhart, op. cit., p. 5.\n\n20 Harold Ingrams, Hong Kong (1952), p. 42.\n\n21 Helen Sam, \"The Architect and his dream\", Property Review Hong Kong Standard (25 September 1986), p. 3.\n\n22 Alan Birch, \"The Problems of Progress\", Hong Kong Standard Anniversary Magazine (1 March 1978), p. 1.\n\n23 Vaudine England, \"The Awnings: Remnants of an empire”, Asia Magazine (28 July 1975), pp. 14 to 16.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211805, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "195\n\nhis alarm allayed amidst the warmest applause from the audience for his clever and successful \"sell\". In addition the editor wrote that this Prologue afforded H. E. more valuable hints how to treat the Rebellion than all the suggestions that have been submitted to him since his arrival. Apparently Bonham was \"so much delighted that we are not without hopes a report on the performances may form the subject of his first despatch from Shanghae”. So much for modesty. As regards the performances themselves, the writer had it in confidence from a tall whiskered male who occupied a front seat disguised in a dress coat, that although Hong Kong theatre is now more conveniently lit up in the Victoria Theatre in acting Shanghae would not suffer by comparison\". \"That treaty port chauvinism was not lacking even at that early stage was made clear when the visitor insisted that our Head Actor has been brought from Hong Kong”. Despite his earlier lukewarm praise he must have made some sour remarks too, for the editor wrote that \"except as to the heroine, his critical skill was evidently at fault in discriminating the excellences of the other performers in Betsey Baker; and all he could be got to say regarding Apartments was something about Mr. and Mrs. Keeley having many worse imitators” (Robert Keeley, 1793-1869; and Mrs. Keeley (Mary Ann Coward), 1806-1899: famous British actors). (NCH 26.3.1853).\n\n5.5.1853 (Thur)\n\nG.A.A. BECKETT: \"Siamese Twins\" (1834)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nR. BUTLER: \"The Irish Tutor\" (1822)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Music by the band of the Susquehanna\n\nTh: Imperial Theatre (B)\n\nN: Final performance of the season\n\nR: The close of the season by the amateurs who called themselves the \"Lily Troupe\" for a \"bumper house\"; with some “admirable music by the Band of Susquehanna\" — a steamer belonging to the U.S. Japan Squadron. (NCH 7.5.1853).\n\n8.3.1854 (Wedn)\n\nJ.M. MADDOX: “A Fast Train! High Pressure!! Express!!!\" (1853)\n\nT: Farce\n\nW.B. BERNARD: “A Practical Man\" (1849)\n\nT: Farce\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nP: Music\n\nTh: Tac Ming Theatre (C)\n\nR: At the start of the evening a, for part of the audience at least, unexpected treat was in store: “On the rising of the curtain a ludicrous incident quite upset our friend BUSKIN. He was set down to enact \"Colonel Jack Delaware\" (in A Fast Train — JH) but a storm met him as soon as he appeared on the stage and he was fairly hissed off when a stranger leapt over the footlights and announced his intention of supporting the character. The curtain dropped and after a short delay the volunteer Yankee came forward, dressed in the most extravagant fashion and took up the part with great spirit\". Was the leading actor-manager really taken by surprise? This could hardly be, and it must be assumed that it was, like the \"rebellion\" before, a set up. At any rate the \"interloping Yankee was enrolled in Buskin's company. The musical department was sustained by \"Messrs Thalberg and Koenig with their usual talent and success\". Both these noms de théâtre were after well known musicians: Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), a Swiss pianist and composer; and Friedrich Koenig, a German violinist. (NCH 11.3.1854).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211898, "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": 313, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "288\n\nI had a good long yarn with Madame Baines on the verandah. When I told her what I was, she became very religious all at once; but I could see it was only hypocrisy, although she had an oily tongue. The Bishop of Victoria was there in 1856. The people were highly pleased with his visit, and all who I heard speak of him seemed to do so with respect. She was acquainted with a Mr King of the Scottish Free Church, who had returned from Scotland only three months ago; and promised to introduce me to him and drive me there in her carriage.\n\nAt eleven o'clock I went to bed. My room was very fine and airy. All the beds in Java have to be curtained all round to keep out the mosquitoes, which would prevent sleep, and sting finely into the bargain.\n\nThe captain and wife came from the ship to the hotel the next day. They made themselves such fools by wanting to appear grand that everybody laughed at them behind their backs. No sooner had the captain left the table, and the rest began to talk, when Mr Phillips began: “Well of all the disagreeable obstinate men I ever saw, I never saw anybody to beat him. I can see it in his looks although I have never spoken to him nor know who he is\". When I told him it was our captain he wanted to know if he had not guessed right. I told him I must be excused from answering that question. Madam was finely laughed at, and reckoned up in just the terms she deserved. Since our return to the ship these parties have been equally run down by the captain and wife,\n\nA\n\nTwo days I took a walk into the town in the middle of the day. I was afterwards told that no European would ever be able to do it, for it was enough to kill the strongest man on account of the sun's intense power. However it had not the least effect upon me. In fact I felt all the better for it.\n\nOn the first day I started to go into town but took a wrong turning, and went out through one of the Chinese quarters into the country, where I had a few miles' walk. The scenery was very fine indeed. The palm and betel nut trees, and trees of which I have no idea formed a delightful shade. Even the country is intersected by canals. But whether in town or country, you always find the shore of the canal crowded with washermen. The clothes are never washed, but merely beaten. They get a smooth stone, and after soaking the clothes in the water, they keep dashing them on the stone, swinging them for that purpose round their head.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211905, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 320, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "295\n\nweather, in which it is impossible to study. Today and yesterday however I have brushed it up a little.\n\nI am looking forward with the most intense anxiety to get a letter from you at Hong Kong. Till then, unless our voyage is unexpectedly prolonged I shall write no more. I think that what I have already written will occupy many an hour to read; but if it interests or amuses, I shall consider the time spent in writing not to have been thrown away.\n\nSince the voyage has been unusually protracted from Batavia to China I must just describe the last few days. We had light winds all the way up the China Sea. Day after day we lay with scarcely a movement. Everything went on worse than ever, swearing increased fearfully. So we went along till Sunday evening, when a wind gradually began to blow, and took us along at a comfortable rate.\n\nOn Monday morning we took in a pilot about 60 miles from the Ladrone Islands. He was about as smart a fellow as ever I saw, and knew his business thoroughly. I was most thankful to see him, because I could not trust the captain. I could see he neither knew where he was, or what to do; and in a few more hours we must have been among the hundreds of islands, which to one that never saw them before, could never be navigated. I look upon the unusual fact of the pilot coming so far out to sea, as an interposition of Providence on our behalf. The wind increased and we went along famously. We were to get to Hong Kong early in the morning. I sat on deck watching the ship as it threaded its way among the groups of islands and rocks. At last I went down to my cabin, but there was no sleep. My mind was all activity.\n\nAt day break I went on deck, and there I saw the sight my eyes had so long desired to see. Hong Kong lay before me, and rising up the slope of its rocky sides stood Victoria. Everything looked green and flourishing. As I glanced round the town my eye rested on the Cathedral, and then there stood the college on the hill side, almost buried by the trees round it, and as much unlike the photograph I had, as winter is unlike the summer,\n\nI packed all up, and went to breakfast, but it was not till eleven o'clock that I could get on shore, since all the boats were gone. At last I got a chance, and went on shore with a very intelligent Chinaman, who cautioned me against the thieves and pickpockets. The heat was dreadful.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211907, "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": 322, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "in our family prayers, as you sailed down the Channel and set out on your voyage to China. I hope this will find you arrived in Hong Kong, and we shall await with much interest your first communication. There will be just time to answer this before Mrs Smith and I embark D.V. on October 4th.\n\nI am glad to find that Mr Beach is likely to be in China on your arrival. He will kindly direct you until my arrival, as to your course, and I doubt not you will find in him a kind friend, and a prudent counsellor.\n\nMrs Smith if she were with me would write in the expression of our best wishes and kind remembrances.”\n\n(I must omit a lot for want of time.)\n\nI remain, my dear Mr Fryer\n\nYours very sincerely,\n\nG. Victoria.\n\nET\n\n297\n\n^His portrait hangs over the drawing room fire place. I often look at the old chap as he hangs there. From what I have seen and heard of him I cannot help really liking him. Everybody seems to love him and speak of him with the greatest respect and veneration.\n\n^Mr Beach is a good sort of fellow. As rough and blunt as you can imagine, but under the rough exterior I believe he has a manly warm heart. There is no \"gammon” about him. We agree remarkably well together, and he leaves everything to me, although I would rather he should not do so. For a clergyman and chaplain however, I think there is not anything like the amount of the elements of religion in him that are necessary. He is too much like a gay young man.\n\nA Mr Cleverly, the Surveyor General, is a middle aged man, and a thorough gentleman. He pleases me much. Mr Beach goes in a few days to Tien Tsin, where he remains, so that I shall be all alone. He will give up everything to my control, and I can do what I like till the bishop comes.\n\nI had no idea that the institution was so large, or that the duties required", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212003, "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": 418, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "393\n\nforces were defeated. In 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. According to the Census taken on 15th May, 1841, there were sixteen villages, with 7,450 people, on the island,\n\nAt that time, pirates still caused great disturbance along the coast. Those of outstanding importance were Shap Ngai Tsai+ and Tsui Ah-po. In the 30th year of Tao Kuang (1850), piracy along the coast was suppressed by the combined force of the British and the Ch'ing navies.7 With this, the island gained its name 'Tai Ping Shan'\n\nwhich means 'the Mountain of Peace'.\n\nDuring the early years of British rule on the island, Chek Chu was considered as a suitable place for the capital city of the Colony.5 However, because it was subject to severe tropical disease, the British built the capital city between the Central and Upper Bays (Chung Wan and Sheung Wan :). It was named Victoria after the name of the British Queen at the time of the early colonization.\n\nFrom then on, development on the island continued. With political changes in mainland China,8 more people flocked to Hong Kong, and they helped to make the city famous in the world.\n\nConclusion\n\nHong Kong, an isolated island at the mouth of the Pearl River, was only sparsely populated with fishermen. During the Ming Dynasty, because of the cultivation of incense trees, which gave great profit, population increased rapidly. However, the Coastal Evacuation at the 1st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign obliged the people to retreat to the mainland. Fields were left barren, and houses were pulled down.\n\nWhen the Edict of the Coastal Evacuation was abandoned, people were encouraged to return to their old dwellings. Villages were rebuilt, people from the neighbouring counties came and settled in the Hong Kong region, too.\n\nWith political changes in mainland China, more people came to Hong Kong. They helped to develop Hong Kong into a densely populated commercial city.\n\nANTHONY SIU Kwok-Kin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212033, "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": 448, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "423\n\nstudent and to begin to understand a bit about town commerce. I was overjoyed.\" One of these two, then aged 59 sui, was the owner of a general store in Xunwu and a former president of its Chamber of Commerce, the other, aged 51, was a poor peasant and a County Soviet official (p. 46).\n\nLike the Chairman, I also want to know more about petty commerce, still a rather neglected topic in the Chinese field, though now being addressed by the Chinese Business Studies group.\n\nAs a long-time researcher into the rural history of Hong Kong and South China I have found both the Report and the Introduction equally fascinating. I strongly recommend them to readers of this Journal and especially to those who wish to know more about the Chinese countryside in the 1920s and 1930s, a crucial time in China's modern history.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nREVIEW NOTES The following books have been received by the Journal from the publishers and are briefly noted here. They have been placed in the RAS Library.\n\nTHE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR\n\nHugh Baker, Hong Kong Images — People and Animals, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 1990. 172 pp. Maps, Photographs, Notes, Index. A reprint of Professor Baker's highly successful book published originally in 1979, and subsequently in 1980 and 1981, this paperback continues to inform and entertain readers interested in the Chinese tradition as practised in Hong Kong.\n\nTun Li Ch’en (English translation by Derk Bodde), Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987, reprint of 1936 edition. Illustrations, Glossary, Index, Bibliography. This brief but beautiful volume brings the reader through the Chinese year, including customs and festival celebrations as practiced at the turn of the century in Peking.\n\nCraig Clunas, Chinese Furniture, Victoria and Albert Museum Far Eastern Series, 1988; printed in Hong Kong by Oxford University Press, 1990. 118 pp. Illustrations, Notes, Index. With traditional Chinese woodblock prints and modern photographs by Ian Thomas of pieces from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212193, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "112 \n\nto walk along the paths which follow the mountain slope, when it began to rain heavily. Spying close-by a house, with an attractive green-tiled roof, we approached proposing to ask permission to 'phone for a taxi. \n\nI rang the bell and put my request to the Chinese boy who opened the door. He showed me in, leaving the door ajar, so that my wife, who remained outside, should not feel shut out; and led me to the 'phone in the hall. He was about to dial for me, when a voice in the distance asked, curtly as I thought, who I wanted. We were by then pretty well soaked and I suppose we did look rather like tramps. It was the lady of the mansion. I explained our predicament. She motioned to the instrument, then moved to the far end of the room, without inviting in my wife, whom she saw waiting outside. The boy got busy on the 'phone and eventually connected me, when the voice was heard instructing him to \"close that door\". He was most embarrassed and apologetically shut it on my wife. The taxi firm having promised to send for us, I rejoined her outside in the rain, where we remained for ten minutes until the car arrived. \n\nI would not have the reader think that such behaviour was typical of British manners in Hongkong. It was not, but it was characteristic of a small clique, which is found in most British colonies, courting a reflected lustre on the fringe of the official hierarchy. \n\nI think possibly its geography explains to some extent the notorious snobbery of Hongkong. Living, say, in Victoria, an invitation to dinner on the Peak was of doubtful attraction. It meant starting off in a taxi to the higher level, where there would only too probably be a heavy mist, and perhaps rain as well. You would have to leave your taxi to walk up several hundred steps to the house, built on the steep hillside, arriving with wet feet and, if wearing a raincoat, probably also drenched in sweat. \n\nOn another occasion the invitation might be to dine in Kowloon. That would involve going down to the jetty, crossing the harbour in the ferry, picking up a taxi on the other side, and so reaching your host's house without too much difficulty; but, unless you left in time to catch the last return ferry at midnight dinner in the Far East \n\n― \n\nyou would have to \n\nseldom starts before nine, or half past nine search for a walla-walla boat, a small type of taxi motor-launch; there \n\n! \n\n! \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "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": 212203, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "122\n\nOur office had removed to a new building, a tall building with lifts and American plumbing. But the old office was still there, a little way down the Bund, in the French Concession, built of red bricks in a style which can only be described as Sino-Edwardian, though decked with a hangover of that rococo embellishment, which was not one of the glories of Queen Victoria's reign. It was in that office so many years ago that a dear old Chinese merchant had patiently explained to me how in Hankow the yolks of all the eggs were in the centre of the egg, because Hankow was in the centre of China. Not a little bit up the egg, or a little bit down, but just in the centre. I asked him where the yolk of the egg was up in the north at Tientsin, but he said he did not know as he had never moved far from Hankow; and, I fear, he attributed my ill-concealed scepticism to callow youth. I do not suppose all those young Chinese officers who now walked briskly along the road worried where the yolk of the egg was. For since the fall of Nanking, eight months earlier, Hankow had been the capital of China, and also the headquarters of the army. The Japanese were held up at the Mateng bluff, where the Yangtze narrows some miles below Kiu Kiang, but the pressure was increasing and it was thought that Kiu Kiang might fall soon.\n\nBefore leaving Hongkong I had taken the precaution of providing myself with six bottles of whisky, as I had heard that supplies were running short in Hankow. My information was not quite accurate. I found there was plenty of whisky, but it was a green colour, derived from the solder-flux of the Kerosene tins in which it was despatched from Hongkong. Freight on the railway was reserved for war material, and it was easier to bring up an odd tin of whisky than to find space for a case. The green whisky, it was discovered, could be taken, in the usual small doses, with impunity. Nevertheless my six bottles, containing liquid of a more agreeable shade, were acceptable. They unfortunately did not go far. I heard afterwards that an enterprising chemist found a way of removing the green colour from the imported whisky to the joy of patrons who had qualms regarding the effect of solder-flux on gastric juices.\n\nHankow was a very busy place. Amongst other things the rolling stock, which had been salvaged from the north China railways, was being ferried as quickly as possible over to the south bank. Locomotives of diverse size and vintage were shunted down to Hengyang onto sidings where they were held for spare parts or for...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212229, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "148\n\nthat accompany this essay. Other illustrations include a photograph of the college found in the Fryer Papers and photographs of the college as it looks at present. Finally, a photograph of Fryer with a group of students was used as centerpiece for a holiday greeting card by Fryer in 1927-28, 66 years after his impressions of Hong Kong were formed, and eight months before his death at age 88: it is also included.\n\nNOTES\n\nPublished in Vol. 29 (1989) pp. 252-301 of this Journal as \"Diary of Voyage to China: From March 10, 1861 to August 6, 1861\",\n\nRichard G. Irwin, \"John Fryer's Legacy of Chinese Writings\" (mimeo.) n.d. There is no evidence for this in Fryer's extant writings, but it is known that Dr. Irwin had contact with Fryer's eldest son, retired Professor Charles Edmund Fryer, of McGill University, in the early 1950s. Presumably this and other information on Fryer's life that cannot be verified at present was transmitted during that contact.\n\n1\n\nSee note 10 in Fryer's \"First Impressions\"\n\n+ See Plates 2-5.\n\n\"\n\nFIRST IMPRESSIONS OF HONGKONG\n\nAND THE CHINESE PEOPLE'\n\nSt. Paul's College. August 7th!\n\nMy dear Parents, relations, and friends.\n\nBeing now comfortably settled down in my new abode, I am going to give you a closer insight into the place, and of my new style of living. Knowing how inquisitive mothers, etc., generally are I mean to go into every little particular, just to gratify all curiosity, and this yarn being passed around will save having to insert it in every letter. And now to begin with Hong Kong itself.\n\nHong Kong is a small rocky island, about half a mile from the mainland of China. It is about 26 miles round. The centre is nothing but hills of hard granite, covered with scanty vegetation. Yet there are numerous ravines and valleys which are fertile, and well watered. Among these \"Happy Valley\" ranks as the most eminent. It is indeed a lovely place. Behind the town the hills rise to the height of nearly 2000 feet. On the top of the Peak of Victoria stands a small lake which from its romantic position is an object of interest. The summit is obtained by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212232, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "151\n\na mark or two on my hand one morning, but they proved mere pimples arising from the heat.\n\nAs regards the vegetation, I must say that although taken altogether the island is not so well supplied with vegetation as some parts of England, yet what there is, has been so judiciously taken care of, and propagated, that in a few years it will become well wooded, in all the habitable parts. No pains are spared in planting and rearing trees, and nature assists the efforts of man, by a rapid and luxuriant growth. But even now, all parts that are inhabited are surrounded by trees, the quantity and size depending only upon the time since the houses were built. There is the Asiatic pine, found through Central Asia to the Himalehs. The rocks and table lands in Hong Kong are well planted with it, making it look very like the Scotch pine or fir in England. The bamboo looks well, and its luxuriant and rapid growth, together with the graceful appearance of its foliage, has caused its prevalent use. The apple, pommaloc, laichis (Chinese plum), willow, oak, mulberry, appear the chief. There are several fine trees of which I can only get the Chinese name in our shrubbery. Nearly all the vegetable food comes from the mainland. It is tolerably reasonable in price. A fine pine-apple costs about —/4o. Plantains 1\" to 2a a pound. In a few weeks fruit will be plentiful. Potatoes about 2a a pound. Rice ditto. Bread 5o per pound. Ginger grows fine here; and the green ginger preserved is delicious. There is a nice fruit, just out of season, called Wong-pay, and another whose name means “dragon's eyes\" is not pleasant to my palate. Fish is very dear; a little fish for breakfast costs 5 or more.\n\nThe town of Victoria is a long street running nearly parallel with the shore of the bay. Branching off from this street are the many hills, covered with English villas for a good way up. The eastern end of the town is mostly occupied by large merchants' offices, warehouses, etc....... and beyond are many fine English houses. The Chinese streets are very curious to a stranger. The Chinese shops are likewise interesting. Some however are in English style. An English shop is a different thing here to what it is in England, and more resembles a warehouse. There are, however, a few fine milliner's shops, hotels, dispensary, and club room. At the Eastern extremity are the Barracks, the parade ground, and market; and about a mile on, is a beautifully wooded hill, where the Colonial Chaplain, the Rev. J. Irwin, resides. Then passing through a ravine you open upon Happy Valley. A Chinese villa is quite a curiosity. Here and there you see one perched upon some eminence; but it does", "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": 212476, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "in a period when Chinese were only allowed to invest in European insurance companies. But at the same time, he still had large interests in traditional business.\n\nCantonese compradors in Hong Kong, of course, should not be considered as only a few persons; they could probably be identified from archives of the firms they worked for. However, we are limited by sources, which make it quite difficult, but not impossible, to assess compradors' wealth which they had accumulated when they were in office. Furthermore, most of the wealthy Chinese in Hong Kong, including compradors at that time, had investments or property in China. From their business activities, a Canton-Macau-Hong Kong linkage is shown in their wills deposited in the Hong Kong Public Records Office.\n\nNames of the Cantonese compradors in Hong Kong were probably Cheang Hoong of Philips Moore & Co., Wong Kong and Kwong A Hang of Smith, Archer & Co.; Ng A Cheong of Douglas Lapraik & Co., Law Pak Sheung of Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, Wai A Kwong of Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China, Law Sai Nam of McBain & Co., Lau Cheong of Gilman & Co. (Fuzhou), Au Yeung Shing of Russell & Co., Sung Chin Tseung of Messrs. Turner & Co., Tong Mow Chee (Tang Maozhi) of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (Tianjin), and Choa Chee Bee of China Sugar Refining Co., Ltd. They all left wills in which some indicated business connections with Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong. For example, the will of Wai A Kwong written in 1866 reads:\n\nI am a native of Tsin Shan in the District of Heung Shan, Empire of China, at present residing in Victoria, Hong Kong, and holding the office of compradore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London, and China. At the age of eleven years, I left my native place and proceeded to Macau, where I obtained employment as a domestic servant to a Portuguese; at the age of thirteen, I was sent down to Singapore by the Reverend E. C. Bridgman, missionary to the Chinese, and became the first pupil of the Morrison Education Society. I returned to Hong Kong in the year 1843, and I have ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government. I married in Hong Kong and have several children, all born in this colony. By industry and thriftiness, I have acquired and am possessed of sundry houses, lands, shares in business, and other property and effects. Knowing\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "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": 213091, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "140\n\nnot see the graves. About the use of lime as a disinfectant it appeared that this was being understood by the public, for Lowson added in an annotation to the July 16th entry that 'the lime which had been supplied to Laichikok and graveyard was brought over to Hong Kong and sold at high price to the Chinese in the streets. Or, was he talking about corruption and a black market?\n\nThe relationship between Lowson and Cantlie would seem to be strained at this stage. Cantlie made himself look ridiculous by writing to the Sanitary Board that the insanitary conditions in Victoria Town had nothing to do with the Epidemic. He was openly challenged by Major James in a letter to the Hong Kong Weekly Press. They made up afterwards. After they died together on July 21st, Lowson wrote: 'At this time he had ceased to be simply causing trouble and angry because he had not been taken more notice of but he began to see our side was right.'\n\nJuly 17th\n\nA meeting of the Permanent Committee Lockhart, myself and others A warm discussion arose and I had to tell Lockhart and Francis that they were both damned cowards as they were afraid to go near the plague cases They wanted many things done which were simply impossible When I called them damned cowards old Ayres backed me up and there was some scene May did not say much but silently agreed with us\n\nLowson knew that by calling Lockhart and Francis cowards to their face he could not expect to get any recognition for his work. He put down on this entry in bold letters: CMG strip. Also, 'that settled the question of future honours as neither would forgive me and they were bitter enemies for years.' In those days he could indeed expect the CMG, as the Order of the British Empire which later becomes the normal award for civil servants was not instituted until the reign of George V. However, he received some other rewards as we shall soon see.\n\nJuly 19th\n\nGovernor really played the bloody ox Feeling very bitter and strained at this time as Governor and Lockhart felt everybody was thinking them nonentities and fools and they had a very bad time It was entirely their own blame\n\nI think we have had enough of the bickering. Lowson ended the diary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213267, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "69\n\nthe views expressed right at the start of this paper by Dr Ernest J. Eitel, sometimes titled Hong Kong's first historian and for some time a Hong Kong civil servant, were by no means unusual.\n\nToday, far more empathy is shown towards Chinese culture in general by Westerners. For instance, many Caucasian firms believe aquariums enrich the fung shu of an office. It is not just Chinese who can relax, Westerners will tell you, when they lie back and watch fish swimming. It gives everyone a special feeling and lowers their blood pressure by a few degrees.\n\nOf course, certain rules have to be followed. The number of fish kept is often six or nine. Three multiplied by three equals nine (a lucky number); and a homonym of three, in Cantonese, sounds similar to the character meaning 'lively'. Because of colour symbolism, one fish may be black (a Black Molly), another reddish (a goldfish), and the rest any other colour. Because the fish are supposed to act as a shield against bad fung shui, sometimes a fish dies. But better a dead fish than a dead customer.\n\nHigher up the hill above Central District, at the Albany in Albany Road, residents were concerned about the 70-storey, new, People's Republic Bank of China Building 'giving off vibes'. They feared the sharp edges of its structure with their negative forces would menace the abode of some of Hong Kong's rich and famous. In the West, the new Bank of China building would perhaps be described as 'ominous', 'overshadowing' or 'overpowering'. Many Chinese, however, liken the sharp edges of the Bank of China to a knife pointed at, or arrows cast at, Government House and Central Government Offices, namely, the heart of the British Colonial Administration. These 'weapons', together with the flyovers close to Government House, tie the decision-making hands of the British Governor and threaten the prosperity of Hong Kong. The fung shui 'dragon vein', with the dragon's head turned to face its ancestors, serpents down from Victoria Peak, close to the Albany, concealed by a carpet of vegetation. It passes close to the Albany apartments. The dragon thrusts and turns as the topography changes. The earth surges with natural energy. Chinese dragons are more serpent-like and sinuous than those in the West. And, as the vein gathers strength, it proceeds vigorously on to the 'dragon sites'\n\nsuch as the home of the Governor and down to the Hong Kong Bank. It then dips into the harbour, the 'dragon's lair'. Although now the slope up the Peak is largely obscured by high-rise buildings, on some hills and\n\n70", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213269, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "71\n\nMost Chinese will, however, tell you that a dragon has sinews and veins which can be severed. Blood can be spilled. Thus, when the earth's flesh was pierced, blood, in the form of bright red, ochre-coloured earth, appeared during excavations for the construction of Hong Kong's underground railway in the 1970s. This could mean the time had come for workers to down tools. The evil that might follow had to be averted ritually. Taoist priests would then beat ceremonial gongs and offer prayers to pacify spirits of the earth where the dragon's peace was being destroyed. Exorcism in modern day Hong Kong is by no means uncommon (Raceday rites, 1987). Neither is exorcism uncommon in Christian churches. It is mentioned in the Bible.\n\nOne can compare certain Buddhist, Taoist or folk-religion ceremonies, which purify and bestow blessings, with walking through fields in Europe in springtime while conducting a Christian Rogation Service to ensure a good harvest.\n\nInterestingly, some Chinese came to the conclusion during the last century, that foreigners know far more about fung shui than they are prepared to admit. Otherwise, why would they have picked such a fine site (as it was then) for the Governor's residence? Why would they plant vegetation over the slopes of Victoria Peak in which dwells the resident dragon?\n\nReturning to the cutting edges of the Bank of China: a fung shui master is supposed to adhere to strict ethical standards and not do anything which could be construed as the 'black art'. He should not 'attack' a neighbour. However, in the New Territories, for example, a case where a successful family's fortune has suddenly waned has sometimes been traced to the desecration of an ancestor's grave. As a result, revenge against perpetrators was, in the past, not uncommon.\n\nA buried 'person' needs to 'breathe', and, whether he or she can do this properly or not, affects his or her descendants. Some believed Chiang Kai-Shek's rise to power depended on his mother's fine grave. This, the Communists are said to have dug up.\n\nThe People's Republic's 'Red Guards' went to considerable lengths during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) to destroy the 'Four Olds' (old customs, old habits, old culture, old thoughts). These included fung shui.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213278, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "There is a resident dragon living within Victoria Peak, as in all remarkable mountains, and it is believed to have spiritual influence over the people living below it. Energy is harnessed from cosmic forces and this affects mere mortals who inhabit the earth. Most people, the fung shui master who accompanied the author explained, need a strong 'back-up'. Such persons are likely to prefer working for the Government rather than engaging in the rough-and-tumble of private enterprise. Although it can be described as geomantic imagery, psychologically, in some ways, it is like sitting in an office chair with a high substantial back, as compared to a low-backed chair formed with slender slats. Likewise, living in a flat close to the Peak with its good topography, whose green slope is covered with a mattress of vegetation, helps provide much needed moral support.\n\nBut vital elements can be dispersed, and, with too much wind blowing and too much water flowing, cosmic breath can be excessively dissipated. Too little or 'neutral' fung shui can bring about stagnation. It is something like salt. Add too much and the food is inedible. Sprinkle too little and the meal is tasteless.\n\nAfter a heavy rain the 'eyes of Victoria Peak' (springs) open up and water courses (the arteries) flow. Slopes come alive. Water, the emblem of wealth and influence, cascades among rocks and down gullies worn over centuries. If this flow ceases, people living under the influence of the Peak will lose their fortunes. (The flat in this study also has the added advantage that it is close to water in the swimming pool). All these features provide a sound back-up in addition to being a scene on which 'one can feast one's eyes'. Here in the twilight the world can seem like a dream; the trees and bushes surge as if at anchor on the 'tide', the heave of the slope running from the Peak down to Realty Gardens comes alive.\n\nEarly in the 20th century, however, the Chinese were not at all pleased when Lugard Road and Harlech Road were constructed encircling the mountain at Victoria Gap level. People likened the effect to putting a halter around the neck of the 'Hill of Great Peace'. Nevertheless, there has not been a severe hill fire on the Peak, where erosion is limited by stands of verdant trees, bushes and undergrowth, for half a century. Figuratively, above the flat in this study the heavily overgrown, evergreen slope has 'vegetation as its hair and mist as its complexion'. The Peak is the home of a fair amount of wildlife.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213496, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "60\n\nThe second hypothesis, on the other hand, is held by a few western historians. Writing in the 1930s, H.G. Jarrett claimed that:\n\n\"The Army was hard put to it finding suitable quarters for some time after the occupation of Hong Kong and the move from West Point was not made until some three or four years after the founding of the Colony in 1841. As the arrival of large numbers of soldiers and their quartering in matshed barracks (which the chronicles tell us were erected in the western part of the town) would naturally impress the Chinese and we easily see the connection between this encampment and the vernacular name, which, if any indication were needed, definitely established the area where the first barracks went up.\" (Jarrett, 1933-5, P.23)\n\nG. R. Sayer also said that:\n\n\"The latter (barrack) is known for obvious reasons as West Point and is destined to provide the name Sai Ying Pun, the Western Encampment to a large district of the town.\" (Sayer, 1937, P.99)\n\nOne way or the other, one thing is sure that the place name Sai Ying Pun was not provided by the British when they first arrived at Hong Kong in 1841. The reasons are not difficult to furnish.\n\nFirst, when the British first came to Hong Kong, they were not accustomed to naming the places in Chinese terms. For example, the British gave out names like Queenstown, East Point, Belcher's Bay. The British even cared to rename places like Shek Pai Wan as Aberdeen and Chek Chu as Stanley. There was no reason why the British had to name an area with only a few establishments as Sai Ying Pun. As a matter of fact, the British named the place West Point Barrack since the place was situated at the western extreme point of the British occupation at that time.\n\nSecondly, there are too many variations in the name Sai Ying Pun used by the British themselves to make us believe that the place was named by the British. If Sai Ying Pun is an original English place name, variation in the spelling of the words would not have existed. In early Government Gazettes, the place was called Sy-ing-poon. In an early city plan of Victoria, the district was named Sei Ying Poon. In G. R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213498, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "62\n\npicture of the situation was given by L. Yu. He stated:\n\n“At the time they built their fortress with the backs against the hills and the fronts facing the sea. The two fortifications acted as two watchtowers. It made the Ching army difficult to attack or even try to get near to the island. On the slopes above Sai Ying Pun, at the midlevels, there was a fort and it helped to reinforce the defence.\" (Lai, 1948, P.13)\n\nSecondly, it is because Sai Ying Pun was situated at the foothill of the highest peak of the island. The peak (i.e. Victoria Peak 1917 ft. which was called O Tau Shan or Ngan Tau Shan at that period) formed the look-out of the pirates in those days. They wanted to keep an eye on the harbour which was a very important water route in that part of the South China coast. Whenever a vessel appeared, the watchmen would signal the pirates who were stationed at the foothills at Sai Ying Pun. The pirate fleet would then sail off to plunder and loot the vessels.\n\nThirdly, the pirates chose the place because Sai Ying Pun possesses some peculiar physical characteristics. Before the waterfront was reclaimed in the late nineteenth century, Sai Ying Pun was the only area in the northwestern sector of the Island, which controlled the western inlet to the harbour, with a fairly long coastal slope. The slopes were made up of colluvial fan. In other words, the soil in the area was derived from the decomposition of granite or other primitive rock. It was not, however, formed of detritus of rock washed down from above, but solid rock altered in situ. In the area west of Sai Ying Pun, Shek Tong Tsui, the granites outcropped nearly to the sea front. It was possibly the reason why as early as 1771 the Hakka people came to the area and quarried the granite and carried them to Shek Pai Wan. Therefore we can see that Sai Ying Pun was the only area in the northwestern sector that was suitable to set up a fortification. I think this is also the reason why the British commanders chose the same area to set up a barrack in 1841.\n\nSo Sai Ying Pun during the early years of Chiaching period was probably occupied by scores of pirates. They guarded themselves against the attack of the Ching armies and waited patiently for the signals that came from the peak and were always ready to sail off to plunder any trading vessels that happened to sail past the Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213704, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "28\n\nThe figures for females in the City and in Old Kowloon in 1911 (Table 10), and in New Kowloon (Table 11), show the same features of under-reporting of young girls as in the islands and in Northern District, and suggest essentially the same situation for ages above 60, but the increase in the numbers of young women aged 20-30 is far higher than in the Southern District land population (in Old Kowloon there were 55% more women aged 30-35 than aged 15-20, and 42% more in the City), and, in this case, this is certainly connected with the prostitution trade.\n\nThus, the 1911 Census shows a Southern District female land population with characteristics generally similar to the Northern District population, but with a few features suggestive of the temporary-immigrant society in the City.\n\nIf the figures for the 1911 Southern District female population show a few, rather faint, indications of temporary immigration into the area, however, this becomes very much clearer when the male population figures are considered. The figures for males of the land population recorded in 1911 in the islands are very different from those recorded in Northern District (Table 9: Table 3). The islands land population figures for 1911 show a male population sharply higher than the female population between the ages of about 15 and 55. A similar feature is to be seen in the figures for males recorded in 1911 for Old Kowloon and the City of Victoria (Table 10), and New Kowloon (Table 11). In both the City and Old and New Kowloon in 1911 the explosive increase in males recorded aged between about 12 and 55 was undoubtedly a reflection of immigrant workers only temporarily resident in the City, arriving there in their teens or low twenties to work, and leaving again to settle down in their native place once they had made some money, a few years or decades later. Given the general similarity between the female populations recorded in the Islands land population and Northern District, it is unlikely that the two areas had any radical differences between their settled land populations. The sharply higher male land population in the islands between the ages of 15 and 55, must, therefore, be due to significant temporary immigration into the islands of workers from outside the area, as in the corresponding figures for the City.\n\nThe Islands towns contained a higher percentage of the total population of Southern District than was the case in Northern District (at most, Northern District towns had a little less than 3,000 residents,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213749, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "72\n\nOf course, in some cases the emigration was over a short distance, to the nearest market town. It is likely, as noted above, that the absent males of the Yuen Long plain villages were working in the Yuen Long markets, and possible that some at least of the Lam Tsuen males were in the Tai Po Market. Some Lamma villagers were probably working in Aberdeen, and from all over the New Territories there were villagers working in the city - so many that their return to the villages for the Ching Ming Festival in 1921 could bias the census in that year, as noted above. But much of the emigration, as the Basel missionaries, the temple donation tablets at Shan Tsui and Tsuen Wan, and oral evidence, all make clear, was to overseas.\n\nThe implications of villages with surplus males are less easy to identify (see Appendix II and Table 32; these identify villages with more than 56% recorded males in their populations: villages with fewer than 35 total population are excluded, except where the surplus of males is extreme). In many cases, just as the villages with low male female ratios identify villages with significant temporary male emigration, so villages with high male: female ratios identify places with temporary male immigration. One group already discussed which stands out is the market towns, almost all of which have high male: female ratios. Nearly 82% of the recorded population of Yuen Long market was male, and almost 80% of that of Tai Po new market (Tai Wo Shi). Even Shek Wu Hui, Ha Tsuen and Tuen Mun San Hui had over two-thirds of their tiny populations male (Table 28). These figures need to be put into perspective. In 1911, within the City of Victoria (i.e., omitting the Peak and the Hong Kong Island villages) there were 151,303 males out of a total Chinese population of 217,668. Males represented, therefore, 69.5% of the total Chinese population.1 Thus, the male domination of the larger New Territories market towns was significantly more substantial in 1911 than that of the city, and even the smaller New Territories markets had at least as high a level of male domination. The only exceptions to this are Cheung Chau, and Tai O, in Southern District. While these towns have more males than females, the imbalance is less than in the Northern District towns or the city: however, it seems likely that small rural populations are included with those towns, and that this causes distortion in these cases. Most of the New Territories towns also, as noted above, had suburban villages which shared the male domination of the town itself.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213977, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "11\n\ngovernment would not surrender responsibility for, say, Immigration or Inland Revenue; but that other duties were either less clear-cut or simply so expensive as only to be borne by Government - this did not mean that they were not of great interest and concern to local residents. The report proposed that local authorities must be consulted, and enabled to make their views known, on the adequacy of Government’s arrangements or proposals for police and fire-service 'cover', medical, housing and educational facilities (which must silently stretch to financing policy), town-planning and development plans, and public transport. 'Mandatory' executive functions which should be devolved to all local authorities would include:\n\nPublic Health\n\nControl and provision of cleansing & sanitary services; latrines, bath & wash houses, laundries, labourers' lines, swimming pools, offensive trades & markets, hawking, ventilation, overcrowding, advertisements, slaughter houses, cemeteries & mortuaries.\n\nLicensing & control of restaurants, tea-houses & cooked food stalls.\n\nNotification of infectious diseases and public vaccination.\n\nOther Licensing Liquor, barber shops, bars, billiard saloons, bowling alleys, cinemas, dance halls, mahjong shops, money-lenders, pawnbrokers, skating rinks & table tennis saloons.\n\nHousing\n\nManagement of Government low-cost housing estates.\n\nOther\n\nWeights & Measures & naming of streets.\n\nAt first sight this miscellany hardly seemed of major public interest, apart from housing management and sanitation, and certainly no more likely to inspire civic consciousness than did the Urban Council which already had these powers in Victoria and Kowloon (its unofficial membership doubled as the Housing Authority.) However the supplementary list of 'permissive' functions which councils could undertake within laid-down standards promised much more delegation of visible powers from central social service Departments. Under Public", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214049, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "84\n\nKowloon, mainly for ships in the coastal trade, was opened in 1868 to be followed soon afterwards by a shorter 80m-long dock. A few years later (1876) the 140m-long Cosmopolitan Dock and dockyard at Tai Kok Tsui were commissioned. Subsequently the much larger 168m-long Admiralty Dock at Hung Hom was completed in 1888 and later extended in length by some 8 metres in 1903, to be followed by further lengthenings in 1911 and 1931.\n\nIn the summer of 1907, the 170m-long Admiralty dry dock in Victoria, with an entrance width of 29 metres and 9m clearance at lowest spring tides, and Tai Koo's great ashlar-faced 238m-long 27m entrance-width graving dock (now a car park in the Tai Koo Shing development) at Quarry Bay, the latter capable of accommodating the largest ship then afloat (the liner Oceanic), were both commissioned. By laying down the former dock where it did and extending the original dockyard, with an 8ha reclamation which was started in 1900, the Navy sealed the long-held hopes of making Victoria a coherent city with a continuous commercial waterfront. Due to difficult foundation problems, including removal of a 1.2 to 1.8m layer of hard porous coral and the need to install hundreds of steam-driven hardwood piles through the underlying decomposed granite to secure the site, the naval dry dock finally took seven years to build whereas the larger commercial dock at Tai Koo was finished in five.\n\nThe whole of the Tai Koo dockyard development took seven years to completion in 1908, a remarkable achievement in so much that it not only included the large dock but also excavation of some 1.3M cubic metres of hillside to form a 21ha site, which included a 8ha marine reclamation, and the adjacent section of the 23m-wide cut for King's Road, and the building of an entire complex of slipways, workshops and all the ancillary works which are needed to make a large dockyard a world of its own. It is interesting to note that Admiralty engineers in 1908 regarded locally-made cement as unsurpassed in fineness and tensile strength (at 28-days around 750lb/sq in or 5.2MPa), and it was used exclusively when building the new naval and Tai Koo dockyards.\n\nWharfs\n\nBy 1843 there were several comparatively small piers and jetties on the Island located between East Point and Sheung Wan. Pedder's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214051, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "86\n\nReclamation\n\nVictoria Harbour, the raison d'etre for Hong Kong's foundation, formed the focal point around which the new settlers clustered and around which the banks, business houses, the shipyards and, later, commercial factories were built. Hemmed in by hills both to the north and the south, the population around the harbour became concentrated on the limited flat or less steeply sloping land available along the coast. Expansion was only possible by reclamation into the sea (and later by higher buildings), spoil being obtained from nearby hills thus providing additional building land. Until the advent of motor vehicles, reclamations were unable to benefit from more remote fill sources, like the Peak where site development necessitated balanced cut and fill. In all several hundred hectares of land were reclaimed in the hundred years up to 1941 (compared with many thousands in the 50 years following).\n\nSome of the people who were lucky enough to lease the first lots of land fronting on the sea, which had been auctioned in 1841, extended their lots by illicit reclamation over the foreshore absorbing such land as could easily be reclaimed, a procedure which was soon forbidden. Quite early, probably in 1842-3, some valuable land was reclaimed in Victoria, part of which was subsequently occupied by the Hong Kong Cricket Club (now Chater Garden).\n\nThe first formal praya (waterfront) reclamation scheme was partly carried out in 1851, by the filling of a small creek in the Bonham Strand area, but as might be expected it aroused stiff opposition from affected lessees who claimed marine rights. This, compounded by the destruction of part of the original praya wall by severe typhoons in 1867 and 1874, delayed matters but, despite these problems, by 1886 an 8km-long near-continuous strip of land (the major discontinuance being the section adjacent to the naval and military areas), perhaps broadly averaging around 100m wide was formed between Kennedy Town and North Point, the seawalls providing much needed access for handling marine cargo. In 1887 further reclamation was recommended to alleviate overcrowding in the city. As a result, the Praya Reclamation Ordinance was gazetted in 1890 and a year later Paul Chater (later Sir Paul) initiated a band of reclamation, totalling 26 hectares and extending three kilometres westward from Murray Road along the northern foreshore.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "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": 214063, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "98\n\nprovince.\n\nIn 1941, construction of a 457m-long tarmac-surfaced runway at Kai Tak for military use on an approximate south-east/north-west orientation, which had already necessitated the dismantling of the RAF hangar, was due to start on 8th December 1941, the precise day on which the Japanese invaded the New Territories and attacked Kai Tak airport.\n\nMilitary/Defence Works\n\nPrior to the British administration, there were several forts in the New Territories going back to the early years (17th century) of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the oldest existing fort (1717) probably being that on Tung Lung Chau overlooking the narrow Fat Tong Mun passage in the eastern approaches to the harbour, and the largest still remaining at Tung Chung (60m by 80m) on the northern coast of Lantau, which was completed in 1832. Little remains of the old 4m-high walled Kowloon City, a garrison fort (120m by 230m) with its sturdy granite parapet wall complete with embrasures and watchtowers, which was finished in 1847 soon after the British established themselves on Hong Kong Island.\n\nSubsequently, the British military have been involved in a considerable amount of civil engineering. The Royal Engineers were first involved in 1841 in the early construction of Queen's Road in Victoria. Perhaps their most impressive roadworks over the years, constructed before the Pacific war, have been Jat's Incline, which provides access to the upper levels of the steep hills overlooking Kowloon. Nevertheless, the main military engineering effort was expended on providing defences and back-up facilities (for example, naval dockyards, aviation needs, storage depots, barracks, and hospitals), principally against possible seaborne attack by Russia last century and later against the increasingly land/sea invasion threat by Japan in the 1930s. Novel defence measures included excavation of a cavern at Lei Yue Mun towards the end of the nineteenth century to house the sophisticated Brennan torpedo, which, after launching down a ramp, was controlled from the shore with a wire attached to the rudder.\n\nRegarding defence facilities, at the outbreak of the Pacific war in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214079, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "LAI CHI KOK\n\nCHEUNG SHA WAN\n\nSHAM SHUI PO\n\nTAI KOK TSUI\n\nTÖNE CUTTEaS (likely OCR error for \"Tsing Yi\" or another location, but preserved as is)\n\nISLAND\n\nKENNEDY TOWN\n\nYAU MA TEI\n\nKOWLOON\n\nKOWLOON BAY\n\nTO KWA WAN\n\nKWUN TONG\n\nHUNG HOM BAY\n\nCAI YING PUN (likely \"CAI\" is an OCR error for \"BAI\")\n\nTSIM SHA TSUI\n\nVICTORIA HARBOUR\n\nCAUSEWAY BAY\n\nVICTORIA\n\nWAN CHAI\n\nNORTH POINT\n\nMA YAU TONG\n\nQUARRY BAY\n\nSHAU KEI WAN\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND\n\nHarbour Reclamations-1841 to 1941, HK Annual Report 1963 (adapted)\n\nLEI YUE MUN\n\n115\n\nHowever, upon closer inspection and following the instructions:\n\nLAI CHI KOK\n\nCHEUNG SHA WAN\n\nSHAM SHUI PO\n\nTAI KOK TSUI\n\nTONE CUTTEAS (still unsure, but \"TÖNECUTTEas\" is likely an OCR error; however, we preserve it as closely as possible)\n\nISLAND\n\nKENNEDY TOWN\n\nYAU MA TEI\n\nKOWLOON\n\nKOWLOON BAY\n\nTO KWA WAN\n\nKWUN TONG\n\nHUNG HOM BAY\n\nBAI YING PUN\n\nTSIM SHA TSUI\n\nVICTORIA HARBOUR\n\nCAUSEWAY BAY\n\nVICTORIA\n\nWAN CHAI\n\nNORTH POINT\n\nMA YAU TONG\n\nQUARRY BAY\n\nSHAU KEI WAN\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND\n\nHarbour Reclamations-1841 to 1941, HK Annual Report 1963 (adapted)\n\nLEI YUE MUN\n\n115\n\nCorrected version in HTML as per the instructions:\nLAI CHI KOK\n\nCHEUNG SHA WAN\n\nSHAM SHUI PO\n\nTAI KOK TSUI\n\nTONE CUTTEAS\n\nISLAND\n\nKENNEDY TOWN\n\nYAU MA TEI\n\nKOWLOON\n\nKOWLOON BAY\n\nTO KWA WAN\n\nKWUN TONG\n\nHUNG HOM BAY\n\nBAI YING PUN\n\nTSIM SHA TSUI\n\nVICTORIA HARBOUR\n\nCAUSEWAY BAY\n\nVICTORIA\n\nWAN CHAI\n\nNORTH POINT\n\nMA YAU TONG\n\nQUARRY BAY\n\nSHAU KEI WAN\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND\n\nHarbour Reclamations-1841 to 1941, HK Annual Report 1963 (adapted)\n\nLEI YUE MUN\n\n115\n\nLet's correct and simplify it according to the rules:\nLAI CHI KOK\n\nCHEUNG SHA WAN\n\nSHAM SHUI PO\n\nTAI KOK TSUI\n\nTONE CUTTEAS\n\nISLAND\n\nKENNEDY TOWN\n\nYAU MA TEI\n\nKOWLOON\n\nKOWLOON BAY\n\nTO KWA WAN\n\nKWUN TONG\n\nHUNG HOM BAY\n\nBAI YING PUN\n\nTSIM SHA TSUI\n\nVICTORIA HARBOUR\n\nCAUSEWAY BAY\n\nVICTORIA\n\nWAN CHAI\n\nNORTH POINT\n\nMA YAU TONG\n\nQUARRY BAY\n\nSHAU KEI WAN\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND\n\nHarbour Reclamations-1841 to 1941, HK Annual Report 1963 (adapted)\n\nLEI YUE MUN\n\n115\n\nThe final version should be in HTML format as requested:\nLAI CHI KOK\n\nCHEUNG SHA WAN\n\nSHAM SHUI PO\n\nTAI KOK TSUI\n\nTONE CUTTEAS\n\nISLAND\n\nKENNEDY TOWN\n\nYAU MA TEI\n\nKOWLOON\n\nKOWLOON BAY\n\nTO KWA WAN\n\nKWUN TONG\n\nHUNG HOM BAY\n\nBAI YING PUN\n\nTSIM SHA TSUI\n\nVICTORIA HARBOUR\n\nCAUSEWAY BAY\n\nVICTORIA\n\nWAN CHAI\n\nNORTH POINT\n\nMA YAU TONG\n\nQUARRY BAY\n\nSHAU KEI WAN\n\nHONG KONG ISLAND\n\nHarbour Reclamations-1841 to 1941, HK Annual Report 1963 (adapted)\n\nLEI YUE MUN\n\n115", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214430, "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "254\n\nbetween the two main batteries, but being mobile the battery could have been at any position within the fort at the time of the surrender. This battery would have had its own mobile searchlights.\n\nA wartime machine gun post is shown on some old maps beside the footpath leading down to the present pumphouse behind the new married quarters on the west side of the peninsula. Nothing is shown on the Ordinance Survey map and it is believed that this post would have been an improvised sandbagged strongpoint. Its purpose would have been to prevent the enemy coming up the path from the sea. It also may have had its own searchlight set up in a sandbagged emplacement.\n\n**\n\n*\n\nThe story of the fierce fighting in the Stanley area and the last stand at Stanley Fort, which in the latter stages of the battle had no water supply and no communications link with the Fortress Headquarters in Victoria Barracks, has been told in Oliver Lindsay's book “The Lasting Honour\", Tim Carew's \"The Fall of Hong Kong\", and the Volunteers' Little Red Book. It was in this final action on Christmas Day 1941, that severe damage was done to the Stanley Fort Batteries by intensive shell and mortar-fire bombardment from the Japanese counter-batteries combined with continuous air-raid attacks by Japanese dive-bombers throughout the day until the capitulation was made on written orders from Fortress HQ shortly after midnight.\n\nFrom 1942 to 1945 Stanley was used as a civilian internment camp by the Japanese. In July, 1943 the batteries at Stanley Fort, then of course in Japanese hands, were again subjected to air-raid attacks this time from American dive-bombers. Fourteen internees were unfortunately killed in one of these bombing raids by a stray bomb. These air-raids continued intermittently until the end of the War. The war damage sustained by the bunkers, magazines, observation posts, and pillboxes which made up the batteries can still be seen today.\n\nAfter the Liberation, Stanley Fort was again occupied by the British Army. The garrison was reinforced in 1949 and remained strong throughout the 1950s despite deployments to fight insurgency in Ma-", "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": 214631, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "10\n\nwere indeed set out by the same Fung Shui master. This strongly suggests that the walls of Nga Tsin Wai were built about 1570-1574. This date fits very neatly with the dates calculated above for Chan Chiu-yin, the first ancestor of the Chans to live in Nga Tsin Wai. It is, therefore, likely that Chan Chiu-yin was not the first of his name to move to Nga Tsin Wai, but was the villager in whose lifetime the place changed its name from Nga Pin Heung to Nga Tsin Wai, and that he was the first of the clan to move inside the newly built walls from his earlier residence in the open\n\nopen fields\n\nThe reason given by the Tai Wai villagers for building their walls in 1574 was the ravaging\n\nthe area by bandits. Pirates or bandits are recorded in the Hsin An County Gazetteer as ravaging in the county in 1551 (when they killed the local Military Commander), 1566, 1567, and 1570 (when a local Military Sub-Commander was killed by them). Particularly active in the area during this period were the bandits under the command of Lam Fung (#, he was known as \"Limahong\" to the Portuguese, who also suffered from him). Lam Fung is credited in the Ming History with killing 20,000 people in the general Hong Kong area, which he dominated from 1568-1574: the County Gazetteer specifies attacks in the Tai Po area in 1570. Nga Tsin Wai, only a hundred yards or so inland from the best landing place in Kowloon Bay, was doubtless extremely exposed to the attacks of all these pirate bands. Pirates remained a problem here for many years. Cheung Po-tsai was active in the Victoria Harbour area in the mid-eighteenth century, and the Shau Kei Wan area was notorious for pirates right down to the middle nineteenth, when a vigorous local military commander drove them out for a while. In the unwalled village of Ngau Chi Wan even as late as the 1920s the village youths took turn to spend the night on watch from a bamboo shelter in front of the village - there was a gong there to waken the village if any bandits were spotted. Walls, therefore, were highly desirable, and a late sixteenth century date for them entirely reasonable.\n\nThe Ng clan Tsuk Po starts with an ancestor who achieved a Tsun Sze degree in the period 1056-1063, who enjoyed significant official success in the early twelfth century, and who died in 1113. This man was unlikely to have been born any earlier than about 1040, since his eldest son was born in 1078 (this son died in 1158). This eldest son, Ng Kui-hau, (5), the second generation of the clan to live in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214753, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "132\n\nLai, S.S. The Surrender of Japan: Before and After, Hong Kong, Ming Pao Publishing, 1995. (Chinese publications)\n\nLeason, J. Singapore: the Battle that Changed the World, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1968.\n\nLiddell Hart, B.H. History of the Second World War, New York, Da Capo Press, 1999.\n\nLiddell Hart, B.H. Strategy, second revised edition, New York, Meridian, 1991.\n\nLindsay, O. The Lasting Honour: the Fall of Hong Kong 1941, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1978.\n\nLindsay, O. At The Going Down of the Sun: Hong Kong and South East Asia 1941-45, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1981.\n\nLondon Gazette: Supplement, 29 January 1948. “Operations in Hong Kong from 8th to 25th December, 1941”\n\nMorris, J. Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1997.\n\nMuir, A. The First of Foot: the History of the Royal Scots, the Royal Regiment, Edinburgh, Royal Scots Historical Society, 1961.\n\nNeillands, R. A Fighting Retreat: the British Empire 1947 - 1997, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1996.\n\nOrwell, G. The War Commentaries, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1987.\n\nOxley, D.H. Victoria Barracks, 1842-1979, Hong Kong, British Forces Hong Kong, 1979,\n\nPonting, C. Armageddon: the Second World War, 1995, Chinese translation by Rye Field Publishing, Taipei, 1997. (Chinese publication)\n\nPriestwood, G. Through Japanese Barbed Wire, New York,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214989, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "41\n\nhis contingent of coolies via the Panama Canal for New York and ahead of them was the Empress of Asia which was torpedoed, so they headed for the safety of Jamaica. From his memoires I cannot ascertain a date. He held a high opinion of his coolies and stated that the greatest aid to maintain discipline was to retain his sense of humour under all circumstances. He also believed in seeing that they were properly cared for when ill and, most important of all, when selecting coolies for promotion, to prefer the old man with character with the slow moving brain to the smart young town coolie.\n\nDaryl Klein, who joined the CLC as a 2Lt in late 1917, assisted in escorting a large contingent by sea, leaving Qingdao in about February 1918, sailing via Japan where they coalled ship and on to Canada where they stayed for about ten weeks. They were then conveyed in June 1918, with some Canadian soldiers, on HMT Empress of Asia, this ship being used to convey troops and others, via the Panama Canal to Kingston, Jamaica and, after refuelling in New York, on to France. This contingent consisted of 13 officers [of whom one was an ex-banker, one an ex-officer from Russia and one an ex-missionary], 4,200 coolies with five interpreters and one medical assistant. During the voyage, Klein interviewed two First Class Gangers [or sergeants], Sgt Tang Chi-chang, aged 27 and previously a school teacher in Nanjing and a graduate of Weixin University; he was also a Christian. Sgt. Sen Shin-lin, aged 26, had served in a warlord's army for six years.\n\nAs Halifax, in Canada, had been so badly damaged by the accidental explosion of an ammunition ship in harbour, G. E. Cormack and his contingent had to stay at Victoria, British Columbia and whilst there he had to look after a coolie who had been admitted to hospital for a severe operation, which was successful. Later a deputation came to see Cormack and presented him with a carved wooden panel, which they had made, representing two stags fighting. This was their way of showing appreciation of his attention to their sick comrade. This carved panel is now held in the Imperial War Museum, London, and, at the time of writing, is not on display. [see photograph]\n\nWorking in France\n\nIn a Company of about 500 men, there would be 24 British officers and NCOs, lead by a major or captain; 476 Chinese labourers, with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215537, "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": 314, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "264\n\n10. Chekiang and Kiangsu\n\n11. Hopeh and Shantung\n\n12. Pentecostal\n\n13. Christian\n\n2. Distribution of lots at Wo Hop Shek Cemetery:\n\nCoffin section:\n\n1. General\n\n2. Chiu Chow\n\n3. Fukien\n\n4. Yan Ping\n\n5. Wai Hoi Wai\n\n6. Pentecostal\n\n7. 7th Day Adventists\n\nUrn section:\n\n1. General\n\n2. Chiu Chow\n\n3. Toi Shan\n\n4. Hoi Ping\n\n5. Ka Ying\n\n6. Tung Kwun\n\nThe very large number of indigenous villagers' burial sites/graveyards, some of considerable size, will not be dealt with in this study.\n\n2 Prior to 1926, Hong Kong's official spelling was 'Hongkong.' In September 1926, under instructions received from the Secretary of State for Colonies, 'Hong Kong' was adopted as the official form. See Hongkong Government Gazette (hereinafter HKGG) Notification 479 of 3 September 1926.\n\n3 The name of Wan Chai was not in use in the early 1840s, the area around the burial ground was described as 'that part of the town fronting upon Howwan Bay' in Friend of China of 19th May 1842.\n\n4\n\nOxley, D.H. (ed) (1979), Victoria Barracks 1842-1979. Hong Kong: Headquarters British Forces Hong Kong, p. 25.\n\n5 The barrack area of the present Hong Kong Park site.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216099, "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": 398, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "332\n\nSir Robert had a wonderful funeral procession with 16 bands. In those days popular tunes at Chinese funerals were; Abide with me, Polly Wolly Doodle all the Day, and Yes, we have no Bananas! They were good, rousing tunes and most Chinese did not understand the words anyway. Bamboo ramps were a common sight in the 1950s to bring coffins and corpses down to street level. Ramps disappeared with traffic congestion and with the introduction of high-rise buildings, about 1960. Major Chinese festivals occur in the calendar when there are marked changes of seasons. People are then likely to feel \"under the weather.\" When the body is at a low ebb a sick person is more likely to die. In 1956, it was said that Sir Robert had “passed over\" Ching Ming and should be able to carry on at least to Dragon Boat Festival. However, it was not to be.\n\nIn March 1955 I had managed to obtain a government quarter at 56 Conduit Road. At the time it resembled a quiet country lane, gay with flowers, where you could occasionally hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. A few people were still carried up to Mid-Levels by sedan chairs which, until the end of the fifties, were parked at the bottom of Wyndham Street.\n\nI engaged a Chinese amah to whom I paid $130 a month. She spoke Pidgin English and talked of \"going topside” when she meant going upstairs. Indeed some of us old Hong Kong hands still use pidgin expressions. I, for example, still talk of a makee-learn, for someone learning a job, and I say small chow when I mean canapés which are provided at receptions. A Chinese colleague complained that, at $130, I was overpaying my amah. He gave his $70 a month. He also said that his amah had no time off. If she had anything important to do she would request a few hours off work. Several people had gold teeth in those days and the saying was that one should have enough gold in one's mouth to pay for one's funeral. The present-day, gold-coloured building, at Admiralty, is nicknamed the \"Amah's Tooth.\"\n\nWhen I first lived in Conduit Road there were a number of quite palatial mansions standing in their own grounds, often with tennis courts, in the Mid-levels. One example was the house on the site, at No.41, on which I live today. The old building was demolished in the mid-1960s. From 1951 to '61 it was occupied by the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC). The film, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, based on Han", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216166, "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": 465, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "A NOTE ON THE JAPANESE GUN EMPLACEMENT AT TATHONG POINT, TUNG LUNG CHAU\n\nROBERT HORSNELL\n\n399\n\nAt Tathong Point, also known as Nam Tong Mei, a small rocky peninsular at the extreme southern tip of Tung Lung Island, there still exists the remains of a little known war-time Japanese gun emplacement. Its purpose was probably to protect the south-eastern approaches to Victoria Harbour. This gun emplacement is not mentioned in the book Ruins of War by Tim Ko and Jason Wordie and is not listed in the Gazetteer of the Batteries of the Fixed Defences of Hong Kong in Denis Rollo's book The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong, although Rollo does mention an observation post for the Devil's Peak Battery at the southern end of Tung Lung Island built in 1935/36. From information in an old Public Works Department file it appears that the gun emplacement was built by the Japanese during the Occupation (1941-1945).\n\nIn 1965, the gun emplacement was converted by the Public Works Department's Architectural Office into an engine room for the Marine Department's Tathong Point Lighthouse Station to house the electric marine light, foghorn engines, light standby engine and switchboard. The staff quarters adjacent to the engine room were built later in 1973/74 to replace the old lighthouse keeper's quarters built in 1949 lower down near the jetty and landing stage. The old vacated quarters were used as stores for some time then later demolished. The remains of the concrete platforms on which these old buildings were built can still be seen amongst the rocks.\n\nFrom the original P.W.D. drawings for the conversion works, it is possible to learn something about the construction of the gun emplacement. It was built of concrete with a floor area of about 40 square metres. The walls are about one metre thick but the roof is much thicker especially over the rear part which contained the expense magazines. The chamber which housed the gun consists of a rectangular room with a semi-circular bow front in which the wide angle embrasure for the gun was formed. The armament is not known but from the size of the gun embrasure it was probably a large coastal defence gun.\n\nPage 465\n\nPage 466", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216223, "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": 522, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "456\n\nsouth-westerly monsoon in the summer. As the Cantonese saying has it, ‘Even with a 1,000 taels of gold it is not easy to buy a flat facing south.'\n\nOn the steep hillside with its lush vegetation, opposite and well above Realty Gardens, exists even now what is sometimes still called Cheung Po-Tsai's Path. Shown on maps, starting more or less opposite and a little higher up than May Road, although heavily overgrown and not negotiable in parts because of landslips and other obstructions, the footpath goes around and finishes up on the southern slopes of the Peak. Cheung was Hong Kong's most notorious and fearsome pirate who was at the zenith of his powers during the first decade of the 19th century. He was reputed to command as many as 600 junks, 40,000 fighting men - including a few British ex-Royal Navy gunners and \"own\" the prettiest girls. No firm evidence, however, appears to exist that he himself ever walked along that path.\n\nFrom the fung shui aspect Victoria Peak with its spurs, and Seymour Cliffs to our southeast, symbolise strong backing. The \"cosmic breath\" of fung shui rides on the wind and is dispersed and checked by watercourses. Realty Gardens' location brings blessings, which are just, and inevitable rewards deserved by the skilful and the diligent. Watercourses stream down the mountain keeping fortunes flowing into our flat and protecting our well-being. Some fung shui specialists maintain that the spiritual energy on the Peak is the best in the whole of Hong Kong.\n\nAt the far western end of Conduit Road, close to the junction with Kotewall and Po Shan Roads, a steep, narrow road branches off. This is Hatton Road. It leads to the Peak. About half way up it passes the remains of Pinewood Battery, which has been turned into a picnic spot. This artillery emplacement was constructed by the British, starting in 1903. The whole area around Hatton Road is relatively unspoiled and provides a wonderful recreational area for Conduit Road residents to stretch their legs and to appreciate nature. Many of the elderly Chinese who walk up there daily for exercise call it \"Long Life Road.\"\n\nSadly however, while talking of heritage, with the villa at No. 55 (completed in 1919) having been demolished in the summer of 2000, there is only one pre-World War Two building still standing in Conduit", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]