[
    {
        "id": 205180,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 136,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n131\n\nexample of a local boy making good, whilst his public activities demonstrate the sustained zeal to perform charitable works that continues to typify leading members of the Chinese community of Hong Kong to this day. Farming was not for him. When in his twenties he set up a general store in Yau Ma Ti where his elder brother was already running a wholesale vegetable business. Very soon he turned his energies in other directions and established two cross-harbour ferry services with steam launches running from Yau Ma Ti and Mong Kok. At the same time he also went into the confectionery and soft-drink business in Hong Kong. These activities prospered to such an extent that whilst still in his thirties they enabled him to undertake public affairs. He served on the Yau Ma Ti Kaifong for many years and, up to the time of its removal, he was also the leading manager of the Tai Shek Kwu Temple which, as you will recall, was a particular concern of his own village of Mong Kok and the adjoining rural settlements. In 1917 he became founder President of the Kowloon branch of the Hong Kong Confucian Society and two years later he was appointed a director of one of Hong Kong's oldest charitable institutions, the Po Leung Kuk. These appointments mark the summit of his career. He responded to the traditional Chinese concern for his family ties and background by founding the Wong Clansmen's Association of Hong Kong in 1925, and when the universal flood disasters of 1924 affected his family's home district of Wai Yeung he had become founder President of the Wai Yeung Relief Association and was responsible for raising the then considerable sum of $9,000 to help flood victims there. He was also president of the Chinese Steamboat Association for some time.45\n\nWith its varied activities his career is a useful reminder that a person can be involved in various public capacities at one and the same time. The various community and welfare groups which characterised Hong Kong society at this time and later were operated on a complementary basis and not one of exclusion. As in his case the strands of village, town, business, family and district are all interwoven to form the traditional pattern of Chinese charitable activities.\n\nFinally, I wish to touch on another aspect of village and town life in Old Kowloon. Because of its proximity to Hong Kong, where a variety of religious bodies from the West established",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211944,
        "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": 359,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "334\n\nBui Leng village was established in very early days, “even earlier than Kam Tin\". But the building of Yau-Leun Tong had destructive effects on its fung-sheui. After the rise of the Dangs the Sa Bui Ling villagers became their ha-fu.\n\nI have talked with a 64-year-old Mr. Chan, who was the oldest person in this village. The villagers were originally of three surnames: Chan, Yeung and Yun. The Yuns have left no descendants. The villagers had established Sa Bui Leng at the same time as the Dangs established their settlement. The Dangs had taken measures to prevent the prosperity of this village. They built three ancestral halls (chi tong-jai), i.e. Yau-Leun Tong, and two others, which used to be at the site of the present playground, and dug a pond which had only been filled up to build the cinema some ten years ago. The combination had bad impacts on the fung-sheui of Sa Bui Leng and the Chans suffered a serious decline. Therefore some of them had moved to Tai Kiu, a small village in Yuen Long.\n\nBefore the war, the Chan family had grown rice on fields rented from a wealthy Dang and one of the jous of the Kam Tin Dangs. Mr. Chan stressed that the family farmed land rented from the Dangs, they did not work for them. There are indications that at least for the last hundred years, the Sa Bui Leng people were accepted as equals by some of the poorer Dangs. The Chan family was a member of the Yi-Chung Wui, a ritual association which drew its members mostly from the poorer Dang villagers of Kim Tin, since at least the time of his great grandfather. I also discovered that Mr. Chan's wife was a daughter of a Tai Hong Wai Dang.\n\nV. WORSHIP\n\nThe supernatural world was very real to the villagers. It is still so to many of the elders. A Mr. Dang who had spent his youth in a trading firm on Hong Kong Island told me that in the old days when the area was less densely populated, one often encountered ghosts. Now that there were more people one rarely saw ghosts. I have heard something similar from a younger Mrs. Dang. The belief in the reality and power of the gods is strong too. It is, above all, manifested in the villagers' behaviour in the jiu festival.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]