[ { "id": 205596, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE STREET-CRIES IN HONG KONG\n\n133\n\nAnother class of hawkers are the sellers of articles for daily use. Here is one panting under his load of earthenware; there is another who cries out his bamboo-wares, such as baskets, brooms, mats, benches, ginger grinders etc. Hawkers of fans, pipes, feather-dusters, china, fire-wood, tobacco, salt, oil, cloth, lanterns, etc., one meets everywhere. Beautifully arranged bunches of flowers are offered to you in the street, but happily in a quiet way, because they attract sufficient attention by themselves, I suppose.\n\n\"What does that fellow call out? He has nothing in his two baskets.\" Ah, my friend, he belongs to a very numerous and a very bad lot of men. He is a buyer of refuse. If you hear a voice cry out “mái lán t'it lán l'ung”* you may be sure that he will soon be at the back of your house, near your servants' quarters. He has plenty of money with him, and he will buy from your cook bones, feathers (the good ones for fans and the bad ones for manure), rags and empty tins; from your coolie, paper, nails, shoes, needles, thread or anything that can be got hold of whilst sweeping the rooms; from your boy he will buy bottles, glass, or anything which you may have lost, such for instance as a key, a lock, a stocking, a handkerchief, or a gold button, and even a watch.\n\nThere are a great many of these refuse buyers in Hongkong, but I cannot say how many, as they do not come under the Hawkers' Ordinance. They either have their own shops or they deliver their goods to one of the licensed shops, called Marine stores, which take their name, I am inclined to think, from the fact that all not properly acquired goods are sent afloat into the interior as soon as possible. There are, however, other refuse dealers who are quite respectable. They buy or exchange broken silver, old fans, spectacles, frames, opium-dross, etc.\n\nWe have now to turn our attention to the cries of those who offer their services for repairing things. And here I must say, that the Chinese have really acquired the art of mending. In how wretched and clumsy a way are things repaired in Europe! There is not a foreigner in China who has not several testimonials in his house, proving that his servants are very careless in breaking glass and china and that his servants' countrymen are very skilful and careful in mending it. His tools look rather primitive, but they\n\n* ✰### to buy old iron and old copper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209778, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "shopkeeper, land speculator, auctioneer and entrepreneur; William Tarrant, Land Office clerk and later editor and proprietor of the newspaper Friend of China, Charles Markwick, auctioneer for the Government; Hugh Mackay, shopkeeper his lot No. 4 was resumed in 1859 for nonpayment of Crown Rent; and Wong Ah Hoy, one of the original So Kon Po cultivators.\n\nWong sold his lot in 1852 to Chang On Kee, a merchant trading at Hong Kong, who in turn sold it to George Duddell in 1857. Duddell had already bought in 1851 the lots of Markwick and Tarrant. Thus all the arable land of the valley was in his possession, except the lot of Mackay which reverted to the Government shortly after. Duddell added to his holdings by purchase from the Government in 1853 of Farm Lot 13. This was between his valley lots and So Kon Po village.\n\nIt was probably in the 1850's that Duddell experimented with growing coffee plants in the valley. Evidence of the project was still to be seen in 1878. The Hong Kong Daily Press in that year published a series of articles on places of interest around Hong Kong. The issue of 17 December 1878 gave directions for a walk to the \"Coffee Plantation\". The hiker was directed to proceed to the Race Course, passing the Obelisk and keeping straight on over a bridge to the gardener's cottage. There he was to turn to the right for one hundred yards, with the race course on his right and a densely wooded hill on the left, and follow the footpath up the hill through the trees. On descending the hill on the other side, he would find himself near some huts occupied by Chinese quarry-men or stone-masons and on the path leading to the coffee plantation. The writer noted, however, that \"the coffee shrubs are now neglected\".\n\nGeorge Duddell, having retired from Hong Kong some years previously, sold his So Kon Po land to William Keswick, of Jardines, in 1884. The lots, whose twenty-one lease had been extended to seventy-five years, were regranted to Keswick as Inland Lots 955, 1018, 1019, 1020 and 1021. Keswick transferred the present site of St. Paul's Convent and Hospital to a Jardine enterprise, the Hong Kong Cotton Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing Company. This was in 1898. The property was bounded to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210667, "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "IMMIGRANTS AND SOCIAL ETHOS: HONG KONG IN THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES\n\nHELEN F. SIU*\n\nIntroduction\n\nSince the early 1980s, terms such as “mainland boy” (大陸仔), “green stamp alien” (綠印客), “Canton Boy” (廣東仔), “Ah Chan” (阿燦), have entered the daily vocabulary of the Hong Kong media.' These terms specifically address Chinese immigrants who came to Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Around 1949, 700,000 refugees fled to Hong Kong from China. Another wave came in the wake of the famine years in the late 1950s. A third group consisted of “sent-down” city youths who escaped the chaos of the Cultural Revolution from 1969 to 1974. The recent wave of immigrants was triggered by liberalization policies in China. In 1977, 31,000 arrived in Hong Kong legally and illegally. In 1978, another 95,000 came. Immigration reached its peak in 1979 when 178,000 crossed the border. Another 91,000 made their way into Hong Kong in 1980, not to count numerous others who would never be found in the crowd. By the time the Hong Kong Government passed emergency bills in 1980 to restrict the inflow of immigrants, one out of twelve Hong Kong residents had settled for fewer than three years. Considering that different waves of immigrants have made up the population of Hong Kong since the 1940s, and that their energies and resources are well recognized, it is intriguing to see recent immigrants being singled out as a distinct social category and heaped upon with negative images. According to a survey conducted by students in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public sentiments towards recent immigrants were not couched in the most friendly terms. Eighty-five percent\n\n* Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University.\n\nAuthor's note:\n\nI wrote this paper under very sad circumstances. Judy Strauch, a fellow student, colleague, friend, had organized a panel for the Regional China Seminar at UC Berkeley in 1985 on refugees in Hong Kong. Due to her untimely death, I was asked to present a paper in her place. I kept the topic Judy had chosen with the hope that this was what she would have liked written.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210678, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "12\n\nHELEN E. SIU\n\nDecember 1980,\" 80 percent of the menial jobs in restaurants were given to the \"green stamp aliens.\" They were also taking short-term work in construction sites which were dangerous and shunned by local workers. Out of 165 work-related deaths from January 1979 to August 1980, 70 percent were immigrants who had come to Hong Kong for fewer than three years. Many work-related injuries occurred within the first six months of immigration. Not only were recent immigrants getting the most undesirable jobs, but also they were systematically paid less than local workers. 18 Public opinion was blunt: these people should be grateful that they were here; if they did not like their treatment, they should go back to China where they belonged; Hong Kong had its hands full already.\n\nIn a word, the recent immigrants had become the scapegoat for social ills connected with political uncertainty and economic panic faced by a population defensive of what it had gained. The media played up the image of “Ah Chan,” the ignorant and vulnerable “mainland boy.\" Social gossip generated a prejudiced view that most of the young aliens were lazy because they were fed with \"socialist\" education. The same survey (1982) shows that 51 percent of the respondents considered recent immigrants to have problems in learning their jobs and that they were not able to match the efficiency of Hong Kong workers. At a more personal level, over 50 percent of them were unwilling to share living space with these immigrants and 45 percent expressed their reluctance to choose them as spouses. Furthermore, prejudice built around the impression that the immigrants were political activists fleeing political prosecution and were therefore potential trouble-makers. The public soaked in the daily newspaper accounts of the activities of \"the Canton Boys,\" gangs formed by recent illegal immigrants. They were described as overly bold and brutal in conducting their business. In October 1984, a court case concerning a series of jewellery robberies confirmed the fears of the general public. Two of the leaders of a new immigrant gang had actually recruited 'mercenaries' from China to conduct the robberies. The Hong Kong police had a difficult time tracing these criminals because they stayed in Hong Kong only for a short time, and were shielded by underground networks that extended well beyond Hong Kong's social and political boundaries. A movie\n\n19", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211438, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "130\n\nand settled in a new home at the East Gate of Shekki. A son, Tin Suk, was born a year later, followed by two daughters, Ah Fook and Ah Look. When all three children came down with a serious illness, only Tin Suk survived.\n\nI treasure a vignette of Grandfather beside a horse tied to a tree behind our Iwilei home, ready to leave for Kaneohe, and another one of him sitting on a chair and asking me to press my face against the stub of his whiskers. I pushed his face away, but Ruth did not resist. He told Mother that he liked my 'spirit', a trait she considered as stubbornness, and tried to subdue by applying the rod generously.\n\nIt is hard to understand why Grandfather did not leave any money to Uncle when he left Hawaii. This meant years of hardship for Uncle and his family. Everyone had to share in the numerous tasks. The children had many chores: cutting grass to feed the pigs, beating kerosene cans to frighten flocks of birds which came to dine on ripening grain, pasting bags out of newspaper to protect melons from destructive insects, helping with the threshing of grain and bagging of the paddy, and on and on. Aunt's work was endless. In addition to child-bearing, she shared in the planting and harvesting of both rice and vegetables, chopped guava trees which were in great abundance on the hillside for firewood, cooked three meals every day, and saw to the needs of the children. Although Annie, the oldest child, was not a boy, she had to help in ploughing the fields at an early age, and had little opportunity to attend school.\n\nOne crop of rice a year was general, but some years Uncle managed two plantings. Vegetables were also grown: cucumber, bitter melon, mustard cabbage, napa, bak choy, water chestnut, watercress. At harvest time, as well as during the planting season, itinerant workers had to be hired. It was men against weather. They transferred the rice seedlings into the watery mud fields, inserting a few stalks at a time in neat, straight rows. When the grain ripened, the rice stalks were cut with sickles and laid row on row in neat piles for bundling. Sheaves of grain, balanced on each end of a long pole, were carried on the shoulder to the threshing ground, which was a large concrete area with a stake in the centre. A horse tied to it would be driven round and round to stomp the grain from the stalks, which were then pitch-forked away into a mountain-high pile that served as a play area for the children.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211449, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "141\n\nthat day, a Tuesday, for Hilo to work for Man Sing Company and that future mail should be sent care of Yick Sing, Box 131, Hilo, Hawaii. A letter from Grandfather, dated 26 September 1899, stated that he was happy to learn of Father's safe arrival but added that his step-mother was not responding to medication.\n\nTwo important events occurred during Father's absence from Honolulu. His step-mother died on 4 October 1899. On 11 October that year, Grandfather wrote to Father that even though his sorrow was deep, he felt that they must take care of their own health and that Father must not grieve over the loss, but must turn his attention to bettering himself, since her death was final and she could not return to life. It was not until 7 November 1899 that Ping Lam was able to communicate with Father expressing his heartache over his mother's death and his inability to go to school for a whole week. Father became concerned about his brother's depression and when he acknowledged a letter of condolence from a schoolmate, Kong Ying Chi, he asked this friend to comfort Ping Lim.\n\nThe second event was the Honolulu Chinatown fire on 20 January 1900. In December 1899, bubonic plague had broken out sporadically among the Chinese in Honolulu, three of whom were friends of the family. Grandfather wrote to Father that Chiu Ngin Sin, who had moved to Wing On Tai from next door Yuen Chong, to obtain medical attention, had died on the 8th and was buried the next day. Ah An E, a son of Chan Hoy, died unexpectedly on the 24th. On the 27th Dai Joong\n\n, a son of Chan Jok San Mf, died and when the autopsy showed that he had had the plague, his body was cremated. The Board of Health had ordered the area quarantined, neither people nor goods were permitted to enter or leave. Not only was the home set afire but also other residences and old buildings to prevent the spreading of the disease. After a week, the quarantine was supposed to have been lifted, but Father received a brief letter dated 18 January 1900 from Grandfather, written on a piece of wrapping paper, stating that his residence had been condemned to be burned and they all would be moving outside the area to live. He added that Sung Jarn was also condemned and that Aunt Yim's husband who worked there would have to leave with his family according to regulations. Grandfather assured Father that he was well and that there was no need for concern.\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213165, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "215\n\nTAKING A GODSON\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nOne June Sunday evening, in 1995, I attended a ceremony at a restaurant in Tonnochy Road, Wanchai, at which a childless couple (the wife has a daughter by a previous marriage) adopted (kai zi), Chinese style, a 28-year-old ‘godson'. The first ceremony of this kind that I went to took place in a private home, when a girl of 19, for whom the foster mother had great affection, was adopted. Presents brought to the foster parent's house on that occasion, by her real parents in 1966, included a live chicken.\n\nAmong traditional Chinese it is important for a couple to have a son to offer sacrifices, to worship the departed and to carry on the family line. Without a son, one cannot die in peace. If you do not have one you can adopt one. Not infrequently, if two families want to strengthen the friendship existing between them, then one couple may kai an offspring from the other family. On such occasions, Chinese speak of yuan fen (緣分), meaning ‘predestined connections”.\n\nAncient custom had it that there was no distinction between an adopted and a natural son. An adopted boy could not be disinherited except for offences which would apply to a natural son. On the death of his foster parents an adopted son mourned as for the death of his natural parents, although J. Dyer Ball, in Things Chinese (1903), says the adopted son need only go into ‘half mourning'. Ball also maintains that five per cent of Chinese families adopt children, 70 per cent of whom are male. A large number of Hong Kong Chinese families adopt children today.\n\nAlthough these adoptions are supposed to be permanent, come what may, I myself know of cases where relationships have been severed. For example, because of the alleged misconduct of the foster child.\n\nBut back to the case study in Wanchai. At that gathering in the restaurant there were four standard, Chinese, round tables, meaning that approximately 48 people, comprising relatives and friends, attended. A ‘good day' had been chosen according to the Chinese almanac. The ceremony of ‘adopting' commenced with a speech by godmother (kai neung ah).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216224, "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": 523, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "457\n\nRoad. That is the supermarket and estate agency at No. 44. Now, many of the buildings flanking Conduit Road top 30 or 40 storeys blocking their neighbour's view. Certainly today barking deer can no longer be heard calling from Victoria Peak. But, proving the location is still peaceful, Realty Gardens does have its own flock of pigeons and it is not infrequently visited by a destructive, gregarious group of sulphur-crested cockatoos.\n\nNevertheless the pattern of nature does change. In the 1970s crested-mynah birds were common in the grounds at Realty Gardens. Nowadays, you seldom see them. Snakes are not uncommon. But much of the wild life on the slopes of the Peak itself is nocturnal and limited. However I did see dead ferret badgers and masked-palm civets, in the 1990s, which had been run over by vehicles. Although rare on the Peak, one can occasionally even see fresh-water crabs and blue-tailed skinks. The latter is Hong Kong's most attractive lizard.\n\nAlthough customs have changed one can still sometimes see and hear street criers in Conduit Road. They vary from the itinerant, tiny, wizened old sharpener of knives and scissors to the trader who buys odds and ends of scrap metal. There is also the old man who sells lengths of bamboo. These are used for hanging out the washing to dry when it is euphemistically called \"flags of all nations.\" In the mid-1950s, I remember there was a peddler with a pet monkey.\n\nCertainly if the present old, worn, steps, which are original, which Han Suyin and her boy friend once trod in the film shot at Realty Gardens, together with the original balustrades and the heavy, battered, gravity retaining walls which still exist today, could talk, they would have wonderful tales to tell.\n\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nThe author gratefully acknowledges the assistance given by Mrs. Betty Chiu, long-time resident of Realty Gardens, in the writing of this paper. The author is also grateful to Mr. David Roads, Honorary\n\n'The picture in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, of 41 Conduit Road, is a watercolour on paper titled, Fairview, Conduit Road 1926', by Alfred Lane, reference AH72.1. It was donated to the Museum of Art by Mr. Kwok On.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]