[ { "id": 204459, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "80 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nan honest livelihood without difficulty. Few signs of anything approaching destitution were seen, and only a few beggars were met \".\" \n\nThe reason for this general standard of well-being was undoubtedly the universal ownership of land. Whether Punti or Hakka, most families in every village owned some fields of their own, some more as a matter of course and some less, and because of the joint succession to ancestral property by all male descendants in the direct line, nearly everyone had a joint and undivided share, a stake, in the land. There was also clan land, which could be farmed out to poorer members. In land matters, the clan had priority over the individual. This was reflected in Chinese deeds of sale or mortgage which, if the New Territory is anything to go by, appear to follow the same form in Kwangtung as in far Shantung.11 Where a sale was contemplated, a reason had always to be specified, and the land had always to be offered in the first place to all relatives, which in fact meant practically anyone inside the clan, before being offered to an outsider. Mortgages were more common than sales and were redeemable at any period after the original mortgage, so that land need not pass outside the clan forever. There is no doubt that this tight rein on sales assisted the general preservation of the clan and the village and was a powerful factor in the continuance of a static and integrated life. These matters were regulated by the clan elders in conformity with immemorial custom. \n\nTo meet clan needs, amongst which was the proper worship of ancestors as well as the needs of the living, such as education of the young and the care of the old, certain fields and houses were set aside in trust, and the trust so created was known as a tong or tso. These are commonly found in the New Territory, and many were registered at the land settlement which followed the grant of the lease to Great Britain. The tso is the more closely connected with the clan. Anyone can form a tong, but a tso is definitely a clan affair, and of the nature of a serious ancestral trust.12 It is set up to ensure that property is not divided or disposed of without due thought and is designed to circumvent the acts of foolish or spendthrift descendants, in the interests of all that the Confucian system holds most dear: the rearing of sons, giving them a proper education, seeing that forebears are duly respected in a fitting manner, assisting with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204634, "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-1963", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n36 shops from Hong Kong, 28 from Peng Chau and 15 from Tai O contributed to the Po On study (presumably all or mainly of Tung Kwun origin); a few outside shops sent donations to repair the Tin Hau temple; hardly surprisingly no outside shops contributed to the Defence Bureau; but the subscriptions for the Fong Pin hospital came from a wide area and the list included over 20 shops and 40 individual persons (including 2 tongs from Tung Kwun and Hok Shan), from Canton, Pun Yue, Tung Kwun, Nam Hoi, Shun Tak, Macau, and other areas of the province,\n\nMost of the temples still contain tablets and other dated items which record their repair from time to time. However, the series is far from complete and many tablets have been lost. A typical instance is the loss of commemorative tablets from the Tin Hau Temple at Tai Shek Hau (the local place name). A prominent citizen remembers seeing a whole row of them fronting an outside wall when he was a young man, about thirty years ago, but they have now all vanished without trace.\n\n15 For mention of these Cheung Chau posts see the following tablets: salt (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), stamp (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), customs, e.g. tax on kerosene (Fong Pin). There was also a customs post on Lamma (Fong Pin), and there were various patrol boats (both tablets). The officer in charge of the military post on Cheung Chau is mentioned on the Tin Hau tablet, whilst the Fong Pin tablet lists eight officers of the Tai Pang battalion.\n\n16 Only the defence bureau tablet gives donors their official ranks, though comparison with others shows that some of the graduates are mentioned there without their titles, i.e., persons mentioned in these tablets may also have been graduates. A comparison of the Tong's genealogical record with the names on the tablets is at first sight disappointing. The genealogical record does not record titles for the later generations, i.e. those of the generation whose names appear on the tablets. An additional confusion is that the clan generation names may not have been used on the tablets where business or personal names may have been recorded instead. However, I think we can be fairly certain that most of the WONGS on the tablets belonged to the Tong.\n\n17 I have translated \"WU\" as \"petitioned the district magistrate\".\n\n18 See Kung-Chuan HSIAO Rural China; Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1960), pp. 294-306 for defence organisations in this period.\n\n19 His precise title was described on the Cheung Chau tablet as 城鎮 *which was probably the equivalent of colonel. A few years later he presented a large painted wooden commemorative tablet to the Hau Wong temple outside Kowloon City, on which his rank is described as tsung-ping or brigadier-general (see Ralph L. Powell The Rise of Chinese Military Power 1859-1912 (Princeton University Press, 1955) pp. 15 and 367). \"The brigadier-generals were semi-independent, yet their units were scattered and practically sedentary,\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204999, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "98\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\nindication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today.\n\nThe years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved.\n\nA feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the \"unequal treaties\" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is.\n\nAn interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205001, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "100 \n\nCOLINA LUPTON \n\nwell, it seems, have been ruled by largely Chinese civil servants. It would have been helpful if Mr. Endacott had discussed the question more fully. \n\nHowever, the book is useful as a concise account of the history of the exercise of power in Hong Kong. Mr. Endacott writes clearly about the early governors and their administrative problems. But Hong Kong is today so different a place that such background sheds little light on today's problems. Hong Kong has, of course, inherited its constitution from those early days, but this was in any case of the normal colonial type devised by Britain in the nineteenth century. On the post-war history of the Colony, a little more information might have been desirable. Why, for instance, was the opinion of the Legislative Council, as voiced by the Hon. D. F. Landale, so inexorably set against the Young Plan, and why was it that the Government spent two years working out a detailed scheme for its establishment only for it to be thrown suddenly overboard at the last moment? What are these \"wider powers\" which he mentions in his reference to the police? And, while he makes the point that in fact the government does work in most cases harmoniously with the people, could he not have analysed a little more fully than he does the causes of the 1956 riots? \n\nThere are people who think that a chance has been missed by not making Hong Kong into a show window for Western democracy. Mr. Endacott's book makes clear just how difficult such an ideal would be to achieve and how little real opportunity there has been for it. Apathy, factionalism and an appreciation of international realities today virtually rule it out. But a modest progress towards constitutional development is surely to be desired. If the institution of democracy is of any value, it is worth some effort to promote.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205320, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n75\n\nVaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement.\n\n28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282.\n\nA Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui.\" Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27.\n\n29 \"Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long.\" New Territories Report 1917, p. J2.\n\n30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home.\" New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55.\n\n31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction:\n\nIn the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162.\n\n32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest.\n\n33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon,\n\n34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci.\n\n'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205561, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "98\n\nMORRIS I. BERKOWITZ\n\nobtained would be a good sample of households with young children but not of all households. Accepting that limitation, we sampled from this list with the intention of \"snowballing\" our sample as we continued the work.\n\nThe purpose of the household head sample was primarily for the gathering of research data but secondarily it was concerned with increasing the spread of our total effort. We had early decided to study the reaction to the resettlement of several segments of the population, divided by social status, and we used the household heads as our data source for the other statuses. We were concerned with studying families across the entire age dimension and settled (because of the known patrilineality of the Chinese family) for asking complete information about all of the members of the household head's family. The groups we were primarily interested in were: Household heads; Housewives; Children; Aged; Young Unmarried Adults; and other Household Heads without school age children. We assumed that resettlement would have different impact on different status groups and therefore each of these needed separate examination.\n\nOnce having assembled our list of household heads and randomly sampled from it, we faced our second major methodological difficulty: information contagion within the resettlement area. We developed and pretested our basic instruments on other Hakka speaking people, and then devised a plan for \"sweeping\" the resettlement area for all of our primary interviews in the shortest possible time to limit the spread of the news that research was going on and the communication through the gossip of the villagers of the content of our instruments. Two days (using sixteen interviewers) was the allowed time for the collection of the scheduled 35 interviews. More than half were completed within the first evening. The schedule itself is a bulky one, with 129 questions, not all of which, however, would be administered to any one respondent. We had trained our interviewers to be prepared to administer it in an average of 45 minutes. As it turned out, the average time for Household Head and Housewife interviews was 58 minutes (N=35). The schedules had been prepared in English, translated and practiced in Cantonese, and frequently had to be administered through the use of a translator: a total of 14 translators were used, most frequently the children or other relatives of the household head.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205592, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE STREET-CRIES IN HONG KONG\n\n129\n\ntickets are signed by the Registrar General and have a notice stamped on their back which states that crying out is prohibited in Chung-wan,* on the great road,† and on the sea side. For the first quarter of this year 1082 tickets for hawkers were issued and for the second quarter 1146.§\n\nAssuming that every hawker cries once in a minute (many do it oftener) and that, on an average, his business keeps him out of doors for seven hours a day, this will make about half a million street cries every day. Besides these licensed hawkers, however, there are about as many other persons, old and young, who cry out with the object of attracting attention to their trade. This would give about one million street cries a-day on this Island. That may seem an extravagant calculation on my part; but if some one will stand for ten minutes on any spot in the busy parts of the Chinese quarter and count the street-criers who pass by, he will doubtless become inclined to agree with the above estimate.\n\nAfter these preliminary remarks I will try to answer in a measure my friend's former question, \"What does that fellow call out?\"\n\nI do not intend to give the Chinese Street cries as one hears them, and affix a translation, though that were the easiest plan; I would rather regard them as one of the many outward signs by which we learn the life of the Chinese around us, their moral and their domestic habits.\n\nWe will listen to the cries used for selling articles of food, fruit, and various articles for daily use; to the cries of those who buy refuse, and those who offer their services for repairing; of coolies, and to those in connection with idolatry.\n\nThe Chinese generally are early risers. Most of them will get up with the sun; then they dress, after which, rich as well as poor, look out for their warm water to wash in and have some tea. But the Congee hawker has been up an hour or two before sunrise; now he sallies forth, two boxes hanging from the pole over his shoulder, each containing a large cooking pot and a small wood-fire underneath. Every hawker cooks his own particular kind of\n\n* the middle ring, i.e., the middle (European) part of the town.\n\n† i.e., Queen's Road.\n\n‡ i.e., Praya.\n\n§ These particulars have been kindly furnished by the Actg. Registrar General.\n\n[Save where stated all footnotes are by Mr. Nacken. Ed.]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206293, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "104\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nimposture and contemptible impudence\". He later was part of Chan Lai Tau's ambassadorial staff at Washington, and upon his return to China in 1882, he promoted the organization of the Canton and Hong Kong Telegraph Company.38\n\nAssociated with Ho Shan Chee in the Telegraph Company was a kinsman, Ho Kwan Shan (何崑珊) alias Ho Amei (何阿美),†Œ4 the Secretary of the On Tai Insurance Company in Hong Kong. Ho Kwan Shan had been educated at Dr. Legge's Anglo-Chinese College in Hong Kong, being a schoolmate of the sons of Ho Asun. Upon completing his education, Ho Kwan Shan joined his elder brother, Ho Low Yuk (何陸玉) in Australia in 1858. From Australia in 1865 he went to New Zealand to arrange for the importation of the first Chinese laborers to New Zealand. Returning to Australia, he served for a time as interpreter at Ballarat, Victoria. In 1868 he came back to Hong Kong. Here he became a clerk in the Registrar General's Office. Later he became interested in developing mines on Lan Tau Island as well as at other places in Kwang Tung Province.39\n\nThe most prominent of the Ho clan, however, was the family of Ho Tsun Shin (何遵善) or as he was better known in Christian circles, Ho Fuk Tong (何福堂).† His father had been a block cutter for the press of the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca. Ho Fuk Tong joined him there and became a student at the College. He showed scholastic aptitude and for a time accompanied the son of the senior missionary at the Malacca Station to India for advanced study. Upon the arrival of the Rev. James Legge at the Mission, a close bond was established between the two young men. Ho Fuk Tong was his junior by three years. When Legge removed to Hong Kong in 1843, Ho Fuk Tong accompanied him and was ordained as the Chinese pastor of the London Missionary Society congregation in 1846. He continued as a faithful minister of the congregation (now Hop Yat Church) until his death in 1871. He was conscientious and faithful in his service to the church, but he was also very successful as a financier. After his death there were numerous Court suits over the interpretation of his will and the administration of his estate. Some of the difficulties arose because Ho Fuk Tong held his property under various aliases. In one of the cases a barrister gives his opinion why Ho Fuk Tong followed this procedure:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206942, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "forgotten, left or resigned, and to yourselves. During the year however we gained ninety-six new members-- eighty-eight ordinary, three student, and five life members, bringing our total net membership now to 610: the highest ever recorded. Three ordinary members also transferred to life-membership during the year, and nineteen of our new members were enrolled during the last month alone.\n\nTHE FUTURE\n\nWe are aware that some members join because of a new type of activity started by the Society, and we now ask new members to express their particular interests when they join. We will endeavour to cater for various interests as far as we can. We do, in fact, plan to have more local and overseas trips during the coming year and we also hope the Society might be able to do something for young people in Hong Kong who are becoming increasingly interested in local history and culture. Our field visits enable members to meet one another, and for this evening's dinner we have arranged a buffet so that more social interaction is possible. Please let us know if you prefer this arrangement. Please let us know also if you would like to help us arrange any particular activity— perhaps a field trip or if you would like yourselves to give any talk to the Society.\n\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nIt remains for me now to thank all those who have assisted us during this year: our many speakers; organisers of excursions and field trips; those contributing articles for the Journal; the Council for its time and support; and as always our auditors, Wong T'an and Co., and Mr. Bridges, British Council Representative, and his staff, for the facilities they provide.\n\n26th March, 1974\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207320, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "80\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nThe girl comes out of hiding, and the fortune-teller takes her to safety.\n\nSU LIU-NIANG (SIXTH DAUGHTER SU) *** Drama in 10 acts, lasting about 3.4 hours.\n\nDramatis personae: Su family: Uncle, the eldest of the Su clan Mr. Su and Mrs. Su, their daughter, Liu-niang (6th young lady),* her maid, T'ao-hua, 1 girl-servant and 2 man-servants\n\nAct I\n\nyoung master Yang young master Kuo\n\nand his wet-nurse cousin of Liu-niang\n\nTao-hua the maid comes to the river returning from Hsi-lu\n\nwith a parasol, gay silk trousers and jacket, her hair in two knots one over each ear garlanded with flowers, the temple hair hanging down in two long strands which are adorned with coloured silk-strings. She calls the ferryman [old man-servant type with white beard], who arrives rowing with an oar. There are no other stage props. The movement of the boat is all indicated by mime.\n\nT'ao-hua hides behind the parasol fooling the ferryman and suddenly surprises him by showing her face. Then she pretends to be afraid to jump on the ferry, so the old man tries hard to bring the boat closer. With a wicked smile she jumps on the boat with all her strength, causing it almost to turn over. They perform a beautiful dance to balance the boat and she pretends to be terribly frightened.\n\nThey then start chatting and T'ao-hua proposes to sing a couplet each, composing it as they go along. But which of them first says things that are wrong or cannot rhyme has lost. The old man starts, \"In the first month all flowers bloom...\". T'ao-hua carries on, \"In the 2nd month the cotton tree blooms\" and so on.\n\n*The names of sons and daughters of important families (those with high doors) in these operas are called, for example, Su Liu-niang, meaning the sixth daughter of the Su family. The parents Su have only one daughter, but she is still called the sixth daughter because she is the sixth girl born in this generation to all the brothers of Mr. Su. The same is the case for Wu-niang meaning 5th daughter, called such although she is the only child of her parents. Ch'en San is the third (son) of the Ch'en clan. The term 'niang' is an address for a young lady, whereas the word 'chieh' 'sister' is used for a girl of humble birth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207321, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA \n\n81 \n\nuntil the 12th month. Then it is the ferryman's turn again and he happily goes on, \"In the 13th month.\" but T'ao-hua catches him, \"Haha! You have lost because there is no 13th month”. They argue but he cannot win, and now they realise that the current has taken the boat too far downstream. This is a most delightful scene, a fully choreographed dance with the music based on Chiuchow folk tunes. The music and the dance are fresh and cheerful. This opening shows characteristic features of Chiuchow opera; it is beautiful, lighthearted and full of songs and dances. \n\nAct II \n\ntakes place in the garden of the Kuo family's mansion in Hsi-lu. Hsi-lu is the native place of Mrs. Su who is of the family Kuo. As she has only one daughter Liu-niang she always sends her to Hsi-lu to study and to play in the company of her cousin Kuo Chi-ch'un, with whom she has fallen in love. Liu-niang decided to declare her love to him today. She carefully drops a jade-pendant, and when she hears his steps, hides and lets him search for a while, and then throws a flower at him. He now expresses his understanding of the purpose of this meeting, but she of course denies it, blushing with embarrassment. He finds the jade-pendant, and realises how earnest she is about her feelings. So he cannot hold back any longer the news that he is leaving to sit for the civil examination; but they vow that when he comes back they will happily stay together like two butterflies. T'ao-hua appears and watches this scene, and jeers at them. The young lady takes a pin from her hair and asks T'ao-hua to act as go-between, then she hurries away. T'ao-hua gives the pin as a betrothal gift to the cousin, and asks him to take up the question of marriage seriously after his return. Then she follows her young lady. \n\nAct III \n\nThe eldest member of the Su clan visits Mr. and Mrs. Su, and urges them to think of marrying off their daughter. He has a very good match in mind, namely the son of the Yang family who is not only very well-to-do and young but has already passed the District Civil Examination and can call himself Hsiu-tsai (elegant talent). Mr. Su is indeed very pleased to hear of these prospects, and agrees wholeheartedly to this match. \n\nAfter the eldest of the Su clan has left, Mrs. Su accuses her husband of dealing with such an important matter too lightly; agree-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207324, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "84\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\npromises the wet-nurse that, if he becomes a mandarin, he will erect such a monument to her chastity, whereupon the wet-nurse cries. Asked why, she answers that this is not possible and that his father knows very well why.\n\nAct VI\n\nThe eldest of the Su clan together with the Hsiu-tsai Yang come to visit Mr. and Mrs. Su. Mr. Yang, whom the parents see now for the first time, is very aggressive and accuses his parents-in-law of being responsible. Mr. Yang makes a very bad impression on them, being ugly and of mean character. They are determined to get out of this marriage contract. But Mr. Yang threatens to take them to court. Mr. Su finds it difficult to answer why he does not want to keep his word. How can he and his wife confess that their daughter has fallen in love and that they support her romantic choice? It would be against all rules of decency. So they repeat the fact that she is their only child and still so young, and that the Yang family is living so far away. But Mr. Yang argues that she is already over 16, which is the right age for a girl to marry.\n\nT'ao-hua is also present and argues with Mr. Yang with her quick and sharp tongue. The parents are pleased to get help against this ruffian, but the eldest Su is appalled. \"How can you allow your slave-girl to have a say in your affairs?\" he asks. At this point the parents realise that this is against all the rules, and they send T'ao-hua away.\n\nHowever, the eldest of the Su clan is annoyed by the arrogant behaviour of Mr. Yang. He asks him to leave and let him handle this awkward matter. When the three of them are alone, the parents try again to persuade the eldest Su to help them to get out of this contract, and start to explain why. But the eldest does not want to listen, and states what a shame it would be for the whole Su clan if the daughter is allowed to follow her own inclination. The eldest finally forces the parents to send their daughter to the Yang family's house on the next morning. The eldest Su exits with a content 'haha', as the mother is scolding the girl's father, saying that it is all his fault.\n\nAct VII\n\nThe daughter Lu-niang in her chamber is desperate at the news that she has to be married tomorrow to the Yang family. When", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207326, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "86\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nching the room they find the parting letter on her desk. The mother starts wailing, cursing her husband. They call the servants to check the house, and the two male servants return and report that they found the back-gate open. They panic, and the wet-nurse rushes out to inform the groom's family.\n\nAct X\n\nThe servants lead the way with lanterns to the river. Mr. and Mrs. Su are followed soon after by the eldest of the Su clan, and by Mr. Yang and his wet-nurse. Then the group meets T'ao-hua and she joins in the search. Mr. Su now accuses Mr. Yang of having pushed their daughter to commit suicide. Mr. Yang reads Liu-niang's last letter but is not impressed. Perhaps it is a trick to avoid the marriage. He will not believe it until he has tangible proof.\n\nAfter walking in many circles they come to the bank of the river, where a servant discovers the shoes of Liu-niang. The parents wail and scold Mr. Yang, and finally the old ferryman approaches with his oar. When asked whether he had seen Liu-niang, he answers that he did not see anybody, but heard a big splash. Whereupon the whole party decides to return home.\n\nThe ferryman calls back T’ao-hua and triumphantly tells her that he can now finish the couplet of the 13th month, because every so many years there is in fact an intercalary 13th month. And on this gay note the play ends, providing the reason why this opera is colloquially called \"T'ao-hua Crosses the River”.\n\nAct VIII is the climax of the play and Act IX and X the anti-climax.\n\nFOOTNOTE\n\nChiuchow Opera and Peking Opera\n\nThe repertoire of Chiuchow opera contains plays taken from the Peking opera, as well as plays based on Chiuchow's local traditions. Ch'en San Wu-niang and Su Liu-niang are both typical Chiuchow operas which have no parallel in the Peking opera. Both are elegant and refined literary operas, with a very strong local flavour in the treatment and development of the subject, and in the music and performance style.\n\nIn a Peking opera the hard laws of society, the five relationships instituted by Confucius, are more important than human happiness; and in Peking opera the same plot would have quite a different dénouement, most probably with a tragic end. How would a well-kept young lady ever dare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207746, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 119\n\npoint to Feng as the more active leader in the movement's initial phases. An account given of him by a deserter from the Taiping army and a former member of Gützlaff's Chinese Christian Union, published in The Hong Kong Register, 27 September, 1853, states that when he met Feng in Kwangsi, they recognized each other as fellow members of the Union. According to the account, Feng had studied under Gützlaff. I have carefully gone over the rather detailed reports Gützlaff sent back to Germany reporting the activities of the Chinese Christian Union, hoping that he might have mentioned Feng, but I was unable to find him named. Gützlaff, however, does report trips made by his workers into Kwangsi, where they preached and distributed tracts. These reports were published in the Calwer Missionsblatt and Gaihan's Berichte.\n\nWhen Hung Hsiu-ch'uan left Roberts and Canton in the late spring of 1847, he travelled to Kwangsi in search of Feng, arriving there in August. In the Journal of Roberts published in the Southern Baptist Missionary Journal, vol. 2, no. 10 (March 1848), under date of 25 June, 1847, Roberts states that two of his followers were appointed to visit the inquirer Hung in a different province.\n\nSeveral efforts were initiated to bring the families and followers of the Taiping leaders to Kwangsi from Kwangtung, but the plans were frustrated by the authorities. Some were caught and imprisoned, others scattered and fled. The friends and relatives of the leaders of the Taipings were rooted out of their native districts and at the same time cut off from the troops of the Rebellion as it advanced from Kwangsi to Nanking. Some appear to have had branches of their clan settled in Hsin-an District, adjacent to Hong Kong. Many of the people moved in and out of Hong Kong. These movements left traces in the reports and records of the Missions, but they are not complete enough to provide a comprehensive account.\n\nThe various adventures and travels of Hung Jen-kan before he reached Nanking in 1856 are documented in the writings of Jen Yu-wen. For an English language account see his The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (New Haven, 1973). A few additional details are provided by missionary archival sources.\n\nIn 1852, Hung Jen-kan was brought to Hong Kong by a young tailor from Lilong (Li-lang) in Hsin-an District. He was the grandson of a clansman of Hung, who had befriended Jen-kan in his wanderings. The grandson Fung (Hung?) Sen1 had been under", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208412, "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-1978", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "C. MARTIN WILBUR\n\ngoes on in his social environment. He feels morally responsible, and realizes that he may be held legally so, for the behavior of the members of his family certainly, and to some extent of all his neighbors.\n\nIII\n\nThe general structure of the Chinese family is pyramidal. This is true both for the largest unit, the clan, and for the smallest group, the individual sex family. At the head of each family unit stands an individual usually called Chia-chang (家長). It is of value to consider the attributes of this Chia-chang because he is the basic unit of village government, the link between the family and the larger group of neighbors. Moreover, he is the prototype of the village elder, who stands somewhat in the same legal and psychological position in the village as does the Chia-chang in his immediate family. The customary, ethical and legal sanctions which reinforce the Chia-chang reinforce also the village elder. There is no more perfect example, in fact, of the generical relationship between the family and all other social institutions in China.\n\nIn the simple sex family the father is usually Chia-chang, or after his death, the mother, if the family is still dependent upon the parental grouping. It was found that in Ching Ho, a village just north of Peiping, of 371 families only ten had women as family heads, and of these nine were widows. In the \"larger family\" which covers several generations living together by common consent under one roof as a single economic unit, the principle is more complicated. Su, quoting Chinese legal sources, gives the following order for succession to the position: grandfather, grandmother, great paternal uncles, their wives, father, mother, paternal uncles, their wives, elder brothers, their wives2. This systematic order is sometimes broken when the individual who would properly become incumbent is judged to be too young or of questionable character or ability. These qualifications of age and character are most important, and carry over into village government as well. Certainly no system of family or village control could be efficient without some modification from the rigid rule set down by law.\n\n1 Ching Ho a Sociological Analysis; p. 43.\n\n2 Su; op. cit., p. 48; from: Ta Ch'ing Lü Li, sec. 88; and Provisional Civil Code, art. 1324.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208421, "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-1978", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n129\n\nas a basis of authority and to facilitate administration. The value of this visual representation of status, linked with the most solemn religious ceremony, can thus readily be seen.\n\nThe ancestral temple is the seat of clan government. An elder, who derives his position from his relation to the clan line, is usually the chief executive of the temple. He should be the eldest son of the oldest branch of the family. This requirement is conditioned by two other factors: age and ability. If the candidate in line is not aged, a member of the older generation in the clan,1 he cannot hope to command the respect from the whole clan which is necessary for true leadership. The weight of the filial piety attitude, with its emphasis upon respect for age, will be against him rather than in his favor. Likewise, unless his ability is recognized, it is difficult for him to succeed to the position. This ability may have been shown as an arbitrator and peace talker, or by clever administration of family property. Thus wealth might, and often does bring the necessary respect. Education is strongly in an individual's favor, for the educated members of the kin-group are always respected almost as oracles of wisdom. Negatively, if the aspirant is known to be a rascal, or grossly ignorant or incompetent, he will be unable to take or hold a position of elder in his clan. Thus, while the position is definitely and legally fixed in customary law, at the same time this legal basis can be modified in practice whenever it is necessary. This is quite natural, for in the final analysis the incumbency rests upon popular approval, the very office itself, with all its properties, being an attribute of a rural customary society.\n\nThe term of office is likely to be indefinite, lasting as long as the incumbent continues to command the respect and approval which brought him his position. But local customs differ, and his position may be fixed for a certain number of years only, or until a definite age limit is reached.2 In some cases, indeed, there may be no one particular individual who is recognized head of the clan except at times of worship when one person performs the ceremonies.\n\n1 This is no mere redundancy. It might very conceivably occur that the eldest son of the oldest branch would be a young man, and not at all a member of the older generation in the clan. The difference is between absolute status and age.\n\n2 In Phenix village the age limit for responsibility is seventy years. Kulp; op. cit., p. 108.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208431, "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-1978", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n139\n\nvenue. As with the ancestral halls, described above, the village temple usually owns some farm land which is rented out at a profit. Village markets, held in the temple courtyard, form a source of revenue, since all outsiders must rent stalls. Revenue comes into the temple also from small contributions of the superstitious folk, who visit it to seek some benefit from the presiding deity. Much of the village budget is made up, however, of self-imposed taxes (Hui Ch'ien), and voluntary contributions solicited from the wealthy members, usually for some specific civic betterment. In theory, under the Manchu dynasty, certain sums were supposed to be returned to the village from their general government taxes for the purposes of education, as set down in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien (...), but these seldom, if ever, did find their way back.\n\nAn annual festival in honor of the patron of the temple is the chief social event in most villages in China. The responsibility for the management of this normally falls upon the temple council. Theatricals, side shows, and feasting mark these occasions. The religious side of the carnival has largely disappeared; usually, it is merely a grand social period, a time of relaxation and merry-making for young and old. Interrupting the normally dull routine of village life, it is of some psychological importance as a social safety valve.\n\nThe duty of properly policing the village is also the charge of the temple council (when it is not handled by the Ti-pao). Every household is expected to supply a man for a certain number of nights a year, but more usually, a contribution of money is given to pay for the service by regularly employed individuals. Civic duties such as lighting dangerous corners and repairing walls, roads, canals, and boat landings, when these are ever done, are the responsibility of the village temple. The main task in this connection may be the solicitation of funds from door to door.\n\nSuch charitable duties as supplying free medicine, burial, food, and clothing, when not taken care of by the clan, are the concern of the temple council, as is the supplying of educational facilities when these are lacking.\n\nIn short, all financial and administrative matters which concern the village as a whole, rather than any individual group, are handled by the village temple. As Kulp reports for Phenix village, \"Gene-\n\n1 Ibid., p. 65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208449, "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-1978", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n157\n\nof approximately 2437 inhabitants. It differs from typical rural villages in at least three respects: it is very young, having a history of only about fifty years; it is rather a grain market town with many stores than an agricultural community; and it is really a suburb of Peiping, lying just north of the former capital, and its whole economic, political and social life is highly colored by this fact.\n\nAt present there exist in the town two sets of political organizations: the old type established by the people themselves, and a more recent type set up by provincial or Kuomintang authorities. The two sets of organizations function simultaneously, and each seems to be weakened by the presence of the other. Of the first type is the village self-government of the traditional kind, a Chamber of Commerce composed of the leading merchants, and an Association of Farmers for the Protection of Crops.\n\nIn 1915 a district self-government movement was started. The term is not exactly accurate, however, since all the officers were appointed from among the various heads of villages by the county government or by the governor of the capital district of Peking direct. This organization worked with the cooperation of the traditional village governments, and seems both to have supplemented and coordinated them.\n\nIn 1919 the provincial authorities decided to remodel the system of self-government after the Shansi plan. According to this system, which is almost identical with the plan adopted later by the Central Government, five and twenty-five families were to be gathered into groups each with a chief. One hundred families or more were to constitute a village with a village head. Above the village there was to be a district office under a leader who would serve as a link between the self-government of the villages and the officials of the county government. This district head was also to serve as chief of the local police.\n\nThis theoretic plan was not so democratically carried out. In Ching Ho the selection of the village head was not made by popular vote in a mass meeting, as was supposed to have been done. Only the leaders of the village were present, no vote was taken, and the office was assumed by the associate of the former village head. Nor was the district head elected, his office being taken temporarily\n\n1 Ibid: chapters seven and eight, p. 96-121. The following description is taken from this section of the book.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208858, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1979\n\n(Covering the period March 27, 1979- March 23, 1980)\n\nI am pleased to report tonight on your Society's activities over the past year and on our ongoing projects. During the period we organized twelve lectures which, because so many members and most of your Council are away from Hong Kong in the high summer season, were arranged mainly for the Spring and Winter months. There were two overseas excursions and one local tour. Let me briefly review the lecture programme first of all:\n\nTalks to the Society\n\nIn April 1979 two lectures were given. The first had Dr. Margaret Ng as our speaker: well-known in Hong Kong for her newspaper column, and also as a social philosopher concerned with different facets of the Chinese world-view. She spoke on \"A Chinese theory of Discontent\". The other speaker in April was Professor Rulan Chao Pian who talked to us once before, in 1975. She is presently visiting professor in Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her talk, entitled \"A Musicological trip to China”, was related to a recent visit to China where she had lectured to the National Academy of Musicology at Peking.\n\nIn May Mr. Leonard Rayner lectured on \"Communism in the Association of South East Asian Nations”. Mr. Rayner who moved to Hong Kong from Singapore a few years ago is a journalist and perhaps best known to us for his regular column in the South China Morning Post. In June Professor D. W. Y. Kwok, who has been Director of the Asian Studies Programme at Hawaii for the past six years, spoke on \"The New Culture Movement in China”. Also in June, Dr. John Young of the Extra-Mural Studies Department of Hong Kong University, lectured on \"The Hong Kong-Canton Connection, 1905-1925”, at the same time sharing his experience with us of a research trip to Canton and pointing out the archival research opportunities which exist in that city. In October Rev. Carl Smith talked on \"The Amateur Dramatic Club (founded 1860) and the early history of Dramatic arts in Hong Kong.\n\nSince the new year we have had a relatively full programme. In January there were two lectures: one by the Rev. Father Harold Naylor who spoke on \"Wah Yan College; a case study of an Anglo-Chinese school directed by an Irish Jesuit\". Father Naylor has\n\nX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208994, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "124\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nLast year the Pang clan village of Fanling held its great ta chiu. It happens once every ten years. The film you saw at the beginning was taken there, and many of the photographs on display too. I was lucky enough to be able to spend nearly all the days of the ta chiu in Fanling. To my surprise, I found myself constantly being greeted and spoken to in English -- not in Hong Kong English, but in the different local dialects of different geographical regions in the United Kingdom. The speakers ranged in age from 3 to 25 years. All were children of the restaurant emigration which has taken place since about 1953. With their parents, they had come back for the occasion. To this village of less than 3,000 inhabitants, more than 500 people had come back by air at great personal expense. Asked why they had spent so much money, the parents all gave the same reply: \"We want our children to know our customs and traditions\"; \"We want our children to know....\" A similar thing happened in Ho Chung in December, and this year the villages of the Lam Tsuen valley expect the same. These people understand about personal identity; they know the immense value of the intangible; and they can still experience their cultural heritage. But whether the future will allow them to continue to do so we cannot tell. Even if it does (which I think rather unlikely) there are already far, far larger numbers of young (and older) people in our towns who have no chance at all of experiencing the intangibles of their cultural heritage at first hand. The only way they can be given even a small part of what is, after all, their right to their own past is through the kind of work that historians and anthropologists have done and are still for a short time able to do in the New Territories.\n\nMost of you will not know that I am both the oldest and the pioneer social anthropologist in Hong Kong. It is a fact—now I suppose an historical fact—that I started the whole thing off, way back in 1950; and I have spent most of my academic life teaching, reading, researching, and writing about it. It is my hope and intention to continue this kind of work and, in cooperation with my historian friends, help to see it through to a triumphant conclusion sometime before the year 1990. That is why I accepted an invitation to come to the Chinese University, and, to answer the question I set at the beginning, that is also my justification for daring to speak to such an audience as this on the cultural heritage of the New Territories.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209241, "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-1981", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "130\n\nTA ACTON\n\nearnest students of all ages doing the homework impossible to do in crowded one-room flats) The report suggests that even though land-based jobs had increased awareness of the need for secondary education, drop-out rates of those who started on it remained high because of the physical difficulties in the way of studying. The F.M.O. schools are not, however, mentioned in the report, nor have I seen any F.M.O. comments on these findings.\n\n38\n\nThe report of the survey concludes that the plight of the poor boat-people is an indication of a more general social malaise, the devil-take-the-hindmost atmosphere of Hong Kong. They suggest that the Government should accept responsibility for re-settling the casualties of the mechanisation of the fishing industry from which the rest of the community has benefitted. In the long term, a better understanding of the Shui-sheung-yans' needs was required by the housing authority, who should plan in accordance with forecasts about the manpower needs of the fishing industry. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries should extend the availability of its loans so that less initial capital is required of the borrower. New fishermen's villages could be built by the Housing Department, and the Labour Department and the Education Department should co-operate to increase the general levels of education and training in industrial skills. In the short term, the report urges immediate improvements in safety, rubbish collection, sanitation, and disinfection. Regular checks on boat safety should be made by the Marine Department. The Urban Council should provide study rooms for children, and the Education Department evening literacy classes and industrial training.\n\n39\n\nThe report spurred a campaign which gained wider sympathy. In January 1979 a coach-load of boat-people were arrested on their way to take a petition to Government House. Children as young as seven years of age were finger-printed and charged with illegal assembly, although magistrates refused to proceed with the case against those under the age of 12. The adults, social workers, students, a Catholic missionary and Shui-sheung-yan, were found guilty, but discharged.\n\nAfter this incident, however, the groundswell of liberal support for the boat-people diversified into a general civil rights attack on the Public Order Ordinance itself. This has left the boat-people to fight their housing struggle by themselves, with the help of a few community workers linked to SoCO, such as Fr. Cunbo Franco, an Italian Roman Catholic priest actually living on a boat in the Yaumatei typhoon shelter.\n\n40", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209323, "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-1981", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "212\n\nLOÈS, Dr. Sabine de\n\nWONG, Mr Kwok Fong\n\nLOSEBY, Miss Patricia\n\nLUK, Mr. George Ping-chuen\n\nWONG, Mr Peng-cheong YEUNG, Mr Walter W.T.\n\nLUM, Miss Ada\n\nMACKENZIE, Mr. John\n\nMACKEOWN, Dr. P.K.\n\nMARDEN, Mrs. J.L.\n\nMCCRARY, Mr. Michael\n\nMCINTYRE, Mr. W.M.\n\nMCKEIRNAN, Rev. Michael\n\nNORONHA, Mr. J.E.\n\nOGDEN, Mr. B.J.N. OU, Miss G.\n\nPAIN, Mr. John H. PICCUS, Mr. R.P. RAE, Mr. John Allan RAWLINSON, Mr. M.C. RAYNER, Dr. Mary RIDE, Lady May RUST, Mr. H.A.\n\nRYDINGS, Mr. H.A., MBE SEED, Mr. Brian SELLETT, Mr. George SERSALE, Miss Shelia M. SHAW, Dr Brian C.\n\nSHAW, Mrs Felicity\n\nSMITH, Rev. Carl. T. SMITH, Mr Leslie C. SPOONER, Mr Michael G. SU, Dr Chung Jen TAN, Mr Khek-seng TANG, Sir Shiu-kin, CBE TANG, Mrs Madeleine THOMAS, Mr Louis F. THOMPSON, Mr. P.J. THROWER, Prof. L.B. THROWER, Dr Stella TON CHEN, Mrs Chp-ching TORRIBLE, Mr Graham R. URE, Mr Gavin M.N, WATSON, Mr K.A.\n\nWAUNG, Mr William Sikying WEINREBE, Mr Harry M. WERLE, Ms Helga WESLEY-SMITH, Dr Peter WILLIAMS, Mr Roger WILLIAMS, Mr Bernard V. WILLIAMS, Mr & Mrs W.D.F. WINKLER, Mrs E.\n\nYOUNG, Miss Pauline\n\nINSTITUTIONAL MEMBER\n\nAGRICULTURE & FISHERIES DEPT. The Director\n\nLOCAL ORDINARY MEMBERS\n\nABBOTT, Mrs Elizabeth Lee\n\nADDIS, Mr Stewart\n\nADDIS, Mrs Diana\n\nAIKEN, Mrs Lorna\n\nAKERS-JONES, Mr D.\n\nALLCOCK, Mr R.C.\n\nARCHER, The Hon. Mrs S.\n\nASHCROFT, Miss Jacqueline P. AUM, Mr K.N.\n\nBARD, Dr S.M.\n\nBARRETTO, Mr Ruy 0.\n\nBATSON, Lt. Col. J.F.S. BEHRENS, Mr Ernst H. BERTRAM, Mr James BIRCH, Dr Alan BLAIKLEY, Mr P.E. BONAVIA, Mrs Judith E. BOWMAN, Mr S.A.W. BOWMAN, Mrs Dorothy BOYLAN, Mrs. Catherine BRAGA, Mr Paul BRAMWELL, Mr Hartley BRANDON, Miss Jacqueline N. BRAUN, Mr Francis BRAY, Miss Jennifer M. BROMFIELD, Mr A.C. BROMFIELD, Mrs Jeanne BROOM, Mr Michael B. BROUWER, Mrs R.P. BROWN, Mr Edward de R. BROWN, Mr Gerald H. BROWN, Dr H.O. BURNS, Dr John P. CAMERON, Mr Nigel\n\nCAMERON, Mrs Susan\n\nCAMPBELL, Mr Mark C.\n\nCANTERS, Mr Rene\n\nCAREY-HUGHES, Dr John\n\nCENTRE OF ASIAN STUDIES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209745, "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG BRANCH\n\nOF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nPatron:\n\nH.E. Sir Edward Youde G.C.M.G., M.B.E., Governor of Hong Kong\n\nThe Council, 1983\n\nPresident:\n\nJ. W. Hayes, M.A., Ph.D., J.P.\n\nVice-Presidents:\n\nCarl T. Smith, B.A., M.DIV.\n\nA. I. Diamond, M.A.\n\nHon. Secretary:\n\nR. H. McLean\n\nHon. Treasurer:\n\nD. A. Gilkes, M.A., C.A., J.P.\n\nHon. Editor:\n\nP. H. Hase, B.A., Ph.D.\n\nHon. Librarian:\n\nV. E. Morgan, B.A., A.L.A.\n\nCouncillors:\n\nM. Topley B.Sc., Ph.D.\n\nAlan Birch, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.Hist. Soc.\n\nH. A. Rydings, M.B.E., M.A., A.L.A.\n\nHugh Gibb, M.A.\n\nMichael Lau, B.A., Dip.Ed., M.A., Ph.D.\n\nJ. Young, M.A., Ph.D.\n\nOliver Siddle, B.A.(Oxon.), F.R.S.A.\n\nElizabeth Sinn B.A.\n\niii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210831, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "165\n\nsess qualifications which will make them highly prized and liberally salaried, as interpreters, clerks, and in other services. They cannot and ought not to be treated on the same plan of rigid economy as mere boys. To ensure the prosperity of the institution there ought to be an annual allowance of £25 each, to cover all expenses and support the young men in a manner respectable and befitting the position in life which they are intended to occupy.\n\nThe school at the London Mission House in Hongkong could now become what the missionary meeting of 1843 intended it to be, the Theological Seminary of the London Missionary Society in China. The meeting had dropped the designation of college as being too pretentious for the character of the reorganised school.\n\nIn adopting the name Theological Seminary, they intended to let the world know their labours were all directed to one end, the preparation of Christian workers. This did not mean the abandonment of a general education in literature and science, but it did mean the inclusion of definite theological studies.\n\nIf the name college had been too ambitious, so had the name Theological Seminary. From 1843 to 1847 there were no theological students. Now with the three young men Dr. Legge had brought back from England, the long delayed plans for his school could be realised. But the future was filled with disappointments.\n\nHIGH EXPECTATIONS,\n\nTHEN DEFECTIONS AND SETBACKS\n\nDr. James Legge returned to Hongkong from England in August 1847, renewed in health and with high expectations for the future of his school. He now could organise a theological class in addition to his other classes. The three boys, baptised during their visit overseas, would be the foundation for advanced studies. They showed every evidence of the sincerity and dedication necessary for the achievement of their announced intention to become preachers and evangelists.\n\nTheir enthusiasm was infectious. The school took on new vitality. There was an increased interest in its religious objectives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210875, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "209\n\nThe fifth brother, Ho Wooi-shang, became an assistant in the business of A-tick, Hongkong's most successful tailor at that time. In addition he had a business at Honam in Canton. While visiting there he was wounded by a Chinese tax officer. He lingered long enough to make his will but died not long after leaving a family of small children.\n\nIn the collection of the Legge family, which was deposited in the Archives of the London Missionary Society, there is a photograph of Ho Shun-chee, alias A-lloy. On the back is written: “To Miss Legge with kind regards from her sincere friend,” and an added note by Dr. Legge's daughter, Edith: \"He told me he had attended the emperor when he went to pray at the Altar of Heaven.\"\n\nIt is indeed a long step from a Hongkong classroom to the Altar of Heaven at Peking.\n\nTO THE GOLDFIELDS DOWN UNDER IN SEARCH OF CONVERTS\n\nAmong the students of Dr. Legge's school in Hongkong were a number of boys from the Ho clan. Two orphaned brothers, Ho Low-yuk and Ho Mei-yuk, were near relatives of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong. Both went to Australia after finishing school.\n\nThey were part of an exodus of Hongkong-educated boys seeking their fortunes in overseas communities. As English speakers in a place where their countrymen were cut off from the general community, they served to bridge the gap. At the same time, government officials and Christians interested in the conversion of the Chinese needed someone through whom they could communicate with the immigrants.\n\nA-low and another young man from the school were urged by Dr. Legge to emigrate to Australia. Because of the unsettled conditions in China created by the Taiping rebellion, Dr. Legge felt it was not a good field for these two young men he had trained as religious workers. So provided with letters of introduction to a Congregational minister in Melbourne off they sailed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211268, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "304\n\nSteve Yui-sang Tsang, Democracy Shelved, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988.\n\nThough about the 1945-1952 period, Democracy Shelved is important and timely because its publication coincides with another period in which plans for democracy in Hong Kong have been shelved.\n\nSteve Yui-sang Tsang, a Research Associate at Wolfson-St. Antony's Chinese Studies Centre and Rhodes House Library, Oxford, has written a blow-by-blow account of the abortive attempt to introduce major constitutional reforms in Hong Kong in the immediate post-war period, when decolonisation was in the air.\n\nThe book is important for the light it sheds on an important historical period but, even more so, for its illumination of the reasons behind events transpiring today.\n\nOn one level, it is the role of personalities. Sir Mark Young retired before he could see his reforms, dubbed the Young Plan, implemented. Similarly, Sir Edward Youde died before his proposal \"to develop progressively a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong,\" could take shape.\n\nBut Steve Tsang shows that Young was no wild-eyed radical. His reforms were moderate. And he was enough of a realist to know the importance of China's views on the colony. That is why he recommended the appointment of a Political Adviser to the Hong Kong governor who would be a specialist on Chinese affairs.\n\nSteve Tsang concludes by raising the question whether failure to implement the Young Plan represents a lost chance. His answers it in the affirmative, concluding: “On balance, it would appear that the Young Plan could have worked successfully during the period under study.\"\n\nThe reader is free to draw his own conclusions as to what the ramifications would be for today's Hong Kong as it wrestles with the need for political reforms on the eve of its return to Chinese sovereignty.\n\nFRANK CHING", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211752, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "142\n\nsteady waves. This sensible and pragmatic defence plan lead to the villages near Kan Tau Wai being formed into five Yeuk, which radiate out from Kan Tau Wai like the spokes of a wheel. The villages to the north-east, furthest from Kan Tau Wai, formed a sixth Yeuk: its duties were to guard the other entrances to Ta Kwu Ling, the Fan Li Au and to keep an eye on the Cheung's allies in the area, especially Lin Ma Hang and Sai Ling Ha. The arrangement of the area into six Yeuk lead the area to be called the Ta Kwu Ling Luk Yeuk (\"Ta Kwu Ling Alliance of Six\"). The Yeuk seem to have been very united in their opposition to Wong Pui Ling — the deaths of villagers in the fighting were very evenly shared between them.\n\n29\n+\n\nThese arrangements required the Ping Yuen Hap Heung to be split, Ping Che joining Tong Fong and Kan Tau Wai in one Yeuk, centred on the Ping Che Road, and Ping Yeung with Nga Yiu Ha and Wo Keng Shan forming another centred on the Miu Keng road. The Loi Tung villagers had no interest in the Law Fong bridge, and did not join the Ta Kwu Ling alliance; their political interests lay elsewhere. Similarly, the old grouping of Kan Tau Wai, Lei Uk and Tai Po Tin had to be split, with Lei Uk and Tai Po Tin being joined with Shan Kai Wat further along their common access path. These arrangements seem to have been introduced no earlier than about 1850, and were limited to defence and mutual assistance matters; ritual and other arrangements continued to operate according to the older groupings. Hence the management of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was unaffected, and even though Loi Tung and Man Uk Pin were probably friendly with Wong Pui Ling, the political contacts of the villages near the pass did not end, and probably helped to stop the dispute escalating too far.\n\nAlthough it is something of an irrelevance to this article, it is, perhaps, worth saying something further about the Luk Yeuk. The alliance was successful in its war with Wong Pui Ling: the bridge was built (it was a very fine, three-span granite structure), with an inscription set up at the bridge foot detailing the donors. Wong Pui Ling had to accept defeat, and see its influence disappear throughout Ta Kwu Ling and beyond. The Ta Kwu Ling villagers, after peace had been secured, set up an organisation to ensure that the area could go back onto a “war footing” at short notice if required. This was the Shing Ping She (\"Peace Secured Society\"). This organisation ensured that all the young men were trained in martial arts, and that patrols \"to keep the peace\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211765, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "155\n\n27\n\nAs noted above, 20,000 people a month used the Miu Keng pass. Probably as many again used the road from Ping Che to Kan Tau Wai, or started their journey within Ta Kwu Leng. 40,000 users of the ferry a month is a likely figure. Probably 25% of them carried goods. This represents more than $50 a month income, or about $600 a year. Even depreciating heavily for the salary of boatmen and costs of maintenance, $400 a year clear profit seems likely.\n\nThe date of this war was probably in the 1860s, as Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., p. 104, shows.\n\n29 For the arrangement of the Yeuk, see map. The information in this section comes from Mr. Chan Yau-tsoi and Mr. Chan Wa-chun of Ping Yeung, Mr. Man Kam-muk of Ping Che, Mr. Yeung Choi of Fụng Wong Wu, Mr. Man Lei-wa of Tong Fong, and Mr. Hau Foh-tai of Law Fong, all very knowledgeable elders. I met them as a group, and include here only what they were unanimous in agreeing was the case. I would like to express my particular thanks to them for the several hours of discussion they had with me. As to Sai Ling Ha, this village, although it lay within the Ta Kwu Ling hills, supported Wong Pui Ling in the fighting, I was told. It had no part in the Luk Yeuk. However, when the Communists took over, most of the inhabitants of Sai Ling Ha crossed into Hong Kong, and set up homes in Ping Che. They were then allowed to become part of the Luk Yeuk, as part of Ping Che Yeuk. The account of the Luk Yeuk given here differs in detail from that given in Faure, op. cit., pp. 103-104.\n\n+1\n\n-\n\n30 The deaths are recorded in the \"Heroes Shrine\" () in the Tin Hau Temple at Ping Che, which was the community temple of the Ta Kwu Ling area. 23 names of the **Heroes who died in protecting the villages, who knew how to perform the duties of filial piety\", or the \"Heroes who defended the Yeuk\" as they are named in two inscriptions *澳四總鎮源樂友例段英雄履考之神位 and \"MX\") are recorded. Of these, 3 (all surnamed Chan) came from the Ping Yeung Yeuk, 4 (3 surnamed Tang and 1 surnamed Chau) from the Lin Tong Yeuk, 4 (1 surnamed Chau and 3 surnamed Lei) from the Lei Uk Yeuk, 4(2 surnamed Yiu and 2 surnamed Hau) from the Law Fong Yeuk, 2 (both surnamed Yip) from the Lo Shue Ling Yeuk and 4 (2 surnamed Wong and 2 surnamed Man) from the Ping Che Yeuk. One Law died he came either from Law Fong (Law Fong Yeuk) or Kan Tau Wai (Ping Che Yeuk). A Lau Ah-ngau (劉亞牛) also died -- he could have been from Wo Keng Shan (Ping Yeung Yeuk), where there was a tiny clan of Laus, or could possibly have been a servant, as his name suggests his name is entered last on the tablet. 23 deaths suggests very bloody fighting. It is unlikely that the population of the whole of Ta Kwu Ling in 1860 was higher than 1750 (representing an average village population of about 80, or perhaps 12 households), and the adult males could not have been more than a quarter of that (440). The young men of fighting age were probably no more than about 200. 23 out of 200 is about 11.5% deaths of those involved, which is a very high percentage. The population of the Ta Kwu Ling villages within the New Territories totalled 1441 in the 1911 Census (Sessional Papers, 1911, no. 17, Noronha & Lo, Hong Kong, 1911, \"Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911”, Table XIX p. 103 (32)).\n\n+\n\n-\n\nLoi Tung, with its lineage brethren of Lung Yeuk Tau, and the small villages between them, formed the Sze Yeuk (四約, “Alliance of Four''), which was, to a large degree, designed to ensure that the ancient enmity of the Tangs of Lung Yeuk Tau and Loi Tung with the Pangs of Fan Ling was tilted in favour of the Tangs. The Pangs supported the Luk Yeuk in its fight with the Cheungs this almost certainly means that the Sze Yeuk supported the Cheungs, as did Sheung Shui, the other ancient enemy of the Pangs. Man Uk Pin was a Yeuk of the Sha Tau Kok Shap Yeuk, as well as forming a part of the Sze Yeuk. The Shap Yeuk were dubious about the activities of the Luk Yeuk. Free travel between Sha Tau Kok and Sham Tsun was vital to the Shap Yeuk. With the Cheung Shan Kwụ\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211931, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "321\n\nThese accusations were made at the county magistracy. The Kam Tin Dangs got news of the accusation and arranged that all their young men gathered in the various ancestral halls and temples to read, so as to deceive the investigators from the county government. The county magistrate was deceived, and believed that the Kam Tin Dangs were all scholars and would not give any time to the accusation. Therefore he did not pursue the case any further.\n\nSome of the Dangs believe that the fighting between the people of Kam Tin and those of Pat Heung was over agricultural resources such as irrigation water. The Dangs of Kam Tin used only one bei reservoir, the one called Fui Sha bei. The water flowed from Pat Heung, near Lin Fa Tei, and the Pat Heung people could stop the water. One recent (about 100 years ago) example of a dispute over agricultural resources was the Ngau Wong Wui association which had been started to organize the cowherds of Kam Tin, to protect them against their Pat Heung counterparts, and to preserve Kam Tin pasture rights.\n\nOne piece of documentary evidence of the conflict between the Dangs and their Pat Heung tenants has survived. It is a stone inscription dated 1777 found in both the Daai-Wong Temple of Yuen Long Old Market and the Jau and Wong Temple of Kam Tin. It records a rent dispute.\n\nFive Dangs are named as the landlords in this inscription. In general terms, the document calls the landlords \"the Dang surname\", and the land \"the land of the clan\". It is therefore clear that the landlords were all from the same lineage and the property was considered as linked to the lineage as a whole albeit it was probably individually owned. Four of the five names can be found in various documents from Kam Tin. All four appear in a silk embroidery presented to a Dang of Kam Tin to celebrate his birthday in 1771. We have more specific information about two of them: one, Dang Si-Daan, was a descendant of Yam's second son Gwong-Yu, and the other, Dang Chung, is a descendant of one of the other sons of Hung-Yi, most probably Gyun. It is therefore clear that one of the parties to the dispute were many of the Dangs of Kam Tin, including members of different branches and represented in general terms the Dang lineage.\n\nA few names are also given of the tenants. There were about the same number of Dangs and non-Dangs among them. While the landlords were referred to as members of a lineage, the tenants were referred to as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211985, "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": 400, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "375\n\nOfuchi (1983).\n\n5.1 These two kinds of embroidery were always found in major festivities and at temple altars.\n\n54\n\nBoth are reproduced in the Dang Clan Association handbook in Huge Baker's collection of genealogies, with commentary. One of the Dangs I talked to had some doubt about the authenticity of the alleged painting of Song Wuizong. He observed that the calligraphy was not of the typical style of the emperor, the shou-zhen ti.\n\n55 Although the wong-gu was a common ancestress, her relics were not public property. The painting of the eagle belonged to a wealthy leader of the Dangs of Kam Tin, and the other pieces to the Wan-Gaan jire segment or one of its members.\n\n57 On this divination instrument, see Ahern (1981:45-47).\n\nDiscussed in the next part of this report.\n\nSV For more information on Lam Pui and his family, see Tsui (1985).\n\n60\n\nThe rite is locally found probably only in the Kam Tin jiu festival. The priests explain it by alluding to the legendary Baiguai Zhen battle formation of Zhuge Liang, a stateman and strategist in the period of the Three Kingdoms (220-265). I think it is probably more directly related to the gimen dunjia style of magic.\n\n42\n\nA handheld small metal idiophone with a handle.\n\nSee Schipper (1974) for a thorough discussion of the Memorials in the Taiwan case, which is very close to the one I am describing.\n\nThe Oral History Project collection and Osuchi (1983) include most of the manuals used in this festival.\n\n64 The actual seating no longer observed the segregation of the sexes, although this used to be the practice.\n\n65 The difficulty was due partly to the fact that there were more Naam Bin people than their Bik Bin counterparts, even when the Ying Lung Wai villagers were added to the latter. As I have mentioned already, the seating area was divided into two halves, one for Naam Bin and one for Bak Bin. This gave the Bak Bin chu more seats each.\n\nI learned from a different source that the elder left early on the day because he felt that some younger villagers were being hostile to him.\n\n67 The informant explained that it was usual for the Village Representatives to keep their position until they die. Therefore, those who are interested in becoming one always fail, except in Shui Tau, where the villagers generally have more exposure to the outside world and re-elect their V.R. once every two years.\n\n68 I saw another lady doing waan-san at Ying Lung Wai. In addition to the san-seng, she made offerings at the village gate as well, which I guess is the normal practice.\n\nThe two men were elders/ritual representatives, neither was the head of the lineage, probably due to the lineage head's age.\n\n70\n\nExcept in the case of Tin-Chyun San-Gwan, I have relied on the Daojiao Yuenliu, the priests' manual to which they often refer when asked to explain their tradition, for interpretation.\n\nThere were some young ladies in the procession this time, which represented a recent development.\n\n72 Ancestral tablets could be seen inside, but Mr. Dang Jik-Waai said that the place used to be a sun-teng, and was worshipped by the procession because of this.\n\n73\n\nIn which case only the woman herself would suffer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212101, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "20\n\nenough, it was to be remembered and duly acknowledged long after. A contemporary example from the Tsuen Wan villages may be used to exemplify these continuing obligations.\n\nThe endeavours of one of my Tsuen Wan village friends to recognize and continue to honour help given to his family in the distant past is a striking example of the kind. The founding ancestor of his clan had settled in a small village outside Tsuen Wan in 1724; but as sometimes happened in the local settlements the family did not prosper, and for three or four generations just managed to produce enough adult males to survive. A crisis ensued when the only adult male in one of the later generations died when still a young man, leaving behind a pregnant wife. By great good fortune, a family from another of the clans living in the village took pity on her; and after she gave birth to a boy who was reared to adulthood the future of my friend's family was again secured. This happened around 150 years ago. The descendants of this other family died out or went away pre-war never to return. When part of the village burial area was needed for development in the 1970s, my friend approached the District Office for a resiting of one of the old graves of the other clan. He was not applying for cash compensation as he was willing to pay all the expenses, but he did want another site in order to express, in tangible form, his family's continuing gratitude for the kindness done to the young widow so long ago. This was provided.\n\nAnother instance of a similar kind involved the old grave of a husband and wife, dated to 1813, which had to be removed for development at Sam Pak Tsin, Texaco Road, Tsuen Wan about 1975. Elders from another lineage belonging to Hoi Pa Village had responded to our notices posted on site, stating their obligation to arrange for removal and reburial of the remains. They said that the link with the persons buried in the grave was through the female side of their family but was no longer known clearly to even its oldest living members.40\n\nIn another, even older expression of gratitude for past assistance, the Ho clan of Muk Min Ha Old Village (settled in 1712) had built a special hall next to their main ancestral temple to honour a man of another surname who had helped their founding ancestor. One of this man's daughters had married the newcomer, and land had been given which enabled him to make a good start in a new place. The donor's clan still lives in one of the hill villages of the District. When Muk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212286, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "205\n\n“Scottish Commonsense” philosophy was a conscious effort in the eighteenth century to counteract the sceptical implications of the radical philosopher, David Hume. The young Legge had read the writings of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown while a student at King's College in the early 1830s. He claimed later that he did not agree with all their philosophical implications, preferring a less rationalistic philosophy (perhaps that of William Paley), but even his granddaughter, the late Prof. Mary Dominica Legge, underscored his preference for Aristotelean ethics over the Confucian equivalent. If the content of James Legge's thought is rooted in the Biblical interpretations of the Non-Conformist tradition and Paley's evangelical system of natural theology, the categories came largely from the Commonsense tradition.\n\n72\n\nIt was these categories which, as translator and interpreter, James Legge employed in evaluating Confucian ethics, education, and epistemology. The lack of rational precision in a number of places in Confucius' life evoke from Legge a sense that there was a “want of freedom” in Confucius' behaviour. He likewise criticized the important Song dynasty Confucian commentator, Zhu Xi, for implying that, when knowledge is complete, the thoughts are by this means necessarily made sincere or without self-deception. For Legge, the moral life stemmed from a spiritual source related to the moral will, which was more penetrating and more complex than a mere mental grasp of things.\n\n7.1\n\nIn his study of Confucius' philosophy, Legge identifies specific details of the sage's biography in which his evasion of the truth (in one case involving an oath) is claimed to have produced an \"injurious influence” as an example to later Chinese people. There is also a conflict between Confucius' more humble claims about himself and the claims made about him by later Confucianists. At times these claims approach blasphemy, and Legge minces no words in decrying these assertions. The fact that other canonical texts included passages in which Confucius appears as the advocate of an ethic of revenge, especially when it involved family or clan ties, was an additional issue Legge regarded as deserving unqualified criticism. Whether or not these texts were historically reliable, their negative ethical influence was undeniable.\n\nWhat is important here is that the ethical questions Legge asked", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212877, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "A geomancer whom we have consulted in this matter has examined the position. He has advised that this year, when the grave is in the southern part of the cosmic cycle, lives will be cut short if the grave is harmed: and if land in front or behind the grave, or to its left or right, is disturbed it will be difficult to preserve the lives [of our clansmen] and people will certainly die. The whole clan will have to disperse.\n\nBecause of this, our entire clan's four branches, male and female, old and young, can have no peace and quiet in their lives. All are in a confused state and know not what to do. We cannot but object, we cannot stop or rest [in our best endeavours], and we have decided to inform you of our united and sincere opposition.\n\nWe invite you, knowing both government policies and the people's disposition, to cancel the order [to remove the grave] and to select another site for development. If this protection cannot be achieved, all descendants of the Wong clan's four branches will oppose [government] to the death, as in the spirit of the Anti-Japanese War [1937-45], and with tearful eyes and blood flowing, will fight to protect the founding ancestor's grave and keep it in its present position.\n\nFor as long as there is our ancestral grave, there will be descendants: but without the ancestral grave, there will be no living persons [in our clan]. 'When drinking water, think of its source' [Chinese proverb]. Thus we have to oppose the government in this matter. If there are any losses arising from the government's actions, it will carry the full responsibility.\n\nIf, however, it is possible to discuss and negotiate over the siting [of the development] and select another place, the government will have shown a benevolent heart, and acted with rectitude, loving the people as if it were its own sons. Then our founding ancestor will have [continued] good fortune and the clansmen will enjoy long lives; and the government will have calmed the people and done a meritorious deed.\n\n171", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "225\n\nparallels Hong Kong's, petitioned the British government to acquire 'an insular possession near the coast of China... beyond the reach of future despotism and oppression,' Matheson, who did not have Hong Kong specifically in mind, thought of British merchants as 'princes of the earth,' and despised the Chinese, ‘a people characterized by marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy... [in] possession of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.'\n\nChinese officials were no less culture-bound: Commissioner Lin Zexu, the Emperor's man in Canton, confronted the British just before the 1839-1840 Opium War by burning 2,613,879 pounds of British opium, 'surely the largest drug haul ever collected,' says Welsh. The British had been smuggling opium into China, hoping to balance off the large amounts of money they were spending for tea and other products exported home to Britain. Lin Zexu advised punishing the British traders by withholding exports to them of rhubarb and tea, without which they could not exist. Because 'their legs were too tightly bound to permit them to box or wrestle,' British soldiers, he said, were not suited to fighting on shore. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their confiscation of opium was followed by attacks by British gunboats on their port cities. They were forced to open Shanghai and other coastal cities to the British and cede Hong Kong to them.\n\nNot until Chris Patten was appointed governor in 1992 did Hong Kong become a high British priority. While publicly demanding that the garrison lay down their lives for it, says Welsh, Churchill privately considered the colony not worth defending against the Japanese. During World War II, the Foreign Office regarded Hong Kong as 'something of a thorn in the side' - a view some of its diplomats still hold — and wanted to return it to China; the Americans wanted this too. In 1946, the first postwar governor, Sir Mark Young, drafted a plan for a 'Municipal Council' constituted on a fully representative basis, but this was consistently turned down. Later, the colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, commented, \"The electorate of Britain didn't care a brass farthing about Hong Kong.' Welsh says this remains true, but he also reminds us that, in 1992, Chris Patten was proposing a more democratically elected Legislative Council not for the British voters but for the people of Hong Kong. As Welsh suggests, in 1946 China would have been in no position to object. But Hong Kong has since become more valuable than anyone could have dreamed in 1946.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213362, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "167\n\nKong, HIIKBRAS, vol. 14 (1974) pp 12-27 and his Facilities for Research on the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies, (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984) pp 153-192\n\n16 In 1994, the Executive Council instructed that all records over thirty years old should be reviewed, this does not automatically mean opening the files to the public, and some materials are re-classified. Applications for use still have to go to the generating agent (department) for approval. But it is now much easier to get access to records over 30 years old.\n\n17 Peter Young, The Hung On-Lo Memorial Library, the Hong Kong Collection, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds), pp. 137-152\n\nIX The most current project is an index to CO129, the Colonial Office Original Correspondence series on Hong Kong, from 1841-1926, containing about 45,000 despatches. The index, put on CD-Rom, operates on the basis of search by keywords. The chief investigator of the project is Elizabeth Sinn who currently runs the Hong Kong History Workshop. Her major works include Power and Charity. The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Growing with Hong Kong: The Bank of East Asia 1919-1994 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994).\n\n19 Peter Y L. Ng. The 1819 Edition of the Hsin-an Hsien-chih a critical examination with translation and notes. Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, 1644-1842 (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1961). The work was published many years later as New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong region, prepared for press and with additional materials by Hugh D.R. Baker, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983).\n\n20 Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Interaction of East and West: Developments of Public Education in Early Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984).\n\n21 Other scholars include L.Y. Chiu, K.C. Chan, K.C. Fok, Ming K. Chan, Elizabeth Sinn and Steve Tsang at the HKU, David Faure and Bernard Luk at the Chinese University, John Young, Fung Pui-wing and Chung Po Yin (much later) at the Baptist University, and later Choi Chi-cheong and Liu Dik Sang at the University of Science and Technology - although not all of them are, or would agree to being labelled as, practitioners of local history.\n\n22 Patrick Hase, Research Materials for Village Studies, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Research Material for Hong Kong Studies (Ibid) pp. 31-46\n\n23 David Faure, Bernard H.K. Luk and Alice Ngai-ha Lun Ng (comp.) Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, 3 volumes (Hong Kong Museum of History, 1986).\n\n24 David Faure, Bernard H.K. Luk and Alice Ngan-ha Lun Ng, The Hong Kong Region According to Historical Inscriptions, in David Faure, James Hayes and Alan Birch (eds). From Village to City: Studies in the Traditional Roots of Hong Kong Society (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984) pp 43-54", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214377, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "201\n\nof affairs is not known but it is a possibility which cannot be discounted entirely. What is beyond dispute is that these widely publicized fears were used by the leaders of the Chinese community as a reason to petition the Government for permission to organise a force of Chinese watchmen who would help the public police. The scheme received the blessing of the Governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, though it met with less than wholehearted approval from some other members of the administration, most notably the Chief Justice, Sir John Smale. The feature of the plan which appealed most to Government officials was its economy. Since the expenses of operating the scheme would be borne by the Chinese merchants, the Government would not need to spend any money yet it would, in effect, gain additional police constables.\n\n\"The Victoria Registration Ordinance 1866\" (No. 7 of 1866) provided the authorization for the formation of this body of men and came into effect on 1 January 1867. By its provisions the Governor, on the recommendations of the inhabitants of a particular District, could appoint a Chief Watchman and Watchmen who were under the control of the Registrar General and had the same powers as a constable. Thus, although both the words 'District' and 'Watchmen' appeared in the Ordinance, the combination 'District Watchmen' was not used. Two of the most informative early accounts of the District Watch Force appeared in the Registrar General's Reports for 1867 and 1868. In 1867 the Registrar General's post was held by a young Cadet Officer, Cecil C. Smith, who also acted as Colonial Secretary whilst in 1868 Alfred Lister, a Cadet with even less experience, acted as Registrar General. From the tenor of the earlier report it seems that Smith favoured the establishment of 'a body of men acting as a help to the Police Force.' The introduction of the scheme was not easy and 'Much jealousy was at first displayed as to the powers which were to be exercised in controlling the Watchmen.' Although the wording is ambiguous and the sentiments could have applied equally to some Europeans, the tone of the following sections of Smith's report suggest that this 'jealousy' prevailed within the Chinese community. This political in-fighting amongst the Chinese merchants and shopkeepers had long-lasting consequences for the future direction of the watchmen and undoubtedly led to the subordinate position of the Chinese in its operation.\n\nAs had occurred with earlier attempts to give the local population", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214634, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "The Chans and the Ngs, therefore, insofar as their clans originated in these difficult years, fall entirely into a widespread local pattern.\n\nThe Ngs today divide their clan into four Fong, or branches, and twelve descent lines (see Table 1). The four Fong are the descendants of the four eldest of the six grandsons of Ng Shing-tat (the descent lines from the youngest two died out, probably during the troubles of the Coastal Evacuation). There are few descendants of the first three Fong, which each comprise only one descent line, stemming from the single sole survivor of that Fong still alive after the Coastal Evacuation. The fourth Fong comprises the remaining nine descent lines. Of these, three stem from the three eldest of the five descendants of the fourth grandson of Ng Shing-tat who remained alive after the Coastal Evacuation (the descent line of the youngest of these five later died out). The remaining six Fourth Fong descent lines all stem from the fourth eldest of the Coastal Evacuation survivors from the fourth Fong. Three stem from the three eldest great-grandsons of this man, and the final three from the three sons of the fourth great-grandson. It would seem likely that only eight males survived the Coastal Evacuation from this clan, i.e., the stem ancestor of the first three Fong and the five survivors from the fourth Fong. Thus the present clan divisions reflect the post-Coastal Evacuation history of the clan, in the period 1668-1750.\n\nThere is very little in the records to support the villagers' belief that their ancestors were followers of the Sung boy-Emperor Ping. It would have been Ng Shing-tak's great-grandfather who would have been the head of the clan at the time of the boy-Emperor Ping, but the Tsuk Po merely records that he lived at Ng Ka Chung, and is buried there. The last of the Sung members of the Chan clan, Chan Yu-wa, BARVE, must have died very young, and very close to the end of the dynasty: it is possible that he was connected with the Sung remnant court, and possible that he died in their service, but the Tsuk Po is silent on this. Given that the Chans were living at Nga Pin Heung a hundred years before the Sung Court came to Kowloon, it is very likely that they would have been swept up in its support in the period when they found themselves living on the doorsteps of the Court.\n\nThus the first people to settle near Nga Tsin Wai seem to have been the Chans, who settled at Nga Pin Heung about 1150-1170, probably in a development associated with the removal of the Salt Intendancy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214714, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "93\n\ntold the Editor:\n\n'Villagers are out to \"screw\" Government.'\n\nOne Scottish, retired, senior civil servant and his Chinese wife who was herself at one time a government servant, both level-headed people, agreed between them it was 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui. Some other Chinese government servants take a similar view.\n\n'Perhaps some of the older Tang Clan members really believe in tun fu', a Chinese, past District Officer who is outwardly quite westernised but inwardly still very Chinese, told the Author. 'But not the younger ones.\n\nSome young people do believe, nevertheless. And for those that do not it does not mean to say that, as they grow older, their views will not change. Such people, in middle age or when they are elderly, sometimes become the most enthusiastic proponents of traditional values.\n\n'A woman who did not believe in feng shui nearly died', the Author was once informed. 'After recovering she became convinced', the informer continued (Waters; 1997, 63).\n\nIt has been argued by Wong Siu-lun that most Hong Kong Chinese are westernised only in a superficial sense (Evans; 1997, 3, 7). Inwardly, they are very Chinese. To a large number traditions and festivals are important. There were, however, few young people at the Pat Heung tun fu ceremony as it was a weekday and pupils had to go to school. The ceremony was, nevertheless, well attended by adults. There are, of course, other reasons for attending. In some cases villagers were expected to be there by others. In any case people could meet old friends and chat. They might even get invited to a lunch at government expense.\n\nNot everyone agrees believing is all a question of money. James Hayes, a past District Officer in the New Territories, wrote (Hayes; 1998):\n\nsome European civil engineers and contractors' staff stated their belief (to me) that it was all hooey ...'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214978, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "30\n\nAfter the First World War and the return to China of the Powers, a movement to finance a new westernized Chinese élite began among the Powers. Each country hoped that the Chinese educated by them would naturally favour their country of education; gratitude, ties of friendship, as well as cultural and emotional orientations, would see to that. This also Leopold, the astute King of the Belgians, had foreseen. He had spoken of it urging that young men be sent to Belgium for training. \"Ils seront des nôtres,\" they will be ours.\n\nAbout her own Western studies, she wrote the following equitable lines:\n\nI myself was, in 1935, a recipient of a scholarship derived from the Belgian Boxer indemnity fund; I went to study in Belgium, following in my father's footsteps. But it was, in the end, China's money which was being spent to educate me, it was the Chinese people paying the Boxer Indemnity of 1900 who paid for my years in Belgium. And so my gratitude must go to them, for making me in turn, as they made my father, a privileged person, a returned student from abroad. Later I was to study in England, on a British Council scholarship, and also be grateful to England. But this has not influenced me in the end. For truth is truth and it cannot be bought at any price.\n\nVigilant yet dispassionate, non-compromising yet lacking even the slightest urge for revenge, always eager to unveil painful truths about enslavement of one people by another, Han Suyin is a born defender of human dignity and human rights. In the pages of her autobiographical/historical cycle, multiple shrewd remarks about interference of indigenous Chinese and foreign powers' interests in Old China are a most natural and therefore a matter-of-factly element, masterly interwoven in a vast political and economic panorama of Chinese life in that pre-1949 epoch. After all, the so-called 'gunboat diplomacy' and also the other forms of political blackmail, extensively practised by the white powers to threaten feudal, backward and corrupt society in order to press even more lucrative concessions out of it, had directly affected Han Suyin's and her family clan's existence on an everyday basis. Surprisingly enough and in the circumstances incomparably more neutral (or even favourable) for her, Han Suyin wrote a stunning and remarkable book - And the Rain My Drink - devoted entirely to the declining post-World War II period of the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215848, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "80\n\nAppendix:\n\nA Failed Scholar\n\nBy the late 1950s, degree men like Mr. Lo Sheung-fu were few, but it was still possible, by enquiry in the villages, to seek out some old men who, in the language of an earlier day, were failed scholars. By great good fortune, when District Officer, South, I was able to visit one of their number in Ho Chung, one of the larger villages of the Sai Kung area.\n\nBorn in 1876, old Mr. Chan Min-yue was already 86 years old. His house was still older, and its interior, blackened with soot, had like its owner seen better days. The dwelling was one of several within a large courtyard, approached from the outer village street by an entrance gate, and situated within his own clan's section of the village.\n\nBent and shuffling in his gait, Mr. Chan was rather deaf. He could not see very well, and his voice quavered, but he responded well to my enquiries and his memory was still good.\n\nHis education had been long and ultimately expensive: first, at little cost, in his own village school for seven years, then in Canton for another six or seven at a considerable annual outlay to his father. One hundred silver dollars was the figure mentioned, though this was probably an approximation intended to convey the sense of expense. Board and lodging had been required, as well as tuition fees. All in all, he had taken the prescribed examinations leading to the first degree five or six times, but always without success. His father had become reluctant to spend even more money, and the young man had to return to the village. He then went into business with a herbal and Chinese medicine firm in a market town, which (he told me) provided him with a pension when he retired.\n\nUnlike many other failed scholars, Mr. Chan had never taught school, but his proficiency in writing scrolls and couplets had been recognized and utilized in the village and neighbourhood. He carried on with his calligraphy until old age and increasing debility obliged him to stop. Men of this type were accustomed to meeting together for literary pursuits. They composed poetry and discussed its merits, held literary competitions, and wrote scrolls and couplets, replicating at the local level the more prestigious gatherings of senior officials, gentry and literati of the kind to be found in all the district and prefectural cities of China, and in the provincial capitals, like Canton.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216072, "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": 371, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "305\n\nMason that 'You [Mason] have been left at Chinkiang not because you have been overlooked, but because you have shown a particular proficiency in acquiring the Nanking dialect, and I did not wish to interrupt these studies by transferring you to another province. It is also important for me to train certain men in the intricate business of Transit Passes40 peculiar to Chinkiang alone, and I have been pleased with your mastery of this branch of our work'.\n\nFor the next couple of months Mason's name crops up in some dozen or so of Hart's letters, usually towards the end of a letter on, what were to Hart, weightier matters. Such comments included 'The Yamen finds \"Mason Affair\" very handy: it can now return the Legation fire neatly after last summer's bombardment sustained for the riots, etc.\n\nMason was brought to trial in the British Supreme Court before the British Consul-General and the Shanghai Settlement's Chief Judge, N J Hannen, on 29 October 1891, charged simply with the illegal possession of dynamite to which he pleaded guilty. Although he had declared before and after the trial that he was a member of the Gelao Hui, had acted to further its plans to overthrow its government, and had personally brought the dynamite into China with unlawful intent, these facts were not mentioned at the trial nor did the Chinese government produce any evidence. The Chinese Legation in London later exerted pressure to demand that Mason, on his release from prison in Shanghai, be tried in Hong Kong on charges of crimes and conspiracy against the Chinese state. Mason was, however, not tried again.\n\nHart, at one point, refers to Mason's comrade Croskey who Mason himself mentioned in his \"Confessions\" as a spy, put there by the Customs Service to watch Mason and who, according to Mason, betrayed and ruined him. In practice Croskey had been promoted from the outdoor staff to the indoor, and then posted to Zhenjiang. Mason somewhat naively explained his plans and plots to Croskey shortly after they met, and Croskey informed his boss in Zhenjiang who in turn asked Croskey to learn more about Mason's plan. Croskey resigned from the Service in the November 'on Sir Robert Hart's recommendation'. Croskey, according to Hart, was a promising young American citizen, a grandson of the first Sir Thos. Bazley, a Manchester MP.41", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]