RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author Vol 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 93 The climax of the dramatic struggle between No-cha and his father Li Ching may be summed up here: Li Ching, hearing that No-cha had come again with his magic arms, was infuriated. He mounted his black horse and came out to meet No-cha with his halberd with crescent-shaped blade. The fighting had not lasted many minutes when Li Ching was in a profuse perspiration and had to flee for his life. No-cha pursued him with desperate efforts and nearly caught him when Mu-cha, the second son of Li Ching and disciple of the Immortal P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra), came on the scene. Although they were brothers they had not known each other before and No-cha had to tell Mu-cha the whole story. Mu-cha rebuked No-cha and called him a patricide, and defended the father with his precious sword. No-cha hurled his golden brick in the air which fell on the back of Mu-cha and hurt him. No-cha resumed his pursuit, and as Li Ching, being exhausted, did not wish to be overtaken by his son, he drew his sword and was about to commit suicide when he was stopped by a Taoist who was no other than the Wên-shu Kuang-fa Tien-tsun (Mañjusri) who was invited to come by Immortal T'ai-i to give No-cha an impressive lesson. Wên-shu now hid Li Ching in his grotto and seized the naughty hero with his "Dragon-concealing Stake"--which was also called "Seven Precious Golden Lotuses"--which in a mist of dust fastened No-cha's neck and feet with three golden rings and bound him to a golden stake. Wên-shu ordered Chin-cha, his disciple and No-cha's eldest brother, to beat No-cha black and blue with a staff until T'ai-I himself appeared. At the intercession of T'ai-i, No-cha was released and both father and son were brought before the two Taoist masters. T'ai-i rebuked the father for his petty-minded action and told him to go home. After Li Ching's After Li Ching's retreat, he instructed No-cha not to bear any grudge against his father and charged him to return to the grotto in Mt. Ch'ien-yuan on the pretext that he would stay with Wên-shu and play chess. No-cha, raging with anger, taking advantage of the absence of the two masters, pursued his father again. When Li Ching was in danger of falling into the hand of the son, another Taoist, the Jan-têng Tao-jên (Dipamkara) of the Yüan-chüeh Cave on the Vulture Peak, appeared on the scene as if by accident. He sheltered Li Ching behind, and when No-cha demanded single combat with his father, he increased Li Ching's strength by spitting on him and touching him on the back. Li Ching was then able to get the upper hand in the fighting and No-cha was defeated. No-cha was beside himself with rage. He jumped aside suddenly and tried to pierce Jan-têng with his spear, but the thrust was repelled by a white lotus flower emitted from the latter's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 164 NOTES AND QUERIES (a) the New Village was built entirely by inhabitants of the old village; (b) two of the houses in the New Village were built 1860-70 and some earlier, some later; (c) many families owned houses in each village; (d) many families owned 2 or 3 houses; (e) none of the cultivated land in the valley was (1893) owned by outsiders: (f) one of the villagers had been away in Singapore for over 10 years, another (most likely the future Sir Shou-son CHOW) was in Shanghai and one was “a cook for an Englishman”.12 The People of the Villages. The inhabitants of the two villages were all Cantonese, as opposed to Hakka etc.13 There were five clans in 1893. The CHOW family accounted for most of the Old Village and part of the New Village. This clan is of particular interest to us because Sir Shou-son CHOW, the well-known leader of the Chinese community before the war, was one of its members (see below). This lineage has other branches in several villages on Lamma Island, to which they seem to have migrated from Hong Kong. The other old families in the two villages came from clans whose main settlements are to-day still in Pokfulam on Hong Kong Island and other villages on Lamma. The marriages of those surviving old people in the village born in the decades 1880-1900 still reflect the close ties of family and village which bound together the scattered settlements of old Hong Kong. Enquiry showed another aspect of this unity, i.e. the participation of the two villages and the old village of Wong Nei Chung - with whose people they were related by marriage - in the series of ten yearly Ta Chiu or Pacification of Spirits ceremonies which appear to have been held regularly up to 50 or 60 years ago and in which my informants participated on several occasions in their youth. Origin of the Name Hong Kong. According to Prof. LO Hsiang-lin of Hong Kong University, the name Hong Kong means "incense port" and the village along the northern shore of the present Aberdeen, "extending as far as the present settlement of Little Hong Kong", once acted (in Ming and early Manchu ...) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g BOOK REVIEWS 173 and its raison d'être: why we find rows of burial urns placed on the hill-sides of the "Territories, and why more permanent omega-shaped graves are scattered rather than in neat burial grounds. The individualism and competition of geomancy in relation to the ancestors is to some extent balanced in another aspect of ancestral care with which the author deals: ancestor worship itself. But even so, at every level of a complex lineage, it seems, segments may be in competition with each other in ancestor worship. Differences in social status and ambition are shown in the way the very ancestors are admitted to the ancestral halls (through their tablets) and in the performance of the grand rites for such lineage forbears. Two other sections, again well illustrated by New Territories material, should be of particular interest to people here. One is on social status, power and government, and the other on relationships between lineages. We are told of the rivalries between powerful higher-order groups, with illustrations taken from the Tang and the Man groups which have a history of mastery of large parts of the county from which the New Territories were cut out. Most of us know of the Tang lineage in Hong Kong; if not by name, at least by one of its villages in Kam Tin — the walled village often visited by tourists to the Colony. The large Man community at San Tin, near the border, is also becoming popular with visitors. The strength of such lineages was not only in their man and fire power, as the author says, but in the command also of economic resources and call on political influence through scholarly ties with the traditional bureaucracy. But smaller communities might also combine with other weaker groups to form more powerful organizations to stand up to high-order lineages. These groups are what the author calls "yeuk combinations". In Cantonese yeuk (*) popularly means a pact, but it appears the term might have deeper political associations — a question Freedman goes into. Several yeuk combinations existed here: one at Taipo, and others at Tsuen Wan, Sai Kung and Sha Tin. Some of the armed resistance to the British when they first arrived in the 'Territories was bound up with such complexes. The author warns us that this book does not represent the end of the story. I would say, however, that his skill in drawing on Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 37 How were such composite forces recruited? Wakeman stresses three factors: gentry leadership, the she-hsüeh (local school) as an organisational node, and agnatic kinship. Let us consider them in turn. "Usually a gentry organizer would form a cohesive t'uan-lien around one town When he had assembled his men, he persuaded the elders of neighbouring villages to enroll their banners under his . . . From such integral nuclei, other, less tightly organized 'banners' could be extended: but gentry leadership was the essential factor."29 She-hsüeh were often resurrected or founded to serve as headquarters for militia forces: "in 1836 . . . village leaders near Whampoa had become alarmed by secret society activity. Twenty-four of the villages built a common hall under the guise of a 'local school' at a market town on the south side of Honam island. There the elders met to try miscreants and bind them over to the district magistrate."30 During the period discussed by Wakeman (1839-61), the she-hsüeh served as "recruiting depots, treasuries, meeting halls, posting places, and drill grounds." Kinship was also significant in the formation of militia: "clan and t'uan-lien were mutually intermingled in Kwangtung during the 1840's and '50's. The militia of a uniclan village was nothing more than a clan organization."32 Kinship ties might constitute an important organizational element even in the case of more widely based militia. Wakeman has shown that, of the twenty-five leaders of the Tung-p'ing militia, 60 percent shared surnames.33 The possible relationship between these factors and Skinner's analysis of marketing systems is striking. The most obvious instance is that of the twenty-four villages which combined to establish a she-hsüeh at a market town on Honam island. Skinner says of this association that it "can only be interpreted as a formalization of structure within a standard marketing community.”34 To take another example, Wakeman reports that one of the leaders of militia in the San-yuan-li area combined the "twelve local schools" of his region (En-chou) into a defence command.35 En-chou lies within the area classified by Skinner as the central region of Kwangtung province. In the 1890's the average number of villages per market town in this region was 17.9.36 Could this also have been a “formalization of structure within a standard marketing community"? ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 71 it was chipped on each edge to take a rope or rattan band, indicating later use as either a net-sinker or a hammer; perhaps both, as it seems water-worn. The material is a welded tuff, a very common rock type in Hong Kong. From shore below sand cliff at south end of isthmus, which had been cut through: hand hoe, found below the original centre of the sandbank, roughly chipped from a pebble of banded rhyolite, and showing slight signs of wear at the acute angles of the trapezoid formed by its outline. Rounded stone of hard welded tuff, worked into shape by pecking to make a rolling-stone of the type used in the Polynesian game known as 'LAFO' in the Uvea and Tonga islands, or the game of bowls practised in the Hawaiian islands. This rolling-stone was found on the west beach about 20 yards from where the hand hoe lay, and near the sand cliff.* It appears slightly roughened at the centre of each smooth side, possibly to give a better grip. This is not the only rolling-stone found on the Colony's beaches: another in my collection comes from Castle Peak, and is close in shape and size to the specimens shown in the British and Honolulu museums. 3. Found loose: exact find position not known: Stone of pentagonal shape, sides unequal, with signs of hammering at the long point and on one edge. The side between the point and the worn edge has been flaked to some degree of sharpness, while the other sides are left flat. The rock resembles a fine-grained grit, and must have been imported. Two small stones shaped like the point of a knife, one of a fine-grained shale, the other of a thin-bedded shale with lenticles of grit. The former shows edges polished and curved so as to meet at a point, now broken off. Possibly used as grave goods. Semi-circular stone of gray shale with pinkish stains, chipped on outer edge, and with inner edge hollowed out by chipping or pecking. The shape is very roughly that of the ritual jade (#), the image of the god of the North in the belief of Chou times. Stone axe polisher of white muscovite-bearing sandstone, originally used for arrow straightening and polishing; four of its five used sides have been slightly worn hollow, Stone adze, half-shouldered, with one side polished flat from butt to edge, and showing chipping on its edge caused by use; made from a fine-grained hard gray shale, *It can be seen in the centre of Plate 3. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 78 W. SCHOFIELD bears glaze, mostly gray, yellow, brown or blue, and was made on the potter's wheel. The levels of seven pieces are recorded: the rest were picked up loose. Most of the pieces found, both loose and in situ, can be fairly safely ascribed to the Sung dynasty. Two of those from known levels are more doubtful; one jar fragment, with a band of four shallow grooves, horizontal, round the exterior, which is covered by worn black glaze, may be older, and was found at 122 cm., the other, found in two pieces at 97 and 107 cm., has been ascribed to the Yuan dynasty. It is part of the lip and body of a brown-glazed vessel with rounded lip and one loop just below the junction of the lip and body, rising vertically in the centre, intended to hold a cord for keeping in place a stopper dish covering the mouth. Three shallow grooves decorate the neck, and three go round the body below the undecorated zone in which the loop is attached. The whole piece is glazed brown outside, and this extends to half way down the inside of the neck. All but these two fragments were found at an average depth of 60 cm. in the bank. One of them was believed to be of Ming date by Professor Shellshear, who found and kept it; and the small fragment of a bowl lip from 41 cm. may well be from the large piece of a Sung tea bowl with wave ornament under the glaze inside, found loose on the beach, although they cannot be precisely fitted together. The depths of all these pieces cannot be fully relied on as indicating the time of their original deposition in the bank, as the upper levels down to about one metre have often been disturbed by later burials of bodies by boat people. Of the other pieces found loose, one had a flat unglazed foot, a kiln mark inside, at the bottom, and dark brown glaze and was undecorated: it was a small shallow dish about 10 cm. across the rim, and might well be of Tang date. Another bore typical Sung type underglaze flower ornament, made partly with a 16-tooth comb; it may have been a large tea-bowl, and its glaze was of the celadon shade. One large yellow-glazed rice bowl, its foot and foot-rim fully glazed, was undecorated and could be almost any date between Sung and early Ming. Finally there are three pieces which may well be considered modern. Two were picked up loose; one a complete small duck-egg blue wine or spirits bowl; another the bottom of a rice bowl ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 102 CARL T. SMITH to Hong Kong, practiced law, was a member of the Legislative Council from 1929 to 1937. Another Government employee—although his family was not as distinguished as that of Tso Aon, but who does appear on a number of our elite lists was the Overseer of Coolies in the Surveyor General's Department. Cheong Assow was appointed to this office in September, 1844. He also invested in real estate, which upon his death in 1897 was divided among his seven sons. In 1848 the Surveyor General suggested that Assow was underpaid, as he found him an invaluable man in his department: + The headman Assow I cannot speak too highly of, he is intelligent, honest, and careful, and displays great zeal for the Department. He understands English perfectly, and I can trust him to make measurements for me upon lines that are clearly defined, which he performs with great accuracy. His wages are very small for a man of his usefulness, and I should wish much that they were raised as he is one of the most deserving Chinamen I ever met. His education under me (for he has now been in the Department nearly five years) has progressed so satisfactorily that he is of more service than many of the English overseers I have employed, whose wages are never less than $30 per mensem.36 THE GROUP EMPLOYED BY MISSIONS Another group which identified itself with Hong Kong was a small number of Christians who came here from Malacca, Singapore and Macao under the patronage of missionaries. As Christian converts they had renounced the traditional practices connected with the veneration of ancestors and thus had cut themselves off from participation in the ritual observances which bound the Chinese family together. There seemed little chance that they could expect to be welcomed back to their home villages. In a sense they were as marginal to the social structure of China as were those who had had to flee China because of criminal activities. Unlike the tradesmen and small merchants they did not view Hong Kong as an opportunity to make a quick fortune which they could take back to their home village ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE COLONY OF HONG KONG 191 but the area of those in China, so far as already ascertained, amounts, it has been said, to 400,000 square miles. All that will yet come in for the benefit of the world at large, and I hope in the first place for the benefit of the nation itself. If the movement of its Government seems to be thus far mainly in the way of military preparation, can we blame it? It would all be found but a very feeble affair in another struggle with ourselves; but I like to see the manifestation of a purpose in China to try and hold its own:-she is the gnarled oak, the growth of four millenniums, which will not bend to us as the sapling of Japan is doing. And we have given the Japanese little reason to do anything but love us, while we have given China much reason to fear us and hate us. I am not here to-night to express my views on the opium traffic, but I may surely ask, without giving offence to any one, whether, if we had forced that traffic on Japan as we have done on China, the relations between Japan and foreign nations would be what they are to-day. If there be a man here who thinks that there does not glow in me as true a British patriotism as in himself, I only say he does not know me; but I thank God that the United States preceded us in the opening of the Japanese Empire. Their treaty of the 29th July, 1858, recognizes the prohibition of the importation of opium, and that made by Lord Elgin, on the 27th of the following month, does the same, and with a very stringent addition. Thus one thing which has embittered and fettered our intercourse with China, and will continue to do so, so long as it exists, has had no place in our intercourse with Japan; and the result has been accordingly. It is in the evidence of Sir Rutherford Alcock before a parliamentary commission, that again and again Prince Kung declared to him that take away opium and Christian Missions, and there was no concession which the Government was not prepared to make to further the extension of legitimate commerce. We are suffering at this day in Hongkong from the opium traffic, as from nothing else. The Custom houses at the two entrances to our harbour do the greatest injury, I am persuaded, to the development of a healthy and extensive trade with all the seaboard of the south. They were founded on the ground of the smuggling of opium from the Colony. Take that away, and there is no locus standi left for their continuance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS 75 to be attached to the back of a puppet general and the like. There was also a wooden trunk containing about 30 puppet-bodies. The orchestra sat on the backstage floor. The band-leader had a set of drums and a clapper. There were two pairs of gongs, two sonas and a pair of two-stringed violins. There were also two female singers with the orchestra. The whole troupe comprised 12 persons and was paid H.K.$2,500 to perform one hour in the afternoon and a full Opera for four hours in the evening. Before the performance started, the puppets were taken out of the trunk, a stick was attached to each hand and the headless bodies were hung on a string at the joint of stick and hand back-stage (Plate V). The left puppeteer was obviously the technician. He adjusted the head on the puppet with glue (UHU), fastened the headgear, bent the wires of the hand around a sword or a halbard, hooked the leading rod into the back and led it onto the stage. While fighting the puppet often loses its head or its sword, but it is quickly repaired and the action continues. The puppeteer guides the right arm with his right hand, left hand and back-stick with his left hand. This technique gives the largest range of movements. If a general has to show his strength by leg movements, the puppeteer transfers the three sticks into his left hand and moves the legs with a fourth stick. The scene is often suddenly tumultuous when whole armies appear. The puppeteer then holds nine sticks of three puppets in each hand. But it poses a great technical problem to let them pass each other or one group another. (Plate VI) It is difficult to keep them standing on the floor, and when not in action they hang in midair (Plate VII). The puppets cannot walk, they fly over the stage (Plate VI). They can easily kneel down but often uncontrollably spread their legs. After its appearance the puppet's back-stick is taken off, its head is put back into the drawer and its body is hung on the string. The puppet itself is tiny, about 10 inches high. Its body is a carved wooden torso, to which two-jointed legs of wire or wood are attached. The arms are stuffed like sausages with a bend at the elbow, altogether too soft to be well controlled. The costume is very detailed, including the shoes, and cannot be taken off. Only the heads can be exchanged. These heads complete with hairdo are made of clay and painted. Their features resemble the old, small, delicate, glove puppet heads of Fukien. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 168 NOTES AND QUERIES DEEP BAY MARSHES The photograph at Plate XV was taken in March 1973 by Mrs. F. O. P. Hechtel. It shows men and women collecting seaweed from an embanked pond at Deep Bay. They had come over from Chinese Territory by boat, bringing a punt with them on deck. The boat was anchored at the outer edge of the bund, left high and dry at low tide, and the punt was launched in the shallow pond and loaded with seaweed which was taken back for pig food. This is still a common practice, and has been observed by Mr. and Mrs. Hechtel on other occasions. This brings in another feature of the marshes. Our printer, and member, Mr. Y. F. Lam of Ye Olde Printerie Ltd., tells me that when he went shooting on the marshes just after the war, his party used regularly to meet a person who came over from Chinese territory using a waak baan (★★) or mud scooter on which he travelled easily over the areas of foreshore and swamp. The man landed at Mai Po, left his mud scooter there, and walked to Yuen Long Market to buy necessaries, after which he would return to Mai Po, load his scooter and set off for home. The mud scooter is also used by oyster farmers in Deep Bay and is an old form of local transportation. Two of them, one old and much used, and one made to order, have recently been obtained by the City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. Plate XVI is by courtesy of the Curator, and shows the used scooter. A very similar contrivance is used in the shrimp fisheries at Stolford on the Bristol channel, Somerset, England, C. M. Yonge writes: 'At Stolford where the nets are secured on soft banks of mud a mile from the shore, the fishermen use a type of intertidal sledge or "mud horse" which they push in front of them and which serves the double purpose of preventing them from sinking deeply in the mud and of carrying back the catch'. (pp. 321-322 of The Sea Shore, Collins, The Fontana New Naturalist paper back, 1963). There is an illustration of the "mud horse" at page 322. Hong Kong. April, 1974. HON. EDITOR ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 BRIDGEMAN'S LETTERS FROM CHINA AND HONG KONG 81 pulled down and so there is an end to all amateur acting for the future.12 Shortly after the ignominious end of amateur dramatics in Hong Kong, Orlando found a pastime to his taste. Perhaps his interest originated with the visit to the Macao aviary, for he began to keep birds, but even this seemingly innocuous pastime had its hazards. My only amusement here is in keeping birds. I have a great many canaries and remarkably fine one(s). They sing beautifully and in the daytime I sit in my balcony and read and listen to their beautiful singing. They are at times almost too much, for the moment one begins they all strike up and sing and try (to see) which can make the most variations.13 Early in the new year, he found another small amusement, the band, and a new problem, rats. My chief amusement here is listening to the band at practising hours, so heavily does our time hang on our hands. I walk occasionally for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and the rest of the day I read and write. You talk of mice overrunning your house, our places are so full of rats that even whilst we are reading and writing in our rooms they come out and play in the middle of the floor. They eat up the legs of our tables and chairs which are made of camphor wood and of which they are very fond. Your description of one being found drowned in the milk is certainly very nasty, but even there you are better off than us, for we have not even the luxury of milk for them to drown themselves in. Although in China, I have not tasted one cup of tea half so good as I have in England.14 Within a few months, Bridgeman had acquired a taste for Chinese tea and was even admitting a fondness for it.15 He even went as far as to admit that some of the best tea he had ever tasted had been in Hong Kong. He became such a connoisseur of tea that he insisted on keeping his own teapot at mess as the other officers didn't brew it quite to his liking. By his own admission Orlando had few close friends while stationed in China and Hong Kong.16 His letters give the impression he led a very isolated and solitary existence. Occasionally though, mention is made in his letters of individuals of interest to the present day student of nineteenth century China. Thomas Francis Wade, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q TIN-YUKE CHAR and by boat to Honolulu, arriving on October 29, 1881, after a tour of nine months and eight days. The harbor of Honolulu was crowded with people welcoming the safe return of the King. The Royal Hawaiian Band played "Home, Sweet Home." Arches entwined with flowers spanned the streets. The Chinese merchants of Honolulu erected a triumphal arch at the intersection of King and Fort Streets. As King Kalakaua mentioned in his July 3rd letter from Rome, "The trip appears as if a mixed panorama and a dream. We have seen Emperors, Kings, temples, and pagodas until one gets apparently confused which end to commence and where and how it will be finished. So many varieties of the people, the different nationalities, the customs and scenery of the places we have visited that have made our travels so pleasant." As one historian commented, "The trip had been a great experience. Kalakaua had stood where Alexander the Great had stood and Julius Caesar, and Napoleon; and the foremost rulers of his own day had welcomed him with cannon salutes and guards of honor. Pomp and circumstance agreed with Kalakaua. He came home, more convinced than ever that a king should rule as well as reign."10 Another result of the King's tour was the legislative approval of his proposal to provide education in foreign countries for selected Hawaiian youths. This progressive policy was inspired by what he observed on his journey. One of the students sent abroad was Kapaa who went to China in 1883. The Reverend Andrew Happer in Canton was asked to be Kapaa's instructor and guardian as evidenced in the March 7, 1883 letter from Walter Gibson, then Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to F. Bulkeley-Johnson, Hawaiian Consul General in Hong Kong: "that Mr. Kapaa's visit to China is made in pursuance of a resolution of the Legislature, providing for the education of Hawaiian youths. His Majesty the King desired that one of these should proceed to China and there study the Chinese language and customs. I, therefore, invoke your good offices on behalf of young Kapaa, who has been selected for this career, and shall be obliged by your placing him where he can learn the dialects (Cantonese and Hakka) chiefly spoken by the Chinese who are here, and the written language, acquiring at the same time familiarity with Chinese manners and ideas. I am, of course, anxious that while pursuing this course of study, Mr. Kapaa should not lose such European culture as he has acquired." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 208 MAURICE FREEDMAN own region. (See his History of Chinese Civilisation, in Chinese, Taiwan Chinese Book Company, 1956, pp. 57-60. Hsiao, op. cit., pp. 345ff., translates a large part of this section of Liang's book but fails to indicate that Liang makes modern rural independence rest historically on heung yeuk). 29. Early British reports on the New Territories speak not only of yeuk but also of tung, ‘cave', a term which in some contexts may be translated as a valley. When the social history of the New Territories comes to be written the significance of the groupings going under the names of heung, yeuk, and tung will need to be carefully gone into. (See Hayes, op. cit., pp. 9-12, 14, 25 for statements based on Lockhart's material. I am myself sceptical about some of Lockhart's data on local organisation and local tribunals, but I have not yet marshalled enough historical material to be able to enter into a debate on these topics). For the moment, confining ourselves to the data, such as they are, on yeuk, let us consider the kinds of leadership which were implied in the old system of inter-village relationship. Rich and powerful clans, of which the Tang were a supreme example, were—the paradox is superficial—so tightly connected with officialdom that they could act independently of it and use their power to dominate their neighbours. (In one account I received of the founding of the Tai Po new market the ability of the Man to establish a rival to the Tang market was attributed to the 'pull' they were able to exercise, through a high Man official, at Canton. There was a limit to the influence which any one clan or clan grouping could exert on the state, for officialdom played off one local power centre against another). But dominance could be expressed in some contexts as leadership, for up to a point weaker communities were content to be guided and instructed by stronger, making use of their favours vis-à-vis officialdom, looking to them for protection against other strong communities, and submitting their disputes to them for mediation. (The Man of Tai Hang got themselves into this position of leadership; they had something to offer to the other six yeuk). Past a certain point, however, dominance became oppression, and then the weaker communities might band themselves together. The leaders of such unions (except when, as in the case of the Ts'at Yeuk, a relatively powerful clan took a hand) were not gentlemen but country people (farmers and small business men) whose claims to prominence rested on their economic substance and ability as organisers and spokesmen. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 219 of disbelief is other than what might be called purely contextual. Let me illustrate. Early in my study I found myself, during a visit to a remote coastal village, a fellow guest at lunch with two building contractors engaged in some local works. The conversation between my hosts and me turned to fung shui. One of the contractors spoke fluent English, as I discovered when he addressed me across the table to lament the nuisance caused by geomantic beliefs. I concluded that he had had trouble at some time with geomantic obstructions, and I read into his final remark on the subject an envy for a world where people would not be allowed to raise fung shui against builders; the talk had turned to how the authorities across the border in China had cast out geomancy along with the rest of traditional religion, and the contractor cried: 'Yes, they have cancelled all that bloody nonsense'. (If the others at the table had understood what he had said they would have been very shocked, for they had been giving me an enthusiastic account of fung shui and its benefits). Some weeks later I came across the contractor again, this time in the area where he lives, and, since I was already on good terms with members of the circle within which he moves, I was able to discuss many aspects of Chinese religion with him. I discovered in him a passionate interest in and devotion to fung shui. It is not necessary to conclude that he had been deceiving me on the first occasion. He had perhaps been irritated by the consequences of the fung shui beliefs of others; his own beliefs, bound up with his own interests and those of his close associates, were another matter. Again, I am acquainted with a man in the New Territories whom I may fairly describe as a devotee of geomancy and a constant client of geomancers who, quite sincerely and without any sense of strain, condemns the foolishness of people who raise fung shui objections to government works designed to benefit them. What one believes and how and in what circumstances one chooses to express and implement one's beliefs are two different things. 49. The Administration is often forced to pay for geomancy; it is not alone. People make real economic sacrifices for their fung shui beliefs. Graves and dwellings are moved and altered, often at great expense. How are we to define and account for the nature of this faith? Fung shui is in fact a complex of beliefs concerned with a central theme in Chinese metaphysics: man's place in nature and the universe. But the last few words are a Western way of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 150 W. SCHOFIELD morning visiting Nei Kwu Chau to discuss the problem of their fifteen children. They had been taught by a private teacher in the ancestral temple: but he had left, and the Education Department were asked to find someone to replace him. They had replied that the children would have to go to Cheung Chau, thus raising in an acute form the problem common in villages all over England to-day. Few if any teachers would volunteer to teach fifteen children in so poor an island as Nei Kwu Chau in those days. The problem of providing one was then found insoluble, and as the only means of transport to Cheung Chau was by junk or sampan, I fear the rate of literacy on Nei Kwu Chau must have declined badly. Another event which affected life in Cheung Chau in 1925-6 was the change of Governor in November 1925, during the great Communist-inspired but mainly Nationalist strike which started in June that year. Sir C. Clementi increased the D. O. South's public works vote from the absurdly small figure of $400 to $1000 or more. This made it possible to repave some of the chief streets of the village with granite blocks set in concrete, which cost about $800. He also paid a State visit to the island in the summer of 1926. Flags and decorations were put up, and practically all the proceedings were in Chinese, including a lengthy prepared speech by H.E., written out in characters by (I believe) Mr. Sung Hok Pang. He walked through the main streets, keeping up conversation with the Kaifongs, and showing that despite a long absence in British Guiana and elsewhere his Chinese scholarship had undergone no observable decline. The chief impression of the day that remained with me was the heat! While I was District Officer South I attended two other functions of importance, both in the Northern district. In 1925 the Government had had the imagination and sympathy to restore to the Tang clan the village gates of Kam Tin, removed in 1899 because of the clan's opposition to the original leasing of the New Territory and taken, as I heard, to Sir Henry Blake's estate in Ireland. The ceremony of reopening the restored gates took place in May, just before the big Strike began: its central point was to be the opening of the gates to admit H.E. Sir R. Stubbs. As he rose up from his seat the local band struck up, and this so startled a small pig rooting in the moat that he fled for shelter over the causeway to his sty in the village, just getting ahead of H.E. and bursting through the gates! The reward for the Government's attitude was seen in the autumn ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 118 C. MARTIN WILBUR the group is bound up in a single enterprise, forms yet another striking example of this situation. By unity of time is meant that deeply rooted conception of the immortality of the family, by which all members of the family, living, dead and yet unborn make up the corpus of the whole. It is difficult not to believe, indeed, that the dead are not more important than the living. "Who will look after the graves of our ancestors?" is the almost epic question invariably asked when emigration is suggested as a source of relief from famine and overcrowding. The system of ancestor worship is postulated upon this unity of the family over the span of ages. Even family property cannot be considered as owned by the living generation: land and goods are inherited from the forefathers and are again to be passed on to the descendants. The family tie easily bridges any space. Home, to the typical Chinese, is not always the spot where he is residing. Emotionally, it is his ancestral seat, the place where his forbears have lived and where their graves still exist on the family land. There is nothing harder for a Chinese than to tear himself away from his ancestral home and move. The hearthunger of the expatriate is a theme of their literature found constantly recurring, and can really be understood in all its poignancy only by a Chinese. A man who is compelled to leave because of economic pressure or by some other powerful force still looks back upon the place he left as his home and expects ultimately to return to it, certainly after death for burial. No matter how far afield, he will consider himself as part of the family group remaining at home. This family cohesiveness as easily overrides space as it does time. One should be careful not to regard this central fact of family cohesiveness romantically. Having beneficial aspects, it is also the root of many evils inherent in the system. In a self-contained society, which changed only very slowly, it has been of marked advantage; but at the same time it has made for a social vision limited for all practical purposes to the family alone. Because of it nepotism is almost a religious duty. The whole system has placed a retarding burden upon the capable few. Again, the system strongly discriminated against women, who had no place in the all-important practice of ancestor worship, and were likewise excluded 1 Mallory, Walter H.; China: Land of Famine, p. 100. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 53 that was the extent of our Christmas Day fare, breakfast, dinner and supper. And there we sat on the floor from seven thirty in the morning until four in the afternoon, wondering what was going to happen next. In the meantime, as the soldiers went through the house from top to bottom, they found a few of the Royal Engineers, a couple of Canadian officers and some soldiers. When the Japanese saw these uniformed men they no doubt thought that we were also soldiers, though dressed as we were in cassocks. Four of the above-mentioned officers, one a fine fellow named Lawrence, a Lieutenant of the Engineers, were immediately trussed up with ropes binding their arms behind their backs, and made to squat on the floor with us. Another group of some seven or eight was tied up in a similar manner but led away directly, and as we have every reason to believe, were bayonetted to death. Among this group were a few wounded soldiers and one who walked up our front walk waving a white handkerchief in surrender. As we observed Lt. Lawrence bound and sitting on the floor in front of us, we noticed that he was in acute pain because of the tightness of the ropes. At this, Father Meyer spoke to one of the officers who had tied him up, and requested that he loosen the rope a little. At first, he paid not the least attention, but finally walked over to Lt. Lawrence and pulled the ropes even tighter, which made the veins in the poor man's neck swell up and his face became distorted with pain. Father Meyer expostulated, but in vain, though after about five minutes another officer came over and loosened the ropes to an endurable position. While we were sitting on the floor, one of the soldiers, a Canadian, said he would like to go to confession and the priest nearest him performed this duty for him, the Japanese being none the wiser. During the night while the battle was raging outside around our house three British soldiers who had been wounded were brought in and laid on the floor in the west corridor. There in the morning we found them, but as the Japanese burst in so early we could do practically nothing for them. During the day we made signs to the Japanese that we wanted to help these soldiers but our request was refused. Going in and out of the house the Japanese soldiers passed repeatedly by these wounded men and at one time, I saw a Japanese take his rifle and lower the point of the bayonet until it touched the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 59 Father Szeliga, who was untied, handed it around and we all took a sip of the precious liquid, but the half-full canteen did not go far among thirty-four parched throats. Later on, a second canteen was handed in, and we had another swallow. We continued to ask and make signs for food, and at length, at four-thirty in the afternoon, we heard a commotion outside. Our door opened a little wider, and a few Japanese soldiers, one apparently a petty officer, brought in and distributed to each a small package of army hardtack and a can of evaporated milk undoubtedly from our own store. We found some sort of implement to open the cans, and we had our first meal of hardtack and milk. Not knowing what the future had in store, we drank only half the milk and kept the remainder for the morrow, just in case! An attempt to explain to the officer who came with the food that two of our men had dysentery met with no response. Then we pointed to our bound hands and asked to see a higher-ranking officer. To this, he replied that tonight we would be taken to the headquarters of the gendarmes, and hope sprung up anew in our breasts. However, as the night came on, no officer appeared, and we sought our bed on the floor as on the preceding night, but with a little less inconvenience, as during the day we had managed to clean up a little more of the debris, or at least to push it aside and thus made a little more sleeping space. During the course of the day, a few Japanese soldiers came along and peeked in through the crack in our door, and one of them threw in a couple of pieces of dirt or stones. As we lay down to sleep that night, we noticed shadows playing on our wall, and looking out surreptitiously, we saw that the Japanese had kindled some fires nearby, the flames of which partially illuminated our quarters. A second look confirmed our suspicion - they were cremating the bodies of the dead. A little later on, we thought we heard English voices outside, but could not distinguish them clearly. The next morning, we found that some captured British soldiers had been billeted in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the house to which our garage was attached, but not being allowed outside, we, of course, could have no conversation with them. Dawn of the twenty-seventh came, and we had breakfast in bed! Sitting or standing in our crowded quarters, we finished the few ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 122 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS Hotel. Well, we did justice to that meal! Sister Paul also lost no time in informing us that we had every hope of getting out of the Colony within a few weeks, and that even then she was working on our necessary passes and permits to go to Kwongchauwan. Right then and there we signed our forms, affixed our photographs (she, in her admirable foresight, had even these all prepared) and after the second group had arrived and carried out their part of the program, it was time to sit down to another real honest-to-goodness meal. Of course, these were still wartime meals, but we enjoyed them hugely. Then we trekked down to the bund, caught the eight o'clock bus to Aberdeen, and soon were knocking at the door of Bethany, where we were heartily welcomed by the Superior, Father Bos and Father Chaye, the Belgian priest, who, it will be recalled, was once our fellow-internee at Stanley. They were the only two priests in the House, and the rest of it was at our disposal. Our rooms were all prepared and we lost no time in getting under real covers and settling down to rest, after such an exciting and memorable day. The next morning found us saying Mass at real altars in a real Chapel, and sitting down to breakfast table at which we enjoyed some of the food which again Sister Paul had previously provided. She had also very thoughtfully engaged a cook and a house-boy for us, and everything was shipshape. Bethany is a sort of Rest House for sick and aged Paris Foreign missioners, and the scriptural inscription over its main portal is pregnant with meaning: "Magister, quem amas, infirmatur” "Master, he whom thou lovest, is sick." Just across from Nazareth is the Retreat House and Printing Press of the same society; it is situated on a knoll overlooking the beautiful South China Sea, and on the slopes of its hill are the graves of a hundred of its valiant missioners who have labored in almost all parts of the Far East. Its little Gothic chapel has a charm all its own, and must be redolent of memories for those who have spent some time within the walls of Bethany. Needless to say, we Maryknollers were delighted to have this haven of refuge and we are all more than grateful to the French Fathers who have been so uniformly kind. On the Monday following our arrival, we went to the city in company with Father Troesch in order to secure our ration cards and to register our names and addresses with the proper precinct. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 32 KEITH G. STEVENS include the burning of incense every day. This amongst other things saves the individual having to perform the rite before his ancestral tablets daily. 4 There are no Confucian temples in either Hong Kong or Macau. 5 Although there are obvious and major differences between Daoism, Buddhism and Folk religion, their beliefs and practices are so interwoven and syncretized beyond description, that in practice there is almost a single religious scheme of things. A handful of folk religion temples, mostly in Chaozhou and Min An community resettlement areas, are also centres for spirit medium activity. Chaozhou and Min An people customarily communicate with the major gods through minor gods and spirit mediums, Folk religion is very occasionally referred to as "Spirit worship” (Shen jiao), albeit more by foreigners than by Chinese. Chaozhou and Min An spirit mediums are usually males who speak with the more junior gods, whilst Cantonese spirit mediums are normally female and speak with the spirits of the dead. * The natives in both Hong Kong and Macau are Cantonese. Immigrants over the centuries who brought their own cultural heritage with them are the Hakka, Min An, Hoklo, and Chaozhou. The Chaozhou are speakers of the Chaozhou (sometimes called Swatow) whose native area is eastern Guangdong province. In folk religion the Chaozhou have more in common with their immediate neighbours to the north, the Min An and other Fukienese rather than with their Cantonese neighbours. The total of 450 temples reflects the number found and visited by the author. The total given by the Hong Kong Government Temples Committee of the Home Affairs Department of over 500 private temples registered in Hong Kong is misleading in that their total includes to the author's knowledge quite a number of small temples which have been destroyed, removed or closed down. The author's number of 450 is also inaccurate as there are bound to be a number of very small temples hidden away in residential blocks of flats which would defy discovery without a visit to every floor of every apartment building. * County towns were the centres for official, commercial and religious activities. Villages within present day Hong Kong before the arrival of the British came under the jurisdiction of the mandarin at the county town of Hsin An (present day Pao An), north of the Sino-Hong Kong border. * However, an engraved title can easily be superseded when a more popular deity has been promoted to the main altar, without the title over the entrance being changed. 10 Images on, beside, before and under altars can be categorised into the deities themselves, and their disciples, guardians and attendants. There are also two other categories of figures, seen only on separate altars in some Buddhist temples. These are the likenesses of the founding Abbot and of major donors and their wives. 11 Urban and rural are terms used for the areas where the temples were established, and many a rural temple is now lost in the centre of a vast modern housing estate. Urban temples do not include village temples, they do however include the temples of the market towns such as Taipo and Yuen Long. 12 These "pensioners" are normally the most needy and worthy elderly males or females of the community, voted or appointed into the post and supported there by subscription. 13 See Hong Kong 100 Years Ago (Hong Kong City Hall, 1970) on the sixth page of photographs, though under another titling. Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 106 a boarding house where Europeans can put up at cheap rates on the "Peak". An interesting feature of the island is that nearly all the land is owned by a family association called the Wong Wai Tsak Tong, which has its headquarters in Namtau21. All the buildings, however, are owned by the people who built them, or their modern representatives, who pay a small ground rent to the Tong for their sites. Most of the European houses are on hills, and so are on Crown land, unclaimed by the Tong in 1905 when the land settlement was made. This system of ground landlordism is found very rarely now elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is a relic of the system of paying land tax in distant Namtau by deputy, as happened before 1898, when the Territories were leased. To the north-east of Cheung Chau is Neikwuchau (“Nun Island"). This island once had three villages on it: but two are deserted; the third (Ngau Tau Tong, Cow's Head Pond) still flourishes.22 Pak Pai took its name from the high white rock in the bay off it; Kwo Lo Wan ("The Bay Along the Road") is where the limekiln used to be, Chau Kong ("Old Man Chau") 28 is a small island lying off Neikwuchau opposite Kwo Lo Wan. It is practically a desert island. I have never seen anyone on it. Further to the north-east, beyond Neikwuchau is Pingchau ("Flat Island"). Pingchau is another dumb-bell island, its houses being built on the isthmus, with limekilns thick along the western and southern shores, facing sheltered water. An industry not mentioned so far is gambling, which flourishes vigorously in the large, long shops fronting on the main street. As no Police live on Pingchau, nothing serious can be done to stop it. The island is full of Hakkas and Hoklos, who have little in common save mutual dislike. I once had a very bad riot case to try, in which a man had been killed by someone unknown, and the only thing I could do was to bind everyone over to keep the peace. The chief point is that to my amazement they did so! Leaving Pingchau and travelling east we first come to a group of small uninhabited islands. The first of these, Kau Yi Tsai ("Little Armchair")24 is a little desolate island, chiefly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 223 or the artisan. And even The Water Margin 水滸傳, an omnibus of tales about a large band of outlaws, tells us next to nothing about the life of ordinary men and women. drama, poetry and documentary writings. So it was, also, with Early travellers, missionaries, traders and diplomats from other cultures were not tied in the same way to one social class in China. They do show in many cases a marked preference for chronicling the deeds and circumstances of the elite, but in their writings they roam over all aspects of Chinese life because they could take no knowledge on the part of their readers for granted. By the time that Chinese scholars and Western sociologists came to be interested in popular culture and the workings of everyday life. China was in the throes of modernisation and encroaching foreign influences, and the old accounts of China as seen through the observant and frequently bigoted eyes of early Western writers came into their own again. Here lay a mass of material on what life was like before the -isms and schisms of the twentieth century began to warp it in strange ways. now. What has been happening in recent years has been a dovetailing of the study of old China with the study of China We can very well use scientific analysis to show how contemporary people behave, but we cannot necessarily use it to discover why they hold a particular set of beliefs and prejudices. Here the study of Chinese history and traditional culture can help us to achieve an understanding. On the other hand we have no good information on how the common people of imperial China behaved, but we can track back from what we know of how contemporary people behave to gain a greater understanding of what those earlier times must have been like. One China did not cease in 1911 or 1949 and another different China take its place: there is a meaningful continuity over time. Here lies the justification for the Ancestral Images approach, and I do not find it surprising that at the time of writing this a Chinese translation of the books is about to go to press why shouldn't the Chinese want to explore the cultural links with their past, even if through the dim eyes of a foreign observer? How good, then is this list of books I have quoted from? Is it a representative sample of what is available? Are all the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 114 JAMES HAYES lation hard at work getting in the second crop of paddy. The principal part of the labourers was the women, owing probably to the fact of the men being generally engaged in fishing. The paddy rice grows to a height of about two feet six inches. The fields are little patches of about fifty paces, on account of the unevenness of the ground. The rice is thrashed out of doors: first, in a tub with a screen, by a man, who takes a bunch in his two hands to strike the ears against the edge of the tub and then gives the rice again to be thrashed on a floor made hard with chunam, the Chinese asphalt. Ploughing is here done with a very primitive plough and a wonderfully small bullock, as the ground is soft and does not contain a single pebble, ... After being harrowed, it may receive a crop of sweet potatoes, or ground nuts. The women work with children on their backs. No one appears too young to take a part in the work. In the next fields are sugar-canes. 9.29 Thus long before 1841, the villagers of Hong Kong, and the shopkeepers and local boat people too, had settled into the routine of a settled life. Tied to their fields and houses, and to their businesses and daily occupations, they had established institutions of the kind that is usual in Chinese communities, including the shrines and temples that were the object of periodic and special rites through the calendar year. They were therefore to be numbered among those who, in another place and time, twenty years on at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, were described as "the old inhabitants of this site, who are indeed orderly people” in contrast to newcomers who were suspected of being "thieves and outlaws”.3 30 Their good behaviour struck a series of visitors from outside. The famous botanist Robert Fortune, writing of his experiences on the Hong Kong area in the 1840s commented: "In all my wanderings on the island, and also on the mainland hereabouts, I found the inhabitants harmless and civil. I have visited their glens and their mountains, their villages and small towns, and from all the intercourse I have had with them I am bound to give them this character. Another observer, the military surgeon Keith Stewart McKenzie, Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 182 THE STRUCTURE AND OPERATION OF KEI WAI (#) Y.H. CHEUNGa, K.Y. TAIb, S.W. TSAOc, AND L.B. THROWERc* The kei wai () is essentially a device for exploiting the nutrient-rich waters of an estuary. As they exist in the region of Mai Po (N.W. New Territories) kei wais consist of ponds about 1 metre deep and some 10 hectares in area. Each kei wai is separated from the adjacent Deep Bay (Hau Hoi Wan) by an embankment or bund, but communicates with it through a sluice gate. Seawater is allowed to enter on the high tide, carrying with it the fry and larvae of potential produce (fish, shrimps, crabs), and the gate is then closed to prevent outflow of water. Individual kei wais are also separated from one another by bunds. There is an obvious similarity in managing the kei wais to that used to control the exchange of water in commercial shrimp ponds in Hong Kong, namely the opening and closing of the gates as the tidal level changes. However, an important characteristic of kei wais is that no artificial fertilizer or food is added to the water. This paper consists of two parts: I which describes the actual mode of operation of the kei wai and may be of interest to the general reader, and II which reports an investigation into factors affecting productivity of the kei wai. PART I OPERATION OF THE KEI WAI Situation and Form The present Mai Po marshes are the latest stage in the deposition of alluvium. Thus, a zonation exists from dry land to the waters of Deep Bay: (i) old alluvium which usually is or has been cultivated, (ii) the general area of marsh, part of which has been excavated into deep fish ponds, (iii) the seaward region of the a Pollution Research Unit, U.M.L.S.T., United Kingdom. b Department of Anatomy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. c Department of Biology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. * See Plates 7-14 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 25 tenced two soldiers to seven years penal servitude for robbing a man of ten dollars. However in a report to the Governor (Hennessy) he wrote "if after the circumstances shall be forgotten, say a year after the Regiment shall have left the Colony, you should think it fit to remit any portion of the sentence it might be done”. In another case of robbery in which two defendants were convicted by a majority of the jury of four to three he wrote “I know the Chief Justice has expressed dissatisfaction at verdicts by majorities but the judges have found themselves bound to accept them as conclusive and the practice has been to act on such verdicts. I felt myself obliged to follow such precedents". He recommended that they be pardoned because a co-defendant who pleaded guilty asserted that they were innocent. In September 1881 the Governor discharged them, and the two soldiers, from prison and was abused by the press for his "capricious leniency”. (In 1894 an Ordinance provided that a majority of five to two was required in criminal cases). When criticised for hearing proceedings in camera he said "I mean as long as I sit on this bench to continue to exercise the discretion vested in me by law to hear a case in camera when the ends of justice appear to me to require it, in entire disregard of all obloquy to which it may expose me”. When he ceased to act as Puisne Judge the Chief Justice wrote to the Governor to say that he entirely agreed with the Daily Press that Francis had earned for himself a high reputation for ability and clear-headedness. In addition he was appointed to the Commission of the Peace in 1878, and a member of the Commission to Revise the Laws and Ordinances of Hong Kong in 1887. He was also an examiner of candidates for admission as attorneys both when he was a solicitor and after his call to the Bar. He was never appointed acting Attorney General or Chief Justice, which appointments carried a seat in the Legislative Council (the latter until 1889) and that according to his obituary in the China Mail was a matter of regret to him. The system of acting appointments could have disadvantages as Francis pointed out. In 1885 there was a rumour that the Puisne Judge was going on leave for twelve months and that E.J. Ackroyd the Registrar of the Supreme Court would be appointed to act in his place. Francis wrote to the government expressing the view that officers of the Supreme Court should not be appointed to the bench and that the Registrar was a far more important official than the Puisne Judge. He pointed out that Ackroyd had been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 61 thoughts back to the decision to leave the Central School and the teaching profession. Even before the expiration of any bond period to which he might have agreed, he capitalised on his extra training in English by moving out of the underpaid teaching profession and into the more prestigious, and better paid, government service as a Chinese Clerk and Interpreter. Thus, even if he were an open collaborator with colonial rule, he also made use of it for his own purposes. His first post was with the Registrar General's Department. He joined the Registrar General's Department on 1st April, 1887, not, as his Who's Who in the Far East entry claimed, in 1893. This move raised his annual salary to $660. The experience certainly provided him with evidence about active negotiation at the sharp end of the relations between the colonial government and Chinese social, cultural and political mores. While working in the Registrar General's office, he probably not only improved his facility to translate between Chinese and English, but also made useful connections. He was certainly in good enough standing to be able to secure a brief endorsement of his book by the new Registrar General, A.W. Brewin, over ten years later, in August 1904. Towards the end of his time at the Registrar General's Office, Mok Man Cheung had begun another potentially prestige-making and personally rewarding middleman activity. In 1890, he was translating Chinese wills into English. Indeed, his dual role is recognized in the Government Blue Book of 1890 where his name appears twice — first, substantively, as Chinese Clerk and Interpreter at the Registrar General's Office, but, also, as “Acting Chinese Clerk and Translator at the Supreme Court”, having been appointed to this acting post by the Governor on 7th July, 1890 under C.S.O.1531 of 1890. It is not surprising, therefore, that his next career move was to the even more face-giving Supreme Court. This he joined, substantively, as "Chinese Clerk and Translator”, on 17th September, 1891, under Colonial Standing Order 351 of 1891, not in 1895 as he elsewhere suggests. His salary was now $960 per annum, rising by $10 increments to $1,200. By 1894, however, he had reached the salary level of $1,200. In that year he witnessed a further dete- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 89 Northern Vietnam) he asked to be relieved of office and left the capital for Guangzhou. In 327 he settled in the Zhuming cave of Mt. Luofu where he busied himself collecting medicinal herbs and refining cinnabar. His extensive writings include several important treatises on Taoism and Chinese medicine. (Source: Zongjiao Cidian [Dictionary of religion], Shanghai, Cishu Chubanshe (Lexiographical publishing company), 1981, pp. 997-998; see also Jin Shu [The Book of Jin], volume 72, Zhonghua Shuju). Needham calls him "the greatest alchemist in Chinese history" (Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, Cambridge University Press, 1956, p. 437). 14 The story that Huang Yeren was late for the levitation because he was drunk, we heard from a young official of a local Taoist organization whom we interviewed in Guangzhou on August 27, 1987. Cultural affairs cadres whom we interviewed at the main temple on Mt. Luofu on August 28, 1987 indignantly denied this story. The young official also related the story that Huang Yeren (Huang the wild man) had originally been called Huang "also [in Cantonese “yah”] man” (in many Luofu folk-tales the Yeren is said to appear in the shape of an animal). Later the character for "also" (in Mandarin “ye”) had been substituted by that for "wild" (in Mandarin also "ye"). We have not found any documentary sources which confirm this information. 19 Michel, Soymié, "Le Lo-feou chan", 1954. Bulletin de l'école française d'Extrême-orient, Tome XLVIII (ler semestre), 1954, pp. 1-137, raises another possibility (see pp. 109-110): that the Yeren tradition is based on contacts in ancient times, possibly including periodic trading exchanges, between people of the plains of Guangdong and aborigines living on or near the mountain. In the eyes of the plainsmen, the aborigines would appear strange in many respects, especially in speech and appearance. Stories derived from these contacts might have become the basis for the Yeren legend. Supporting this interpretation, Soymié notes, is the fact that Yeren was thought to be able to appear as a man or a woman, a young person or an old person, and that Yeren is in fact a category of "strange person apparitions” rather than a single figure. Clearly, once such a flexible figure had become established in the popular imagination, sightings of almost anything on the mountain could feed into the growing folklore about Yeren. 16 Some stories of healings by Yeren are contained in Luofushan Fengwuzhi (Records of Mt. Luofu scenery), Guangdong Lüyou Chubanshe (Tourist affairs publishing co., 1984). This source also records the tradition that the cave of Yeren was guarded by a mute tiger. The chapter in which the healings are recorded is titled, "The earth-bound fairy riding on a mute tiger." 17 Source: Nanhan Shu (The book of Southern Han), Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 1981 (reprint), volume 17. This story was also related to Ragvald by scholars of the provincial Wenshi Guan (Research institute of culture and history) whom the first author interviewed in Guangzhou, September, 1987. 18 These details are in notes provided to the first author by the Wenshi Guan scholars (see previous footnote), and were evidently taken by them from an addition to the Nanhan Shu, titled Nanhan Shu Kao Yi (Collating the variants), volume 17. 19 We have not yet been able to verify the exact location of the temple, which apparently is called Huangxianweng miao (The temple of old saint Huang). There may be several other Huang Li temples in this region. 20 According to Nanhan Shu Kao Yi (volume 17) his original name may have been Wang rather than Huang. Evidently he changed his surname to Huang (in Canton... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 113 on the right side were stitched six $1000 notes. On either side of the characters were strips of red paper with gold inscriptions wishing the young couple health and good fortune, from the various family members who had contributed the money. Outside in the street female relatives and friends of the groom were busily cleaning cooking utensils and preparing for a feast. Other women were practising banging the gong and dancing in step, in readiness for the 'Dragon Boat' dance they would perform. Although the Hoklo people in Yim Liu Ha have been settled on land for more than four decades they still retain many of their customs originally performed on water. Instead of the bridegroom being transported by boat to worship and to fetch his bride, on land he is carried along in a procession called pa lung sung (扛龍船) by pairs of women pretending to row a dragon boat. These women are gaily dressed in matching pairs with straw hats decorated with plastic flowers and paper tassels. Round their necks they wear collars embroidered and sequinned with nine Chinese characters symbolizing good fortune: up, down, in, out, double happiness, then the same ones repeated around the other side. At their waists they wear aprons in the same colour as the collar, and each woman carries a yellow painted stick to resemble an oar. Often the family will possess its own set of wedding attire, made by a clever seamstress within the family, but in this case the whole set had been borrowed from another family. At 10 am the procession was ready to leave the groom's home. The women formed themselves into four pairs, with one at the front to bang the gong, and another older woman at the back carrying a fan, with her left trouser leg rolled up above the knee, who was said to represent the tail of the dragon. Then, at a given signal, the women set off at a steady pace, moving in a rhythmic rocking motion to suggest the rowing of a boat. They were followed by two men who formed the head and back part of the Chilin, while behind them walked the band banging a large gong and clashing cymbals. Then came the bridegroom and his best man, both wearing Western suits of the latest fashion, with the groom in white shirt, maroon cummerbund and matching bow ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 116 had to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then. In a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote: "My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine. Now I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 1} American missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'. › 28 The two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 66 Another time the alarm went, due to a slight misunderstanding at one of the gates. It was approaching dusk and the sailor sentry, who had no doubt been standing guard at this particular gate at the back of the Concession for some time, was beginning to get bored. The gates, of wood, with a small window through which persons on the far side could be inspected, were open. Outside stood a row of hawker's stands, for the most part purveying cooked foods to the coolies who passed in and out. The stand nearest to the sentry held a large copper pan, of the sort in which rice is cooked, over a small fire. At the moment the pan was empty, and the sentry, being of an enquiring mind, wondered what would happen if he put a rifle cartridge in it. The experiment produced a loud bang and several holes through the bottom of the pan. An infuriated hawker, supported by increasing numbers of excited fellow tradesmen, shouted curses at the sentry and loudly demanded large sums of money in compensation for the damage done. At the sound of the explosion the naval guard in a near-by house turned out. The petty officer in charge was a great barrel of a man, an old tarpaulin of long service in many parts of the world where opportunities for cultivation of that diplomatic tact, in which the Royal Navy is so accomplished, must have been numerous. In less time than it takes to tell he had the situation well in hand, had paid one dollar compensation for the damage done, had closed the gates, and had nipped an incipient riot in the bud. It was considered unwise to allow a "matelot" of such an enquiring mind ashore again, and for the remainder of that destroyer's stay at Kiu Kiang he was confined to his ship. Late on an afternoon early in January, 1927, as the river water swirled past the hulks under the hard light of the wintry sun, a strange tall man walked down the Bund, accompanied by a number of Chinese dressed in civilian clothes. He wore the collarless buttoned-up jacket, the knee-high black leather boots, and the little leather-peaked brown cap, of one of Borodin's officers. His companions were members of the Revolutionary Kuo Min Tang party. They moved along looking at the houses, at the cross-roads, and at the foreshore, talking and gesticulating. Outside the Consulate they paused to read the pink posters and the green posters. They were planning the organisation of riots, the object of which would be to draw fire from the British sailors guarding the gates. The bodies of a few dead Chinese rioters, shot by the blackguard Imperialists, would provide excellent fuel to inflame still further the feelings of an excited populace; and would at the same time give ammunition for the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 162 * 12 actors On the occasion of a performance of Buckingham's Take that Girl Away and Selby's A Fearful Tragedy in the Seven Dials, on February 15 1860 it was observed that "the weak point of our Amateurs has been the selection of their pieces".1 From time to time this argument crops up; but, as with all opinions about the theatre, it was a matter of taste. A regular writer for the Herald, "The Man on the Bund", had the audacity to react adversely to the choice of Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep, performed on April 23 1857, which he thought "one of those incongruous mixtures of French novel morality and English domestic life as offensive and preposterous as ludicrous". In a letter to the Editor "Another Man on the Bund" (!) was furious about this attitude: "Are we to take the opinion of this would be critic, this damp orator, in preference to the unanimous opinion of the rest of the community? What meant those thunders of applause repeated again and again in a manner that has never been heard in Shanghai. (...) My own and the general opinion is that the 'Man on the Bund' at the time of writing was (...) labouring under a severe attack of bile (...) (see also Calendar, 23.4.1857). 14 In quite a different vein, writing about Colman's Heir at Law (1797) and Townley's High Life below Stairs (1759) the chronicler “would recommend our Amateurs to expunge from their plays all profane oaths and ambiguous phrases. In the time they were written too many of them were in keeping with the language and manners of the day, but nowadays no Gentleman would sully his breath with such irreverent epithets; they neither add wit or point to the dialogue and grate harshly on all refined ears especially in the presence of ladies".2 Of course no examples were given. When it came to the professional, travelling, companies a generally favourable attitude was maintained. "Standards of excellence" were kept up by Lewis' Australian Drama Company;3 and, discussing the 1865 performances, another critic thought that "where so much talent is shown it is almost invidious to single out any one actor or actress in preference to the rest". 18 In the musical field the efforts of the amateurs, although they were less numerous than in dramatics, were also duly appreciated. About a concert in aid of the Lancashire Relief Fund, given on April 17 1863, the Herald thought "it was pleasing to see the gentlemen (...) entertain con amore their less gifted fellow residents with a charming chamber ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 200 rash decision to marry the first that came". Another actor who was to become a local Roscius. Mr. Phunago BRUSHWOOD, "gave the somewhat unusual stage character of a double-faced farmer (Wurzel) all the selfish cunning and irritable tone which it needed". Other parts were taken by Miss Polly DEXTER, Mr. HEAVISWELL, Mr. Jehoshaphat SNAKES and Mr. PLEADWELL (as the lawyer!). In Box and Cox Messrs PROTEUS, BRUSHWOOD and Mrs. CLAY "kept the audience in a roar" (NCH 22.2.1857). 3.3.1857 (Tue) Dramatic readings from Charles Dickens by Mr. Benjamin SEARE. Th: C ― R: In the Herald of February 28 it was announced that "we are apprized by 'Circular' that an entertainment of a novel character in Shanghai, but one which has greatly attracted the fashionable and literary world elsewhere, will be given by Mr. Scare in the Hall of the Shanghai Theatre on Tuesday Evening next the 3rd prox. The subject - The Early Writings of Charles Dickens is a theme affording scope for great versatility of talent. (...) The Community are much indebted to Mr. Scare for his gratuitous offer of an evening's intellectual amusement to diversify and enliven the monotony of Shanghai life. The Circular notifies that the divertissement will commence at half past 8 & precisely, that no personal invitations will be issued and that a syllabus of the Lecture will be placed in each seat for the use and acceptance of its occupant”. Then, in the issue of March 7, a report was published: "A large and select circle of residents had met in the New Theatre". It became a kind of one man show by Mr. Seare, as the "requirements of versatility and mimic power were most successfully supplied. (...) The lecturer was perfectly at home in each and all of the various characters as they turned up, passed from one to another with an ease that was admirable and portrayed each with a force of comic power which elicited much applause, and, to select the most appropriate compliment we can bestow, did justice to the author. All in all the audience was "kept in a roar”. Mr. Seare concluded with some general remarks on the necessity of some recreation of this kind in a community so distant from home and so isolated and comprising at the same time so much intelligence and ability" (NCH 7.3.1857). One wonders how Mr. Seare was able to give these lectures free of charge; had he been a touring artist that would of course have been impossible. But as it turns out he was a mercantile assistant in the employment of Gilman & Co (this according to the Shanghai Almanac for 1858). In May 1865 he gave another performance (see 27.5.1865). No further details are available about the programme, but no doubt the characters from The Pickwick Papers figured largely in it. Who, after all, can resist Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Jingle and Sam Weller? Dickens himself began readings from his own works one year later, in April 1858, in Britain and the United States. 26.3.1857 (Thur) J.B. BUCKSTONE: "A Kiss in the Dark" (1840) T: Farce (1 act) M.B.W. JERROLD: "Cool as a Cucumber" (1851) T: Farce (1 act) H. DANVERS: "A Conjugal Lesson" (1856) T: Farce (1 act) C: Amateurs Th: N.N. (CH R: In a witty mind "The Man on the Bund" informed us that "by way of introduction there was a kiss — and in the dark too! — perhaps the sweetest kiss of all, administered with enviable gusto by Mr. SNAKES as Fathom. Mrs. Pettibone submitted to it with less indignation than the fact of her being so much respected led us to suppose. But then, it was to punish the odiously jealous Mr. Pettibone who would insist on making Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 202 Byeplay showed that, although his first appearance here, it is by no means his first attempt at acting". But another anti-French jibe was added when he wrote: "Mrs. NESBIT and Miss DEXTER play indifferently and we are rather proud of it — for as they only profess to play English female characters it was no wonder that they did not feel at home". These acid comments drew forth a letter from "Another Man on the Bund" in the Herald of May 2 in which a counterweight was offered: "Are we to take the opinion of this would-be orator in preference to the unanimous opinion of the rest of the community? What meant those thunders of applause repeated again and again in a manner that has never been heard in Shanghai and the repeated calls at the fall of the curtain; are we to believe that a piece that has had an almost unprecedented run in both England and America and in the former country was played by the express command of Her Majesty at her own palace is worthless or so bad because condemned by 'The Man on the Bund?' (...) My own and the general opinion outside is that The Man on the Bund at the time of writing the above was either labouring under a severe attack of bile or intensely disgusted that the acknowledged best performance ever given here should have been given without the assistance of himself or his darling Peter Proteus". After, at any rate his disappointment about Still Waters, in A Capital Match Mr. BRUSHWOOD restored "The Man on the Bund" to his comfort and equanimity, nay more, utterly overturned our critical gravity and made us laugh like the veriest schoolboy at a favourite pantomime". Mr. Beverly NEWCOME made his debut and he appeared to be quite at home in the naval character and we admired his style almost as much as the widow did. And the widow; none other than Mrs. NESBIT. It was also the occasion on which the critic showed his disapproval of the new interior of the theatre: "'On entering the Thespian temple, I observed that there had been a change in the decoration of it - I cannot add improvements. The same taste which had furnished me with a posting bill streaked all over with lightning threatened to overwhelm me with a fall of flowers and garlands from the roof and treat me as if I were a prima donna or the boeuf gras of a Parisian festival". Yet, thinking about Mrs. Nesbit, he continued ironically: "What will a man not undergo when a woman is on the tapis! So, in imminent danger of being garlanded, like the Ass of Silenus [attendant of Bacchus usually represented as riding on an ass, drunken and crowned with flowers — JH] in a classic fresco, I took my seat and, unfolding my portentous play bill, began to scan it over at my leisure". (NCH 25.4.1857). 8.10.1857 (Thur) M. BARNETT: "The Serious Family" (1849) T: Comedy (3 acts) B.N. WEBSTER: "The Golden Farmer" (1832) T: Domestic drama (2 acts) J.S. COYNE: "Binks the Bagman" (1843) T: Farce (1 act) C: The "Union Theatrical Company of the U.S.S. San Jacinto" Th: On board ship N: More entertainment had been given by the crew of this ship, but this is the only one which has been recorded. R: Specially noticed was the prison scene in The Golden Farmer wherein the robber "takes a tender farewell of his beloved wife and infant daughter Louisa. It brought moisture to the eyes of many". Could it be of laughter, bearing in mind the ruling travesties? (NCH 10.10.1857). The San Jacinto was a U.S. warsteamer with a crew of 218. 29.12.1857 (Tue) Entertainment by Mr. George Henri, a conjurer and ventriloquist. Th: Theatre Royal (C) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 203 21.1.1858 (Thur) Entertainment by Mr. George Henri. R: As there appeared no review of Mr. George HENRI's miracles on December 29 there is some doubt as to whether they were indeed performed on that date: perhaps they were postponed to January 21. Then the Herald showed itself “so astonished that had he asked us what we wished him to do next we should have requested him to produce Yeh before our eyes". This alluded to Yeh Ming-ch'en, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Affairs who had played a major role in the second Anglo-Chinese war. He had been captured on January 5 1858 and taken to Calcutta by the British. (NCH 23.1.1858). 9.2.1858 (Tue) T.J. DIBDIN: "The Birthday” (1799) T: Comedy (3 acts) C. DANCE: "The Dustman's Belle" (1846) T: Comedy (2 acts) J. KENNEY: "Raising the Wind" (1803) T: Farce (2 acts) C: Officers of H.M.S. Pique Th: On board ship R: The description of the circumstances under which the Herald's reporter was drawn to the "Pique" (a British frigate with crew of 350) is too vivid for the reader to forgo: Tuesday last was a depressing day for a melancholic tempered man, and even we, not constitutionally sad, felt its influence. The morning dawned through an atmosphere in which rain and mist were struggling to see which should do its worst to make everything look disagreeable. As the day moved on, the rain gained the ascendancy and pelted down most pitilessly; overhead the sky looked dull and murky; underfoot the soil of Shanghai, mingling lovingly with the weeping clouds, produced a mixture as tenacious as the grasp of a miser, and dirty as the soul of a time-serving parasite. The mail, with the usual fatality which crowds one mishap upon another, though overdue, had not arrived. To take the gun was simply to commit a felo de se in a sea of mud; and to hum a snatch of a tune was as great an exertion as to dance an Irish jig in fetters, or laugh at the present Sir R. Peel's facetiousness.* In this desolate mood we were plunged, when suddenly a bright recollection flashed upon us. We rose hastily from our chair and consulted a paper which had been lying neglected in a corner: it was the Pique's playbill. The sight of the 'Birthday', the 'Dustman's Belle' and 'Raising the Wind' acted like a charm upon us, and a few minutes afterwards we had crossed the Bund, escaped the insidious dangers of those man-traps of jetties which the Municipal Council are daily suffering to grow more and more like that bridge with many pitfalls invented in the vision of Mirza (this is a reference to "The Vision of Mirza" by Joseph Addison, first published in "The Spectator" in 1711 and reprinted in 1856 – JH); and committed the safety of our person to a China-boatman and his magnified eggshell. The rain pelted, but we laughed at it; the gusts blew spitefully, but we clutched the tighter and defied them; the darkness did its best to mislead us, but the bright glow from a sailor's pipe guided us with more trustworthiness and safety than a beacon light under certain auspices could have done, and we reached the Pique in safety. Here we found all light, bustle and tiptoe expectation. The main deck had been cleared of its grim everyday tenants - the cold frowning implements of old Mars and their room occupied by the flimsy, but joy-inspiring fripperies of Thespis. We passed along row after row of happy, eager faces and took our seat in front, amongst the guests whom the ship's company of the * Sir Robert Peel (1822-1895), diplomat and politician; popular in social life and gifted with "rare powers of irony, but also "absence of dignity" and a "want of moral fiber in his volatile character" (Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 44, p. 223-224). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 267 Tomorrow Captain Moate and I are thinking of commencing to exercise with a pair of 18-pound shot, which for a few days will prove warm work. On Wednesday one of the men refused to go aloft to the top mast and tar the shroud on the plea of illness. But the captain made short work of it by having a rope tied round him, and hoisting him up, where he hung till the evening about eight o'clock, when he was let down, and has since been below on the sick list. The captain declares it is all sham, but I do not think so. Wednesday, April 24th Last Sunday we crossed the line early in the morning. The weather was intensely hot. During the day we spoke with an outward-bound ship, the Pathfinder of Swansea, bound for Cochin in India. She had been out 39 days, and so in proportion was no better off than we are. The hot weather makes but little difference to me. During the day the sun shines on the top of my cabin, and then at night it is like an oven, so that it is difficult to get off to sleep. I slept for some nights with no clothes on, and even now it is a trifle cooler I can only bear one sheet and the window wide open. Yet this is not nearly so hot as Hong Kong will be when we get there. We are now going along capitally. The ship seems almost to fly through the water. We generally make about 200 miles a day. I expect now we are about 10 degrees to the south of the line. It is now 45 days since we left London. How glad I shall be when we can add another 45 to them. It begins to get rather wearisome work since it is the same thing every day, and I like a variety. There is only one person on board, whom I can at all associate with, and that is Capt'n Moate, and he is poor company, since his views will not accord with mine. Yet I can notice a considerable improvement in him since he came on board, and once or twice I have caught him reading his Bible. I cannot help speaking out sometimes, and Capt Harper says I can never touch lightly, but I always do it with a "regular maul". So it shows the cap fits him. We had rather a rough sea lately, and on Monday it made me feel rather squeamy, but today I am all right again. We have had some fine moonlight nights lately, and I have sat on the deck for hours, thinking. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 275 tossing about. Great blame is therefore due to those who saw it for not describing what they saw, and to those who ought to have been on the lookout for not seeing it. Just before dark we saw another ship in the distance, quite disabled, or rather nearly so, and laid to. We steered close under her stern, and found the crew all right, and preparing to set her to rights. She was a Dutchman from Cape Town, bound for Batavia, Every sail in her was blown to rags and gone, except two spankers which helped to keep her steady. Yet she laboured fearfully. Instead of being thankful that we were not so badly off, the captain kept laughing at the poor fellows, and saying how mortified they must feel to see us going on so well under the circumstances. On Sunday as they were clearing the wreck away, a lot of the upper rigging fell on the new yard that had been put up, and snapped it off as clean as possible, to add to our troubles. I expected no other, and am only surprised it did not give way during the storm. It will take two days to "scarf" the pieces together and put it up again, and even then it may not stand. I do not know how long it will be now before our journey will end. I am almost disheartened about it. Three months gone, and not yet got to St Paul's Island or Amsterdam, in the Indian Ocean. As to you ever hearing from me again, it seems out of the question altogether. This storm will have put us by very considerably and no mistake. I dare say you all very much wonder you have not heard before, but I have only this consolation, that it is not my fault. I am continually thinking of home, and picturing in my mind all the pleasures of the country in May and June, while here I am tossed on the ocean, in the depth of winter, where the cold is enough to freeze anybody, with everything damp and cold. No more going round the Cape for me while my name is John Fryer, if I can avoid it. It is worth a pound a day to put up with all the inconveniences, and were it not for the thought of what I am going to do, I could not endure it at all. It is now dinner time, three o'clock, so I must now stop. Thursday, June 6th Since my last entry our circumstances have been much on the improve. Yesterday we got the topsail yard up, and the sail bent. The old yard Page 300 Page 301 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 111 was especially fond of like homemade, western-style cookies. There were traditional offerings such as roast duck, rice wine, fruit, cakes, cooked vegetarian food and chopsticks. Ancestors must be provided with sustenance. Even with Christian services food is still sometimes 'offered up' on the altar, for example for 'divided families'. Although not all mourners approved, because the deceased enjoyed smoking, cigarettes were placed on the altar. During the proceedings a butt was found in an ash tray which some were convinced had actually been smoked by the dead woman. Objects once placed on the altar should not be touched. Although the deceased was a humble housewife, 37 suit lengths and blankets were draped on special fixtures around interior walls of the hall. These practical gifts from friends were overlaid with gold, red or white paper characters proclaiming slogans such as: 'Everlasting life in heavenly kingdom'; and another, 'Picture of her will live in minds of women', There were 114 wreaths, many on eight-foot or so high bamboo frames each with a banner, sometimes black with white characters, giving names of donors and slogans. The family cobler who owned a small street stall sent a wreath. Immediately after the ceremony these bamboo frames were appropriated by outsiders and reused for making wreaths for other funerals. After encoffining, the body, lying in state with face heavily made up and looking peaceful, was placed behind a glass partition in a small adjoining 'farewell room' off the back of the hall. So that a person is in the 'mainstream' it is necessary the body be positioned in the centre of the coffin. The air was oppressive with candle smoke and incense, one of the main ingredients of the latter being sandal wood." The deceased wore four dresses and three pairs of trousers (for a man it would have been four and four). With "foo" being a homophone for both 'riches' and 'trousers', an odd number of pairs are worn by females and an even number by males. No fur, leather or rubber are used for fear of reincarnation as an animal. The feet are tied together with hemp cord supposedly to prevent jumping if tormented by ghosts. Feet of corpses in England are also bound, to keep them together before rigor mortis sets in, when a body is ‘laid out'. This seems a more plausible reason. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 21 The third level of actions concerning face could be termed as face strategies. This is a set of actions at the technical level to produce effects accordant with the principles of facework. They have already been explored by some scholars. For example, Modigliani's (1971:20) facework index includes the following: (a) defensively changing the subject; (b) introducing information excusing the performance; (c) introducing redeeming or self-enhancing information; (d) minimizing failure by derogating the task; (e) denying failure; (f) fishing for reassurance. Another example can be found in a study on participants' face-saving behaviour in a singles dance. Eleven strategies have been listed; 1. Denial; 2. Re-definition; 3. Enhancing presentations; 4. Limiting involvement; 5. One-downing others; 6. Controlling visibility; 7. Withdrawal; 8. Avoidance; 9. Internalization; 10. Repair damaged self-esteem; 11. Change the self (Beik, 1977). These strategies focus on just one grid of the table of face behaviour (Table 1) In view of this inadequacy, Bond and Lee (1978) have found that people (Chinese students) not only try to save face for themselves, but also for those with whom they interact. Still, the other grids in the table are rarely explored. All the studies cited above use experiments to collect the data. They encounter the shortcoming of experimental designs. They cannot generalize their results to other settings because the results are obtained in a controlled condition instead of a total life condition. They cannot easily come to generalized terms for the strategies applied in facework from these experiment data. Despite this, they shed light upon research on face. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 63 More so, the relation between factors of face that belong to individuals or teams with attributes of face that belong to people, nation or government is affirmed in the study. This seems to agree with the proposition posed by King and Myers (1977). These two authors argued that due to the breakdown of the traditional social networks, such as the village, the family and so on, individuals would seek to identify more with the nation, the government or other Chinese as a whole. This identification serves to connect them with a source of face too. That is to say, when an individual gains face, he may extend it to the nation, and in turn, he could also share the face of the nation, her status, honour and so on. Such an interflow seems to have roots in the traditional Chinese character of mutual dependence (Hsu, 1981: 114). In the past, this spirit of mutual dependence was found within the family system. The social tie of parents and sons allowed the interchange of status and authority between them. In the light of piety prevalent under Confucian teachings in traditional China, the father is the one to have the upper hand in case the two come into conflict. More so, the father can enjoy the authority derived from the son even after retirement. Likewise, he could enjoy the influence, the honour, the status, the economic resources etc. obtained by the son through his own efforts. This was what happened to the concept of face in the past as has been pointed out in previous studies reviewed earlier in this paper. But the communists advocated the party as the vanguard, preached a revolution of the feudal system, the family, and the old social networks etc. After the breakdown of the family and this strong social bond, the father-son relationship needed to be replaced, the family system required a substitute. The era then saw the creation of self-reliant rather than mutually dependent individuals, "isolated, insecure, purposeless, and therefore perpetually in search of something to which he can belong and for which he can fight" (Hsu, 1981, 471). In short, the individual under the Communist rule needed to position himself in a new setting. The answer to this would be the introduction of another collectivity in which an individual could feel at home with. In the findings of the present study, the fact that face exhibits some collective character seems to signify the existence of such a new collective environment, a new set of relationships in which it works. The interflow of status, honour, influence, power etc. is now being placed in a new social network. Exchange between fathers and sons may still be present, it is hard to prove not, but what is more prominent in the press is an exchange in a new ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 193 H Details of the early Hakka examination successes are known from a recently recovered genealogy, of the Chan (陳) lineage of Nam Chung. It is understood that a copy of this genealogy will be deposited with the Hong Kong Museum of History. I am indebted to Mr Chan Wing-hot for drawing my attention to the information in this genealogy. Q Seen 8 At the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905), 12.68 acres of saltpans were recorded. However, the serious inadequacies of the first survey here led to another being conducted in 1912, when 17.11 acres were recorded. However, in 1912 two areas were left unclaimed, probably because storms had breached their bunds and ruined them. These two areas totalled about 3.3 acres. In addition, there were about 0.6 acres of houses, huts, and waste within the saltpan reclamation, which, therefore, totalled about 21.2 acres. The saltpans were very valuable property in the nineteenth century - the Basel missionaries (see below, n. 17) record the sale of a share by a Tam Shui Hang villager in 1882 for "several hundreds of dollars" (Basel Mission archive, doc. AT-16, Nr. 45). In the 1920s, however, and still more in the 1930s, cheap imported salt caused ever-growing problems, which led to the closure of the saltworks before the War. A bridge was built to the saltpans in 1934 (Administrative Reports for the Year 1934, App. J, "Report on the New Territories for 1934", p. J17). After the War, the abandoned saltworks became the site of a major squatter settlement, recently cleared. Today, the saltpan area has disappeared under new reclamation, and all that remains is a new Tin Hau Temple, replacing the old one previously on the saltpans, built on a new site on the new waterfront. For details of the history of the temples in the area, on the settlement of the Hakka in the area, the reclamation projects they undertook, the founding and management of the market at Sha Tau Kok, and the functioning of the Shap Yeuk as the district management body, see P.H. Hase, "The Alliance of Ten Settlements and Polities in the Sha Tau Kok Area", in D. Faure and H.S. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, Stanford University Press, 1995. 12. No details on the earlier history of the temple survived the very full restoration of 1894, but Shan Tsun elders believe it to be very old. 13. In the 1688 Gazetteer (Ch. 3) a ferry “along the coast” is mentioned called the "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry". There can be no doubt that this is the ferry to Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong, etc.), 12 miles down the coast. Ma Tseuk Ling, at the head of Starling Inlet, is the nearest old village to the Wu Shek Kok Temple (Wu Shek Kok village - probably a foundation of the early nineteenth century). The coasts of Starling Inlet within two or three miles of Ma Tseuk Ling were blocked with mudflats and mangrove everywhere except at Wu Shek Kok, where alone a hill falls steeply into the sea. Wu Shek Kok is, therefore, the only possible site for a "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry" landing place. The Ma Tseuk Ling villagers owned the Wu Shek Kok Temple, and the Ma Tseuk Ling military post (1688 Gazetteer, ch. 7), was at Shek Chung Au, just a few hundred yards from Wu Shek Kok. These Ma Tseuk Ling connections with the Wu Shek Kok area strongly suggest that the Wu Shek Kok hill was regarded as forming part of the Ma Tseuk Ling area. Later, Wu Shek Kok formed part of the Ma Tseuk Ling Yeuk of the Shap Yeuk. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 141 the verandah and afterwards in the little parlour I was soon deep in an argument with Eitel and Winness, as to the general tendency and aim of Paul's preaching, and we maintained the point a long time, without either giving way. At last Winness is a fine Chinese scholar, and we had a long talk about religious publications in the Chinese language, of which he has written several. Then we turned in for the night, after our evening devotions, and after hearing Mr Winness' evening service, in his chapel. Really the singing of his boys was melodious to a high degree. He has about 20 whom he teaches German, etc. One is now at Hong Kong waiting to go to Germany to be educated as a missionary, and can play the Harmonium quite well. We then turned in. The only two rooms in the house for Europeans served our turn. Four in one, and three in the other. It was sharp work. The mosquitoes were immense great things, and big enough, and many enough to suck all the blood out of one man, but with seven of us, they could not quite manage it. So in the morning we were all able to get up. Few of us slept much. I slept but very little, although I had the best bed. In the morning I took a walk over the hills with Eitel for an hour or two, and then after breakfast we prepared to go on the hills pheasant shooting. I got a long two-barrelled gun, and Stringer got another, and so four of us started, with a guide. Two at last struck out one way, and then Capt Drummond and I went the other. We were soon out of sight and hearing of the rest. But no pheasants were to be seen. This Drummond is a fine fellow, and has no foolery about him. He appears to be as good a Christian officer as could be expected, considering the many things they have to make them wild and dissipated. His right hand and shoulder were bitten severely by a great tiger in India, which caught him and carried him off. The tiger was soon wounded, and at length dropped him, and next day was shot dead. It just gave him a pat on the head with its paw, and made him insensible. It was a narrow escape. The tiger was rather old and its teeth were almost worn out, or it would have been far worse with him.'2 We walked a long time, but shot nothing. So we began to bend our steps home through the village of Lilong. We looked at many houses and things, and even entered some of them and looked about. We were much amused with the immense great wheelbarrows the people use. The wheel is made of planks, sawed... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 165 55 representatives of the rocket associations bid for the rockets Physical violence is avoided, but competition remains keen among bidders who strive to show superiority over each other in terms of wealth and power' To decide who in the winning group can take the representation of the god home, another ceremony should be held whereby the temple keeper, after placing on the temple altar a list of members of the rocket association and reciting a “song to invite the god" (#), casts the divining blocks thrice for each member The winner is he who passes the divination three times in a row. 1 50 In addition to the representative associations from villages such as Mok Ka's Yu-ch'ing tang W, upper Ling Per's Ch'un-ying t'ang #*, Ngau Au's Ch`un-lu t’ang San Tau's Ch'un-ch'ing tang # , and so on, other units such as social clubs and recreational societies also form their own rocket associations. According to Hayes's observation in the 1960s of the concomitant celebration of the Houwang feast day and the reopening of the Houwang Temple after the first major repair in 1909, among the rocket associations, two were fishermen's groups, (one from Tung Chung and the other from Tai O) and one was formed by the Seamen's Union from Hong Kong which came to Tung Chung for the festival for many years." Many native Tung Chung seamen had joined the union. By forming the associations and attending the festival, members of the same profession can also exchange information and news of their trade. In this sense, the festival functions tend to promote solidarity not only among villagers, but also among colleagues. For local residents of different surnames and various social backgrounds, the Houwang worship and its all-pervasive influence provide them with the social bond of union and the ideology of territory identity, through which the Tung Chung community seems to have become a culturally self-sufficient entity Even the fishermen settled in the district seldom visit the Empress of Heaven Temple at Chak Lap Kok or Ma Wan. Like other Tung Chung villagers, they pay homage mainly to the Houwang, the principal deity of the locale, and participate quite actively in the “bid-for-rockets” contest during the annual feast day festival. The Houwang's Birthday celebration also provides the local community with an opportunity for contact with the outside world. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 The EIC and relations with the Malay states In the merchants' own words, 'The Supreme Government of India had uniformly discouraged the local Government at Singapore from interfering with matters beyond the limits of the Island. The cultivation of friendly relations with Native States and Chiefs has been neglected.'44 In this section, I will examine the merchants' reasons for this complaint, and also assess the accuracy of their claim. Rupert Emerson, a historian, calls the period during the Indian government's administration of the Straits Settlements 'a half-century of inactivity.' This is arguably the truth but not the whole truth, because DGE Hall, another historian, tends to disagree with Emerson's assertion. He says that 'one only has to glance through the many volumes of records relating to the period to realise that even if there was little or no spectacular achievement there was plenty of activity.' 'Even if by inactivity is meant the pursuit of non-intervention policy in native affairs, the term is misleading. Page 48 The Calcutta administration, wherever possible, adhered to a policy of strict non-intervention in the affairs of the Malay States. This policy had its roots in Pitt's India Act of 1784,49 which stipulated that the EIC's aim was peace, not interference in local politics or extension of the company's territories.50 The main reason for this policy was to avoid any form of entanglement in the internal troubles or wars of the Peninsula which could incur unnecessary expenses for the EIC,51 As it was, the EIC had lost its monopoly over the China trade in 1833 and, with this, the Straits Settlements ceased to be a source of direct profits, and were maintained at an annual loss.52 Page 51 Yet despite the law on non-intervention, there was evidence that in some cases concerning threats to British interests, whether commercial, political or involving prestige, local administrators often found it necessary to intervene. In such cases, the actions were often condoned by the Supreme Government. Thus, there was a violation of Pitt's India Act (which eventually did lead to the change in British policy of non-intervention to intervention in 1874),54 Page 53 Thio summarises the politico-legal scenario thus: ...when responsibility for the Straits was transferred from the Government of India to the Colonial Office in 1867, the British were already bound by treaties with four of the five states south of Kedah, two of whom they Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 293 was a young man of twenty just starting his lifelong career in China. In his Miscellanies he described how on his arrival at Hankou commanding the sailing lorcha, Hailong Wang [the Dragon King], he was paid off by the owners, the Mc Twins, who offered him a job as superintendent builder of a large hong [company office/warehouse] they intended erecting on the Bund. He accepted - as the Hailong Wang was laid up. However, as he actually wished to return to Shanghai to marry a local maiden, Zhu Wenjing, he took leave and in one statement he claimed that he sailed aboard the Huguang, a new beam-engine paddlewheel river steamer on her maiden voyage." In another he explained that he had left Hankou at the end of 1862 in charge of a cargo boat which was captured by the Taipings. This occurred when, having called at Zhenjiang on 1st or 3rd of November 1862 [his accounts vary], he was on his way to Shanghai in charge of a cargo boat, and was captured, with his crew, by the Taiping rebels, midstream, at Fu Shan Zhen. Mesny's colourful description of his time with the Taipings began with him being brought in chains before a senior Taiping who ordered him to ketou [kowtow]. Mesny wrote that he refused and that he only bowed to God. ‘So do we', cried the Taiping, and promptly ordered Mesny's release. Mesny continued his tale describing how the Senior Taiping had dined Mesny and offered him his daughter in marriage and the command of a Taiping vessel with the rank of vice-admiral. In another version elsewhere in his Miscellanies Mesny claimed to have been wounded twice during the capture and was at first badly treated by his captors. But once the Taiping discovered that he could play Chinese tunes on his four-octave flutina, their behaviour entirely altered. On a more credible note he was required to write to his employers in Shanghai demanding 100,000 Spanish Carolus dollars ransom. Mesny was puzzled at the time why various senior Taiping officials should have vied to hold him their captive. It later transpired that at first these officials had not appreciated the power and capabilities of the foreign-led Chinese force [meaning the Ever-Victorious Army] sent against them; and when they did the Taiping officials' first act was to obtain and hold foreigners to prevent the violent wrath of the foreign-led force being brought down on them. One of the foreigners Mesny saw momentarily, also in Taiping hands, was Frank Phillip de la Cour, another Jerseyman, who had been taken whilst shipping arms. Having managed to send a secret message to Shanghai that he was ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 148 Chinese on the Bund at Shanghai. The Russian Consul-General refused to try the men on the ground that theirs was a military offence. The Chinese community, especially in Ningbo where the murdered man came from, was incensed. The Shanghai Daotai (Qing dynasty mandarin - a Circuit Intendent), acting on orders from the Chinese Foreign Affairs Department, insisted that the accused be turned over to him. Finally, they were tried by court-martial at the Russian Consulate-General, and 1st Class Fireman Terente Ageef was sentenced to transportation for four years with hard labour and the other to five days for resisting the police. The Chinese authorities were not represented. The Russian despatch boat the Ryeshitelni Another somewhat similar incident occurred at the end of August at Chefoo (Zhifu, though nowadays Yantai) in Shandong province where the Russian despatch boat, Ryeshitelni (Retchielni), carrying important dispatches, had taken refuge in Chinese territorial waters having been cornered by Japanese destroyers. When the Russian vessel failed to emerge within 24 hours the Japanese sent a boarding party under Lieutenant Terashima. While the Russian Consul in Chefoo was discussing the temporary stay of the Russian destroyer to repair her engines with the Chinese Daotai, the commander of the Retchitelni, acting on instructions from the Russian Rear-Admiral, entered into negotiations with the Chinese admiral on the subject of disarming the destroyer and the handing over of the breech-blocks of guns and rifles, to the Chinese. The Japanese naval Lieutenant, who understood the Russians were about to blow up their vessel, boarded the Russian vessel and was attacked by the Russian commander who threw him overboard. The Japanese immediately took over the Russian destroyer and towed it out of the Chinese port. The Russian note demanded that the Chinese recover the Russian destroyer and downgrade the senior Chinese naval officer in Chefoo. It added that unless the vessel was recovered by the Chinese, into whose protection it had been given, China would stand convicted of acting in complicity with Japan. The Chinese as usual adopted their masterly habit of doing nothing. They gave out that they hoped Japan would restore the destroyer to Chinese custody of their own volition, observing at the same time that though Russia had constantly violated Chinese neutrality in the territory between the Great Wall and the Liao River, at ================================================================================