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NOTES AND QUERIES

165

he charged two or three cash a chih, with food and a place to sleep as was the custom. That was a lot of money for a man to earn; he could live for a week on one day's labor.

At page 53 it is mentioned that a few years later, at or about the Boxer time, the Old Weaver no longer came to the Chu home to weave cloth each winter, and that no one took his place, it being then cheaper to buy British or foreign cloth in the market.

1. For descriptions of hemp spinning wheels from Chekiang see pp. 167-169 of Rudolf P. Hommel's China at Work... (New York, The John Day Company, 1937). Photographs of two such wheels are at pp. 170 and 171. I have not yet come across any such relics from the Hong Kong region.

2. The Hakkas of Hing Ning district, mentioned above, appear also to have played a large part in weaving foreign cotton yarn imported via Swatow. Consul F.S.A. Bourne in his section of the Report of the Mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce 1896-7 (Blackburn, The North-east Lancashire Press Company, 1898) at pp. 153-4 mentions them as using foreign yarn for weaving cotton cloth "sent down the Canton East River past Hui-chow Fu to Fatshan where it is dyed black and called ch'ung-ch'ang-ch'ing i.e. imitation long black. This cloth, like that of which it is a copy, is very largely exported to Singapore."

3. For local, i.e. Hong Kong, place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960).

Hong Kong, 1968.

JAMES HAYES

THE TUNG CHUNG FORT (LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG)

For earlier references in NOTES AND QUERIES see Vols. 3 (1963) and 4 (1964) of this Journal at pp. 144-145 and 146-152 respectively.

In late January 1966, I heard of, and spoke with, an old lady aged 90 sui (歲) born on 2nd October 1877. She had spent all her days in the Tung Chung valley, having been born in Wong Ka Wai and married into Sheung Ling Pei village. A series of questions...
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
CONTENTS

PRESIDENT'S REPORT

HON. TREASURER'S REPORT

HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT

ARTICLES:

Dan Waters

LIBRARIES

138 1937. vii

AR

In the Steps of Lu Pan: Reminiscences of Building in Hong Kong

K.J.P. Lowe

Hong Kong, 26 January 1841: Hoisting the Flag Revisited

Keith Stevens

The Jade Emperor and his Family, Yu Huang Ta Ti

Keith Stevens - Fukienese Wang Yeh (Ong Ya [Hokkien])

P.H. Munro-Faure

The Kiukiang Incident of 1927

A.D. Blackburn

Hong Kong, December 1941 July 1942

Chan Ka-yan

Joss Stick Manufacturing: A Study of a Traditional Industry in Hong Kong

P.H. Hase

Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz, An Old Buddhist Nunnery in the New Territories and its Place in Local Society

J.H. Haan

Thalia and Terpsichore on The Yangtze, Survey of Foreign Theatre and Music in Shanghai 1850-1865

Fred Dagenais

John Fryer's Early Years in China: I. Diary of His Voyage to Hong Kong

Chan Wing-hoi

The Dangs of Kam Tin and Their Jiu Festival

xxi

xxiii

8

18

34

61

77

94

121

158

252

302

NOTES AND QUERIES:

E. Sinn

Notes on the Robert Hart Papers at the University of Hong Kong Library

376

P.H. Hase

A Song from Sha Tau Kok on the 1911 Revolution

382

P.H. Hase

The Mutual Defence Alliance (Yeuk) of the New Territories

384

P.H. Hase - More on The Man the Emperor Decapitated

388

Issei Tanaka

The White Tiger

389

Keith Stevens - British Chinese Labour Corps Labourers Buried in England

390

Anthony Siu Kwok-kin

The History of Hong Kong: From A Village to A City

391

Anthony Siu Kwok-kin

Historical Records

Anthony Siu Kwok-kin

BOOK REVIEWS

Tai Yu Shan from Chinese

394

A Tung Lo Wan

399

400

V
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
HONG KONG, DECEMBER 1941 — JULY 1942

A. D. BLACKBURN*

77

The following is an account of the personal experiences of my wife and myself at Hongkong during the Japanese attack and afterwards.

I was still in Queen Mary Hospital when hostilities began. My leg had so far recovered that I was able to hobble about on crutches and the doctor had decided that he could now safely proceed to operate on my ear which had become completely obstructed with scar tissue. The operation was fixed for 8 a.m. on December 8th. I was waiting to be taken to the theatre when, almost exactly at 8 a.m., the wailing of the sirens and the noise of planes announced the beginning of the blitz and the operation had to be abandoned.

Meanwhile my wife was at the War Memorial Nursing Home recovering from an operation for appendicitis. All patients whom it was possible to remove were evicted from the hospitals to make room for war casualties. My wife was turned out on December 10th and I on December 12th and Witham (Tea Adviser to the Chinese Government and a friend of ours) arranged for us to be billeted with him and his wife in their flat on the Peak, which the Hongkong Government had declared an evacuation area. There we stayed throughout the hostilities.

There was fairly heavy artillery fire and air bombing but the Japanese seemed to be concentrating on military objectives (particularly Mt. Austin barracks and two field gun batteries in our neighbourhood), and civilian property around us was not

* Editor's Note. Sir Arthur Blackburn was Counsellor of the British Embassy in Chungking in 1941. On June 29th, 1941, his house there was totally destroyed by a Japanese bomb. Two people were killed, and fifteen injured, including Sir Arthur, who received injuries to his knee and ear. The injury to the ear required operation, as did the injury to the knee, which had become infected. Sir Arthur and his wife were evacuated to Hong Kong to enable these operations to take place, arriving at the end of November, 1941. Sir Arthur was a witness to the Japanese attack on Hong Kong in December, 1941, and he and his wife were interned from January 22nd to the end of July 1942 in Stanley Camp. He and his wife with other captured diplomatic staff were then repatriated, leaving Shanghai on August 17th, 1942. Sir Arthur was asked by both the Foreign Office and the Red Cross to report on conditions in Hong Kong and in Stanley Camp. These reports were completed by the end of September, 1942, even before the Blackburns docked in England. Because of the general interest of these reports, and particularly because of their contemporary character and absence of post-war hindsight, it is felt useful to print them here. The Journal owes copies of these interesting documents to the kindness of Mr. C. Blackburn.
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a transformation as did the revolutionary activities of Legge's own lifetime. Buchanan, a convert at first reluctant in tone but later adamant in commitment, could not have left a more profound influence on his impressionable Scottish student. Legge began to recognize his own need for conversion—a conclusion drawn as much from Buchanan as from his family's involvement in the relatively new Non-Conformist movement. In his autobiography, Legge spoke of his need to resolve this issue as a matter involving his passage into maturity.

37

As a Scotsman of the nineteenth century, Legge rediscovered his Scottish uniqueness through the pen of Buchanan. In addition, through him, Legge gained a perspective on the rise and fall of clans and nations, a perspective broader and more reflective than usual in the sixteenth century.

At the end of his life, James Legge must have been a remarkable religious figure. Yet what his own statements suggest is that there was as much of the scholar in his early life as there was a missionary. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was the scholar who discovered his spiritual need, at least in part, through identification with the conversion of his Scottish predecessor. The religious and scholarly were intimately intertwined, but, as with Buchanan, it was the scholarly route which first awoke Legge's mind to greater things, leading later to the spiritual conversion which was the primary motive force for Legge's mature life.

III. Legge's Educational Philosophy

James Legge's first job was to teach Mathematics in Blackburn, England. He was quickly able to demonstrate his competence in other fields and was soon afterward also given responsibilities in teaching courses in his strongest subject, advanced Latin. It was during this period that the young Legge pursued the “question of religion”. The headmaster under whom he worked was also a Non-Conformist and so not only permitted him exposure to the Latin Church fathers, which he taught to students, but also involved him in weekend trips to nearby villages for preaching. Through these experiences and relationships, James Legge became convinced that he should become a missionary, and so after one and one-half years of teaching, he entered Highbury College, a Non-Conformist Seminary, to prepare for service in the London Missionary Society.
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and older brothers, discussing the possible future vocation he might take up. Becoming a minister or missionary was considered, but that was "dependent on my becoming a true Christian, and I knew that I was not then such". He decided to put off all final decisions and become a teacher (9) "till my mind should become in a more settled condition on the great subject of religion”. Living with his older brother, George, in London in the interim, James went to hear many preachers, but was particularly impressed by the minister of Weigh House Chapel, a Mr. Thomas Binney. (Two years later, when he entered seminary and studied Chinese at the University of London, he made the extra effort to hear Binney's sermons "frequently and always to my benefit^^.) Later, he heard a message by a famous Congregational minister, Dr. Me'all, on the vow of Jacob in Genesis 28. This encounter set in motion the determination on James' part to be a "truer and more consistent servant of Christ'. These events took place in 1835 and 1836. Finally, while teaching mathematics and Latin in a school in Blackburn, James joined the Congregational Church in Blackburn. His comment on this commitment reflects his sense of duty and spiritual fulfillment: "The doing what is right always brings with it an exhilaration of spirit, and gives concentration to the powers of the mind". There is no note here of an emotionally ecstatic experience, but there is the overcoming of a deep and pressing burden of spiritual accountability. He completed this autobiographical account with the quotation of Biblical passages (predominantly Philippians 3:13-14) and with the Christian witness' simple statement; now he was following Christ, and Christ, he was assured, would not leave him. See James Legge, "Notes of My Life", op. cit., pp. 58-67.

In his eighteen months at the Blackburn school, James taught the upper class boys, who were only a few years younger than himself, mathematics and passages from a number of classical Latin sources. The young teacher later admitted that two texts he taught during this period left a deep impression upon him: Lactantius' Institutiones Divinae (Antwerp, 1539) and Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae. The latter is particularly important because of the Augustinian commitment to which Boethius was bound: that philosophy could be an aid to and lead one on from the search for human understanding to a humble acceptance of a guiding trust in the living God. In addition, the well-structured poetic strains of Boethius may also have had a continuing impact in Legge's rendering of Chinese poetry, but by his own statement, it appears that George Buchanan's style was more often in mind as a model for translating. See "Notes Of My Life", op. cit., pp. 65-66, 72.

T

For details on Legge's Highbury College experience and first studies in Chinese, see "Notes Of My Life", op. cit., pp. 80-87, 102-105.

411

Brian Harrison has written about Legge's attitudes at the Malacca site, arguing that he was a young and inexperienced missionary who stubbornly refused to adopt an older missionary's and other administrators' attitudes toward the College. Other research has challenged this opinion, showing Legge to have been stubbornly opposed to practices which he believed were not only religiously and ethically unacceptable, but also more aligned with both the London office and the original plans of Morrison and Milne. See Brian Harrison, Waiting For China: The Anglo-Chinese College At Malacca, 1818-1843, And Early Nineteenth-Century Missions (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1979) and R. L. O'Sullivan, "The Departure of the London Missionary Society from Malacca," Journal of The Malaysian Historical Society 23 (1980), pp. 75-83.

41

See The Rambles of the Emperor Ching Tih in Keang Nan, A Chinese Tale. (Vol. 1, 320 pages; Vol. 2, 322 pages) trans. Tsin Shen, ed. James Legge (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1843). The second work was attributed to Legge by Alexander Wylie, who [according to Dr. R. Gary Tiedemann, currently of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London] was also tutored in elementary Chinese by Legge during the latter's first furlough (1846-1847) See A Lexilogus of the English, Malay, And Chinese Languages; comprehending the vernacular idioms of the
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Birch, John Grant, Travels in North and Central China, London Hearst and Blackett, 1902

Bishop, Isabella Lucy, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, London J Murray, 1883

The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, New York Putnam, 1900

Blackburn Chamber of Commerce, Report of the Mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce, 1896-7, Blackburn North East Lancashire Press, 1898

Blakiston, Thomas Wight 1832-1891, Five Months on the Yang-Tze and Notices of Present Rebellions in China, London J Murray, 1862

Bland, John Otway Percy, Houseboat Days in China, London Heinemann, 1919

Boardman, Eugene, Christian Influence Upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864, Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1952

Bohr, Paul Richard, Famine in China and the Missionary Timothy Richard as Relief Administrator and Advocate of National Reform, 1876-1884, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1972

Boone, Murel, The Seed of the Church in China, Edinburgh St Andrews Press, 1973

Braam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard van, An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East India Company to the Court of the Emperor of China in the Years 1794 and 1795 (Subsequent to that of the Earl of Macartney) from the journals of..., London printed by R Phillips, 1798

Bradford, Ruth, "Maskee?" The Journal and Letters of Ruth Bradford 1861-1872, Hartford The Prospect Press, 1938

Bredon, Juliet, Sir Robert Hart: The Romance of a Great Career, London Hutchinson, 1909 (New York Dutton, 1909)

—, Peking, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1931 (Hong Kong reprint Oxford University Press)

Bruce, Clarence D., In the Footsteps of Marco Polo, Edinburgh Blackwood, 1907

Bryson, Mary Isabella, The Land of the Pigtail, London The Sunday School Union, 1905

Burland, Cottie Arthur, The Travels of Marco Polo (with photographs by Werner Forman), London Joseph, 1971

Cable, Mildred, Through Jade Gate and Central Asia, with an introduction by Rev John Stuart Houghton, London Constable, 1927
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The reality is that the British had been able to retain Hong Kong as a Colony for another 52 years after August 1945, notwithstanding the promise of Britain to the Chinese Government in 1943 that she would return all her possessions in China after the end of the war. In this light, Churchill's decision was not irrational, and the garrison's sacrifice was a contribution to the way of life and system of government in Hong Kong today.

In terms of duty and moral responsibility, Churchill's decision was also reasonable, given the constraints confronting his administration. For the sake of argument, what other options were available to Churchill in December 1941, assuming that "the British Far Eastern Strategy" (Bell, 1996), for which he was not responsible, with respect to Hong Kong had been wrong? Should he have handed over the Colony to the invading Japanese forces without a fight? Should he have "returned" the Colony to the Chinese Government, which had lost control of Canton and a meagre military presence in or near Hong Kong? Or should he have made efforts to evacuate the Governor and the Hong Kong garrison by sea or air and left the rest of the population of Hong Kong in a state of anarchy?11 Bell suggests that demilitarisation and evacuation were feasible options and that the ruling out of these options by the British Government was not justified (Bell, 1996). I do not think that these options were politically sensible or morally responsible. Therefore, I dispute the view that the efforts of the Hong Kong garrison, though militarily probably doomed to fail, were unnecessary or pointless. The complaint by some authors, such as (Blackburn, 1989) about looting by the "Chinese" during and after the fighting testified the need for British military presence in Hong Kong to avoid a state of anarchy amongst the population. I further dispute the view of some recent authors that the British administration was humiliated in the eyes of the local population when the small Hong Kong garrison surrendered. That would have been the case had they fled or surrendered Hong Kong without a shot being fired. The majority of the law-abiding Chinese population, irrespective of their views towards colonialism in Chinese territories, had always been supportive of measures to defend their liberty, lives and property against Japanese invaders. At the time the Japanese troops marched on Hong Kong, they had already plundered Chinese soil for more than a decade. There is no doubt that the Chinese population of Hong Kong were not, as represented by some authors, apathetic about the invasion.
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not be ignored by those who follow the steps of experts in military studies; people such as J.A. English and Gudmundsson (1994), Ponting (1995) or van Creveld (1982).

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Rev. Fr. Anthony Farren SJ for his comments on the draft of this manuscript. The author is also indebted to Rev. Fr. John Coghlan SJ for providing him access to the publications of Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong. All faults are the author's.

REFERENCES

*Aldrich, Richard J. The Key to the South: Britain, the United States and Thailand during the Approach of the Pacific War, 1929-1942, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993.

*Arbeitskreis für Wehrforschung. Decisive Battles of World War II-The German View, Chinese translation by Star Light Publishing, Taipei 1994. (Chinese publication)

Cameron, N. Hong Kong: the Cultural Pearl, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1978.

Bell, C.M., “‘Our Most Exposed Outpost': Hong Kong and British Far Eastern Strategy, 1921-1941,” The Journal of Military History, Vol. 60, Issue I (January, 1996): 61-88.

Blackburn, A.D., "Hong Kong: December 1941 - July 1942,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29, 1989, pp.77-93.

Birch, A. and Cole, M. Captive Christmas: the Battle of Hong Kong, December 1941, Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1979.

Bruce, P. Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1991.

Bruce, P. "Hong Kong Military History Notes," Nos. 1 (May 1985) to 7 (October 1987), unpublished mimeographs.

Page 165

Page 166
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Supplement, 29 January 1948; A Record of the Actions of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps in the Battle of Hong Kong December, 1941 (1953). For the official Hong Kong account of the surrender, see Hong Kong Government (1948).

3 The literature referred to in this section is not exhaustive and focuses on books and reports only. English and Chinese newspapers and periodicals from time to time carry articles on the Battle. Post-war annals of universities, university halls and secondary schools in Hong Kong are also a good source of materials about the Battle. There are also a number of novels on war events,

+ The emphasis is placed on attacking the enemies' "line of least resistance" or "line of least expectation".

5 As quoted in Ko and Wordie (1996), p.18.

"They were influenced by the views of Air Chief Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British Commander-in-Chief in the Far East.

7 During the initial stage of the Battle, BBC broadcasts (Orwell, 1987) placed high hopes on the availability of Chinese forces in the vicinity of Hong Kong. Such forces were never to come.

Liddell Hart (1999): footnote at 219.

"Colonel Hewitt is the author of a number of books on the Battle and Japanese occupation of the Colony.

10 The title of the book is a misnomer as the police force obtained the royal title only in the late 1960s.

Blackburn gave an account of the anarchic situation of Hong Kong shortly before the surrender (Blackburn 1989).

12 On 23 October 1937, the Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee considered re-fortification or demilitarisation of Hong Kong, assuming that it took 90 days for the British fleet to relieve Hong Kong. Rollo (1992): 113. According to Aldrich, the British Chiefs of Staff considered the abandonment of Shanghai and demilitarisation of Hong Kong to avoid confrontation with Japan. Aldrich (1993): 261.
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