RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
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194

DONALD C. BOWIE

always been under close surveillance as well by the gendarmerie. After his arrest in May, 1943, he was confined in the cells below the Supreme Court in conditions of the utmost squalor and was subjected to the intensive, unending, repetitive "interrogation" about his alleged spying activities which are lamentably so well known nowadays. One of the accusations was that in some way he was in touch with the British Embassy in Lisbon to which he was supposed to have reported information about Japanese activities. The charge was a capital one and the sentence of the trial court was death. To such a condition was he reduced that he told his captors to get on with the job and carry out the sentence. This they did not do, and he suspects that the deaths in prison of the Chief Manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in circumstances in which ill-treatment and starvation were suspected made even the Japanese gendarmerie reluctant to offer Selwyn-Clarke as a third victim. Sixteen months later he was tried again, also upon a capital charge but due to some dealings of oriental subtlety by some of his friends in the Colony the sentence this time was three years in prison. In December 1944 he was transferred from Stanley prison to Ma Tau Wei Internment camp near Kai Tak airport and there he says he was alright. In August 1945, when we welcomed him to our hospital in the Central British School he was still physically in poor shape and he suffered permanent disabilities. His spirit, however, if it had once been bent, had by then recovered and as soon as he could after the Japanese surrender he returned to his office in Hong Kong to reestablish medical and health control and order in the Colony.

Before closing this section which has been devoted to the problems of feeding patients and staff in the hospital I am glad to refer to the Red Cross organization in Hong Kong during the war. Mr. R. Zindel, a Swiss citizen and thus a neutral, was in charge. He made formal inspections of the hospital about every six months accompanied by the Japanese Commander of P.O.W. camps. I shall refer later to these visits, but it was quite evident to me that Mr. Zindel was confined within strict limits by the Japanese during his inspections. He must, I feel sure, have met the same difficulties in his work outside the hospital, but I record here with gratitude our indebtedness to his tenacity, skill and resource in getting to us so many of the food stores which made such a very great difference to our wellbeing. I had the pleasure of meeting him also in Hong Kong during my visit in 1964.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG

205

lights-out and a host of minor matters. They sometimes slapped patients, both officers and other ranks, for what they considered to be breaches of orders. On our side the victims could only guess at the reasons for the slapping for no interpreter was ever to hand at the time. I took up every one of these cases with Saito or Seino as soon as either appeared after the incident, and I always tried to have the matter investigated. Repeatedly I was told that a sentry represented the Imperial Army and must inflict punishment at once for any irregularity on our part. I never discovered that there was anything personal in these slappings in the sense that they might be a retaliation for what, in the British army, we used to call dumb insolence. Some tempers on our side were sorely tried but no major incident occurred. I was never approached by any Japanese officer or N.C.O. for help over medical treatment.

Only once did an opportunity occur to retaliate. Late in 1945 in the Central British School in Kowloon we had an officious guard sergeant who was nicknamed 'Slappy' because of his readiness to slap all and sundry for what he thought were offences. About the time of the Japanese surrender, but well before the guards were withdrawn, this man was waylaid by some of our sappers who had suffered themselves and who wanted to repay him on their own and their friends' behalf. I was told that they were very satisfied with the result and there were no repercussions.

TRADING

The Japanese allowed us to have a shop within the hospital. We had to buy stocks from a Hong Kong Chinese compradore, a term which will be familiar to all who have been in the Far East, and we then sold the goods within the hospital. For a very long time we were not allowed to make a profit, and it was not until a year or two after our surrender that I got permission to make five per cent and use the proceeds within precisely defined limits. The shop stocked goods likely to be desired, mainly cigarettes, matches, syrup, jams, salt, eggs on occasion, tomato sauce, beans, cigarette papers, sugar, sewing cottons and needles, ginger, laces, soy bean powder, soap, razor blades etc. We placed an order one week and such goods as were available were delivered the following week.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG

257

Confirmatory details that the war was ended were coming in via the sentries who it will be remembered were mostly Formosans. Check parades were being held less regularly and there was some cheering within the hospital. Later that night, 17 August Major Harrison and I walked out of the hospital and went to a nearby Internment Camp where we saw Dr. and Mrs. Selwyn-Clarke and Dr. and Mrs. Canaval who had worked with us during hostilities. I got back to the hospital at 1.30 a.m. to find the place deserted by the Japanese and our men collecting souvenirs. On this day an American Red Cross case was delivered by the Japanese to us and on 18 August the Japanese quarters inside the hospital were being cleared up and documents and mattresses were burned by them. There was much broken glass about the place from bottles, windows etc. and it was on the previous night that our guard sergeant known as "Slappy" was dealt with by some of our men who were getting a little of their own back. I found it remarkable that on this day Saito brought the August pay for all officers together with all the savings which had been deducted from pay by the Japanese. This amounted to 740 yen for a major and 370 for a captain. Apparently I signed for all of this, though I have no note as to what I did with this money which by now of course was practically valueless. Two old friends of mine, one from the Middlesex Regiment and one from the Royal Marines came from the officers' camp and gave us news of events there. I went to see the Indian camp and arranged to help them with supplies of drugs etc. Major Ashton Rose brought in one patient from Sham Shui Po and said he had about 60 still to come. At this time my policy was to reserve our hospital beds only for sick people and to transfer to camp those who required no active treatment.

On 19 August I went early to Sham Shui Po where I saw the senior officer who remained, Lieutenant Col. F. Field and others. Major John Crawford, the senior Canadian doctor was in charge of the officers' camp and Captain Strahan moved to give professional help in the Indian camp. I saw patients with Ashton Rose and Crawford and arranged for Sham Shui Po to remain as a reception station sending those who needed treatment to the Central British School in Kowloon. Surplus drugs and equipment were to be returned to the Central British School leaving in Sham Shui Po only items necessary for a reception station. Ashton Rose would go to the Indian camp as Senior Medical Officer, Swyer would be...
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q
NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 131

CARL SMITH'S ADDITIONAL NOTE

Carl Smith has added to the text of the article appearing in Ching Feng the following note on the family of Li Tsin-kau and their services to the Hakka Church of the Basel Mission in Hong Kong and in Sabah.

Li Tsin-kau, otherwise known as Lee Sik-sam, died 8 April, 1885, aged sixty-two. On the letters of administration issued to his widow Ho Lai-yau, the value of his estate was estimated at $400. His assets consisted principally of a small house beside the Basel Society's Church and Mission House in Sai Ying Poon, which he had purchased in 1878 for $480. He sold a portion of the lot in 1878 for $370.

Li Tsin-kau's wife was baptized in Hong Kong in 1861 and died there 21 September, 1888, leaving four surviving children. The family property after her death was conveyed by Li A-cheung, an interpreter, Li Shin-en, a missionary and Li En-kyau, unmarried to their brother Li A-po, a trader.

The eldest son of Tsin-kau, A-lim, had died in 1864 “in trouble with the police". A-po, the second son was betrothed in 1865 to Kong Oi-fuk from Lilong. She was a student in the Basel Society Girl's Boarding School at Hong Kong, and he was a student of their Boy's School at Lilong.

The third son, A-cheung studied at Hong Kong Central School (Queen's College) and in 1871 was given the prize for best scholar. After leaving school, he entered Government service, beginning as a charge-room interpreter for the Police, but in 1875 was transferred to the Magistracy as a clerk. Three years later he was promoted to Second Interpreter in the Magistracy. In 1882 he was offered the position of Interpreter to the Kingdom of Hawaii. Like his brother he had married one of the students of the Girl's Boarding School in Hong Kong, Tshin Then-tet. She accompanied him to Hawaii.

In 1883, the Rev. Frank Damon, who was in charge of Chinese Christian work in Hawaii, visited Hong Kong. In a report of his visit published in The Friend (New Series, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 9) he expresses his pleasure in meeting "the venerable and interesting father of our Government interpreter in Honolulu, Mr. Lee Cheong. A brother and sister are engaged in teaching here, while another brother is missionary to his countrymen".
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977
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NOTES AND QUERIES

A visit will be made by coach to five of the oldest graves belonging to the family and, in addition, to a school in Kat Hing Wai at Kam Tin to see some of its heirlooms.

Quite a bit of walking is involved and lady members are advised to wear flat shoes for comfort and ease of movement over hill paths. The visit will start from the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier at 11 a.m. Members are advised to catch the regular ferry from the Central Terminus, Hong Kong (35 minutes by ordinary ferry, 20 by hover ferry). Please check ferry times with HK Yaumatei Ferry Co. (Tel. 5-220393) and make your own arrangements. Otherwise, come by car and park locally, allowing plenty of time to find parking space (try the western end of Yeung Uk Road, in the area of the Yeung Uk Road Sports Ground, in the same road as the pier).

Members are advised to bring a picnic lunch. The visit should end between 5--6 p.m., back at the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier.

The tour will be limited to two buses and members and their friends are invited on a first-come-first-served basis. Please telephone names to Mrs. Kam at 12-403396 (District Office, Tsuen Wan).

Programme notes will be available on the day.

DAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES

Joint Organizers

29.11.76

THE TANG (4) CLAN IN THE NEW TERRITORIES AND ITS OLDEST GRAVES

According to the genealogical record kept by the Tang clan at Kam Tin, it originated from a branch settled in Kut Shui County (*) of Kiangsi Province during the northern Sung period (960-1126).* 

It all started when one of the ancestors by the name of TANG Fu-hip (###) passed through this part of Kwangtung on his way to his new official assignment as the magistrate of Yeung Chun County () after he had successfully passed the imperial examination and was awarded the chin-shih degree during the reign of Hsi Ning (1068-1077).

* With the exception of "Kiangsi” romanizations used in this Note are in Cantonese.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207
NOTES AND QUERIES

163

and again in 1921, to share its territory with the Maryknollers. It was to do so yet again when, in 1931, a large part of scenic north central Kwangsi centered on the capital city, Kweilin, was transferred to them.

The three books make fascinating reading, partly because these were not ordinary men, and because they worked in China at a time of change, but also because the scene is set in South China among the Hakka and Cantonese of the districts adjacent to Hong Kong where, too, the Order established its mission house and language school in 1934. Indeed, Monsignor Bernard F. Meyer was, with Father Theodore F. Wempe, the author of The Student's Cantonese-English Dictionary, first published in 1935 and still going strong.

To end this note of appreciation, I shall quote from a letter sent by one of our members, Mr. W. J. Howard, following publication of the account of Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong, 1941-1946 in the last Journal.

Hong Kong, May 1982

JAMES HAYES

MR. W. J. HOWARD'S LETTER TO THE HON. LIBRARIAN, dated 18 January 1982

Dear Sir,

JOURNAL OF THE HK BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VOL. 19, 1979 (published 1981)

Please send me five (5) copies of the above Journal addressed to me at Causeway Bay PO Box 30704. I will remit the total cost together with postal charge as soon as I receive your debit advice.

I require so many extra copies of this particular Journal because I wish to send them to my friends. I consider the articles on the Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-1946 by Rev. James Smith and Rev. William Downs, M.M., shed about the most accurate and unbiased record of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. Some of my relatives were interned in Stanley during the war and I was interned in Shamshuipo P.O.W. camp and later in Japan. I

Page 195

Page 196
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985
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166

WEI PEH T'I

other hand, Edith wrote three letters in 1905 — mostly because she had so much to complain about Mrs. Ferguson. Therefore, more likely than not, Edith had written after April 1906, but these letters had not been saved.

We do know that Louese had a new baby in 1907. With four children under ten years of age, even with a household of servants that Louese must have had, she would have found little time for letter writing. We also know that she became seriously ill shortly after the last child, her only son Benjamin, was born. The family today thinks that she had leukemia. At least it is thought to be a form of cancer. She was sick for a long time, and died in 1909, when she was only thirty-seven years old.

NOTES

Harry Ryder is serving as Commercial Counsellor at the United States Embassy in Kuwait. The Strawbridges were originally Quakers who had settled in Philadelphia, but the Ryders are Episcopalians.

2 At first, the Ryder family had believed Edith to be a classmate of Louese at the Central Friends School. Correspondence with Clayton Faraday, Archivist of the school, however, reveals that Louese had been a member of the class of 1890, but there was no mention of her among the list of graduates. Edith Rowe is unknown at the school. Therefore, a conjecture must be made that they were most likely classmates at the "finishing school". Had they been academic scholars, they would probably have been sent to Bryn Mawr College. I am grateful to Mr. Faraday for his timely reply to my inquiry, making it possible to correct the error in my original presentation to the society.

3 Colonel Hedges lived in an apartment attached to the Strawbridge house in Bala Cynwyd after his daughter's marriage. He survived both his wife and daughter. Harry Ryder remembers his great-grandfather, but never knew his grandmother.

4 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.

5 Protestant Missionary records. I am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for looking up this information. Hopefully there is more data on Edith in the archives of the China Inland Mission in London or Shanghai.

6 Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility, American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 13ff

7 Hunter, 29-30.

8 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905. As it turned out, one of Louese's grandchildren, Harry V. Ryder Jr., did join the Foreign Service, but it was the
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522
64

the need to make the record appear to indicate a full three years' participation in such a scheme. This is slightly more convincing as an explanation. A final possibility is that Mok wished to draw attention away from the fact that he was a teacher at the Central School from 1884 to 1887. It is interesting to speculate about the reasons for this desire. Is it a coincidence, for example, that these were precisely the years during which Sun Yat Sen, the future revolutionary leader and President of the Republic of China, then known as Sun Tai Tseung, attended the Central School? It is possible that the young assistant teacher and the new pupil became friends. It is also possible that, in 1906, it struck Mok Man Cheung that public knowledge of this attachment would have been inconvenient and, therefore, he post-dated his teaching career's commencement to 1888, the year after Sun Yat Sen left the Central School for the newly formed Hong Kong College of Medicine for the Chinese. In 1906, the Empress Dowager was still alive. A belated Reform Movement was in operation in a last desperate, but vain, attempt to save the Qing dynasty and the Imperial system. As mentioned above, only two years earlier, in the first edition of his English Made Easy, Mok Man Cheung had given precedence to words like Emperor and Crown Prince. He had referred to queues and queue-strings as normal items, at the very time when for revolutionaries and even reformers they were regarded as symbols of Manchu oppression. There is no doubt that at this particular time open evidence of an affiliation with Sun Yat Sen would have been commercially, socially and politically undesirable, though, like several other middlemen of the period, Mok might have been quietly keeping his connections open with all sides.

Discussion of the significance of Mok Man Cheung's career

So much then for the worldly successes and possible problems of Mok Man Cheung. Whatever his innermost thoughts may have been, there can be little doubt that he strove outwardly to take advantage of the colonial, commercial, and social establishment of his time. Significantly, his book, English Made Easy, attempted to bridge the enormous gap between the Chinese and British communities in Hong Kong at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned above, this was a period which was not
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988
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Groven Ballen. There was some excitement when Mrs. Lam thought the infant was a boy and announced this to Father. Although having no sons was a disappointment to my parents, this infant daughter was no less precious. With his usual sense of humour, Father named her Dora Me Sun, explaining that Dora sounds like the Chinese words for "too many", that is, “too many" girls. He ordered milk, especially rich for babies, delivered daily for Dora, but she could not tolerate it and became very colicky and fussy. I tried to help by carrying her, swinging her back and forth in my arms or in the hammock, hoping to soothe her with songs like “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Upon the advice of Mrs. Lam, fresh milk was replaced by malted milk, but this probably did not fill Dora's need for adequate nourishment and she continued to cry a great deal. The very strict 4-hour feeding schedule that the doctor recommended added to the problem.

Soon the First World War cast a shadow of uneasiness over our lives and we felt the sadness of mothers who saw their sons drafted and sent to Europe. It came close to home when William Kam, our neighbour, and a few of our schoolmates left. War songs, rallies, victory bonds, first aid packages, etc. in school whipped up our patriotism. I had my first sight of an airplane then. It was a day of great rejoicing when the end of hostilities was announced. But soon the world-wide epidemic of influenza reached our islands and we would hear the sounds of sorrow in our community over the death of loved ones. We were anxious and frightened about an illness that struck so swiftly and with such deadliness. In spite of this, we were a happy family until in April, 1919, we received word that Father had come down with influenza on board ship bound for China. This was our last home in which we had all been so happy together, because Father died on his way back to Honolulu. His death left Mother widowed at age 32 with four young children, and gave me my first real loss, which had on me a sobering and maturing effect. Support and advice from friends helped Mother, sheltered from the world before this, to cope with her new responsibilities.

Ruth's education outside the home began in a small school for Chinese girls run by Mrs. Chang in a building behind the Fort Street Chinese Church. The following year Mother tried to enrol Ruth and me in Central Grammar School, but the principal, Mrs. Carter, reputed to be very selective of minorities and called by the Chinese "pigeon eye" ÉIR
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170

men, steeped in the Classics, is one of my positive experiences in this school.

As I remember it, starting school was not a traumatic experience; I went alone to the Fort Street Chinese Church and, without any ado, sat with other children in the kindergarten that was supported by the Free Kindergarten Association. In those days, there were no automobiles and very few hacks, so it was not unusual for me, at my age, to travel alone to a place where I attended church services with Mother every Sunday. One of our friends, Mrs. Chun Nam, even asked me to take her son to this kindergarten without the necessity of registering him beforehand. My teacher was a Japanese woman dressed in her native garb. This year left few impressions on me.

Accepted into Central Grammar School, I found my first-grade teacher, Miss Armstrong, a warm and conscientious person, who had many charts from which she drilled us in the sounds of the vowels and consonants and in the combination of these into words, using a pointer to guide us. Arithmetic was simple addition and subtraction or the reciting of the multiplication table, which could always be found on the back of our notebooks. The majority of the class were white children, and I did not feel comfortable enough to make friends with them. In the next three grades, I began to socialize with them and was included by them in play, as I was an active girl and swift on my feet when competing. As we advanced in years, the different races tended to chum around with their own ethnic groups. Many of the white children came from the army base and were driven to and from school in army vans. When Mrs. Carter retired, the school became less segregated.

Miss Smith was my second-grade teacher, a young lady of rather generous proportions. She was warm and likeable, yet firm. She taught me to sew carefully and neatly a miniature book, the pages of which served as a place for pins and needles, something I treasured for years. Promptness was imperative. One day, when I arrived late for class, I was so afraid of her that I went home, only to be sent back to school by Mother, another disciplinarian, after she scolded me for dallying with my morning chores. Without asking for any explanation, Miss Smith had me hold out a hand, and then whacked my palm with a ruler; I felt exceedingly embarrassed. It did not lessen my fondness for her, and I
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Abraham, is a noted Singaporean academic.

Paul Bolding, works as a financial journalist at the news and information organisation Reuters in London. He has been with Reuters since 1974. He lived in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1997 and has travelled widely in Asia. Mr Bolding has previously worked in Europe and the Middle East including Brussels, Berlin and Nicosia. He is a co-author of the Insight Guide to Turkey (pbolding@onetel.net.uk)

Julia Chan, is the Hon Librarian of HKBRAS and a member of Council (jlychan@hkucc.hku.hk).

Chohong Choi, obtained a B.A. in History from Queens College of the City University of New York, and an M.Phil. in History from the University of Hong Kong. He is currently a research assistant in the Department of Real Estate & Construction at HKU.

The late Arnold Graham, was an old China hand. He was well known for his steady stream of Letters to the Editor in Hong Kong under the pseudonym Ancient Gweilo (a play on his initials). He donated a large number of books to the Library of HKBRAS in 1994. He ultimately relocated to New Zealand where he passed away in 1996.

Peter Halliday, was formerly an assistant commissioner with the Hong Kong Police Force and its chief information officer for over six years. He now heads his own information technology consulting and training company, Elite IT Services Ltd. He is the Hon Editor of HKBRAS and a member of Council (Peter.Halliday@e-liteitservices.com).

Peter Hansell, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS in Great Britain.

Paul Harrison, started his conservation career as a volunteer at Leicester Museum, U.K., in his school holidays. He has a B.Sc. in Archaeological Conservation and a M.Sc. in Archaeometallurgy from the Institute of Archaeology, now part of University College London. He has also worked for the Scottish Urban Archaeological Trust, the British School at Athens in Crete, studying an ancient Minoan City - Palaikastro - and Bradford University's Department of Archaeological Sciences. He was formally with the Central Conservation Division (Metals), Museum of History, Leisure and Cultural Services Department. He now heads his own conservation company, Phoenix Conservation Ltd., (paulehar@netvigator.com).

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