RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q
LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA 

173 

lords then fighting for power in Szechuan. Before the 'Incident' closed nearly a month later, another two China Navigation Company ships had been seized by Yung Lin. All available ships of the Yangtze Squadron were involved, and H.M. ships Dispatch, a light cruiser, and Hawkins, the flagship of the China Station, had been sent to Hankow. In addition the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company's Kiawo had been requisitioned by the Navy to carry reinforcements to Wanhsien. During the sometimes severe fighting which occurred at times, the chief engineer of the Wanliu and seven servicemen lost their lives, and several others were wounded. It was nearly two years later, and after Chiang Kai-shek had expelled the left wing elements of the Kuomintang and his Russian advisers, before the situation on the Yangtze returned to something approaching normal.

After the Royal Navy took over the Pioneer, Captain Plant built a junk and traded between Ichang and Chungking, and made a thorough study of the Upper Yangtze. In 1908 he persuaded a group of Chinese business men and government officials to form the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company, forty per cent of the capital coming from official sources, and the balance from private Chinese merchants. The Company's first ship, the Shutung, was built by Thorneycrofts in Southampton under Captain Plant's supervision. She cost £26,000 and arrived at Ichang in 1909. The Shutung was 115 feet long, sixteen feet beam, and six and a half feet depth, and was described as 'a mass of machinery.' She towed a float alongside in which her cargo and passengers were accommodated, and in spite of only being able to carry sixty tons dead-weight of cargo, twelve first and sixty-six steerage passengers, was a great success financially and comparatively trouble-free. The Shutung's success was largely due to Captain Plant's intimate knowledge of the Upper River, his ability to inspire confidence in Chinese official and commercial circles in Chungking, and in his Chinese crew. Until 1914 the Shutung was the only steamer on the Upper Yangtze; but in April of that year she was joined by the Shuhun, a larger and more powerful sister ship, also built in Britain, sent out in sections, and assembled in Shanghai. At the same time the Szechwan Railway Company, then planning a railway from Hankow to Chungking, put three smaller steamers on the Upper Yangtze. Two of these ran between Ichang and Chungking, and the third between Chungking and Suifu. By 1914, therefore, the technical
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063
220 

CARL SMITH 

Following the religious rites, Ho A-mei gave a short talk on the development of mines in Kwangtung. 

The European contribution to the programme was an impromptu rendering of "For he's a jolly good fellow." A sentiment not necessarily shared by the European community in Hongkong at all times, as we shall see. 

HOW A-MEI PIONEERED A MODERN CANTON 

In addition to promoting modern mining in Kwangtung, Ho A-mei was also connected with other projects to introduce Western technological improvements into the province. 

In 1882 he was a principal in the formation of the Wa Hop Telegraph Company floated as a public company to build a line between Kowloon and Canton. Most of the shareholders were wealthy Canton and Hongkong Chinese merchants. Kwangtung officials aided the company in overcoming opposition aroused by fears that the wires and poles would disturb the fung shui of the neighbourhoods through which they passed. 

After the line was built to Shamshuipo, just on the other side of the British-Chinese boundary, the company was refused permission to extend the line to Hongkong Island. 

There were various reasons for the refusal. One was the connection the project had with the Danish-Russian backed Great Northern Telegraph Company. Its engineers had been employed to supervise the construction and certain rights had been granted to the foreign company in the use of the line. 

Previously the Great Northern had tried to get monopolistic rights over all telegraph lines in China. This effort had been vigorously opposed by Britain which feared the expansion of Russia's power and influence. 

In this light a Hongkong editor thought, "the refusal to permit the line to land on British soil is an act of self-defence and the promoters of the Canton-Kowloon line ought, we think, to have
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
250

generating their own supplies, switched to Hong Kong Electric.

In 1924 there were 1,369 gas street lights, compared to 469 electric. By 1936, few gas lights remained.

During the invasion, in December 1941, a small group of Hong Kong Electric engineers and other staff, a few of whom were veterans of Britain's past wars, held the Japanese at bay in the epic defence of the North Point Power Station. Casualties were heavy. Of these, Vincent Sorby, the general manager, later died of wounds in prison camp.

Except for early days and the war years, blackouts have totalled only two hours 50 minutes. One was caused by a fire at North Point Power Station in 1930, and another when a shoal of fish was sucked into the cooling system in the same year.

China Light and Power

China Light and Power is younger than Hong Kong Electric, and until it was established, apart from a few lamps, the streets of Kowloon went lightless at night. Robert George Shewan registered the company in 1900 (some records say 1901). His main business was as a partner in Shewan, Tomes and Company. Its predecessor was Samuel Russell and Company (liquidated in 1879), which started business in Canton in 1818, an American trading firm originating in Boston which merged with Perkins and Company, another American company, in 1842.

Lawrence (now Lord) Kadoorie, Hong Kong's first peer, was born in Hong Kong and raised in China. His father, who became Sir Elly Kadoorie, arrived in Hong Kong, via Bombay, in 1880 from Baghdad where his was one of the leading Jewish families. Lawrence Kadoorie joined the board of China Light and Power in 1930. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces in the company.

China Light and Power commissioned its first power station, at Hung Hom, in 1903. In 1989, the company supplied electricity to nearly 1,400,000 customers in Kowloon, the New Territories, Lantau, and some outlying islands. 'China Light' is not dealt with at such length here as Hong Kong Electric because it did not come into
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
255

The Hong Kong Guide 1893 (republished 1982)

Hughes, Richard, Borrowed Place Borrowed Time, Hong Kong and its Many Faces

(London 1968, reprinted 1976)

Hunter, W.C., The "Fan Kwac" at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (republished 1965)

Hutcheon, Robin, The Blue Flame, 125 Years of Town Gas in Hong Kong (1987) Hutcheon, Robin, Wharf. The First Hundred Years, 1886-1986 (1986)

Ingrams, Harold, Hong Kong (London, 1952)

Jardine, Matheson & Company... an historical sketch (undated)

Jarrell, Old Hong Kong

Jones, Stephanie, Two Centuries of Overseas Trading. The Origins and Growth of the Inchcape Group) (England, 1986)

King, Frank H.H., The History of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, vols. I to IV

Lawrence, Anthony, and Frederick Amentrout, The Taipan Traders

Liu Kwang-ching, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China 1862-1874 (Harvard 1962) Luff, John, Hong Kong Cavalcade (1968)

Luff, John, The Hidden Years, Hong Kong 1947-1945 (1967)

Luff, John, The Hong Kong Story (circa late 1960s) MacMillan, Alistair, Seaports of the Far East (1925)

Morris, Jan, Hong Kong, Xianggang (England, 1988) Murray, Simon, Legionnaire (England, 1980)

Peak Tramway. 1888–1988

Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, Managing Director W.H. Morton-Cameron, Editor-in Chief W. Feldwick (1917)

Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, journals, various

The Thistle and the Jade. A Celebration of 150 Years of Jardine. Matheson & Co. Editor Maggie Keswick (London, 1982)

Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong. Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, Editor in Chief Arnold Wright (1908)

Wong Siu-lun, Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists In Hong Kong (1988)

UNPUBLISHED BOOKS

Book 1, The Canton Dispensary 1828-1838 Book II, The Hong Kong Dispensary 1841-1862 Book III, A.S. Watson and Company 1862-1886

COMPANY BROCHURES, LEAFLETS AND MAGAZINES

A.S. Watson & Co., Limited

Brief History: The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

China Light and Power Co. Ltd. (annual reports)

Deacon's

The Elements of Power, China Light & Power

History of Hong Kong & China Gas Co. Ltd

Hong Kong Bank Group Magazines

Hong Kong Land 1889/1989

Hong Kong's Noonday Gun (Jardine)

Hutchison Whampoa Limited (annual reports)

Inchcape: The International Services and Marketing Group A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Electric Standard Chartered News
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
178

NOTES

1

Said by one of the Tangs of Ha Pa. The father had won a Jockey Club lottery ticket

Mrs Wong Chau Yuk-bing, 10 July 1991

I once became concerned with a grave on a hill above Tsuen Wan. There had been a mistake and confusion when exhuming illegal graves and removing the remains to an authorized cemetery. My subsequent enquiry showed that this slope contained a number of graves of Chans of Sam Tung Uk, repaired in 1919, and another old grave belonging to their cousins from Kwan Mun Hau, a recent reburial of another of their graves whose old site had been required for development; the earth grave with stone tablet dated 1954 belonging to another local lineage recently taken up and remains placed in an urn (whose removal caused all the trouble); and a Tsang grave dated 1909 but removed at some time previously. The enquiry showed that the hill was a favoured burial site, that it was mostly monopolized by the Chans of Sam Tung Uk; that they had received objections from Kwan Mun Hau to a new grave and had not used it but found another site.

4

The exercise was prompted by what I personally felt was the misguided notion that all the owners of old graves could, and should, one fine day be asked to exhume them.

4 This was still felt to be the case, even though some leading members of the clan were Christians, with forebears who had also been members of the local protestant Chuen Yuen Church, established in Tsuen Wan about 1905.

+

Addressed to DOTW but sent to NTA HQ. See Secretary for the NT's NT L/M No.(172) in E/948/78 to TM&DO TW dated 11 December 1980, enclosing Chinese letter dated November 1980.

+ Chinese letter from Mr. Wong Kit-hung, Village Representative of Shui Pin Village, Yuen Long, dated 14 January 1980.

"Wong Cho-yip and 22 other villagers of this place are the owners of the grave of Ancestor Shui-tai at Tsing Lung Tau. Ancestor Shui-tai was buried there in the tenth month of the first year of Tung Chih [1862], so that the grave has a history of 120 years. The villagers have recently learned that the government will resume the land there for development. They fear that great damage will be done to the fung-shui [of the clan] if the grave is destroyed. We entreat you to remedy the situation quickly [by cancelling the notice] or by compensating for this loss, so that they may choose a lucky day for the removal of their ancestral grave (and another auspicious burial ground for).

M

Chopped DOTW Inward. Serial No. 1861 of 17 August 1963. The District Commissioner gave an account of a ceremonial visit following damage to a grave. See Annual Departmental Report, District Commissioner, New Territories, 1955-56.

4

ADR, DCNT 1955-56, para. 87.

Mr Wong Kwai-chi, Land Inspector, Class 1. He and I had been colleagues and friends since we first served together in the District Office South, twenty years before.

|| DOTW file TW6/WL/71, Chinese letter dated 4 May 1971.

1:

See JHKBRAS, Vol. 17 (1977), p.189 for background.

File TW130/983/77, for China Light and Power Company's electricity supply sub-station on NE Lantau.

14

This was partly their own fault, as owing to a particularly intense intra-lineage feud, all through the late 1970s and most of the 1980s they could not agree on removal terms,
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
97

considered desirable for unsightly power lines and, what many maintain are, harmful cables to be festooned from poles or pylons across the landscape. The complaints by residents of Fei Ngo Shan (Kowloon Peak) in 1995, to the Hong Kong Government and China Light and Power Company, are a case in point.

China resisted similar developments in the late 19th century, including the building of railroads, because it felt these 'improvements' could spoil favourable fung shui. Lin Yutang humorously writes (Lin, 1936:302): 'Has not fung shui contributed more to aesthetic life than it has hindered our knowledge of geology? Certainly 'progress' in China was delayed as a result of fung shui precautions, but, interestingly, relatively no such delays were experienced in Japan,

Fung Shui Overseas

When Chinese emigrate it is understandable that some find it unsettling to be surrounded by the foreign customs and values of the logic-led West. Consequently, there is sometimes a natural reaction of nostalgia, a desire for awareness of Chinese culture to be heightened and for some Chinese beliefs like fung shui to be retained. Years ago, the so-called naam yeung (southern ocean) Chinese transported fung shui to places like Malaya, Singapore, and Thailand. Still today, many try to re-create 'a little piece of Hong Kong' (or wherever they came from) in the country in which they have settled. In addition, many try to convince themselves that, if something is Chinese, it must be better.

Fung shui as practised in Europe can differ slightly from the 'classical' model of Hong Kong, although the basic principles remain the same. There are only a handful of Chinese fung shui masters currently active in Britain, although the number is increasing. Nevertheless, a Chinese estate agent living in England informed the author that up to 80 per cent of her Chinese clients who buy property there are concerned about fung shui. Eighty per cent, however, is a very approximate figure, and it appears to the author it could be on the high side. Customers are generally concerned with points such as the orientation of the property and how the bed can be positioned. But things like Tung Sing (the Chinese Almanac) mean little to many second-generation British Chinese as they are unable to interpret it properly. One Chinese woman academic, a member of one of the Five Great Clans of Hong Kong's New Territories, who has lived mainly in...
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
168

23

Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Village Education in Transition, JHKBRAS, vol 22 (1982) pp 252-70. David Faure, Sai Kung. The Making of the District and its Experience during World War II", Ibid, pp 161-216

26 David Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society. Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1986)

27

This is most clearly expressed in Faure's latest work, Unity and Diversity Local Cultures and Identities in China, edited by Tao Tao Liu and David Faure, (Hong Kong University Press, 1996)

28

Among these histories are Nigel Cameron, Power the Story of China Light (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1982), Austin Coates, A Mountain of Light the Story of the Hong Kong Electric Company (London Heinemann, 1977), Robin Hutcheon, Wharf the First Hundred Years (Hong Kong Wharf (Holding, 1986), Katherine Mattock, Hong Kong Practice Dr Anderson and Partners, the First Hundred Years (Hong Kong Dr Anderson and Partners, 1984), and of course Frank HH King's monumental history of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 4 volumes published by the Cambridge University Press

29 It would be useful to examine the policies and thinking behind the establishment and expansion of these bodies but it is beyond the brief of this paper to do so. But the economic power which makes these possible is very obvious

30

For a brief introduction to its work, see The Heritage of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Antiquities and Monuments Office, Recreation and Culture Branch, 1992), for an account of how the AMO was founded, see Elizabeth Sinn. Modernization without Tears Attempts at Cultural Conservation in Hong Kong, Seminar paper presented at the Symposium on Cultural Heritage and Modernization, Hong Kong Institution of the Promotion of Chinese Culture and Goethe Institute of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 29 September - 2 October, 1987

When Mr Lu Yan (real name, Liang Tao, died, the author went to see his collection of materials which literally jammed his small flat, and was impressed by the rarity of some of the items Obviously an avid and passionate collector, his willingness to sacrifice the physical comfort of home for the love of research, is much to be admired

32 Barbara E Ward, Social and Cultural Heritage in the New Territories, p 123

11

Joan Law and Barbara E Ward Festivals in Hong Kong (Hong Kong South China Morning Post, 1982, republished by Hong Kong Guidebook Company Ltd, 1993)

14

Hugh DR Baker, Ancestral Images 3 volumes (Hong Kong South China Morning Post 1979-81) and Hong Kong Images. People and Animals (Hong Kong University Press 1990)

15

These include Chen Qian, A Record of Things Seen and Heard in Hong Kong (in Chinese) (Hong Kong Zhongyuan, 1987); Liu Zesheng, Hong Kong Past and Present (in Chinese) (Guangzhou, 1988). He Hongching (ed) Hong Kong Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (in Chinese) (Beijing, 1994)
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