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 107 V. WELFARE ACTIVITIES OF THE SANGHA Generally speaking, the monasteries of the Colony do little in the way of public service, except in so far as a few of them provide food and, in some cases, accommodations for visitors (the most famous in this regard being the Po Lin Tsz near Lantao Peak). An increasingly active role in welfare work, however, is being played by the nunneries of Hong Kong. First mention should probably be given to the 30 nuns and 50 lay devotees of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen A, a Pure Land nunnery established by Lady Clara Ho Tung in 1935. Housed in a handsome set of buildings, it operates: (1) the Colony's only Buddhist "seminary" for nuns, which provides an eight-year course in Mahayana Buddhism; (2) a primary day school; (3) a primary night school; (4) the Po Kok Vocational Middle School; and (5) a branch primary school in Ping Shan F, New Territories. The total enrollment (all girls) at these various schools is 1,256,* ranging from 503 for the primary day school to 26 for the seminary. All the schools except the seminary receive a government subsidy, which according to the regulations of the Education Department means that they must charge the standard tuition fees of HK$50 a year at primary level and HK$320 at secondary level. Only 10 per cent of the enrollment in the case of a primary school, and 30 per cent in the case of a secondary school, may be free of tuition. The subsidy covers all operating expenses not covered by tuition, that is, about 80 per cent of gross expenditures for urban schools, and over 90 per cent for rural schools (where tuition is only HK$10 a year). The Education Department does not object to having the tuition partly or wholly donated by the school or its supporters. Thus, in effect, the tuition requirement is only for the purpose of computing the amount of the subsidy. In the case of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, pupils all come from poor families and pay HK$20 a year at primary level and HK$40 a year at secondary (which means that most of their tuition is donated). About one-third of the operating expenses comes from gifts and the nunnery's general income on the real estate that forms its principal endowment. About two-thirds comes from a government subsidy. The study of Buddhist sutras forms part of the curriculum for all pupils (other main subjects being Chinese, English, history, and mathematics, plus vocational training in the middle school). Pupils attend Buddhist services in rotation at least once a week; and before each year's graduation they all are given a lecture by a prominent dharma master. After graduation a small number * Here and below all school enrollment figures are as of June 30, 1960. ================================================================================ 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 ORASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 109 bers, although poorer members may elect to pay $5 and well-to-do members may pay $40 or $100. The activities of the Association are in the hands of a Board of Directors of 35 members, of whom 15 are monks and nuns and 20 are laymen, the Chairman of the Board being the Abbot of the Po Lin Monastery, while the Vice Chairman is a prominent Buddhist layman. The directors hold office for two years and vacancies are filled through election at the annual General Meeting. The Association's office is at 15 Shan Kwong Road, Hong Kong, on the premises of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen MW (see above p. 44). To disseminate the dharma, the Association has sponsored courses of nightly lectures on various sutras, delivered by an authority from the Sangha. These courses have been held three or four times a year, lasting two or three weeks each time, usually at the Tung Lin Kok Yuen. Attendance has run about 200 people. The Association's welfare enterprises include four schools, a cemetery, and two clinics. The Chinese Buddhist Free School, at 117 Wanchai Road, was established in October 1945. It is co-educational, and has an enrollment of 223. Though it is government-subsidized, pupils pay no tuition. Another school, also at the primary level, was opened during September, 1960 in the ground floor of a resettlement block at Wong Tai Sin (the use of such ground floor space for classrooms is encouraged by the Resettlement Department). Known as the Buddhist Boddhi Primary School, it accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, operates on a government subsidy, and charges the standard tuition fees. By far the most impressive educational enterprises of the Buddhist Association, however, are the two schools on Eastern Hospital Road (near Causeway Bay). They began operation in September 1959 and comprise a primary school with 1,053 boys and girls ("Buddhist Wong Cheuk Om Memorial School") and a middle school with 321 boys and girls ("Buddhist Wong Fung Ling College" #+4) HK$350,000 of the construction cost was donated to the Association by two devout Buddhists, whose names the schools bear, while the other $650,000 was provided by the Hong Kong Government, $150,000 of this being in the form of a loan that the Association will eventually repay out of its portion of the school fees. The Board of Directors of the Buddhist Association has full responsibility for and control over the operation of all these schools, although about 70 per cent of the operating costs, including teachers' salaries, are met by Government subsidy. The curriculum includes the study of Buddhism which, at the suggestion of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, was accepted by the Education Department in 1959 as one of the optional subjects thereafter to be included in the Hong Kong School-leaving Certificate examination. Up until now Buddhists, unlike Christians and Moslems, have had no separate cemetery facilities. The Buddhist Association's cemetery, which occupies seven acres of land recently allocated by the Government on Cape Collison, opened early in 1961. M HK$3 a month "t'ong fei" added to the standard fees for subsidized schools of $5 and $32 a month. ================================================================================ 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 112 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 The Nim Ts'z Primary School, also operated by the Lotus Association, opened during December 1960 in Blocks P and Q of the Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate. It accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, is government subsidized, with a tuition fee of HK$50 a year. Plans for another school, to be called the Ts'z Yan Primary School, are still in the initial stage. It is to be housed in a new building, built specially for the purpose, that will not be ready before the end of 1961. The government has made the necessary grant of land on Kwong Lee Road in Kowloon and will provide a HK$300,000 construction loan, interest free, for repayment over 11 years. The remainder of the $450,000 construction cost will be donated by Buddhist laymen, especially the members of the Lotus Association. The operating expenses will not be government subsidized, but will come in part from donations and in part from fees of HK$120 a year (i.e., $70 more than in subsidized schools). The enrollment will be 1,890 boys and girls. 4. HONG KONG BUDDHIST BOOK DISTRIBUTOR This organization operates a non-profit publishing house and second-hand book store. It publishes reprints of the Chinese Buddhist sutras as well as contemporary Chinese works on Buddhism. It also collects used copies of Buddhist sutras (many of them out of print) and sells them at just above cost. Its stock of 20,000 volumes fills the walls of a large room in the western district of Hong Kong (42 Bonham Strand West, 2nd floor). The staff of three are all volunteer workers. Since it was founded in 1945, the Hong Kong Buddhist Book Distributor has published some 228 items in 600,000 copies at a total outlay of HK$500,000. About 30 per cent have been distributed free of charge and the rest at cost. The expenses of the entire operation are borne by a small group of Buddhist laymen in Hong Kong. VII. ROLE OF BUDDHIST ORGANIZATIONS IN HONG KONG Buddhist organizations in Hong Kong do not play the economic, political, and cultural role that is played by their counterparts in Southeast Asia. In particular, they attempt to avoid politics. The closeness of the Communist Chinese mainland means, first of all, that few if any Buddhists here entertain illusions about the nature of the Peking regime or its policy towards Buddhism, and second, that they feel an underlying uncertainty about their future and prefer to do nothing and say nothing that would prejudice it if events took an unexpected turn. Although anti-Communist efforts have been made by a few Buddhist groups, the majority concentrate on religious activities and social welfare. The welfare activities of Buddhist organizations have been described above at some length. Of the 15 Buddhist schools now in operation, 12 are subsidized and 1 is partly subsidized. This means that for about 7,000 pupils plant, textbooks, hygiene, and methods of instruction must conform to standards set by ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v PRINTING IN CHINA 41 a school of thought restricted to the well-born, and became to some extent democratized. Methods of teaching changed. The practice of learning by heart was modified. This was the consequence of the great increase in publication of texts, reference works, compendia, etc. Books of this kind exceeded in number those on the classics. There also resulted a gradual change in the written language. The vernacular penetrated the literary classical style. Lastly, let me say something about libraries during the Sung period. 1. The Palace collection. This was increased by various means: through purchase from private parties; through the granting of titles or awards in exchange for books; through gifts by the authors of books; through search by local officials; through the copying of rare books. The increase in the number of books, brought about through printing, required the enlargement of old libraries, and the construction of new ones. These imperial libraries were accessible only to a limited number of people: members of the Hanlin #, high officials. Books, however, were borrowed in quantity. A report of 1114 relates that 4,328 chüan ✯ had not been returned to the library since the year 1104. 2. School libraries. The increase of education, and the need for more text-books made such institutions necessary. They were sponsored by the government not only in the capital but also in small towns. These collections were increased by purchase, made possible by government subsidies and private donations (sometimes quite extensive). Occasionally books were sent from the capital to these local libraries by special government order. The schools where these libraries were located sometimes published their own books. Many old Chinese books bear the stamps of school libraries. Readers were warned to use the books with care. At the same time, librarians were forbidden to take back damaged books or books that were soiled. All available information leads to the conclusion that there were public libraries and reading rooms open to a large circle of people. 3. Private collections. These increased because of the low price of printed books, and the new form of books facilitated storage. Many bibliophiles, however, still valued hand-copied ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v CHEUNG CHAU 103 20 See T'ung-tsu CH'U Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press 1962) chapter 9, especially pp. 161-164. I am indebted to Mr. W. Schofield, a former District Officer, and Cudet Officer, Hong Kong Government, for a reference to an inscription, now lost, relating to the foundation of the Lung Chun Yee Hok *** in 1847. The school, which is still standing inside the former Kowloon walled city, was opened by the district magistrate WONG Ming Ting after the sub-district deputy magistrate HUI Man Sham had reported that it was being built. Orme in his "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63, Appendix G, gives a school census for April 1912, by which time there had apparently been little change since 1898. There were 10 schools on Cheung Chau, average attendance 20, average monthly fee 38 cents. 21 See HSIAO op. cit. pp. 235-240 and CH'U, op. cit., pp. 161-162. Occasionally government-sponsored schools were granted land for their maintenance. In the 28th year of Kuang-hsü (1902-3) four years after the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, land inside the boundary, previously used for the purpose of aiding a school still in Chinese territory, was sold by order of the Commissioner of Education for San On district. Part of the proceeds had also been used for offerings at the Confucian temple (in Nam Tau). 22 The group of titles on the defence bureau tablet is another demonstration of the widespread sale of degree titles and positions in the late Ch'ing period already remarked in several places. (see HSIAO Kung-Chuan Rural China p. 415 and chapter 10 of CH'U's Local Government in China under the Ch'ing op. cit., pp. 168-173 and notes and, in more detail, Chung-li CHANG, The Chinese Gentry. Studies on their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1955) pp. 102-111. For contemporary notices see Rev. Krone "A Notice of the Sanon District" in Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong), Part VI (1859) p. 84 and Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier c. 1900 p. 121, amongst others.) No fewer than twenty-one persons have titles prefixed to their names, many of them minor ones, of which three-quarters were probably purchased. the first Of the purchased titles and posts five were chien-sheng degree by purchase, which was the prerequisite to purchasing any superior post, such as that of district magistrate or prefect. It was the most commonly purchased degree. Two others were styled chih-chien and chih-sheng. There were four chin-kung and four chih-yüan 職員。 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 73 THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM IN MODERN CHINA HOLMES WELCH (This article is the preliminary version of a chapter in a forthcoming book, The Buddhist Revival in China. It deals with most aspects of its topic except for certain activities of T'ai-hsu, who is the subject of a separate chapter. Some readers may have personal knowledge of the events described and be in a position to add or correct. The author hopes that they will communicate with him at the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that the chapter in its final form may be as complete and accurate as possible.) The Ch'ing government frowned on its people having contact with foreigners almost as much as does the government in Peking today. From 1911 to 1950, however, there was a forty-year interlude during which foreigners could travel freely in China and the Chinese found it relatively easy to go abroad. This was also the period when foreign ideas and ways of doing things enjoyed the highest esteem, when the impact of the West was at its zenith. The Buddhist monastic establishment could not remain unaffected, although, being "outside the secular world,” it was affected somewhat less than other segments of Chinese society. Sometimes the foreign impact on Buddhism was circuitous--such as, for example, the Western military victories, which led to the call for modern secular schools, which led to the confiscation of monasteries, which led to the establishment of Buddhist associations, seminaries, and social action by the sangha. But in other ways foreign impact was direct. Chinese Buddhists entered into contact with foreigners for a variety of reasons and purposes. Contact with Japan From the sixth through the seventeenth century imports of Chinese Buddhism had been entering Japan. In the late nineteenth the process was reversed. Japanese Buddhism began to be imported to China, partly because of the Japanese parishes that were springing up in the Treaty ports and partly because of the possibilities for the use of Buddhism as an instrument of foreign policy. Copyright 1966 by Holmes Welch. The author is a Research Associate of the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM 75 anti-Western anti-Christian united front among the people of the East. Visits were exchanged with Buddhists in Thailand, China, and India. In 1904 Dr. Inoue Entyu, after returning from a trip to India, proposed that the Japanese should establish a great Confucian-Buddhist university that would serve the whole Buddhist world and maintain branches in Korea, China, and Mongolia. Other possibilities for work in China were opened that very year. The Ch'ing government had been encouraging local officials to confiscate monastic property and use it for the establishment of modern schools. Chinese monks were looking desperately for a way to save their property. At this juncture a Japanese priest named Mizuno Baigyo advised them to start schools of their own in order to "get the jump" on the confiscators. He and other Japanese also suggested that protection might be obtained by applying to the headquarters of the Higashi Honganji sect in Japan; and indeed, the latter was pleased to accept the affiliation of some thirty-five monasteries in Chekiang province towards the end of 1904.5 It sent its representatives to protect them. A test case soon arose. Part of one Hangchow monastery was about to be turned into a technical school. On January 10, 1905, with a blaze of firecrackers, a large wooden plaque was installed over its front gate, reading: "General place of worship of the Imperial Japanese Shinshu-Honganji sect." This caused deep consternation among literati and officials throughout the province. The governor appealed, without success, to the Japanese Consul. The Japanese priests stood pat on their passports. Peking wrung its hands, but said that the Japanese would have to be respected. All that the local officials accomplished was the removal of the plaque; Japanese protection remained in force. This was the signal for general resistance by the monasteries of neighboring provinces against the confiscation of their property. In Fukien and Kwangtung they began to place themselves under Japanese protection. Such immunity was the latter believed to confer that in Canton, on February 26, 1905, a school established on monastery land was completely destroyed by a group of infuriated Buddhists. The newspaper Shen-pao castigated the insolence of Chinese monks in accepting Japanese protection ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 The Hanlin Academy The Hanlins and the Literary Pursuits of the Chinese Scholarly Class 111 The Hanlins played an important role in the compilation and composition of the majority of the Empire's publications. In this respect, they were rightly credited as the preservers of the venerable civilization of the Chinese Empire. In the compilations of the Shih-lu (Veritable Record of the Present Dynasty) and the Sheng-yü (the Sacred Maxims), the Chancellor of the Academy would act as the assistant editor-general; while readers, expositors, compilers, and correctors would serve as editors.41 In compiling the Yu-tieh (Imperial Genealogy), Manchu, Mongol, or Chinese Bannermen, being members of the Academy, were to become editors. In editing other official compilations, the Chancellor would serve as the editor-general or assistant editor-general, while other members of the Academy were selected to serve as editors. Not one of the Ch'ing Government compilations could be produced without assistance from some of the Hanlins.42 We have just mentioned the compilation of major literary works by the Hanlins, but they were called upon to perform other literary functions as well, which required less time to complete. In fact, their assigned jobs included those of laureates and secretaries of the emperor. They were the authors of prayers and sacrificial addresses in various ceremonial acts of worship. They composed honorary and posthumous titles and patents of dignity for the emperors' chief concubines, princes, generals, etc. They laid down forms of new investiture and promotion. They performed inscriptions on the State seals and for the temples of various divinities. They wrote acknowledgments for official services and scrolls or tablets containing Imperial decrees for schools, charitable institutions, and temples throughout the Empire.43 They were also responsible for the translation of important official documents of the government from Chinese to Manchu and vice versa.44 However, the most significant influences the Hanlins exerted over Chinese scholarship was their control over the Civil Service Examination. As the Hanlins were regarded as the most educated scholars of the Empire, it was natural that the majority of the posts concerning the public examinations were staffed by them. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 103 many Punti villages from "squeezes" formerly levied on them, "especially the Hakkas". 13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63. 14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist. 15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration. 16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98, 17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon, 18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century. Where no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries, Addition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's "The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 116 REV. MR. KRONE . The preceding, are the "Kau-yue", and the "Fan-to". They have nothing to do with the government of the district, but may be called Inspectors of Education. They register the graduates of the district, and present them for examination at the provincial city, and they inspect and superintend the private schools of the villages and towns. The fifth and sixth officials bear the title of "Tsun-lin-tzu", or chief officer of a township. One of them resides in the market-place called Fuk-wing-ak, on the shore of the Hap-lan-hoi. His jurisdiction extends over the whole plain of San-keaou, and comprises 185 villages; 31 only of these are inhabited by the Hak-kas. The other officer resided, when history first makes mention of his office, in the neighbourhood of Kow-loong. Subsequently he transferred his residence to Chik-me, bordering on Deep Bay; but since the first war with England, his chief place of residence has been Kow-loong, except during the autumn of 1854, when his official residence having been burnt by the rebels, he was obliged to reside again at Chik-me. He rules over 492 villages, of which 298 are Pun-ti, and 194 Hak-ka. Each of these two officers has a military force of two soldiers at his disposal. The seventh officer, the lowest in rank, is the "Teen-le" — director of police. He resides with his superior the Che-yuen, and has under his jurisdiction 73 villages (of which only six are Hak-ka), in the immediate neighbourhood of Sanon. Glancing at the names of the mandarins, who, during the present dynasty, have been at the head of affairs in Sanon, we find that among thirty Chi-yuens, four only have been of Manchu extraction, and the rest all Chinese. Of these thirty, we find that, on first starting on their political career, ten held the rank of Tsin-tze-it, six that of Keu-jin-A, and nine that of Seu-tsai of the first degree, whilst the remaining five could only boast the title of Kam-shang, which is the lowest bestowed, and which was probably purchased by them. Among these last there was only one Chinese, the other four being Manchu. The office of Sub-magistrate has seldom been held by a Manchu; most of those who held it were either Seu-tsai or Kam-shang, and received the appointment for good services rendered to the State. No Manchu ever held the office of Kau-yu or Fan-to in this district. The office of Kau-yu - inspector of schools — is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g NOTES AND QUERIES 169 NOTES I am most grateful to Mr. Yuen Chun-fang, Liaison Officer, Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for help with the interviews which yielded part of the information given above. 1 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, 1845 (London, W. Clowes & Sons, for H.M.S.O., 1846) p. 147 and the same for 1846, p. 230. 2 G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong, Birth Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937) p. 208, quoting from the Canton Press, February 1842. 3 Sayer, p. 91. 4 Sayer, p. 30. 5 A. R. Johnston (H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade) "Note on the Island of Hong Kong" first published in the London Geographical Journal Vol. XIV, and reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for 1846. 6 Hong Kong Government Gazette for 28 March 1857 p. 4, Table No. 4. 7 The Last Year in China......by a Field Officer actually employed in that Country. 2nd edition (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843) p. 75. 8 K. S. MacKenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London, R. Bentley, 1842) p. 160. 9 See Hong Kong Administrative Reports for 1934, 1935 and 1936 at pp. Q.86, Q.84 and Q.81 respectively. 10 This information, like any other for which no specific source is quoted, comes from Mr. CHOW Chik-san of Kau Wai, aged 77 and Madam CHAN CHOW Ping of San Wai, aged 81. 11 Rev. W. Lobscheidt, A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China Mail office, 1859). 12 See Summary of Report of Squatters Commission 1891-1906, pp. 97-103. This volume of MSS. is kept in the Library, Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. 13 For accounts of Cantonese and Hakka see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong etc., Kelly and Walsh Ltd., 4th edition, 1903) pp. 202, 211 and 323-326. 14 LO Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) pp. 80-88. This is the English translation of the text, but not the notes, of their work published in Hong Kong in 1959. 15 This information is taken from the accounts given at p. 5 of Prof. Woo Sing-lim's The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Co., 26th year of the Chinese Republic, 1937) published in Chinese and English and at pp. 578-579, under the name CHOW Cheong-ling, of Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad, published in London, Shanghai etc. by The Globe Encyclopedia Company, 1917. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES 65 be removed for use within the Court, in Chambers, or the Registry, but were not to be taken further: whether this applied only to barristers and solicitors, who were privileged to use the Library subject to the rules, or also to the Judiciary and Law Officers who were entitled to use it, is not clear. Mr. J. W. Norton-Kyshe, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, whose useful history of the laws of Hong Kong is the source of the information on its Library, managed to persuade the Government in 1896 that an annual grant should be made for the purchase of books. In 1897 this amounted to $500, and in the following year it was doubled,12 Certainly the history of Hong Kong libraries in the nineteenth century is by no means restricted to those which have been considered in this article, although they are probably the most important. There must, for example, have been libraries in the various schools, both Government sponsored and others, though the condition of school libraries in the Colony even today suggests that they would not have been particularly well organised fifty or more years ago. Government departments other than the Supreme Court must also have had collections of books. All these possibilities, quite apart from the existence of private libraries, both Chinese and English, need to be investigated. What has been discovered so far, however, contributes to refute the common notion of Hong Kong as a cultural desert, and to indicate that library history in Hong Kong goes back almost as far as the history of the Colony itself. NOTES 1 V. H. G. Jarrett, under the pseudonym of 'Colonial' contributed a series of articles to the South China Morning Post between 17th June, 1933 and 13th April, 1935 on "Old Hong Kong". Typescripts of these articles were rearranged alphabetically by subject and bound in four volumes (unpaginated) in the S. C. M. P. Office. By kind permission of the Managing Director, a Xerox copy of this set is available in the University of Hong Kong Library. This extract is from the article headed "Public Library." 2 Hongkong Register, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 94-5. 3 At this date (1852) prices were normally quoted in Spanish or Mexican dollars, equivalent to about 4/2d sterling. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d PLOVER COVE VILLAGE TO TAIPO MARKET 99 Generally speaking the interviewees were cooperative, although suspicious of the interviewers. There were refusals, of course, but we fulfilled our scheduled interviews in all but one old village group where we were completely unsuccessful except for being able to interview (in lieu of his ill father) a twenty year old son.4 That our failure rate should be so high in the one village is worthy of considerable note but thus far no satisfactory reason has been ascertained. Among the other villagers the male respondents were more reluctant than the females, whom we interviewed when no male was available. Due to the suspicion which we encountered in our first interviews, we modified our research plan and decided to shift temporarily away from interviewing housewives, and begin instead with the interviewing of children at the school (and at other schools where children of these families studied),5 We interviewed the children on the school grounds during recess periods in one day, and hoped that the children would tell their mothers of this unusual event, thus making access to the mothers easier during the next interview wave. The strategy worked very well and the cooperativeness of the women whom we interviewed during the following week was very good." Table I summarizes the number of interviews accomplished in each village during this early phase of the research. It does not include the numbers of children, and other status group members not discussed in this paper as most of this interviewing is still going on. TABLE I Where Living: Households Sampled Interviews with: Village* Out In Two Respondents Wife Only Husband Only Siu Kau 41 73 2 3 Tai Kau 48 97 3 IN 2 Kam Chuk Pai and Tai Lung 161 107 2 4 I Wang Leng Tau and Nai Tong Kok 98 125 Chung Mei · Chung Pui NN 22 62 73 134 TOTALS 443 598 NUN 2 0 3 2 * These place names are in Cantonese romanisation and, together with their Chinese characters, can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong n.d, but 1960) at pp. 193-194. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 20 T. C. CHENG authorities should look into the teaching of Chinese boys in English so as to increase the efficiency of the teaching of English. As a result, a Committee was appointed in 1917 "to enquire into the teaching of the English language to Chinese boys in Government schools, and to examine the question whether by a reduction in the number of other subjects more time can be devoted to such teaching". The Committee reported the same year, but did not recommend any changes in the school curriculum. However, they recommended (a) small classes, better buildings and better-paid teachers which would bring better results, and (b) the appointment of one English teacher to a maximum of 120 pupils. The Committee also advocated medical inspection of pupils in Government schools, as a result of which a system of medical examination was instituted the following year. In recognition of Lau's services towards his fellow-men in Hong Kong, the Chinese Government conferred upon him “The Order of the Excellent Crop, Third Class" in 1916. He died in 1922. There is a Chinese belief that “good deeds will be rewarded by bearing good offspring". This seems only too true in his case, for his eldest son, Lau Tak-po, founded the Hong Kong & Yaumati Ferry Company and his eldest grandson, Lau Chan-kwok, J.P. is now the Managing Director of the Company. When Sir Boshan Wei Yuk retired from the Legislative Council in 1917, he was succeeded by Ho Fook, younger half-brother of the late Sir Robert Hotung. He was another outstanding student of the Central School. In 1878 when the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, attended his first Prize Giving at the Central School, Ho Fook, then in Class 2, received from him a prize in the form of a gold pencil case.23 He served in the Compradore's Department of Jardine, Matheson & Company and in 1900 was a founder of the Chinese Merchants Bureau. He remained in the Legislative Council for only four years and retired in 1921. Ho Fook was a generous benefactor of education. In 1917 he donated HK$50,000 to the University of Hong Kong for the erection and equipment of the School of Physiology. He also endowed prizes in all the faculties of the University. Like the Honourable Lau Chu-pak he produced some very fine offspring.24 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 28 T. C. CHENG NOTES 1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: "For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty See E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349. 2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was "educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)". I find no evidence to support this. 3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government. 4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. 6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies. 7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140. 8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199. 9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98. 10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, "Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes". ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 172 BOOK REVIEWS term “militia” to translate tuan lien (). Wakeman uses this term and, to my mind, strays further from its real meaning when he differentiates between tuan lien and "genuine tuan lien". I would prefer to use Siang-tseh Chiang's term "local corps" for all "tuan lien”, whether "genuine" or not. In English this is a more accurate, because more loose-fitting, term, and it does not abuse the word "militia” which in Britain at least has a precise meaning. Militia were auxiliary troops not on full-time service except when embodied in time of war for home or overseas service. These forces were totally under government control, and indeed were an integral part of the military forces of the English Crown and as such subject to considerable constitutional constraint. This led Cardwell, the 19th-century Army reformer, to describe the militia as "the constitutional force of England.. a force ever dear to the people of England from constitutional antecedents".* Thus the circumstances of the existence and mode of use of the British militia after the establishment of the Standing Army in 1660 were quite different from those obtaining in China during the Ching dynasty; which surely strengthens the case for selecting another term to describe "local forces" that were not financed by government and might never have had official blessing. That the appearance of tuan lien might be deceptive is, however, certain. The Kwangtung Viceroy commented as follows on Hong Kong Governor Sir Henry Blake's theory that Chinese regular troops might have taken part in the disturbances that followed the occupation of the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1899: The Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon, and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety. This quotation is borrowed from Mr. Groves' article, printed elsewhere in this number of the Journal, in which he uses Wakeman's book to put together an interesting essay on the interaction of market, lineage and militia (local forces) during the opposition to the British occupation of the New Territories in 1899. Secondly, this reviewer found the discussion of "local schools" * Quoted in The Spectator, 14th March, 1969, p. 331. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 38 H. J. LETHBRIDGE mutual incomprehension of Chinese and Europeans. Only a few missionaries had a working knowledge of the Chinese dialects spoken in Hong Kong; but missionary effort went mainly into the evangelisation, conversion and education of the Chinese, and most missionaries, many of whom were not British, were antipathetic to the Colonial Government, whose raison d'être in their view, judging by the contents of the contemporary publication The Friend of China, was to protect the opium interests of the great European hongs. Eitel claims there was in 1854, apart from the missionaries, 'not a man left in Hong Kong thoroughly acquainted with both the written and spoken languages of China'; and in 1859 there were said to be only three men in government service, (excepting Lobschied, the Inspector of Schools) who had some knowledge of Cantonese; but only one, the Interpreter of the Supreme Court, 'was at all acquainted with the written language and that imperfectly'. The Chinese could not bridge the gap either: there were few educated Chinese and fewer who could understand English. In 1867, an editorialist in the China Mail averred that 'we can safely assert that the average knowledge possessed by the compradore class in Hong Kong is almost entirely useless in any situation of official responsibility'.8 Above all else Hong Kong needed a group of officials with competence in spoken and written Chinese, especially the former; and, although this was less understood at the time, it lacked officials with an understanding of the structure of Chinese society (of what we would call today the social anthropology of the Chinese). Sir Hercules argued, in defence of his scheme, that it was quite impossible to conduct the government of 120,000 Chinese without proper interpreters who knew their language; but Eitel probably comes closer to the nub of the matter with his declaration: “English education among the Chinese people of the Colony, and Chinese knowledge among the English officials of Hong Kong are the two factors upon which the success of the general scheme of English colonial policy to a great extent depends...." Communication with the Chinese was needed not merely for social and cultural contacts but for reasons of social control over a Chinese lumpenproletariat, without a stake in the Colony. The scheme initially propounded by Sir Hercules to the Hong Kong Legislative Council on 23 March 1861 was designed primarily to establish a staff of interpreters, to be used in the courts, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 42 H. J. LETHBRIDGE unsatisfactory. Instead, the system was adopted in the early 1880s of sending cadets to Peking where they learned Mandarin, which was little used in Hong Kong.24 Finally, in the late 1880s cadets were sent to Canton to learn Cantonese, and this arrangement continued in force until the Second World War. Cadets at Canton were billeted in the former residence of the Tartar General, which was taken by Britain after the war of 1857-60 and became His Britannic Majesty's Yamen. When the Consulate was transferred to Shameen, the area of original European settlement, the Yamen was turned over as a place of residence for cadets of the Malayan and Hong Kong Civil Services learning Chinese. Some cadets also resided in Shameen. In the early 1920s, according to Victor Purcell,25 who was then a Malayan cadet, there were in Canton usually about 15 or so cadets, the majority from Malaya, but a few from Hong Kong, and one or two police probationers, who were taught Chinese by a small band of Cantonese teachers... with a core of about half a dozen stalwarts who had taught generations of cadets in the past'. Sir Alexander Grantham, who was also a cadet in the 1920s, tells us that in his day there were about half a dozen cadets living in the Yamen.26 It is clear from his memoirs that the Hong Kong Government exercised little supervision over its protégés in Canton. So long as the cadets passed their examinations—four examinations taken at six-monthly intervals—cadets had two years of glorious freedom in a very free and easy Chinese city. Cadets appointed to the Hong Kong Civil Service, or transferred from other colonial territories in Asia, had much in common. All were British subjects of pure European descent and all entered the Colonial Service at approximately the same age. They were educated at fee-paying schools, but most had their schooling at minor public and obscure private schools, not listed in the Public Schools Yearbook: only one Etonian, one Wykehamist, two Rugbeians and two Harrovians are to be found among the eighty-five. The majority proceeded to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge but a substantial contingent—over 30 per cent—came from universities in Scotland and Ireland; only a handful—nine in all—were from London or English provincial universities.27 A few—Cecil Clementi, R. F. Johnston, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, F. H. May and A. M. Thomson28—had outstanding academic records; yet even the rest were above average. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 54 H. J. LETHBRIDGE St. Andrews 2, Aberdeen 2, Glasgow 1). Sir Joseph Kemp attended Cape University, South Africa and Edward Wynne-Jones the University of Wales. These university-educated gentlemen represent a social stratum lying somewhere between Mathew Arnold's Barbarians and the Philistines. A large number of them had been educated in schools animated by the ideas and ideals of Arnold's father, Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby. 28 Alexander Macdonald Thomson (1863-1924), Educated at Aberdeen University. Lecturer in Mathematics, Naini Tal College, India, 1884-5; Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Aberdeen, 1887; entered the Hong Kong Civil Service, and attached for one year to the Colonial Office, 1887; Treasurer 1898-1918. Retired in 1918. He is the only cadet who retired to live in the United States (San Mateo, California); most cadets, including the Scots, settled in the Home Counties on retirement. 29 Norman Lockhart Smith (1887-1968) was the son of Hugh Crawford Smith, M.P., Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Lewis Audley Marsh Johnston (1865-1908) the son of William Johnston, M.P., Ballykilbeg, Ireland. 30 Robert Huessler Yesterday's Rulers, Syracuse, New York, 1963, p. 98. 31 In H. R. Wells and Lam Tong Chinese Documents and Petitions, Hong Kong, 1931, some examples are given in Chinese, with English translations. There are also some interesting specimens of petitions received by the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs from Chinese in Hong Kong. In the section on the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs in the General Orders of the Hong Kong Government, 1924, we read: "Before taking action affecting bodies or classes of people, the Chinese Government is in the habit of issuing proclamations explaining the action to be taken and the reason for it and the Chinese in Hong Kong expect the same notice to be given. It is desirable that whenever the Head of a Department finds it necessary to take notice of any slackness in complying with the law, or to put a stop to gradual encroachments on the part of individuals, or to bring some new regulation into force, he should first consult the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and ask him to notify the people affected in the same way". 32 Margery Perham Lugard, vol. 2, London 1960, p. 302. 33 Ibid., p. 367. 34 Geoffrey Robley Sayer (1887-1962), Educated at Highgate School, London, and Queen's College, Oxford. Hong Kong Civil Service 1910; Director of Education 1934-6; retired 1938. 35 Stephen Francis Balfour (1905-1945). Educated at King's College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1929; died in internment during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. 36 Walter Schofield (1888-1968). Educated at the University of Liverpool. Hong Kong Civil Service 1911. First Police Magistrate 1934-1937; retired 1938. Schofield was noted for his work pre-war on the geology and archaeology of Hong Kong, in which fields he was a pioneer scholar. 37 Roger Soame Jenyns (born 1904). Educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1926; resigned in 1931 to join the British Museum. He is a noted expert on the arts of the Far East and has written extensively in that field. 38 Robert Andrew Dermod Forrest (born 1893). Educated at Aberdeen University. Hong Kong Civil Service 1919; Inspector of Vernacular Schools; Immigration Officer 1940. Lecturer in Tibeto-Burman Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 NOTES AND QUERIES 183 24TH MAY, 1969 VISIT TO OLD SHAU KEI WAN The programme notes prepared for the visit are reproduced below. Ed. This visit is to an area soon to experience redevelopment. Within a few years, extensive reclamation and clearance of squatter structures will transform the district. Dirty and non-descript, nonetheless it has interesting relics and associations that are worthy of attention. Shau Kei Wan, the name means "Rice Basket Bay", clearly so named because of its shape, is an old settlement probably dating back to centuries before the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. Its population was given as 1,200 persons in the first Hong Kong census of May, 1841. Then as now, the population were farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, scattered in various settlements round the shores of the bay, named by the British "Aldrich Bay" after a military engineer officer who served in Hong Kong in those first years. Shau Kei Wan has for long been known locally as the 'Bay of Hungry Men'. Writing as long ago as 1858, the Rev. W. Lobscheid noted: "This village is called by the natives Ngo-yan-wan (the harbour of the starving men). They relate that, about 150 years ago, a few junks were driven into this harbour by a hurricane. The weather continuing very rough for several days, and being in want of provisions, they went on shore in order to purchase some rice and other necessaries. But nothing could be obtained, and the unfortunate men had to leave almost in a starving condition. From that time, they called the place the harbour of the starving men', which appellation it bears up to this moment." [From A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong, etc. Hong Kong, Printed at the "China Mail" Office, MDCCCLIX p. 38.] In another version of the same story, given in a Chinese publication in 1947, the name is ascribed to the fact that Shau Kei Wan was a base for lawless pirates, the "hungry people". This account said that because of the geographical advantages ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND KAIFONGS 63 associations, the district and dialect associations also embody economic objectives, since very often the members of each district and dialect group are engaged in the single occupation peculiar to their group. "This close identification of a particular job... means that the various dialect associations have a definite economic raison d'être." Protection of economic interests may take various forms, with the associations taking the role of trade unions among small businessmen, and among laborers in particular lines of native industry. In many cases, the associations act as employment agencies, exchanging information on job opportunities and sponsoring job recommendations. It is a general practice among the associations to favour nepotism in job placement. The main voluntary associations are also responsible for the welfare and social adjustment of the Chinese immigrants. They meet the new comers upon their arrival, accommodate them and help them to find jobs. They open Chinese language schools for the education of the immigrants' children and for the general upkeep of the Chinese cultural tradition. They open recreational centres (including gambling rooms) for the workers. They provide mutual aid benefits, relief funds, free loans, funeral and burial services. A very important feature of the work of the chambers of commerce, the district and the dialect associations is in their acting as spokesmen for Chinese interests and as intermediaries between the authorities and Chinese people. Specifically, this means that the associations, through their officers, intercede for individuals and groups who get into difficulties with the government. The associations present proposals and petitions to the authorities on major and minor policy issues touching Chinese interests; and very often the governments also seek the advice and even the prior consent of the associational leaders in matters regarding the Chinese communities. The economic, social and political functions of the three major voluntary bodies have evolved during the process of adaptation of the Chinese people to their new environment. In most of the overseas Chinese communities (except in Malaysia and Singapore) the Chinese people are not only a numerical minority among the local population, but also a sociological minority dominated by the superior social and political status of other racial groups. * Ju-k'ang T'ien, op. cit., p. 17. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 68 ALINE K. WONG with their leaders. Among the Kaifongs themselves, a Joint Kaifong Research Council and, since 1968 a second federation, the Council of Hong Kong and Kowloon Kaifong Associations serve as co-ordinating bodies. Today, there are 54 Kaifongs, claiming a total membership of over 850,000 people. The Kaifong associations of Hong Kong are traditional Chinese organizations, whose roles are very similar to the overseas Chinese institutions. The welfare functions of the Kaifongs are comparable to the welfare functions of the district and dialect associations. They form some sort of social security system in places where the government does not always provide such a service for the Hong Kong residents. Thus they give out relief, render medical services, open Chinese language schools and offer death and burial benefits. They encourage mutual-aid and friendliness. Like the district and dialect associations in the overseas Chinese communities, the Kaifongs are community-wide associations. However, the membership of the Kaifongs is neither based on ethnic grouping, nor on dialect grouping. Rather, Kaifong membership is based on the place of residence. Though the Chinese population is not a numerical minority in Hong Kong, the Chinese here are a minority in the social and political sense. They do not have direct representation in the Legislative and Executive Councils. Elected representatives only sit on the Urban Council, the municipal body which takes charge of civic amenities, public health and environmental sanitation. Socially and economically most Chinese stand at a number of disadvantages when compared to the European élite. Although there is no system of indirect rule in urban Hong Kong, the Kaifongs act as one of the principal intermediaries between the authorities and the people. The Kaifong leaders, being community "notables", are very appropriate intermediaries between the Government and the general public. They also act as arbiters of disputes. By tradition, the Chinese are adverse to approaching Government officials directly or going to law for the settlement of disputes. They prefer mediation by a third party. The Kaifongs thus resemble the district and dialect associations in overseas Chinese communities as far as their political functions are concerned. Big benefactors and leaders of community organizations are ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 75 By the 1860s a clearly defined élite group had established itself, providing leadership for the Chinese community. The purpose of this paper is to document the conditions from which an identifiable élite group arose in Hong Kong and to illustrate this emergence by biographies of some of its members. SOURCES FOR THE STUDY What sources were used to determine the Chinese élite for the period covered by this study? The most important are the names given on memorials, petitions, and subscription lists. The repetition of a name on subsequent lists, the amount of the contributions, and the position of the name on the document serve to suggest the relative status of an individual. Proprietorship of land also suggests potential élite status. (1) The earliest such document used is a list of land owners dated 19 February, 1848, in which they petition for the remission of what they considered excessive crown rent charges. There are twenty-seven signatures of the principal Chinese landowners. This document is in the Colonial Office Records, Series CO129/23. (2) In September 1852, The China Mail published the subscription list for the Chinese Hospital proposed by Dr. Hirschberg of the London Missionary Society. This also contains twenty-seven names. Of these, ten were compradores, seven shopkeepers, three merchants, three contractors, and one "gentleman". Only three names that were on the 1848 list appear on this list: Loo Aqui, gentleman, Tam Achoy, building contractor, and Chow Aqui, merchant. (3) On 4 November 1856, a memorial concerning a recent piece of legislation was presented to Government. It contained both European and Chinese names. Nineteen Chinese signed. It is in the Colonial Office Records, Series CO131/3. (4) In 1859 the Government Gazette published a "List of Chinese Voluntary Contributions to a Fund for purchasing books, etc., for the Government Schools in the Colony". Most of the contributions were made in the name of business firms, but all of the largest amounts were contributed by individuals. The two largest contributors were both contractors; Tang Luk gave $60, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG THE GOVERNMENT SERVANTS GROUP 101 A life-long career by a Chinese in Government service usually would not have provided opportunity for the accumulation of sufficient capital to enable one to enter the élite group. The highest paid positions were the interpreterships, but a Chinese who had sufficient competency in English to be appointed to this position could earn more in the employment of the foreign firms. However, many of the young men who received an English language education, at first in the Mission schools or the Morrison Education Society School and after 1860 at the Government Central School (now Queens College), upon leaving school became interpreters and clerks in Government for several years. But normally they did not make a life career of Government service. There were, however, two individuals who appear on our lists who had been employed by the British Government even before its removal to Hong Kong and who continued as Government employees until their retirement. These were Tso Aon and Cheong Assow. When the British established their Government offices in Hong Kong the man who became responsible for all the Chinese staff in Government offices, as well as serving as compradore to the Treasury, was Tso Aon alias Cho Yune Choong alias Cho Wing Chow. His family had lived in Macao for several generations, and in 1834 he entered the service of the British in the office of the Superintendent of Trade. By the time of his removal to Hong Kong he had accumulated enough capital to invest in real estate. When he retired from Government service in 1857 without pension, he lived off the income from real estate, pawn shops and other business ventures. He died in 1874 at Macao, survived by several sons. One of his grandsons was the Rev. Tso See Kai (**) 曹思楷) Vicar of St. Paul's (born 1895, died 1928). Tso Aon's brother, Chow Yik Chong (5) alias Chow Yin Yin alias Chow Yau () alias Chow Kam Ming (alias Chow Wai Chun (R), was a large land owner and capitalist in Macao. He was knighted by the Portuguese Government, made a member of the Macao Legislative Council, and was a leader of the Chinese community in Macao. He died in 1896. His son Tso Seen Wan came ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 103 and invest in paddy fields or shares in local firms and shops, or, if more affluent, endow or build schools or family temples or contribute to public improvements such as roads and bridges. Originally the Christian Chinese were in the employment of the Missions, and as most of them remained so, they did not receive high wages. But as earnest Christians they did not pass their time in gambling, visiting the sing-song girls, or smoking opium. All of these activities tended to make inroads into the income of many of the other Chinese, particularly those who were in Hong Kong without families. Avoiding the temptations of money-absorbing local high life, the Christians were able to invest their small savings in real estate. When the London Mission Society moved to Hong Kong, the Rev. James Legge brought with him from Malacca a printer named Ho Asun † alias Ho Ye Tong and Ho Tsun Shin alias Ho Fook Tong ✰ alias Ho Yeung M. They both began to invest in Hong Kong real estate, though Ho Fook Tong became much the larger proprietor. Their first investment was soon after their arrival, but as income from rents permitted, they continued to purchase property until their deaths. Ho Asun died in 1869 and Ho Fook Tong died in 1871. At the time of their deaths their property had appreciated greatly in value, so that Ho Fook Tong's estate was $150,000. It was one of the largest estates appearing on the schedules up to that date. Although neither of these two Christian converts appear on the lists, their children assumed a place of leadership in the Chinese community. Of the several sons of Ho Asun, Ho Chung Shan was proprietor of the Wah Tsz Yat Po from 1886 to 1889; but his brother Ho Shan Chee (†) or Ho Alloy (*) had a more prominent career. He began as a teacher of English in the Chinese Government Schools (1855-1857), then he became Chief Interpreter in the Police Court (1857-1866). He incurred the ill-will of the English section of the community when he accepted charge of the Opium Tax Station the Viceroy of the Two Kwangs attempted to establish in Hong Kong. In the 1870s he joined the staff of the Provincial Government at Fukien, where The Daily Press correspondent from Foochow reported that the Governor of Fukien was "happy in the possession of this peripatetic conglomeration of legal ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 112 CARL T. SMITH He only appears once on our élite lists. In 1872 he was a member of the General Committee of Tung Wah Hospital. He was a member of the Masonic Order in Hong Kong. His first four children, a son and three daughters, were baptized at St. John's Cathedral, but his venture into the opium trade marked his departure from the Christian community. He later took on two concubines and was survived by six sons. His eldest son George Chan Su Kee was the first Chinese to be married in a civil ceremony at the Registry Office in Hong Kong. In this group of Chinese who came under the influence of the missionaries, with the exception of Chan Tai Kwong, we find certain repeated patterns. They received an English language education at mission schools and their sons were usually educated abroad. Almost without exception they served a time as interpreters in the Hong Kong Government. Most of them were interested in journalism. The first four Chinese appointed to the Legislative Council were from this group, their service covering the years 1882 to 1914. They were either blood relations or intermarried, until their family structure forms a complex of inter-relationships. Several of them served the Chinese nation in high posts of responsibility. They were the most significant of the several groups that provided a Chinese élite in Hong Kong before the turn of the century. CONCLUSION With the establishment of Tung Wah Hospital, the Hong Kong Chinese had a structure with which they could handle the problems that were peculiar to the Chinese community. They had also a representative élite leadership through whom they could make representation to government and to whom government, in turn, could turn for advice on problems affecting its relationship with the Chinese community. Although criticism arose concerning the operation of the Hospital Committee, charging it with exercising too much power and in effect forming an unofficial Chinese Legislative Council alongside the British administration, in general both parties - the Chinese community and the Government found the Hospital Committee representative of responsible leadership and hence a helpful bridge between the two groups. With the appointment of a Chinese member to the Legislative Council in 1880, Chinese leadership was in- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 124 H. J. LETHBRIDGE devolving upon the regular police by law or custom. As early as 1868, the Registrar General reported that the Head District Watchmen from their age and authority are often accepted as arbiters of perplexing disputes'. Clearly, these extra-police duties increased year by year, for in 1935 the Secretary for Chinese Affairs wrote 'it is not generally realised that in addition to their normal ordinary police duties the District Watch carry out a great deal of useful investigation in purely civil cases, wages and family disputes'. Watchmen were also active in counting the number of children at vernacular schools, controlling queues during periods of acute water shortage, gathering information about family budgets, and in the more general task of making known to the Chinese public the policies of the government30. Primarily, of course, the members of the force spent most of their time in apprehending shoplifters, thieves, pickpockets and loiterers in those districts where there were Chinese shops. Their special anti-pickpocket squad, a plain-clothes unit, helped to control an offence once very common in Hong Kong. This was what the subscribers expected them to do31, for the subscribers were nearly all shopkeepers and merchants, members of the propertied and moneyed class in Hong Kong. The District Watchmen, armed and uniformed, must have been a conspicuous sight in the Chinese quarters of the town before the war, well-known as individuals to the citizens in the districts they patrolled. In most cases the watchmen spoke Cantonese like the majority in the urban areas, whereas Chinese regular police were often recruited from Shantung32 and spoke another dialect. The police constables from Shantung, given the complexities of Chinese provincial and dialect differences, were comparative strangers -- tall, muscular men from the North. The day to day running of the force was left mainly in the hands of the Head District Watchmen and their aides, the Assistant District Watchmen, and later to the European officer seconded from the police; and all clerical work was done in Chinese in the office of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, which became the headquarters of the force. The Committee met formally once a month, though extraordinary meetings were often held. But when the Committee did meet, it usually had more important matters to discuss than the routine doings of the force. The Committee of Management, since its advice was solicited by the Secretary for ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE 135 4 The first census of the Island in 1841 gave a population of 5,650. In 1844 the population was given as 19,009. See Historical and Statistical Abstract of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1841-1931, Hong Kong, Noronha, 1932. The validity of the first census has been questioned by G. R. Sayer in his Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 104. 5 The China Review, vol. 1, 1872/73, p. 333. 6 Ibid., p. 334. 7 E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1895, p. 282. The Man Mo Temple stands at the western end of Hollywood Road. It was originally a shrine patronised mostly by fishermen before 1841. For a description of the temple see Charles J. H. Halcombe, The Mystic Flowery Land, London, Luzac and Co., 1896, ch. xxvii. The temple was run by a committee appointed by the Five Districts and the committee used to hold an annual ceremony at Mount Davis for the dead... in celebration of the gods of literature and war: see the Hongkong Government Gazette (henceforth cited as the Gazette), 12 February 1879, p. 52. The properties of the Man Mo Temple were transferred to the Tung Wah Hospital by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, No. 10 of 1908. Before the committee of the Tung Wah Hospital was organized, the Man Mo Temple Committee appears to have been recognised as representing the opinions of respectable Chinese. 9 J. W. Norton Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1898, vol. 2, p. 86. See also the reports of the Registrar General for 1866 and 1867 in the Gazette. 9 Ibid., p. 86. 10 In 1867 the police force consisted of 89 Europeans, 377 Indians (chiefly Bombay sepoys) and 132 Chinese, many of whom were employed as marine police. See Eitel, op. cit., pp. 445-6. As late as 1893 there were only two European policemen who could act as proper interpreters and only five who could speak some Chinese. See the Report of the Commission on the Po Leung Kuk, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1893, p. 81. 12 Correspondence on Hong Kong Gambling Houses, London, H.M.S.O., 1869, p. 21. 13 Eitel, op. cit., p. 447. 14 Gazette, 6 January 1872. The Police Commission set up by MacDonnell was not unanimous: broadly it agreed to recommend an Anglo-Chinese police force. The recruitment of Chinese police had been strongly advocated by Dr. Legge, as most likely to bring good understanding between the government and respectable Chinese', G. B. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, London, Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 160. 13 Osbert Chadwick, Reports on the Sanitary Conditions of Hong Kong, London, H.M.S.O., 1882, p. 42. 16 'Registration of Chinese Partners', Hong Kong Sessional Papers (henceforth cited as Sessional Papers), No. 43 of 1901, p. 22. The text reads: 'Head and District Watchmen employed to patrol the streets by day and by night, are to be recommended by the Chinese themselves, because they know whether they are trustworthy or not. If these men, however, should fail to maintain their good character and should be found to be unfit for the post by the Chinese residents of the district to which they belong, they should be dismissed at any time, in order that they may have something to fear'. The translation is clearly a bad one. 17 In 1883, the Registrar General, Frederick Stewart, used the district watchmen to conduct an enquiry into all Hong Kong schools. In the 1897 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 188 REV. JAMES LEGGE the Ta-koo forts; and there were expectations of a second expedition to secure the fulfilment of that treaty. Sir John Bowring left his name in Bowrington, and the Bowring Praya. He was the most learned of our governors, and I had sincerely wished that he might prove himself as mighty in deeds as in words. Sir Hercules Robinson was a different man, as slow to speak as the other was ready, though he could speak well enough when moved. He began his administration under favourable auspices. The treaty of Tëentsin had given a considerable impulse to trade, and soon the concentration in the Colony of the large force for the second expedition to the North produced a great circulation of money, and increased the demand for house accommodation. Building went on rapidly; the value of ground rose immensely; fortunes were realized by many. Most of this, however, was merely a temporary and factitious prosperity, though Sir Hercules seemed to think, as many others did, that it was real, and that tomorrow would be as this day and much more abundant. Many important measures were carried through in his time. In 1860, the Chinese schools, supported by Government throughout the island, were entirely re-arranged, and I may claim to myself the merit of having pressed on successive governors the adoption of the present system, which Sir Hercules was the first to take up heartily, and give effect to. We were very fortunate in obtaining such a master to inaugurate it, and carry it out with untiring devotion, as Mr. Stewart. He has been doing a great work of education with hundreds of pupils, the benefits of which will be increasingly felt by the Colony and by China itself. Sir Hercules adopted another scheme, which I had in vain recommended to one governor and another. My idea from 1844 was that the administration of the Colony would not be thoroughly satisfactory, till many of the offices in it were filled by men having a practical knowledge of the Chinese language, and a sympathy with the people. To secure the former, I advised the bringing out of young gentlemen as student-cadets, hoping that they would gradually acquire the latter also. I venture to think that the idea was sound; and it has not been fruitless by any means. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 130 SUNG HOK-P'ANG SUNG HOK-PANG (宋學鵬) (1880-1962) A MEMOIR Fifty to sixty years ago, there were in Hong Kong some Chinese scholars who could impart to Westerners knowledge of the Chinese language and culture. Among those who were able to write in both English and Chinese methodical and systematic text-books on the Chinese language, especially on the Cantonese dialect, the name of Sung Hok-pang was prominent. Likewise, fifty to sixty years ago, quite a number of Chinese literary men in Hong Kong depicted the scenery and historic sites there in poetry or prose for pleasure or for commemoration. Among the few who took pains to go and investigate the customs of the people and the historic remains of the New Territories, again Sung Hok-pang was scarcely rivalled in eminence. For us who live in Hong Kong and wish to discuss the study and transmission of the Chinese language or the geography and history of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, it is essential that we understand Mr. Sung's contributions in these areas. Mr. Sung's original name was Sung Yick-lam (宋錫林). His other name was Sung Pao-lam (宋寶林) but he was generally known as Sung Hok-pang. He was born in 1880 in Fa Yuen of Kwangtung, but from childhood he was reared in Hong Kong. Since he became well versed in both Chinese and English literature and was very enthusiastic about education, he was highly esteemed. In 1905 he was appointed Headmaster of the Belilios Girls' School. Later, in 1911, he also conducted Cantonese classes in the Government Technical Institute for cadet officers and for foreigners comprising merchants, scholars and officers. In 1913, besides being Headmaster, Mr. Sung was also appointed Inspector of Schools in the New Territories. As a result of his inspection and investigation, the Hong Kong Government followed his suggestions, and subsequently many of the schools in the New Territories received subsidy. Also, a new post of Chinese Inspector was established and Mr. Sung was appointed to this. In 1914 he helped organise the Government Evening School of Education and was head of this institution. In 1916 he was appointed Senior Vernacular Master attached to Queen's College, as well as adviser in matters pertaining to the teaching of Chinese in all government schools. In 1925 Sir Cecil ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES AND QUERIES 207 Another temple, that of Yuk Hui Kung, is on Lung On Street. It was probably built in the early 1860s. It is not listed in the 1860 Rates, but is on the next extant list, that of 1865. The 1882 Rates mention that the temple was managed by the Wanchai Kaifong.* The surrounding lots from Stone Nullah Lane to Kennedy Street were bought at government land sale in 1862 by the Pang and Chan families, who developed them for Chinese family houses. Lung On Street was originally called Fourth Street, being that number south of Queen's Road East. On First Street, now King Sing Street, a hospital was opened. It was built on a lot purchased by Leung King Ham, a government school teacher, under the name Tong Tuck Tong, in 1867. With the organisation of Tung Wah Hospital, Leung King Him (sic) and Leung Shun Ng petitioned in 1872 that the hospital be merged with the new Tung Wah.* A controversy arose, and the Leungs published a pamphlet charging Wong Fung Wan and Wong Yow Ho, members of the managing committee, with embezzling funds granted by Government to the Wanchai Hospital. This resulted in a libel case. The 1872 Rate names it as the Wah Tong Hospital with Leung Shan Ng and Leung Yung Choi as the resident doctors. To the south of Queen's Road East between Monmouth Path and Wing Fung Street, the land was used as timber yards. To the east, on land now covered by Sun, Moon and Star Streets, was the first Protestant Cemetery in Hong Kong. As there was increasingly more building along Queen's Road, the situation was considered unsatisfactory and after 1845 burials were made in the newly opened Colonial Cemetery in Happy Valley. Just a bit to the east, near St. Francis Street was the Roman Catholic Cemetery. Here the Catholic Church built a hospital, a chapel, a Mission House, and day schools. Later the Canossian Sisters built a convent where they ministered to the sick, the poor, and the aged. These institutions attracted a number of poor Portuguese families and created a Chinese Roman Catholic population surrounding it. A piece of vacant land between the two cemeteries An association of local residents, usually shopkeepers, commonly found in the commercial centres and market towns of the Hong Kong area. * The Tung Wah Hospital, established in 1870, for over 100 years the leading Chinese charitable institution in Hong Kong and now more flourishing than ever. See H. J. Lethbridge ‘A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: the Tung Wah' in Contributions to Asian Studies (Leiden) Vol. I (1971): 144-158. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES AND QUERIES 229 the building was blessed. There were then 540 pupils in fourteen classes. The first matriculation class was formed in 1933. With the beginning of the European War in 1939, the Government interned enemy aliens on the College premises. The Japanese used it as a hospital. The Brothers re-occupied the buildings after the liberation of Hong Kong, but from 1949 the British Army took it over for use as a hospital. During these periods the College was housed in temporary quarters. Today the school is under the direction of Brother Raphael Egan. There is a student body of some 1,500, the greater majority being Chinese, though there is still in the student body a number of Portuguese boys. They continue the contribution this part of Hong Kong's population has made to the history of the school. Other Schools in the Area North of Boundary Street between Waterloo Road and La Salle Road is Oxford Road. In one block there are six Middle Schools: Pui Shing Middle School, Tung Wah Hospital No. 1 College, Ying Wa College, Moral Training English School, Jockey Club Government Technical School, and Bishop Hall Jubilee School. Maryknoll Convent School opened in 1936 is nearby at the corner of Boundary Street and Waterloo Road. Of these schools, three have roots in Hong Kong's early history. While the association of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club with education through financial support is of recent origin, the Race Meets were a prominent feature of Hong Kong life from early days. Ying Wa College continues the tradition of the Anglo-Chinese College established by the missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne at Malacca in 1819. In 1843 it was moved to Hong Kong by the Rev. James Legge. The school was closed in 1856. It had been organised and conducted by representatives of the London Missionary Society. In 1914 the Society opened a school in Kowloon bearing the Chinese version of the English name, of their former school: Ying Wah, that is 'Anglo-Chinese'. The Tung Wah No. 1 College opened in 1962 is a part of Tung Wah Hospital efforts to provide education for under-privileged children. This programme began in 1880 when a Free Primary School was opened in the Chung Wah College premises adjoining the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. A school under the direction of the Temple Committee had been operated on these premises for many years previous. A lot had been granted by ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA 39 other geographical groups. However, the Chinese chambers of commerce, with their foreign influence and official sponsorship, were a “modern” kind of merchant organisation, and their story properly belongs elsewhere.38 In the area of increased political leadership—the third area of merchant aspirations—the merchants' success was mixed and in one sense limited. As a social class, the merchants did not have an overall strategy to enhance their status and influence. Rationalisation of their political roles varied from place to place. In Canton, the merchant leadership remained with the directors and officers of the charitable halls, and they remained conservative. In Shanghai, merchants participated not only in charitable halls but also in municipal organisations with clear political aims. By the first decade of the twentieth century, merchant study groups, in imitation of others formed by students and scholar-gentry, were established to examine the questions of local government and constitutionalism. Eventually these activities led merchants to agitate for political representations in the Municipal Council of the International Settlement, and to set up a city council for the Chinese-controlled section of Shanghai.39 Others participated in direct action, as in the case of the 1905-06 boycott against American goods over that country's discriminatory immigration policy.40 Few merchant organisations, however, became schools for political confrontations or other forms of patriotic outbursts. Most of them were run by establishment-oriented merchants who sought to use their institutions as a means to promote symbiotic arrangements with officialdom. Although these efforts varied by time and place, one common element stood out—the Chinese merchants in late imperial China were by and large interested in making their political links only at the local and provincial levels. Their interaction with the political order took place at these levels, for governmental sanctions and supports came from the provincial Governors-general and their lieutenants. The merchants realised that the central authority at the time was weak and far away. As practical men, they therefore limited their ties of mutual benefit to where they were counted most. Yet this went against their long-term interests. For to achieve economic development, China needed efforts at the national level. Then as collaborations between local officials and merchants increased, the considerable strength of the merchant ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 112 10 Ibid., p. 31. H. J. LETHBRIDGE 11 Fifty Years of Progress: The Jubilee of Hongkong as a British Crown Colony, Hong Kong, Daily Press Office, 1891, p. 43. 12 J. S. Thomson, op. cit., p. 8. 13 Ibid., p. 54. 14 Allister Macmillan, ed., Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 340. 15 Information about Bridget Montague is to be found in contemporary Hong Kong newspapers and the Report on the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (see note 5). 16 Alfred Weatherhead, Life in Hong Kong: 1856-1859. Typescript in the Library of the University of Hong Kong. 17 W. A. Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle, London, 1885, p. 185. 18 Capt. Gordon Casserly, The Land of the Boxers, London, 1903, p. 193. 19 John Thomson, F.R.G.S., The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China, London, 1875, pp. 192-3. 20 J. A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China, London (1894), pp. 108-9. 21 See China Station 1859-1864: The Reminiscences of Walter White, London, National Maritime Museum, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No. 3, 1972. 22 Ibid., p. 27. 23 Major Henry Knollys, English Life in China, London, 1885, pp. 56-7. 24 'Report of the Commission on Alcoholic Liquors', Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1898, p. 1. 25 E. J. Eitel, "Treatment of Paupers in Hong Kong', Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1880, p. 470. 26 Ibid., p. 469. 27 The Kowloon British School was opened in 1902; before that some girls were educated at convent schools in Macau. 28 Marjorie Topley, 'The Role of Savings and Wealth among Hong Kong Chinese', in L. C. Jarvie, ed., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 193. 29 J. Thomson, op. cit., pp. 203 and 208. 30 L. N. Wheeler, The Foreigner in China, Chicago, 1881, p. 242. 31 Rev. E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London, n.d., p. 29. 32 Leon Radzinowicz, Ideology and Crime, London, 1966, p. 38. 33 Allister Macmillan, op. cit., p. 339. 34 Op. cit., p. 151. 35 Samuel Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, 1917, p. 437. 36 W. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay, New York, 1900, p. 24. 37 L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes, London, 1931, p. 151. 38 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, 1958, p. 186. 39 Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartwright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China, London, 1908, p. 341. Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 16 RICHARD J. SMITH policies, the Meiji government managed to avoid most of the difficulties that had plagued the Chinese effort to use foreign assistance efficiently. Building on the foundation of pre-Meiji experience, Western-trained and Western-oriented leadership,24 and strong central government direction and support, Japan made rapid strides in the modernization of her military after 1868. A leading figure in this effort was Yamagata Aritomo, who became Vice Minister of Military Affairs upon his return to Japan after a year-long tour of Europe in 1869-1870.25 With French advice and assistance, the Meiji government created an Imperial Guard in 1871, which not only made possible the abolition of the feudal han in the same year, but also set the stage for the introduction of conscription in 1872. By 1875, the Japanese had established a centralized military academy at Tokyo, with branch schools in veterinary medicine and other subjects.26 At the same time, numerous officers were sent abroad for further military education.27 By 1893, Japan had a total of sixteen military schools instructing over 2,600 students per year.28 Overseas-educated officers returned in a steady stream to assist in teaching these individuals. In 1878, following the Satsuma Rebellion (1877), the Japanese established an independent General Staff on the German model. This marked the eclipse of the French in Japanese military affairs and the rise of Germany. Presseisen attaches profound significance to this development: "So long as French influence prevailed, Japan's army remained under unified civilian control, her law code owed much to French legal opinions, and her government might have evolved toward a liberal, parliamentary system. After Germany's triumph the command structure, the constitution, and the Imperial Court followed the German ideological style.” 19 The outstanding contributions of Jacob Meckel's German military mission to Japan in 1885 have been described in detail by Presseisen,30 The salient point is that by the early 1890's, Japan had built a modern, centralized army and had eliminated the need for further foreign military assistance. China, meanwhile, had done neither. The Sino-Japanese War underscored the stark contrast between the Chinese and Japanese reform efforts.31 Armies, like individuals, can both reflect and effect change in society. Sir Lewis Namier has offered the opinion that "the social ================================================================================ 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 197 to the problem of ensuring law and order by means of administra-tive, legal, and police measures which in effect left people as much as possible to their own devices. But however much an adminis-tration may seek to preserve traditional institutions and modes of behaviour and very superficially the pre-war New Territories Administration resembled a Chinese form of Government—it inevitably produces some changes which spring from the framework of its own rules. One change immediately brought about in the New Territories was the removal of political and economic power from certain clans, mainly in the west, which, under the Chinese regime, had exercised control over considerable areas by virtue of their access to the government and their tax privileges. More fun-damentally, however, the new regime set into decline a system of local leadership which had hitherto rested on principles inherent in imperial Chinese society. 13. At the edge of China the county of San On (about three-fifths of which became the New Territories in 1898) was not remarkable for producing scholars, but, as an integral part of the Empire, it sent its men into the examinations and, as a result, furnished the country with some administrators. I have not yet had the oppor-tunity of checking the examination quotas operating at the end of the century, but at its beginning—I do not have the source by me as I write there was a quota of eight graduates at each three-yearly examination at Canton for San On, and an additional quota of two for the county's Hakka population. (In the last decades of the Empire, moreover, the sale of examination equivalents was very common; the number of titled scholars in San On was therefore likely to be considerably greater than that suggested by examination quotas). According to Lockhart, who surveyed the New Territories in 1898, there were about 150 sau ts'oi* in the county. See J.W. Hayes, "The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962, p. 11. Those who studied for the examinations were com-paratively few, and they were almost certainly members of clans, and families within these clans, which, by reason of their riches and connexions, were in a privileged position. But the idea was widespread that all respectable men (a category including all the farmers) were eligible to offer themselves for examination and, ultimately, to assume administrative office. And there existed many schools in the countryside to set children going on the ladder ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n STANLEY INTERNMENT CAMP, HONG KONG 1942-1945 39 The pursuit and preparation of food occupied a lot of time for most, and many had jobs of a sort, working on committees, in kitchens, workshops, etc. In addition, there were diversions such as education and dramatic or musical activities. With more than 200 children in Camp as well as teachers and administrators from the Government's Education Department, the University and a number of primary, middle and other schools, education flourished. There were primary, as well as secondary classes, which although greatly hampered by lack of books and equipment, managed to provide lessons for the children. Matriculation examinations were held in 1943 and 1944, with another planned for 1945, but liberation came first. After the war ended, five Stanley students were admitted directly into English universities: two into London and three into Oxford. For the adults in Camp, there were extensive "adult education" courses, lectures and programmes ranging from the study of foreign languages such as Chinese, Malayan and French, to lectures on photography, yachting, journalism and poultry-keeping. At St. Stephen's College was a large hall with a stage. This was used for the school and also put to active use by those internees interested in dramatic pursuits - plays, musicals, recitals, pantomimes, variety shows, etc. Plays such as "Private Lives" and "Midsummer Night's Dream" were presented. "Cinderella" appeared as a pantomime, and a full-length ballet based on the life of Genghis Khan also provided the internees with moments of pleasant diversion. There were two pianos in Camp which saw a great amount of use, and every Christmas a nativity play and a Christmas concert were presented. In addition, a number of exhibitions were held including art, handicrafts and hobbies. Throughout the years of internment, there was never a lack of rumours, particularly concerning repatriation and the end of the war. In 1945, rumours multiplied like wildfire, especially following the surrender of Germany in May. News of the Potsdam Proclamation of 26th July, calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan and threatening the destruction of the Japanese homeland, reached the internees through a newspaper stolen from some Chinese workers delivering rations to Camp. Anxious days passed and then on Wednesday, 15th August, the Emperor broadcast his acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation. The following day, Mr. Gimson ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 36 RICHARD J. SMITH 38 Holcombe, 82-83; LWCK. Memorials, 27: 405. See also Wang Chia-chien, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang ti chuang-she chi ch'i yin-hsiang," Kuo-li T'ai-wan shih-fan ta-hsüeh li-shih hsüeh-pao (April, 1976), 3. 39 LWCK, Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 4: 39-41. 40 Wang, Huai-chün, 203 and passim; LWCK Memorials, 35; 33b-34, 34b-35. On Wang, see also Bell, 2: 49. 41 On Chou's army, see Japan, Ministry of War, comp. Rimpō heibi ryaku (1882), 3: 45b-46b; Bell, 2: 4, 57-59; Great Britain, War Office, 33/34 (1880), 128-130; FRUS, 1873, part 1, 182-188; CWCK, 1.4: 36b-32; etc. Chou's nien-p'u is included in CWCK. His writings and nien-p'u indicate a rather progressive outlook, including an appreciation not only of Western weapons and military methods, but also of certain aspects of Western science and medicine. 42 CWCK, 2.2: 13a-b; also 1.4; 2b-3, 32-33. 43 Ibid., see also 2.2: 1-8. On the attractiveness of Green Standard rank, consult K. C. Liu, “The Limits of Regional Power in the Late Ch'ing Period: A Reappraisal," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s. 10.2 (July, 1974), 210, and esp. 218. 44 See, for example, CWCK 1.1.2: 24b; 1.4: 2-3, 5-13b, 19-24, 26b-27, 32-33b; 2.2: 1-2b; "supplement," 1: 11-23, 44; etc. 45 See, for example, CWCK, 1.1.2: 16b-17, 23-24, 27-28; 1.4: 3b-4, 10a-b, 27, 30-32; "supplement,” 1: 7-24. 46 CWCK, 1.1.2: 17b-18; 1.4: 30-41; etc. 47 Ibid., 1.4: 33b. 48 Bell, 2: 57; see also Cavendish, 721. 49 Bell, 2: 57, 197; Great Britain, War Office, 33/34 (1880), 129, "The Army of Li Hung-chang"; CWCK, “supplement," 1: 14b, 20, 23b, 35b-37b; see also CWCK, 1.4: 36b-37. 50 CWCK, 1.1: 19b; 1.1.2: 41b-42; 2.2: 22b. 51 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 3-4, 23-24, note 18. 52 CWCK, 1.4: 34. 53 CWCK, 1.4: 33b-34; also 1.1.2: 41b-42. 54 See note 40. 55 Knight Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca, 1961), 61-62; Cyrus Peake, Nationalism and Education in Modern China (New York, 1932), 10-12; Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang," 7-8. 56 Ibid. (Wang), 7-8. 57 Chinese Times, April 30, 1887. The entrance examination consisted of three parts. The theme for the essay was: "(When the people have been taught patriotism and loyalty) they may easily overcome their enemies." The theme for the discourse was: "Much planning brings success." And the subject for the poetry exercise was: "Though summer has come, nature is still mild and pleasant." Ibid. 58 Biggerstaff, 63; NCH, April 13, 1887; Chinese Times, April 23, 1887, "The Tientsin Military School"; etc. The most complete discussion of the establishment, rise, structure, administration and influence of the Tientsin Military Academy is Wang Chia-chien's, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 96 EUGENE COOPER thoughts of the younger worker actually were on the matter, it was apparent that the older fellow eventually carried the day. His younger colleague eventually joined the union. Nor would he have done so simply on a whim. Association with a communist cause is not something casually assumed in the Hong Kong context. The episode shows clearly how the membership drive in progress was implemented at the factory level. In the foregoing, one gets a feel for the role of the Woodwork Carvers' Union both as a carrier of a proletarian message and as an agent of Peking policy. Its close association with the Federation of Trade Unions is also highlighted. The union premises are the site of meetings of various kinds, political discussions and planning sessions all of which are oriented in one way or another toward the promotion and consolidation of a unified class conscious labor force, with the Peking government the object of its members' patriotism. The use of the union premises as a center of recreation, the provision of board to its indigent members, the linkup with Communist Chinese bureaucracies like China Travel Service, are all examples of ways in which the union can cater to its members' needs. The operation of a school in the union hall is particularly noteworthy. Traditional Chinese guilds often provided charitable services to their members, such as medical care, proper burials and relief to workers during periods of unemployment. It was not unusual for guilds to establish schools for children of their members (Gamble, 1921: 198) so that they might be able to better themselves, or more properly, the fortunes of their families. In this sense, the use of the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises as a site for the operation of a small primary school may be seen as a significant continuity with traditional guild practice. With curriculum updated in political content, and text and reading materials from the Mainland, the small patriotic school in the union premises turns our attention to the ways in which the union has adapted the practices of traditional guilds to the contemporary scene and incorporated them into its organizational repertoire. There are two other occasions which are of special interest in highlighting this process. The first is the Woodwork Carvers' Union ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933 131 temporarily pressed for cash, as in the case of a funeral or wedding, loans at small interest will be made. Funds for all these purposes are taken from the clan estate, or a subscription will be raised from among the wealthy. This social consciousness is a valuable feature of clan life, though not without its detrimental aspects. All larger social values are definitely hindered by this absorption with the problems of the clan, for, in a very real sense, what is everybody's business is treated as nobody's business. Education is another administrative duty of the clan council. Much of the education of Chinese youth in the past has been in the hands of the clan, and private schools are still maintained in the traditional fashion in many small villages in China. The clan council, or certain older men and scholars, constitute a sort of school board, and assume the responsibility of hiring a teacher, supplying a school room (often in the ancestral hall), and arranging the curriculum. Education is greatly prized, although much of it that is carried on under clan jurisdiction seems highly impractical and inappropriate for rural life. Another important business of the clan leaders is the preservation and compilation of the clan history and genealogy. The histories of the larger and wealthier clans are usually revised every half century, and often are printed for subscribing members. They thus form a valuable set of historical records. Genealogical tables of all males are accurately kept in the ancestral temple as a basis for calculating status, and to determine the rights of ancestor worship and inheritance. This type of record is the nearest approach to written law that is to be found in connection with local clan government itself.1 In the judicial field the clan leaders, though not the council, are charged with preserving peace and order among the members of the kin-group. Authority is usually integrated through the heads of smaller groups, and the responsibility for a misdemeanor by a member of a lesser group will fall upon the person of its head. This form of responsibility is typical of Chinese familist polity, and is one phase of the doctrine of mutual responsibility. The law which the leaders are charged with preserving is traditional and familistic. To a certain extent also, formal law, civil and 1 This is not to disregard the many features of family and clan life which are codified in the Ta Ch'ing Lü Li, which is, however, a national code. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 156 C. MARTIN WILBUR The plans of the Nationalist Government call for the organization of local self-government in rural districts along republican lines which will fit into the scheme of a thoroughly democratized state. The years between 1930 and 1935 have been designated as a period of political tutelage during which the new organization is to be effected. The smallest unit of organization is to be the Lin (鄰), composed of five families. This unit will be controlled by a president and vice president elected by the citizens. Five Lin constitute a Lü (閭), which will have similar officers. Villages, Hsiang (鄉), and market towns, Chên (鎮) are composed of at least 100 families or four Lü. From twenty to fifty of these villages, in turn, form a county, Ch'u (區), while an undetermined number of counties form a Hsien (縣) or district under a district magistrate or Hsien-chang (縣長). This whole system of organization, it will be seen, is based upon very ancient Chinese forms. What is different is the democratic and republican form which the government is supposed to assume. The machinery of rural self-government is supposed to operate from the smallest unit, the Lin, upwards to the district or Hsien. The rights of election, recall, initiative and referendum are conferred first upon the smallest units. Because of an untrained citizenry, however, the attack has been made first upon the largest unit. And District magistrates, during the period of tutelage, are not to be elected by the people but are first to be examined and then recommended by the provincial Government and appointed by the National government. In the meantime, the plan of the Central Government calls for training schools for county chairmen, and provinces and districts are supposed to form training schools for preparing the personnel of the smaller units of local government. The only available report as to how this process of organization works in practice is that given in the survey of Ching Ho, and unfortunately this village is not typical of rural districts. Ching Ho is a town composed of a number of villages, and has a population For the statement of the plan for rural government as given here, see: China Year Book 1932; p. 687, and Tyau, Min-ch'ien; Two Years of Nationalist China, p. 76-78. 2 Ching Ho: a Sociological Analysis. This study was made during 1928 and 1929, and therefore is by several years too early to give a picture of the situation at present under the slowly strengthening National Government. But it is valuable because it indicates the reaction of a town on which the new, external forces of change are operating. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 208 DAVID FAURE Tseng Lan Shue an on lung ceremony every thirty. Sha Kok Mei also had a regular ta tsiu. * Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 31.7.81, Mr. Chau T'in Shang 9.7.81. The ceremony, taken more as a game of fun, was known as "puk sha ngau tsai". 49 Mr. Lok Kau Kei 26.6.81, Mr. Lei 9.7.81. 60 Before the War, puppet shows were performed at the earthgods' festivals at Sai Kung Market and Pak Tam Chung, and the ta tsiu at Pak Kong and Pak Sha Wan. With the exception of Pak Kong's ta tsiu, which was held once every ten years, these were annual celebrations. See ints. Mr. Kong Hei 21.6.81, Mr. Chau T'in Shang 7.5.81, 9.7.81, Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81, Mr. Lok Kau Kei 26.6.81, Mr. Leung Yung Hei 16.6.81, Mr. Lok Tsau On 21.6.81. "1 See, for instance, descriptions of the feasts in int. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81, feast at grave worship in int. Mr. Cheung T'o 15.6.81, at wedding ceremony in int. Mr. Tsang 25.6.81. 52 For general comments see Mr. Tse Wing 9.6.81, Mrs. Lau 21.6.81, Mrs. Tse 21.6.81, Mrs. Cheung née Wan 26.6.81, and for samples of these songs, Mr. Lok Kau Kei 26.6.81, Mr. Ip Wan 2.7.81. 53 C. Fred Blake, "Death and abuse in marriage laments: the curse of Chinese brides", Studies in Asian Folklore 37, pp. 13-33 quotes extensively from a text of Hakka songs found in Sai Kung. The Oral History Project has found records of these songs in other villages, but not in Sai Kung itself. 5 Hong Kong Government Administrative Report 1913, p. N 16. 56 From the Hong Kong Government Administrative Report 1922, the Hong Kong Government Administrative Report 1923, and interview reports, schools were found in Sai Kung Market (Sung Chen and two others) and the following villages (names of schools in brackets): Mang Kung Uk (Ts'ung Kong), Pak Tam Chung, Wo Mei, Ho Chung (Tsik Shin), Tseung Kwan O (Lap Tak), Yim Tin Tsai, Tai Po Tsai, Sha Kok Mei (Yuk Yin), Tai Wan (Sui Ying), Tai No, Nam Wai, Pak Kong (Man Shang), Tai Long, Wong Chuk Yeung, Pan Long Wan, Sheung Yeung (Ling Wan), Ta Ho Tun, Pak Ngah, Kau Lau Wan, Kau Sai, Seung Sz Wan (Wai San), Hang Hau (Man Uen), Tseng Lan Shue (Lung T'ang), Tan Ka Wan (Shung Ming), Yung Shu O, Ko Tong, Tai Wan Tau, Wong Mo Ying, Ma Yau Tong, Man Yee Wan, Nam Shan, Che Keng Tuk, Pak Kong Au, Ma Nam Wat, Siu Hang Hau. 56 Ints. Mr. Lok Shang 21.5.81, Mr. Chan Kei Shang 28.5.81, Mr. Cheung To 29.5.81, Mr. Chan Shau 19.6.81, Mr. Uen Chan Wan 22.6.81, Mr. Cheung Ts'oi 20.6.81, Mr. Wong Yung Ts'ing 20.5.81, Mr. Lam Kaap Shau 8.6.81, Mr. Lai Foh 8.5.81. 57 Mr. Lei Shiu Yam 8.5.81, Mr. Wong Yung Ts'ing 20.5.81, Mr. Kong Hei 21.6.81 went to Sung Chen. Mr. Wong went from Sung Chen to the Roman Catholic School in Wai Chau and then Canton. Mr. Cheng Chung T'ing 21.5.81 went to the Yau Ma Tei Government School, Mr. Uen Chiu Ming 13.2.81 went to the Tai Po Teachers Training School, but did not graduate. The Chans of Ho Chung sent their sons to Nam Tau or Canton; see Mr. Chan P'aang Hing 29.5.81. Mr. Chau T'in Shang's elder brother was educated in Canton, see int. 3.6.81. See also int. Father George Carusso 20.5.81. 58 Mr. Wong Ts'ing 23.6.81, Mr. Tsang Yau 23.6.81, Mrs. Tse née Lau 24.6.81, Mr. Lau Wan Hei 25.6.81, Mrs. Yung née Wan 2.7.81, Madam Chiu I Mooi 18.7.81, Mrs. Yau née Tse 22.7.81, Mr. Chan T'aai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 50 JIANN HSIEH * According to an imperial decree issued in 1645, a man could change his official domicile only if his grandfather had settled in a new place for more than twenty years, and if he could prove that in that place he had an estate and a clan graveyard (Ho, 1966:8). ? According to the informant, who is one of the directors of the Wai-yeung Merchants Association is a locality association in nature, but not a merchants' guild. * It is especially true that genealogical seniority played a very important role in the leadership of the Chinese traditional clan associations. This emphasis on seniority also prevailed in the leadership structure of other kinds of voluntary associations through pseudo-kinship relationships (Gamble, 1929). • The division of residence by dialect or original locality survives even in today's Chinese community of Singapore. For example, most of the Hainanese concentrate in Hsiao-p'o, while the Cantonese are dominant in the area of Niu-ch'e-shui. 10 Since all the Waichow schools are subsidized by the Hong Kong Government, it is an obligation for them to use Cantonese as the teaching medium. 11 The estimated size of the Waichow population in Hong Kong according to the association leaders ranges from 700,000 to 1,200,000. REFERENCES A. CHINESE Ho, P. T. 1966 Chung-kui hui-kuang shih lun (A Historical Survey of Landsmannschaften in China). Taipei: Students' Book Store. Huang, C. L. 1972 Ma-hua li-shih tiao-ch'a yen-chiu ch'u-lun (A Preliminary Study of Chinese History in Malaya). Singapore: Wan-li Press. Li, S. T. 1957 Yuan-lang Sao-kuan-hu Li-shih tsu-p'u (The Genealogy of Lis in So Kwun Wat, Yuen Long). MS. Li, Y. Y. 1970 Lo, H. L. 1933 Ih-ko i-chih ti shih-chên (An Immigrant Town). Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica. K'ê-chiao yen-chiu tao-lun (An Introduction to Hakka Studies). (1975) Taipei: Ku-t'ing Press. See, C. B. 1976 Fei-lu-pin hua-jên wen-hua ti chih-hsü (Persistence and Preservation of Chinese Culture in the Philippines). Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 42:119-206. ================================================================================ 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 131 The Chinese are both adept at make-believe and at the same time very practical—in a way that confuses some Westerners. This flexibility also creates problems for the government of Teng Hsiao-p'ing. I have heard these problems talked about inside China and outside China. The most serious problem is that mid-level cadres report to Peking only what they think will please the orthocrats there. Therefore mid-level cadres conceal from their superiors the fact that a target has not been met. They do not want to be criticized for not meeting targets—and perhaps lose some of their perks. In Peking the perquisites of cadres struck me more than anywhere else. I did not myself see the special schools that their children attend; nor their superior places of residence. What I did see once was a procession of about fifty cars, each with its curtains drawn as if to shield the occupants from curious gazes. I was told that the wife of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was visiting Peking. The first of several of the cars in the cavalcade were flying national flags as they went past me on Ch'ang-an Boulevard. Ambassadors rode in them. Afterwards I was walking back to the Peking Hotel, where I lived not in the western part (built with Russian help), but in the eastern part built in 1975. I happened to look in a gateway on the south side of Ch'ang-an Boulevard. I could hardly believe my eyes. What I think I saw was a white marble statue of Stalin, about ten feet tall. I could not enter the courtyard and inspect the statue more closely because the sign at the gate informed me that this was the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security. The Chinese government is now revealing that many of the statistics released in 1958-1976 were erroneous. It is issuing corrections when it can. But it faces limits. For example, how can it state with certainty the approximate population of the world's most populous country? Cadres in distant areas may be reluctant to report that they have failed to carry out the program to stop married couples from having more than three children. Many peasant families still believe that the best old-age insurance is a larger number of children. Where they feel this way and have four or more children, the village cadre may be reluctant to report the fact to the county cadre; and the ascending accumulation of errors may be concealed from Peking. If Peking does not know the population of an area, it cannot plan to take adequate measures in case of drought—like the one in Kansu, for example, in 1979. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 92 CARL T SMITH The establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911 brought with it a group of leaders who held liberal ideas on social issues. A disproportionate number of these were Christians or had been trained in Christian schools. There were numerous connections between these officials in the Canton Southern Government of Dr. Sun and the Christians in Hong Kong. Another facet of the events described in this paper is the clumsy manner in which the Colonial Office and the Hong Kong Government dealt with the problem once it was publicised. They had been quite content to tolerate the custom throughout the years, although some administrators were aware of the abuses inherent in the system. When questions were raised in Hong Kong and England about the system they immediately assumed a defensive stand. The Colonial Office depended on information supplied to it by the Hong Kong Government. The local administration in turn relied heavily on the opinions of those "respectable" Chinese whom it recruited as its advisers. Then as now, these were the wealthy merchants, landowners and professionals. They did not represent the masses of the people. Their role as leaders of the Chinese community, however, was seldom challenged by the silent majority. It was a surprise to them and to the Government when an aggressive opposition suddenly emerged. This opposition was also led by "respectable" Chinese, some of whom were wealthy, some of the middle class, but practically all Protestant Christians who were motivated by the moral values of their faith and by enlightened ideas of the age. Their activity did not ingratiate them to Government. A daughter of one of the leaders of the Anti Mui Tsai Society told me her father always felt Government continued to hold his position in the Society against him for many years. The Mui Tsai System The purchase of girls for domestic service was a long-standing Chinese custom. The children who were bought and thus became a part of the household were given the familiar name "little sister", mui tsai. However their lot was not always as pleasant as their name. Much depended on the kindness of the master or more especially the mistress. As very young children their duties were to run errands, fetch articles, pick up dropped fans, etc., or they might be placed under other servants to perform household tasks. As they grew older their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 126 TA ACTON + an oppressed and pariah people without social status. 20 It must be emphasized that this picture of an ethnic group with a long history was not the image of a few scholars only. It was the socially constructed reality of pre-1939 China. Even though since the mid-1950s modern scholarship and the views of the officials most directly concerned, both in the People's Republic of China21 and in Hong Kong have demolished it as though it had never been, it lingers among ordinary people and even some British officials not directly concerned. 22 23 26 From the early 1950s one British social-anthropologist, Barbara Ward, has carried out recurrent field-work on a community of the kind that used to be called 'Tanka', on the little island of Kau Sai.29 She found that with minor exceptions they were ethnically Cantonese, with similar models of the world, marriage and death practices, and religious beliefs to other Han Chinese.24 Other scholars endorsed her view; even their language, apart from an enormous, specialised fishing vocabulary was said to be virtually the same as ordinary Cantonese. In fact, Hong Kong fishing people in the larger ports can tell each others' origins partly by the fact that they speak with different, local coastal accents - for example, a 'Yeung Kong' accent.; 26 27 Official policy in Hong Kong also now sees the boat-people as an occupational, and not an ethnic group, whereas the British Government in Britain sees the Gypsies now as an ethnic and not an occupational group, both viewpoints having reversed themselves over the past thirty years. 28 It should be emphasized, though, that these perceptions of ethnicity, whatever relation they may have to the form and organisation of education (and the vigour with which it is pursued), do not usually affect the content of special educational provision by the state, for either group. Both the curriculum and language remains that of the ordinary school, and the amount of exotic cultural material included is meagre. Despite some pioneering work by voluntary projects, the Gypsy dialects are not used in the West Midlands Local Authority projects, and "Gypsy material" is limited to commercially published books featuring Gypsies, and the occasional pasted cardboard caravan. Equally, in the F.MO. schools in Hong Kong, one might find general readers, with a carefully laudatory couple of pages on the brave fishermen, or, once or twice, beautiful collections of strange fish and other marine creatures in jars, that have been contributed by parents; but the main task was to give them the same education other Chinese children received. 29 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 132 TA ACTON be for them, despite all the official denials. But it had been filled up with outsiders as soon as it was finished. Just in the past couple of weeks, he told me, there had been whispers of resettlement for a number of families in a temporary housing area some miles away. The part of the harbour that contained the club-houseboat and most of the leaky old living-boats would then be filled in and reclaimed as land for further housing. Those of the Shui-sheung-yan who were still fishing would have a long way to travel to their boats on which they were employed. (The richer fishermen had mostly established already their own private, more convenient shore bases.) 41 Despite the fact that it would mean the virtual end of their club, and despite frequent reports in the press of other boat people dissatisfied with the temporary housing areas, members of the association appeared resigned to moving, to feel it was necessary. Boat people from Aberdeen resettled in Shatin had complained that their family life was breaking down because their menfolk were either unemployed, or spending all their time travelling back to work in the Aberdeen fishmarket. They also complained that the Shatin schools had higher standards than those in Aberdeen (including, presumably, the F.M.O. schools) and that their children were falling behind or dropping out. 42 This can in a way be read as an expression of confidence in the F.M.O. schools. There are, however, no F.M.O. schools in Castle Peak; there are no data on how well children there have adapted to the ordinary schools there. Whatever the problems, at Castle Peak for the poorer boat-people, rehousing was still the priority. As in the case of the struggle for re-housing at Yaumatei, that at Castle Peak was given continuity by an outside force. With SoCO both ideology and finance are supplied from Western trusts and churches; at Castle Peak it is the concern of the Chinese authorities. The Hong Kong Government for its part, appear to regard the Trojan horse of liberal capitalism as rather more dangerously subversive and left-wing than that of communism. The Fishermen's Recreation Clubs The Fishermen's Recreation Clubs of Chai Wan and Stanley were founded by a lighthouse-keeper, now retired, Charles Thirlwall, M.B.E., who has been concerned with helping the Shui-sheung-yan since the 1930s. The clubs are, as they say, recreation clubs. The Chai Wan club room is three rooms knocked together in the basement of a resettlement estate block of flats, its walls covered with photographs of smiling ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m THE HONG KONG ORIGINS OF DR. SUN YAT-SEN'S ADDRESS TO LI HUNG-CHANG 169 building up a wealthy nation and a powerful army, and to their laws for social reforms. I also discerned the essentials of current events and changes, and the means of maintaining peaceful relationship with other countries. In addition to the medical training and earlier schooling he received in Hong Kong, by "education abroad", Sun was referring to his schooling in Hawaii. The first Western school which Sun attended was Iolani, and it was an elementary school run by the Church of England in Honolulu, whose staff, except for one Hawaiian, was entirely British. After his graduation from school in 1882, he spent less than a year in a high school, Oahu College, run by American Congregationists and Presbyterian missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands. He was sent back to his native village, Ts'ui-heng, by his brother in the summer of 1883 and enrolled shortly afterwards at the Diocesan Home, a school set up by the Church of England in Hong Kong. The next year he entered the Central School, the first government secondary school in Hong Kong, now known as Queen's College. No record is available as to the class he entered. According to an article in Vol. 37 of Yellow Dragon, the school magazine, Sun entered the school under the name Sun Tai Tseng (Ti Hsiang), at the age of eighteen. He left in 1886 to join the Canton Poh Tsai Hospital as a medical student and then transferred in early 1887 to the Hong Kong Medical College for Chinese. The college was affiliated with the newly established Alice Memorial Hospital, which was set up by Ho Kai, a civic leader in Hong Kong, in memory of his wife. For the next five years, Sun studied under the general supervision of Ho Kai and two Scottish physicians, Dr. Patrick Manson and Dr. James Cantlie. He graduated in 1892 at the age of twenty-six, two years before he wrote the petition. Thus from 1883 to 1892, except for the interval of about half a year in 1886 when he joined the Poh Tsai Hospital, Sun received a major part of his secondary education and then his medical training in Hong Kong. The schools which he attended, the Diocesan Home and the Central School were Anglo-Chinese schools. Since the 1880s, the Hong Kong Government's educational policy had been directed towards the encouragement of the learning of the English language and Western knowledge, and these schools offered subjects such as those referred to by Sun in the opening of his letter. Yet the impact of school upon the mind of a youth like Sun might go much deeper than knowledge obtained from learning in class. The environment or "culture" of the school itself played perhaps a more significant ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 170 NG LUN NGAI-HA part in affecting the social and political attitude of the students. The Anglo Chinese schools in Hong Kong were modelled on the Western pattern, in their curriculum, textbooks and teaching method. In addition, Chinese students here had frequent contact with British school-masters and fellow students of different nations and religions for starting from 1867, the Central School was opened to students of all nationalities and the enrolment included English, Portuguese, Americans, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos and others. The interflow of ideas and experience went on in their daily intercourse not only through formal lessons but also through simply being mixed in a class, in their recess and games. The interchange of ideas was further facilitated by the publication of a school magazine, which contained not only school news, but also interesting articles by staff or students. As a youth and student, Dr. Sun Yat-sen spent his most formative and impressionable years in Hong Kong, and learnt much that could serve as a stimulus to his political awareness. It was never the intention of the Hong Kong Government to include any political content in the school curriculum. Care was taken, in fact, to avoid arousing any national sentiment among the Chinese students, and Chinese history was not taught in government schools. Yet, in a number of ways, some more subtle than others, the curriculum did stimulate political awakening and ideas of reform. In the Central School, topics like "Patriotism", "The Follies of Foot-binding" and "The True End of Education" were often set for English composition. Lessons on the history of England, such as the growth of parliamentary government or the Industrial Revolution, might directly or indirectly activate the minds of the students on the problems in China. What would a young man from China think of his local magistrate when he read about the municipal council in England, the rising influence of the merchant class, or the workers in the West, knowing how humble peasants fared in China? The impact of these lessons of course depended very much on the personality and mind of the individual. This explains why the Central School produced during these years officials of the Ch'ing court, reformists, as well as revolutionaries.10 Hong Kong from the mid-nineteenth century onward was an important centre for the publication of journals and newspapers containing news and articles from Hong Kong, China as well as the West. The more important early newspapers were the China Mail, the Hong Kong Daily Press and the Hong Kong Telegraph.11 These papers formed the important backbone of the China coast newspapers of the time.12 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 172 NG LUN NGAI-HA The person in Hong Kong who had the most direct influence on Sun's thought was Ho Kai, a founder and also a teacher of the Hong Kong Medical College, teaching medical jurisprudence and physiology.1 Ho was the son of a missionary of Cantonese origin who later settled in Hong Kong and became a businessman. Ho himself received his early education at the Central School and then left in 1872 to continue his secondary and then university education in Britain. He returned in 1882 as a qualified medical doctor and barrister. As a prominent civic leader, he served as the Chinese representative in various Government councils and boards, including the Legislative Council and the Sanitary Board. He was a great promoter of Western medicine and education for the Chinese in Hong Kong. In addition to the Alice Memorial Hospital and the Hong Kong Medical College, he was also a founder of the University of Hong Kong and patron of a number of Anglo-Chinese schools. In the Sino-French war of 1884-1885, when China failed to protect Annam, the Chinese seamen and coolies in Hong Kong reacted patriotically in boycott against French ships. Ho began to be concerned with the fate of China and the need for her modernization. From 1887 onwards, Ho began to contribute articles to the local English language newspapers, expressing his views on affairs in China. Most of his reformist essays were translated into Chinese or rewritten by Hu Li-huan and published both in Hong Kong and in China.2 Hu also received part of his education at the Central School both as a student and then as a student-teacher between 1862 and 1872. Unlike Ho, whose education was mainly in English, Hu had received very solid education in classical Chinese, and later won great fame as a gifted prose writer, scholar and poet. He was also a comprador and a very successful businessman. Because of Ho's and Hu's prominence in Hong Kong, their essays must have caught the attention of many intellectuals. Ho's first essay was a long critical review of Tseng Chi-tse's article, "China, the Sleep and the Awakening". The review was published in the China Mail on February 12, 1887, three days after Tseng's article appeared in the same paper. Ho argued that the real cause of China's troubles lay not so much in her military weakness as in her "loose morality and evil habits, both social and political". He strongly emphasized complete and sweeping reforms in China's administration. More specifically, Ho demanded a new basis for recruiting officials as the existing civil examinations involved no knowledge of modern science or arts and were worthless as a test of real ability and talent. He also considered ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 88 ELIZABETH SINN to keep their own people in order. Local headmen such as the Paou-chong E, and then the Tepo were used in the first two decades of British rule. In 1846 the Registrar-General became also the Protector of Chinese Inhabitants in the Colony, 88 But the Registrar-General's office was small, and its function was very much one of liaison. It depended heavily on Chinese leadership groups to manage the native population, The Man-Mo Temple Committee was one of the first such groups to emerge, followed by the Nam Pak Hong and the Tung Wah Hospital, which since its inception in 1870, became the predominant institution of its kind, until the Chinese Chamber of Commerce began to share its status in the 20th Century.87 The Tung Wah Hospital, like the rest, had functions beyond what its name might suggest. It was modelled upon traditional Chinese urban gentry organizations which provided relief of various types, arbitrated conflicts, sat in judgement over minor offences, ran schools, and occupied a privileged position between the officials and the common people. In short it provided in Hong Kong what the Chinese population expected from gentry organizations in China, and created in its merchant-members images of the gentry. It may appear anomalous to describe the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong as shen (gentry). If defined as degree holders then certainly not many of the Chinese leaders in Hong Kong would qualify for the description of "gentry". Yet these men were consistently referred to by Chinese officials as shen-shang (gentry, merchant). Mariane Bastid raises the very interesting point about the transition over time of the expression shen-shang from denoting merchant and gentry to denoting merchant-gentry in China. This change, of course, reflects nothing less than the change in social composition in late Ch'ing China, and perhaps nowhere did this change take place more dramatically than in Hong Kong. The one important difference was that being in Hong Kong, the shen-shang had to act as a bridge, not only between the people and government of Hong Kong, but also between the Chinese of Hong Kong and the Chinese Government, and, in particular, the authorities in Canton. They stood in the midst of a complex net of interests, often clashing interests, and to accommodate all parties was a game of intricate manoeuvring, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 101 lawyers two months training in "New Democracy" and placing them under Communist cadres. When the People's Political Consultative Conference, organized by the victorious Chinese Communist Party, issued its "Common Programme" formally establishing the People's Republic in September 1949, it also adopted an Organic Law of the Central People's Government, Article 5 of this document provided for a Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate, but no action was taken on the establishment of a system of lower courts until September 1951. In fact, during this period, civil and criminal courts left over from the Kuomintang period continued to function alongside military, revolutionary, and people's tribunals. Article 17 of the Common Programme had done away with the six codes of the Kuomintang, but new laws were published in rapid order, some 3,452 of them by September of 1954, including major laws dealing with land reform, marriage, the punishment of counter-revolutionaries and corruption. However, no systematic codes were issued and there were many gaps in areas which lawmakers in most societies would consider of prime importance, including such crimes as homicide. When appropriate laws and regulations were lacking, judges were supposed to use the general policies of Mao's "New Democracy." Such ambiguity naturally led to great inconsistency in judgments, and judges were forced to make wide use of analogy even to the point of secretly basing their decisions on Kuomintang legal precedent. In the autumn of 1952 a National Judicial Conference was called to launch a reform of the courts. By the time the movement came to an end in April 1953, many former Kuomintang officials had been removed from the judicial system, but the problem of judicial decision making continued to persist. A Chinese Political Science and Law Association was established in the spring of 1953 which in May of the following year began publishing its national legal journal, Zhengfa yanjiu [Researches in Political Science and Law]. At the same time, a special legal publishing house was established and began producing annual collections of laws. Several law schools or institutes for training judicial cadres were also opened. Finally a second National -- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 254 the prefectural capital, for more advanced studies. During the last quarter of the 19th century, when deliberate efforts to prepare for the civil examinations began to fade, there still existed within the village some of these special small classes taught by the more prestigious teachers in their own homes. This practice continued even after the abolition of the civil examinations. Liao Chung-nan [Liu Chung-nam], a siu-tsai of the late Ch'ing, taught a small class of about ten at his own house at and after the turn of the century, charging a higher fee than the normal school fees paid for classes held in the study halls. His classes remained as prestigious classes for the rich well into this century. The curriculum and method of teaching both in the study halls and in the private classes were typical of Chinese traditional education. There was no division of classes by academic standard. Instruction was given individually or in groups of four or five by rotation. Progress depended largely on the individual or the liking of the teacher. Normally teaching would start with the well-known primers, the San-tzu-ching,70 Ch'in-tzu-wen* and Pai-chia-hsing‡. Two other popular primers were the Hsiao-ching and the Yu hsueh ku-shih ch'iung-lin****. Brighter students would proceed to the Four Books and even the Five Classics after a year or two. There was also much emphasis on teaching the students rhymed couplets, other simple poetic forms, and the correct way of writing polite letters and other formal documents. Books for this kind of teaching, some printed but most hand-written, have been found in several villages alongside the standard primers used in the village schools. Rhymed couplets were useful, we were told, to reinforce recognition of characters for their sound and meaning and also for teaching students to compose couplets, this being a form of literary activity popular in the villages of the region. Shortly after the setting up of British rule in 1898, a government officer described Sheung Shui as "a village of scholarship and agriculture”.11 Perhaps he was impressed by the grand looking ancestral hall and the number of study halls in the village. The many wooden boards hung in these halls recording ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 258 The first British District Officer of the region had the following remarks:17 Education of any kind has always appealed powerfully to Chinese, and they are probably more ready than any other people to defer to the voice of learning. In every village appeal is made to the lettered man to settle points of dispute, and he receives the place of honour in all local gatherings. It must be admitted that this respect was formerly due not only to his intrinsic merits and his superior knowledge, but to the advantages that he possessed in being able to write and thus to draw up petitions in proper form and present the case of litigants to the courts. With the coming of British rule these advantages have largely disappeared except that it is still usual for a litigant or other petitioner to submit his petition in due form. The completion of the railway from Lo Wu to Hung Hom in 1910 and its extension to Tsim Sha Tsui in 1916 brought Sheung Shui into direct connection with urban Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension of the Tai Po Road into a ring road also connected the village with many of the main population centres in the New Territories and Kowloon. The 1921 census shows a small decrease of the population in the village from 1440 to 1400, but in the whole New Territories, there was an increase from 80,622 to 83,163.18 The village economy was still predominantly agrarian. Yet opportunities for taking other employment must have increased. The decrease in population must have been due to the numbers of people leaving the village for the cities, as oral recollections of the period do not include any memories of any decrease in the size of the clan overall. The increased contact with the outside world and new employment opportunities must have exercised considerable influence on the local popular literacy. Another stimulant was to come from the educational policy of the Hong Kong government. The early laissez-faire policy began to give way to some degree of concern, After a survey made by Sung Hok Pang of the conditions of rural schools in 1913, the government decided to give a subsidy varying from $5 to $10 per month each to fifty selected schools in the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 259 hope of raising the income of the teachers and improving their conditions of teaching. Annual reports given by the inspectors show a constant cancellation and replacement of the schools on the subsidy list. Numbers of schools receiving subsidy varied from forty to a hundred before World War II. More direct supervision was exercised from 1921 onwards when the 1913 Education Ordinance, which required all schools with nine pupils or more to register with the government, was applied to the New Territories. In 1926, a government Vernacular Normal School was set up in Taipo in the hope of "producing capable vernacular teachers for the country districts."20 Political events and cultural movements in China during the first few decades of the 20th century brought about important changes in traditional Chinese educational concepts. Modern schools were set up alongside the traditional ssu-shu, and the classical primers were revised or replaced by new sets of textbooks, the first stage in a major change in the contents and aim of education. This process of modernization, coupled with the changes induced by the economic and social pressures mentioned above, led to changes in the education provided and the level and types of popular literacy achieved in this village community at Sheung Shui which can be documented in some detail. The first departure from traditional educational practices in Sheung Shui was the beginning of female education. For a long time, education was confined to boys only. Amongst the five old ladies above the age of 76 whom we interviewed, all admitted that they were unable to read and write, and they had no knowledge of any woman of their age who had been to school. According to the male informants, they did not see any girls attending class in the village until the first girls' school was opened in 1912, and neither had they any knowledge of girls being tutored at home. The first two ladies resident in the village who were known to be literate came to the village from outside and had received their education in Hong Kong. They were sisters, one of whom had married an early Christian convert from the village who became, in time, a pioneer in the promotion of modern education in the district. Our informants admitted, "In spite of our efforts in building study halls and securing success in the civil ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p No first-hand information concerning female education of the time has yet been obtained as the small number of women who then attended classes in Sheung Shui left the village upon their marriage, and have not yet been located for interview. According to the account of their male contemporaries, however, 'the small classes in the Christian-run girls' school (Fu Yin T'ang 女校) were mostly from humble families, but those who were later admitted into classes in the study halls were mostly daughters of wealthy families. These girls were usually bright and diligent and showed deep interest in learning. Their average attendance was shorter than the boys', starting normally from the age of nine and none stayed beyond fourteen when they began to prepare for marriage.' "The experience of the two daughters of the founder of the Fu Yin T'ang was, however, exceptional. They never attended class in the village but were sent to a Christian school in Kowloon at the age of 10 and 9. It was a subsidized boarding school for girls (Fairlea) where the Bible, English, arithmetic, biology, hygiene, geography, history, and music as well as the traditional primers were taught. The fee was $5 a month per pupil." "It was a big sum of money, as the fee in the village schools was then from $2 to $5 per year," one of these two ladies, now aged 78, told us in an interview. The elder sister died young but she herself, after completing the upper primary class at Fairlea, received training in nursing at the Nethersole Hospital and then worked as a nurse in Hong Kong until retirement. While the above case was exceptional for women, it was less so among the men. Changes of the 1910's and 20's brought opportunities as well as new demands. Traditional education, though modified to a certain extent, began to seem steadily more inadequate to cope with the conditions of the time. Those who formerly would have sought a literate career in classical learning turned to the new facilities available. According to our findings from the Oral History Project, between 1913 and 1932, at least twenty young men from the village and almost certainly more were known to have received a Western education at the Tai Po Government School or at the Anglo-Chinese schools in urban Kowloon and Hong Kong. Most of these people had thereafter successful careers as government clerks, interpreters, teachers, headmasters, and businessmen. They were also viewed as elite. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 264 Sham Chun and Canton. But they were those, according to the New Territories Inspectors of Schools, who had lost their jobs because of educational reforms in China and whose training and attitude were too antiquated to be tolerated.”29. 80 The following table, which summarises the types of schooling and careers of twenty-two people of the village, born between 1895-1915, who attended schools in the 1910's and 1920's, helps to show that changed situations had brought new aspirations and demands. The cases are enough to tell that 1) experienced teachers were giving up their jobs for better paid work as shopowners, clerks and even grocers; 2) even 5-8 years of schooling at the traditional village schools turned out people capable of becoming shop-assistants, farmers, labourers or herbalists only and 3) an Anglo-Chinese education could equip people to take up much better-paid jobs such as clerks, registered teachers in the city and eventually headmasters. Year of birth Years in school Type of School Subject Occupations 1895 10 2, over 10 3, 6, 3.1, 1.3 Subsidized village school teacher, shopowner at Shek Wu Hui! 1900 10 1901 5, 8 L, 4, 3, 3 Subsidized village school teacher, clerk at a private firm in Hong Kong 1905 7, 6 Clerk at private firm, businessman, Landowner, farmer, hawker, Interpreter/clerk in Police Department and Medical Department, Subsidized school teacher at Kowloon, headmaster, Businessman at Kowloon, government clerk 1. 12 i ; + TABLE II :: выпитьной سیما ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 265 Year of birth Years in Type of School Subject school 1906 8 9 り over 10 10 4 3 J ! | 5 I 12 8 13 10 DAC вит L L... L. 1910 14 3 K 3 1911 15 7 ✓ 16 S 1915 B C 17 5 18 3 L 1 برد 19 3 2 20 N GA પ ватим L... ... Атить 2 8 21 ... 12 вонить 222 22 6 L .... ватни Occupations Caddie at Fanling Golf Club, brick-maker at Lo Wu Subsidized village school teacher, teacher at Fung Kai Clerk in various government departments Grocer, bus-driver Shop-assistant, seaman Private village school teacher, registered village school teacher, grocer Registered teacher at Shek Wu Hui Herbalist Farmer, labourer (Urban Council) Caddie, farmer, seaman Teacher at a modern school in Canton Shopowner at Kowloon Grant school teacher at Kowloon, headmaster Registered school teacher, businessman at Saikung Son of a village school teacher, herbalist Traditional village schools in Sheung Shui Anglo-Chinese Schools at Taipo Anglo-Chinese Schools at Kowloon/Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v The Memorial is mentioned in the Report of the Antiquities Advisory Board, 1983 (published by the Antiquities and Monuments Office, Urban Services Department) as "having been restored with a generous contribution from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club and the agreement of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals" (p. 11 and plate 10 of the Report). exemplifies two major There is the Buddhist suffering, and the long- (d) The Tung Wah Eastern Hospital another institution built with private funds which motivating forces in local life. concern to relieve poverty and established Chinese tradition that the rich should participate in good works to assist the community and be seen to be doing so through a proliferation of photographs of donors, memorials, subscription lists and the like. This is evident (I think) to a far greater degree than in the West, where published subscription lists and a memorial stone or two are usually enough to record charitable contributions. (e) The Sir Ellis Kadoorie Government School-established in another location in the 1890s through the generosity of one of the Kadoorie family. These merchant princes of Hong Kong and Shanghai originated from Baghdad. Their zeal for community projects, and their conviction that wealth generated from the community should be ploughed back into it, came over strongly in the interesting film on the Kadoorie Agricultural Association's work here and in Nepal which we showed to our members at the British Council recently. The school was originally planned to be used mainly by Indian and Pakistani children, but it is now attended by Chinese also. (f) The Hong Kong Buddhist Association School this is one of a large number of schools operated by the Association, and also by individual Buddhist organisations. The Association was founded in 1932, revived in 1945 it was inactive during the Japanese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 135 Julian Arnold et al, Commercial Handbook of China, US Department of Commerce, Miscellaneous Series No. 84 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919) Vol. 1, p. 181. Ibid. It is, however, only fair to record that E.J. Eitel Europe in China: the History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Hong Kong 1898) pp. 130-134 gives a more balanced picture of Hong Kong before 1841. 9 The Chinese characters for most of these places can be found in the Hong Kong Government's Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer, n.d. 1960) but variously at pp. 90-98, 103-106 and 114-117. See also “Original Gazetteer and Census, May 15th 1841" at Appendix II of Geoffrey Robley Sayer, Hong Kong 1841-1862 Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937), p. 203. 10 The extracts from the Collinson letters reproduced here are taken from transcripts in preparation kindly made available by Mr. Ian Diamond who advises that they should be checked against the originals. For the owners of the letters, and their whereabouts, see file MSS23 at the Public Records Office of Hong Kong. A reference to Collinson's military mapping of Hong Kong, described by Mr. Diamond in an unpublished memoir as follows: "Collinson completed his survey at the end of October, 1845. The work had taken him almost exactly two years. The survey was principally of Hong Kong Island but the resulting map took in also the islands immediately adjacent to Hong Kong, Kowloon Peninsula and the coastline of the mainland as far as Tsuen Wan in the West and Fat Tong Point in the east, Drawn to a scale of 4" to one statute mile (1/15840) the finished map was on four joinable sheets covering north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east Hong Kong respectively. The map is meticulously detailed and very finely drawn. One of the most interesting features of Collinson's map is that it employs contour lines instead of shading, or hatching, to show land heights and is said to have been the first such map ever to be published. Collinson did not invent the technique. Contour-line mapping was first employed by military engineers in France, but it seems to have been used there largely in the siting and planning of fortifications. By the early 1830s the concept had been taken up by the Royal Engineers who, especially after about 1834, began to give it a more general application, largely in connection with the great surveys of England and Ireland, His map was published by the Ordnance Map Office, Southampton in 1846, prior to any contoured map of the United Kingdom, the first not being printed until December, 1847. Collinson submitted, together with his map, a portfolio of "Ten Outline Sketches of the Island of Hong Kong". These were pen and ink drawings of the Island landscape viewed from ten locations and were designed to illustrate its salient topographical features and the nature and location of important buildings and settlements." 12 Ibid. A few years earlier, Dr. Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., also recorded a visit to a village school, under date 7 April 1841. "Went into the village school where we saw a lot of moon-faced urchins were acquiring the rudiments of the celestial learning and put one in mind of some of the village schools at home." (ed) Michael Levin, The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree. Surgeon R.N., as related in his private Journals 1837-1856 (Exeter, England, Webb and Bower, 1981) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 284 CHOI CHI CHEUNG 14 13 defence. Thus, the 200 Hainanese were saved. He stayed in Vietnam for more than 40 years. He had a very good relationship with the French. He started many new businesses and expanded the old ones. Chinese and foreigners owed him more than a hundred million, but he just left and didn't ask (them to pay back). Within the 40 years, he helped and encouraged many people from his native place and his lineage, and he protected many Chinese in Vietnam. The French law was strict and the ignorant could be accused easily. However, they were released whenever he spoke out for them. Thus, all the Chinese in Vietnam felt very grateful to him and depended on him in many things. Moreover, he contributed a lot to the petitions presented to exempt the Associations(f) and the free cemeteries() from tax. These actions were all praised and well known. In 1879, he was appointed by the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co.() to import rice into China (from Vietnam).1 Many famous diplomats, such as: Chung-hou( ), Kuo Sung-tao(#), Tseng Chi-tse(##), Shao yu-lien( ), Wang Chih-chun( 2), Hsieh Fu-cheng(# ), Lung Tien-yang(U), Huang Tsun-hsien(F) etc., wanted to know him, and relied on him as their host (when they passed through Vietnam).2 However, he was never arrogant, and he always treated them with great hospitality and respect. On his 70th birthday, in 1888, his sons and grandsons celebrated it for him in Vietnam. Many officials and merchants came to the banquet. The French Government Offices(2), companies, schools, and mints(*) all raised flags to celebrate, and a holiday was given as if they were having their national celebration. At that time, the French Governor( t) awarded him a First Honoured Star(MSA) with a written citation." This excited the whole country, and everyone thought that it was a most honorific reward. However, he took it all casually. He was filial and had a fraternal personality. The way he took care of his parents when living and at the time of their death was all according to the traditional ways. He lived with his brothers with fraternal love. He treated his nephews as if they were his sons. He liked to study, and even the old scholars could not equal what he wrote. Thus, his sons were well brought up, and succeeded in the official examinations." For himself, he, according to the Ch'ing regulations, donated money and got the title of Hua-ling-tao( = official ...) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 32 WALTER GREENWOOD Kai, in 1886. Francis himself took part in the foundation of the College of Medicine for Chinese (one of the two original students of which was Sun Yat Sen). He was on the platform at the inaugural meeting in 1887 and was appointed standing counsel to the College and remained as such until his death. He contributed to prizes for botany and chemistry and attended the presentation of the first diplomas in 1892. In 1886 he made a presentation on behalf of the College to Dr. James Cantlie, to whom in great measure the foundation of the College was due, on the occasion of his departure from Hong Kong. He began his address by saying "when I first came to this colony I was given to understand there was only one disease recognised by the Medical Faculty and that was the liver, and that they had only two prescriptions, one a blue pill and the other, if that did not succeed, a P. & O. Steamer". In 1897 at a meeting for the election of the Rector of the College he made a speech pressing the Government for recognition and financial support. He alleged that the Government had ignored the College and wanted a medical school on government lines with the Colonial Surgeon at the head and government officers thick and thin all over from top to bottom. On his death the Court of the College (which may be regarded as the forerunner of the University of Hong Kong) passed a resolution expressing appreciation for his services. His interest in education also included schools, particularly the Roman Catholic schools. After the founding of St. Joseph's College in 1875 he rarely missed a Prizegiving Day there, and usually donated prizes, including on one occasion, somewhat ironically, an inkstand. He also acted as an examiner at St. Joseph's. Bishop Raimondi said that he tested the boys thoroughly and cross-examined them as he would have cross-examined a witness in court. He advocated teaching English to Chinese children. He also acted as a steward at, and patron of, the Hong Kong School's Athletic Sports. One of the obituaries of Francis recorded that he used to say that when he first arrived and stood on the deck of the troopship and gazed at Hong Kong he determined to be Governor one day. Whatever the truth of that there can be no doubt that, as was said in another obituary, he coveted a seat on the Legislative Council. He might have had a chance of nomination by Hennessy save that Hennessy was intent on nominating a Chinese (Ng Choy) and also ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 159 of school age. In addition, two sons of a printer, who had come to Hongkong with the mission press, were available as students. These four formed the first class. They met in quarters rented by Legge for his family residence. There was little prospect of growth until more accommodation could be found. The London Missionary Society applied to the Hongkong Government for a free grant of land on which to build a school. Already grants for schools, chapels and hospitals had been made to the Morrison Education Society, the China Medical Missionary Society, the American Baptist Mission, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission, the Roman Catholic Society for the Propagation of Faith and the Church of England. Since these grants had been made, however, no further land was to be allocated until definite instructions regarding the future of Hongkong and its land policy were received from the Home Government. In spite of this, the mission applied for the hill east of Wanchai where presently stands Wah Yan College. In presenting their case, it was stated that of the several hundred students who had been educated by the school at Malacca, "some acted as interpreters to the courts of the several settlements, others are among the wealthiest native merchants." The petition mentioned somewhat apologetically that, “the location... was unfortunate as the native tongue of the Chinese there was Malay so their progress in Chinese was slow and they in turn were slowed down in mastering English.” These remarks may have been included because of the Governor's known unfavourable view of the school's achievement. In reply, the Governor not only rejected the request for a grant of land, but also expressed his view that the location of the school in Hongkong was unnecessary as the Morrison Education Society School was already in operation. He wrote: "Two institutions of the sort in a small place like Hongkong, where I conceive it to be extremely doubtful any respectable Chinese will ever voluntarily ...... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 182 CARL SMITH the opening of consular offices. A competent staff of translators and interpreters was needed. Qualified people were very scarce. A request was made to Mr. Brown to supply interpreters from his students. He was most reluctant to interrupt the boys' education, but official pressure, reinforced by reference to the yearly Government grant the school received, was strong. He agreed to send Tong A-chick and Wong Tin-sau for a limited period. The latter had only been in the school for a few months, but was an advanced transfer pupil from Singapore. They were to serve for six months and then to return. The boys proved invaluable. The British Consul, Mr. Balfour, reported to Mr. Brown that he was quite pleased with the reliability and the conduct of the boys. He had found them so useful that he was not willing to send them back after the agreed six months. When A-chick finally returned to Hongkong after serving for a year and a half in Shanghai, he brought a note from the consul giving a favourable account of his conduct and expressing the consul's obligation to the Morrison Education Society for the assistance of its pupils. A-chick's fellow student remained in Shanghai where he later met a tragic death during the uprising of the Small Sword Society. Returning to Hongkong in 1845, Tong A-chick resumed his studies. In November 1845, six essays written by members of the senior class of the Morrison Education Society School were published. One of these was entitled “Chinese Government.” The essay appears to reflect impressions made upon A-chick in his post as interpreter, pointing out the injustice and corruption of late Ch'ing Dynasty. While critical of the malpractices, the author clearly described its administrative structure and procedure. The Morrison Education Society School was closed in the spring of 1849. The students were distributed among other schools. Along with seven of his schoolmates, Tong A-chick con- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 207 wife. He began his career as a teacher of English in Government Chinese schools. After two years, he was appointed an interpreter in the Police Magistrate's office. His brother-in-law, Ng Mun-sow, was already in the office and when he was dismissed, A-lloy stepped up into his position. He left Hongkong Government service in 1867 and accepted a position under the Viceroy of Kwangtung. He was to be in charge of an opium tax collecting office in Hongkong for the Chinese Government. Much opposition to this was voiced in the English language press, and A-lloy was attacked as a tool used to subvert British authority in Hongkong. He then left Hongkong to become legal adviser on foreign affairs to the Governor of Fukien. He had received no formal legal training, but his years as interpreter in the courts of Hongkong gave him, as a newspaper account mentioned, “a surprisingly intimate knowledge of the forms and routines of our country.” His activities in Fukien roused the indignation of the Hongkong papers. One of them characterised him as "this peripatetic conglomeration of legal imposture and contemptible impudence." ** Whatever his reputation in Hongkong, in China it had been enhanced by his acquiring, either by purchase or conferment, the degree entitling him to wear a white button on his hat. In 1879 a change of policy in the Fukien provincial government resulted in the dismissal of most of their English-speaking Chinese employees, Ho Shun-chee, as A-lloy was then calling himself, left and joined the Chinese diplomatic mission to the United States. The Ambassador, Chen Lan-pin, was a Canton man and had recruited most of his staff from the Canton-Hongkong area. Ho Shun-chee served as interpreter. In 1880 he passed through London. He took the opportunity to send a note to Dr. Legge, saying: "Shortly before leaving Hongkong for America to join the Chinese Embassy under His Excellency... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 38 With two governments claiming jurisdiction over it, the Walled City fell between two stools, as one undertook minimal administrative responsibility to avoid diplomatic embarrassment, the other none at all. The result was a near vacuum of administrative function and authority. After Chinese officials departed in 1899, the City's population was much depleted. Some of the original inhabitants stayed on. Their landownership was terminated by the Hong Kong government, which, in turn, granted them 5-year leases. The leases were necessarily short because of the awkward political circumstances. The government was in fact reluctant to grant land leases for any but public purposes and the Protestant Church became a major beneficiary of the situation, receiving several short-term leases to operate schools and charities in the City. In 1906, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church converted the former San-sheng (Three Saints) Temple into a chapel, the T'ien-kuo chiu-tao t'ang (Heavenly Kingdom Chapel). Sermons given every Wednesday and Sunday evening seem to have attracted many women and children from the neighbourhood, who might have attended as much for reasons of faith as for the entertainment. The Church also obtained the lease of an official building to operate an old people's home, called the Kuang-yin yuan, and an alms house. Later, these were turned over to the Chinese Christian Churches Union which also ran a home for widows and orphans, known as Eyre's Refuge, in the large compound. In 1908, the Holy Trinity Church converted the former hsun-chien's office into a primary school, the T'ien-kuo A (Heavenly Kingdom) School, operating it until 1936. For some time around 1931, the Church's youth groups also held their activities there. 52 The former Lung-chin Communal School was also put to good use. Between 1900 and 1905, it was the Land Court's office. Then the Secretary for Chinese Affairs took it over to run a free secondary school for over 300 students with funds from the Hou-wang Temple nearby. At one time, a public dispensary shared the premises. In this way, the schools and other charities, besides meeting the spiritual and material needs of the City's inhabitants, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 50 tended to concentrate on the areas of the curriculum considered most important, which certainly included the English language. An almost universal feature of the private tuition business was the relatively high level of fees. Indeed, private coaching (and cramming) had become something of a racket. It had certainly become so prevalent by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century that official notifications and advertisements for teaching posts in government schools regularly included, as a matter of course and as a form of inducement, the formula "Private tuition is allowed by permission of the Director of Education." Mok's emphatic claim that his method could be, and should be, practised without recourse to a teacher was probably a very effective selling ploy which would have appealed to those who disliked paying high fees as well as those who suspected that neither the teaching ability nor the conscientiousness of private tutors was all that it should be. In the preface Mok Man Cheung outlines briefly the nature of his "unique" pronunciation system, which, by utilizing the sounds normally associated by Cantonese with written Chinese characters so that they could mouth English words, would have appealed to the national pride of his fellow Chinese residents of Hong Kong. At the same time, however, he was prepared to compromise his Chinese-ness by arranging that “all Chinese characters given for pronunciation of English words are to be read from left to right". This attempt simultaneously to attract support from many sections of Hong Kong society—the increasingly influential radical Chinese, unsympathetic to the Imperial Government but insistently proud of their Chinese culture, the more pragmatic Chinese businessmen, the westernized Chinese, and even the colonial establishment—was good commercial practice. The preface also helps to emphasize a distinction between Mok Man Cheung's "higher valuations” and his “lower valuations”, in the sense that Gunnar Myrdal made of these concepts. According to the outward, open and rationalized “higher valuations” of Mok Man Cheung, Chinese readers and users of his book might find his inclusion of model letters "handy in their everyday business and social relations with their European friends." From the fact that the book contains not a single sample of an informal, friendly letter to a European, one might infer that Mok Man Cheung's ! Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 58 Furthermore, Mok himself does refer to his participation in the pupil teacher scheme of 1885. This is particularly interesting on a number of grounds. First of all, there must be some doubt about the precise veracity of Mok Man Cheung's 1906 entry in Who's Who in the Far East. His name does not appear in the Hong Kong Government's Blue Book of 1885 as one of the pupil teachers, but it does appear in that year's Blue Book as Third Assistant Chinese Master.26 In the 1884 Blue Book, Mok Man Cheung is recorded as "Fourth Assistant” in the Central School, appointed on 23rd September, 1884. It appears certain, therefore, that, having completed Class 1 at the Central School in 1884, he was appointed directly to the staff of the school, rather than to the pupil-teacher scheme. He may well have taken a Class 1 examination in Pupil-Teacher's Method and his monitorial duties may have included the supervision of some of the junior classes. The records indicate, however, that he was not formally appointed as a Pupil-Teacher at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885 and that the normal length of a Pupil-Teacher course was three years. 27 The pupil-teacher scheme is itself of considerable interest and an association with it may have been regarded by Mok Man Cheung in 1906 as face-enhancing. A slight diversion from the personal snapshot may, therefore, be justified in order to consider the provisions for teacher education in Hong Kong in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 28 The first provision of formal teacher education in Hong Kong was similar to the "Monitorial System" of Bell and Lancaster in Great Britain. In the early days, however, Frederick Stewart, the first Headmaster of the Central School, who, for many years, doubled as the Inspector of Government Schools, became discouraged by the way pupils who were trained in school to become teachers "cashed in" their improved fluency in English by leaving school and taking up employment as interpreters, translators, or other types of middlemen in commercial undertakings or in government service.29 In 1881, an experiment with a discrete teacher education establishment was launched in Hong Kong, thanks to the enthusiasm of the new Inspector of Schools, Dr. E.J. Eitel, and the forceful, but controversial Governor of the time, Sir John ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 60 the pupil-teacher system as the most efficient and economic remedy for the lack of trained teachers in the two colonies and the first training colleges for English-medium teachers were not established until the twentieth century. 33 34 The fact that Mok's name appears as an assistant Chinese master from 1884 to 1887 at a salary initially of $240 per year and later of $300 a year (i.e. $25 per month) shows that he accepted employment at the Central School only for a very short period,” and that he, then, like the students who had been the despair of Frederick Stewart, proceeded to exploit his own marketability by obtaining a transfer to the more lucrative translation service of the Hong Kong Government. In this respect, Mok Man Cheung was a person who took some actions which enhanced his eligibility as an open collaborator of colonialism. At a time which witnessed attempts to ensure "separate treatment” of the Chinese and Caucasian races as far as the admission hours to the old City Hall's museum were concerned and efforts to secure separate schools for the different races," Mok Man Cheung outwardly valued his connections with the European establishment. It is possible that he signed a bond committing himself to teaching in a Government school for a period of five years at a relatively low salary. Like certain Whig politicians of the eighteenth century in England, he might well have been prepared to "sell spot to buy futures”. Snapshot 3: Mok Man Cheung in late 1917 On his deathbed in late December, Mok Man Cheung might have had time to consider whether his career decisions had been wise ones. In their favour he could point to more than respectable worldly wealth and a respected social position. He had written two successful books and had been engaged in numerous property and other commercial deals. In the last few weeks of his life, he witnessed the will of Mok Tso Chuen, a relative and benefactor. In the last few days, he made his own will, disposing his worldly possessions in the proportion of 2:1 between his wife and his concubine. Perhaps, at some time, Mok Man Cheung cast his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 68 Office Records, Series 129 (“Hong Kong: Original Correspondence"), File 404, pp. 359-397. Such references will hereafter appear in the style, CO129/404, pp. 395-397. 12 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1944), p. xlviii, 20-42. 13 The expression "country youths" is broad enough to include the Chinese further up-country in Guangdong Province. It is likely, however, that Mok Man Cheung had his eye on the chance of catering to the population of the area then known as "the New Territory", leased from China in 1898. 14 "Feng Shui" is the traditional Chinese concern for geomancy, or the most favourable conjunction of winds and waters which would be taken into consideration when, for example, a tomb or a residence was being sited. See Maurice Freedman, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', in The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, selected and introduced by G. William Skinner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 189-211. 15 In the Cantonese vernacular, "horse-boy" also means “minion”. 14 The various page numbers included in parentheses refer, of course, to the original 1904 edition of English Made Easy. 17 Other examples of simple errors, which have little to do with local knowledge, include "grosery", "Bigonia", "Spinage", "Carret", "Pumpkin", "Thrimp fritters", “Calway seeds”, “Pate foi gras", "Sarsaparilla", “Cut dough or spargetty", etc. 18 A common expression, especially in business circles, for present, treat, "sweetener", close to the conceptual borders of bribe. 19 Anthony Sweeting, 'Hong Kong', in R. Murray Thomas & T. Neville Postlethwaite (eds.) Schooling in East Asia: Forces of Change (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 275. 20 Smith (1985) p. 103f. 21 An expression used by Carl Smith to mean educated through the medium of the English language in one of the leading “Anglo-Chinese" schools in Hong Kong at the time, e.g., the Morrison Education Society School, St. Paul's College, Ying Wah College, the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, the Central School (renamed Victoria College in 1887 and Queen's College in 1894), and St. Saviour's College (renamed St. Joseph's College in 1875). 22 Smith (1985) pp. 143-171. 24 Who's Who in the Far East, (Hong Kong, China Mail, 1906), p. 233. The first Prefects were appointed on Empire Day, 1911, received gilt badges to denote the importance of their office, and were known ironically as "Mr. Ralph's peerage", presumably to signify that this new pupil aristocracy was the brainchild of Mr. Edwin Ralphs, the popular Second Master. See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College 1862-1962 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1962), p. 282. 25 These included the Morrison Scholarship, donated by the Morrison Education Society in 1873; the Government Scholarship, instituted for pupils at the Central School in 1874; several Belilios Scholarships established by E.R. Belilios in 1882 when his offer to erect a statue in honour of Viscount Beaconsfield, recently Prime Minister of Great Britain, was politely declined; the Stewart Scholarship, estab- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 69 lished in 1884 by ex-pupils and prominent members of the Chinese community as a mark of respect for Dr. Frederick Stewart who had resigned as headmaster in 1881 after nearly twenty years service to the school; and various special prizes especially for proficiency in Chinese. 26 He was appointed under Colonial Standing Order 3248 of 1884, as from 1st January, 1885, at a salary of $300 per year. 27 The authority for his appointment was CSO2202. His starting salary was $240 per annum. 24 For details of the memorial system and the part played in its genesis in England by Andrew Bell (1753-1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), see John Lawson and Harold Silver, A Social History of Education in England (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 241-246. In one of Eitel's reports on the short-lived Normal School in Hong Kong, he refers to the "Madras-born monitorial scheme of Bell and Lancaster" being adopted at the Central School by Stewart. In Eitel's opinion, this scheme suffered in comparison with the Normal School because it did not include “the special private tuition and instruction”, presumably, in teaching rationale and methods. (CO129/202, p. 532). In his Annual Report for the year 1866, for example, Stewart wrote: "In my last Report I stated that I entertained the hope of being soon able to overcome many difficulties connected with the school by training Chinese assistants for their work. I then anticipated that I should always be able to retain two of the more advanced boys for a period of at least four years, after which they might, if they chose, find employment elsewhere and be succeeded by the two who stood next to them. The project has all but failed. The demand for the services of the more intelligent of the boys is so great that it is, in the meantime, hopeless to expect them to remain for any length of time. The two in whose case the experiment was tried have both left many months ago, just when they were beginning to be of real value to the school. I shall not, however, abandon the scheme. Out of several, it may be possible to retain some; and, as the knowledge of English becomes more general and situations more difficult to be obtained, the greater will be the probability that these Assistants will remain until, at least, others are qualified to take their place.” (Hong Kong Government Blue Book, 1866, pp. 279-280). 30 The dispute was, in some ways, a continuation of the friction which existed between Frederick Stewart and Eitel after the separation of the duties of Headmaster of the Central School from those of the Inspector of Schools in 1878, first as an expedient measure while Dr. Stewart was on long leave in England and subsequently confirmed on Stewart's return to Hong Kong. Bateson Wright succeeded Stewart as Headmaster of the Central School in 1881. He inherited the bitter relations between the two leading education officers in the Government, but his own, quite positive personality, if anything, exacerbated the situation so much so, that the supervision of the Central School was taken away from the responsibilities of the Inspectorate and a “Dual System" inaugurated whereby the Central School, renamed successively Victoria College and Queen's College, was administered and reported on by its own Headmaster and eventually examined by an independent Board which did not include the Inspector of Schools. The Dual System was kept in being until the retirement of Bateson Wright in 1909, when the Government's educational system was reunited and renamed the Education Department, headed by a Director of Education in place of the Inspector of Schools.11 Stokes (1962), p. 47. 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 70 32 For further details and comments about the establishment and failure of the 1881-1883 Normal School, see CO129/197, p. 326f. In this file, Colonial Office minutes are critical of Hennessy's extravagance, note that "the scheme is evidently Dr. Eitel's with Governor Hennessy's fiat" and other correspondence (e.g., Eitel first report on the Normal School, in Eitel to M.S. Tonnochy, Acting Colonial Secretary, 19th January, 1882, and his second report enclosed in his letter to Tonnochy of 19th January, 1882) shows that Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, felt that there would be very unfortunate repercussions if the school were to be closed and that the headmaster, A.J. May was even prepared to take a salary reduction (from the original proposal of $2,400 a year to $1,600) rather than see the Normal School break up. In later reports (contained in CO129/202 p. 532f.), Eitel compared the Normal School, with its "special private tuition and instruction" in pedagogy, to the pupil-teacher scheme at the Central School to the disadvantage of the latter, and May, in his letter to Frederick Stewart of 19th July, 1883, mentioned the virtues of being able to utilize simulation techniques for the preparation of teachers at the Normal School. The actual end of the Normal School, which had been dismissed as unnecessary in the Education Commission Report of September 1882, was precipitated by A.J. May's insistence, in September 1883, that the students agreed to a bond to teach for five years at a salary rate of $25 per month on their completion of the course. The immediate result was that four of the ten students left for the Medical College at Tientsin, three joined commercial firms, and one became a government interpreter, leaving only two of the original intake, as mentioned above, to become teachers. 33 In Singapore, a central training college for men teachers using English as the medium of instruction was proposed in 1904 and again in 1910, but the scheme was aborted because of the lack of applications. In Kuala Lumpur, an experimental teacher training course began in 1905, proved successful, and was followed by a two-year course in Penang in 1907. See Wong Hoy Kee, Francis, and Gwee Yee Hean, Perspectives: The Development of Education in Malaysia and Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd., 1972), pp. 12-14. 34 What is certain is that his name does not appear in the Blue Book as one of the Pupil Teachers at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885. As noted above, Mok Man Cheung won the Class 1 Mathematics prize in January 1884. He was employed as "Fourth Chinese Assistant" at the Central School from September 1884. He did not, therefore, have the time to be enrolled in a pupil teacher's course, which customarily lasted for three years, but he might have taken an examination in "Pupil-Teacher's Theory" while studying in Class 1. 35 The dispute over the opening hours at the City Hall Museum had come to a head in 1880 when the Executive Committee of the City Hall Museum, led by its chairman, William Keswick, attempted to restrict the entry of Chinese to the afternoons. They were opposed by the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ng Choy, and by the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy. See CO129/189 p. 476-614 for correspondence, largely unsympathetic to the Committee's discriminatory proposal and including an extract from the Hong Kong Hansard for 1880 reporting a speech by Ng Choy, and CO129/192 p. 438-446 for correspondence which includes Keswick's opinion that racial distinctions should not be abolished with regard to admission to the Museum of the City Hall. The call for separate schools for the different races had been made on a number of occasions in the past, most notably in 1845, 1856, and 1870-1872, but the most recent resurgence of interest and argument about the issue had been provoked by a speech made by the Anglican Bishop Hoare at the Prize Distribution of the Diocesan Boys' School in January ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 71 1901 (see below). 36 Brewin, who was promoted to Registrar General in 1901, had also served briefly, from 1897 to 1901, as Inspector of Schools in succession to E.J. Eitel. His endorsement was, therefore, particularly valuable. He had been appointed, together with his successor as Inspector of Schools, E.A. Irving, and the Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ho Kai, to the 1901-1902 Education Committee, the report of which contains blatant calls for the separate educational treatment of the different races and a clear recommendation, compatible with the extremes of colonialistic paternalism, that, as far as Chinese education was concerned, the Government should concentrate its efforts and finances on the education, in English, of the few who could be regarded as potential leaders. Interestingly, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at this time, Joseph Chamberlain, totally rejected this recommendation (Chamberlain to Sir Henry Blake, Governor of Hong Kong, 12th September, 1902, in CO129/311, p. 481). "For certain individuals, this explanation is something of a euphemism since the “medical and sanitary precautions" involved burning down their homes. The Plague first broke out in Hong Kong in the Spring of 1894. The death rate for the first five or six months was over 2,500, and, though, it was the Chinese population which was most affected, the Europeans were not untouched. Lady Robinson, the wife of the Governor of Hong Kong, was, for example, a victim. Dr. E.J. Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, provided details of the rumours circulating among the less educated Chinese, and their effects, in a memorandum to the Colonial Secretary on 22nd May 1894. Eitel wrote to report and explain "the panic which has suddenly decimated the attendance in the local Chinese Schools" and noted that the rumours began to spread in districts affected by the Plague on Sunday, 20th May and reached other districts the next day. The principal rumours were (a) that "the Government intended to select a few young Children from each School to subject them to a surgical incision of the liver in order to obtain bile, this being the only known remedy for curing the plague”; and, (b) that "every School would be visited by officers who would examine every child and send to the "Hygeia" anyone having the least boil or pimple on its body". Eitel speculated about the origin of the panic, attributing it to "the malicious distortion of the native medical fraternity" and concluded: “I do not think anything very effectual can be done to remove the suggestions of native malice to native ignorance and suspiciousness. Distrust of the Government is still rampant among the lower classes of Chinese. Education will remove it in time. (Memorandum No. 38 of 22nd May, 1894, by Dr. E.J. Eitel, Inspector of Schools; in CO129/263, p. 190-193). 39 In Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the Other Treaty Ports of China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources (London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd., 1908), p. 182, for example, Mok Tso Chun, “a native of the Heungshan district" and formerly one of the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital, is described as the Chief Compradore of Butterfield and Swire. In the Anglo-Chinese Commercial Directory of circa 1915 (Chief Editor, Jan George Chance), a Mok Jao Chuen, clearly the same person as Mok Tso Chun, appears as Compradore for Butterfield and Swire, while a Choi Kung Po and a Mok Kon Sang appear as Assistant Compradores. Mok Man Cheung acted as witness to the will of Mok Tso [or Jao] Chun and the will, itself, makes it clear that Mok Kon Sang was Mok Tso Chun's eldest son. It was certainly not unusual for Compradores at this time to find positions for younger relatives. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 73 tion of schools, contained in the Government Gazette, included: “An Upper Grade School means one in which at least part of the Staff is European. Lower Grade Schools are those under purely native management” (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30th June, 1905, p. 1023). Earlier, Bishop Hoare, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria and South China announced at the annual prize distribution of a school noted for its ethnically ‘mixed' admissions policy that he "did not believe it was a good thing to put two races side by side in the school. He did not think they mixed. There was a gulf between the Chinaman as a Chinaman and an Englishman as an Englishman, and he did not think it was a good thing for Chinese boys to be educated side by side with English boys” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 30th January, 1901, p. 3). Amongst the largely supportive correspondence in the letters to the editor pages of the local press provoked by the report of Bishop Hoare's speech, there is a letter from a local Chinese resident, Wang Chung-yu, who argued, “Now, to exclude Chinese from certain schools means to go against the law of nature and to aggravate the hatred between Chinese and foreigners.... My experience goes to show that, as a rule, European boys in school generally depreciate things Chinese, and therefore there is no need to fear that European boys may learn any bad method of thinking peculiar to the Chinese.” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 7th February, 1901, p. 3). 48 Sweeting (1983), p. 274. 49 Despite the lack of warmth and closeness in the personal and social relations between the two communities, there was, in a sense, a reciprocal interest by certain Westerners for "Things Chinese". This interest was largely intellectual (anthropological and literary) and is, perhaps, best exemplified by Dyer Ball's large publication, which in later editions became increasingly larger, actually entitled Things Chinese. See the Introduction and Prefaces of J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press reprint, with Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge, 1982 of the 5th Edition revised by E. Chalmers Werner, 1925). Interestingly enough, Dyer Ball also published a book entitled Cantonese Made Easy, which by 1904 had reached its 3rd Edition. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 14 1 10 # A BRIEF HISTORY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN HONG KONG DAN WATERS As early as 1863 vocational training in carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, printing, bookbinding and gardening was provided for twelve boys. Numbers later reached thirty. Classes were held in a Chinese building, under a Father Raimondi, not far from the Mission House in Wellington Street. Also, in the late 1870s, up to 100 boys, in addition to their native language, were taught carpentry, shoemaking and printing by brothers at the Roman Catholic reformatory at West Point. The destitute children, some of whom were Portuguese and came from Macau, learned gardening and played games after school. The first annual prize distribution of the Li Shing Scientific and Industrial College (*) was held in January 1905. Over seventy students had enrolled but by examination time only thirty-five remained. The founders felt the purpose of the establishment was to help raise China from her low industrial condition' and to educate her sons in modern science and industry and train them to use their hands as well as their brains. 'We hope to train dependent workers and not mere "hands" to be always under the direction of foreigners.' The aim of most schools in Hong Kong was to train clerks and compradores. During the Governorship of Sir Matthew Nathan (1904 to 1907) the Government began to show interest in elementary technical education. This culminated in the founding of the Technical Institute in 1907. This establishment was different to the eight technical institutes run by the Vocational Training Council we know today. The Technical Institute which was established in 1907 formed a sub-department under the Director of Education. It had no building of its own but was housed at ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 67 To counteract this he recommended that the Government should establish trade schools for poor children. These could be operated by the Confucian Society and the Tung Wah Hospital Committee. Both were already sponsoring free schools. The Government should assist them to open more. He was not, however, advocating compulsory education at this time. He felt Hong Kong was not yet ready for it. The Senior Unofficial Member, the Honourable Mr. Parr spoke in support of the views expressed by Mr. Chow, and said, “I think my Unofficial colleagues will agree with me that the Government should make some arrangements on the lines suggested.” Editorial comment The leader of the Daily Press on the day following the discussion of the Bill in the Legislative Council took up the problem of young children between the ages of five and ten who were taken to factories where their mothers worked. With the passage of the Bill the factory owners would probably discourage the practice as the children's presence might raise questions as to their exact age and activities when inspectors visited the factories. As an example of what enlightened factory owners might do in Hong Kong, he pointed to a textile factory in Shanghai where the Chinese - probably Sincere or Wing On Companies — provided facilities in the factory compound for the care of young children while their mothers were working. owners FR Provisions of the Ordinance The Ordinance came into effect on 1 January 1923. It contained regulations which may be summarised as follows: (1), No person under fifteen was to be employed in a dangerous trade; specified were boiler chipping, manufacture of fireworks and glass making. The regulation applied not only to trades dangerous in themselves, but also to trades injurious to health. (2), No child under fifteen was to carry more than forty catties or a weight unreasonably heavy in regard to the child's age and physical development. (3), No child under ten was to be employed in a factory, and no child under twelve to be employed in carrying coal, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 90 brought in own friends and those displaced, however capable, had to go out to find jobs elsewhere. It made for loyalties on a personal as opposed to a national scale. The Customs service, under foreign supervision, was the first to produce a cadre of permanent officials, and other government departments now set out to follow that example. Yet it should be remembered that relationships in China are still almost exclusively on a personal basis. If I have some business to transact, and if I know the right man, it will probably be easy to arrange; but if I do not know the right man, or have not got friends who can give me the proper introductions, then my business will almost certainly languish indefinitely. Personal relations are important anywhere in the world; in China they are more important than anywhere else. It was, however, in communications that the greatest advances had been made by the new government. Railways were in course of construction under capable Chinese engineers, trained for the most part in the United States; and a network of roads began to spread in all directions, linking remote and backward country towns with the progressive markets on the coast. The telegraph achieved popularity, and the long-distance telephone. Broadcasting stations were erected at a number of places; over these news and views went out in a common dialect, which was compulsorily taught in the schools, and concurrently the simplification of the written style in the newspapers led to the spread of a language understood throughout the country. So in many directions the new developments worked to break down the old partitions. A proportion of the national revenue had been spent in improving the amenities of the capital: wide thoroughfares were cut through the old native city: magnificent government offices rose here and there, topping happily the concrete styles of New York with the curved roofs of Cathay: the electricity supply was good: water was laid on. In the residential district elegant houses vied in diversity of design. The roads streamed with traffic, and the very latest in ferries carried trains across the Yangtze. In the large treaty ports it was difficult for foreigners and Chinese to mix. Habits were too different. The Chinese like to drink with their meals; the foreigner likes to drink before he eats. The foods they ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 119 Liuchow where one of Colonel Chennault's schools for training Chinese pilots was at that time established. I arrived just in time to observe the results of a Japanese air-raid on the field, when they succeeded in shooting up two of the latest type of Curtis Hawk fighters, the only two at that time in China, concealed in some trees on the edge of the field. Training under such conditions was not easy and the school soon had to move west again into Yunnan province. Three hundred kilometres a day is good going on these lightly metalled roads. I reached Kweilin on the evening of the third day after leaving Wuchow, and put up at the government hostel. From time immemorial the idea of travel has filled Chinese with apprehension, induced not only by fear of the ubiquitous bandit, but also by the abomination of the fetid roadside inn. With the advent of the motor car, the need for better hotel accommodation became evident, and the various provincial governments opened official hostelries at key points. While these left much to be desired by western standards, they were a prodigious improvement on the old-style inn. Kwangsi is one of the more progressive provinces, for long controlled by Generals Li Tsung Jen and Pai Chung Hsi, who rank next to the Generalissimo himself. The hostel at Kweilin was better than average. There was a wireless in the lounge, and a small crowd of us sat and listened to the news as it came in. It was the period before Munich. A young German amongst us, flushed with arrogance, gloated over Hitler's successes. My first contact with the aboriginal Nazi spirit left me angry and dismayed. Chinese buildings are flimsy. The rooms are small and dark, and not clean. When you have made allowance for this idiosyncrasy, Kweilin appears a delightful little town. The city wall circumambulates from shrine-crowned hill to hill; the river is full of junks that sail down to Wuchow; the roads are wide and straight, and shop arcades cover the pavements on either side. The little separate hills rise steeply from the plain, in those fantastic shapes seen in Chinese paintings. Their rocky tree-fringed summits staggered drunkenly beneath the sky. The hills are full of natural caves, most convenient for storing war supplies, or to act as shelters in the event of raids. But Kweilin was still far from the war. The Kweilin merchants believed that the Japanese planes would have difficulty in locating their little city snuggling amongst the hills. The excitement was all about the new railway, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 127 The Taoist temple, a centre of superstition, visited by the people of the village at certain seasons and particularly popular with the old women, is usually larger than the ancestral hall. It can be distinguished from the rarer and finer Buddhist temples by its walls of red. The Buddhist colour is yellow. Both Taoist and Buddhist temples prefer remote sites, often amidst the crags of tree-clad hills, but their colour apart are difficult to distinguish the one from the other. They are equally filled with images, from the fearsome spirits that guard the entrance hall, and the divers gods in the succeeding halls, to the Great Buddhas in the main hall, behind which there will be a very demoniacal representation of the Buddhist hell. The temples to Confucius contain no images. They are to be found in the larger towns, amidst ancient trees and stately courtyards. They are now generally used to shelter government offices or schools. Wherever there are troops, the temples are their barracks; and they provide convenient cover for forlorn travellers. On the second evening we reached Kanchow, the wealthy city in south Kiangsi, where the Generalissimo's elder son has been appointed Commissioner in charge of a group of magistracies. While in Russia, where he spent a number of years, he had married a blonde Russian wife. The two have set themselves to converting their district into a model area. No mercy is shown to opium smokers: they are executed. Dishonest officials are inexorably punished. Wealthy merchants, who have profited by holding stocks for a rise, are made to contribute heavily for the benefit of local services, and the sons of the influential are not allowed to dodge conscription. The dispensation is popular with the poorer classes, but not with the privileged. The Generalissimo is proud of his son's work, and one day sent a foreign reporter, who had been critical of Chinese administration, to investigate. He returned with a glowing report. Would that there were more districts in China, where honesty is the rule! Unfortunately, since 1937, there has been a relapse. The improvisations of war have left increasing spheres of administration in the hands of the military, and graft is again the order of the day. It is another of those Chinese anomalies that the Generalissimo, the relentless opponent of Communism, should be proud of a son who unquestionably is influenced by Russian ideology. Conscription in China is not applied in our sense of the term. There Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 214 last in the Hok-keen and Canton dialects (Malacca, 1841), 111 pages. The breadth of Legge's vision is fully realized in the extensive studies and translations of his later career. A testimony to this fact is found in the current editions of The Chinese Classics (first prepared in the 1960 edition published in Hong Kong) which include tables locating parallel passages in all other major translations. Legge is the only non-Chinese scholar who has translated all of the major Confucian classics. In some standard Confucian lists, two classics on the rites are included which Legge did not translate: The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) and The Rites on Etiquette (Yili). This in itself is a feat, but when one recognizes the further achievement of the extensive commentarial apparatus, it is easy to understand why one missionary-scholar referred to Legge in the 1870s as the greatest sinologist in the Western world. 1 James Legge, “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China", sometime in the 1880s (1881?) to an Orientalist Conference. I have seen the published article, but could find no precise reference for it. In addition, Legge published an annotated translation of a Korean recension of a text important for the understanding of Chinese Buddhism. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399-414) in Search of the Buddhistic Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), which included at the end a copy of the Chinese manuscript. ++ George Baker, author, James Legge trans., Graduated Reading, comprising a Circle of Knowledge in 200 Lessons: Gradation 1 (Zhihuan qimeng shuke chubu) (TER224) (Hong Kong: London Missionary Society Press, 1856, second printing, 1864). This monthly magazine was entitled Xidi quanzhen (遠邇貫珍) Penetrating Treasures from Far and Near which Legge edited from mid-1855 to mid-1856, Hì While remaining a patriot of Great Britain, and feeling at times that war was a necessary means for promoting international justice in the specific case of relations with Guangdong provincial leaders, Legge questioned the employment of war for the sake of "stimulating the economy". For this reason, he challenged the Hong Kong government's militarism in 1856 (the Arrow affair) as well as its questionable motives. In addition, he argued that China had good reason to fear and hate the English because of the evils of opium trade, comparing her response to that of Japan, where opium trade had been made illegal from its very beginnings. See James Legge, "The Colony of Hong Kong". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), [reprint from The China Review of 1872-3, see n. 2 above] pp. 185-191. In the prolegomenon of the first volume of The Chinese Classics, Legge explicitly argued that the colonial responsibilities Great Britain had assumed in India and China would best be put into the hands of governors who, as if following the dictates of benevolent government advocated by Confucius, were worthy examples of moral, ethical, and political well-being. A criticism of some of the British imperialistic intentions and its accompanying evils could not be put more plainly by a loyal citizen. See The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 105. Theodore Hamberg, The Visions of Hung Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong: 1854). J7 44 At the end of his missionary career, Legge could still speak of Hong Rengan with some affection. In public Legge praised his intelligence and amiability; see Legge's "The Colony of Hong Kong". The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 186. In private notes found in the Bodleian Library entitled "Reminiscences", Legge tells how they would walk, arms across each other's shoulders in close friendship, and how adept Rengan was when they performed Christian Ministry together. See James Legge, "Reminiscences", manuscript in the Bodleian Library, pp. 13-14. 典 In his lecture on the history of Hong Kong in 1872, Legge indicated his satisfaction in seeing the rearrangement of all Chinese schools. E. T. Eitel also discussed Legge's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 64 28 19 3:0 David Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsueh-ch'eng, (Stanford, 1866), 251 Ibid See Si ku wei shou shu mu u yao, 5 juan, 1807 Ruan Yuan's bibliographical annotations on important books omitted from the Si Ku chuan shu. He had found these books in Zhejiang. The original memorials that accompanied these books and his annotations are in the Qing Archival Collection at the National Palace Museum (Taipei) 31 Yi zheng Liu Meng zhan nian pu (Chronological account of the life of Liu Wen chi), 114-115. 32 Arthur Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, (Washington DC, 1943), 91 33 34 Yang Wensheng X, Si shi cao ji (1801), Preface Letter to Liu Taigong (1790-1855), dated 1802 Liu's daughter was married to Ruan Yuan's adopted son, Ruan Changsheng, 34 Letter to Wang Niansun. 36 Ruan Yuan blamed the errors on the fact that he had not had a chance to do the final proof reading before the book was printed. 37 Ruan Yuan's letters written in old age, Ruan Wen da gong zhi shi hou jia shu, consisting of several dozen memos written to his family after 1838 when he retired from government service, serve to prove that Ruan Heng, always referred to as "my younger brother" but actually a distant cousin who had been adopted as heir to a half brother of Ruan Yuan's father, had taken care of Ruan Yuan's business and financial interests with the aid of a couple of clerks. These letters are in the Rare Book Collection of Beijing Library. I am grateful to Professor Wang Junyi and his staff of the Qing History Institute at the People's University who made it possible for me to have access to the collection in March 1991 38 I am not happy with the English translation "tent friend" or "guest" Ding xian ting bi tan, 1:11a. 40 41 See, for instance, Ding xiang ting bi tan 3.52b-53a Hai ning zhou zhi gao 4:3 shan, 11b-12b. 42 Xie Guozheng, Jin dai shu yuan xue xiao zhi du bian quan kao (An inquiry into recent changes in the academies and schools of China), (Hong Kong, 1972), 2-18. 43 Zhang Ying in Wen lan xue bao 2:1 Lin Bo tong, Xue hai tang zhi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j I should like here to explain that the Japanese intelligence service is efficient; very little that goes on in China is not quickly known to it. But obviously considerations of security, no less than a courteous regard for a great Ally, require a severe discretion in what may or may not be mentioned while a war is still in progress; unperceived by the reader there will be gaps in the story which follows, a story of some minor assistance given to our Chinese Allies in the 3rd War Zone by the British, when themselves hard-pressed during 1942. For similar reasons, where persons are concerned, I propose to refer to them by their Christian names. I had asked that the Chinese government should provide me with an interpreter for my trip; but Michael was much more than that. He had been educated in Peking and at the Chelu University in Tsinanfu, and was the type of modern young Chinese patriot, on whose enthusiasm, integrity, and sense, the future of China depends. The horizon of these young Chinese is only too often limited by the fact that not only have they never travelled outside China, so that their knowledge of the foreigner is confined to the few they may have met in their schools or in their immediate environment, but also they know so little of their own enormous country. The displacement of schools brought about by the Japanese aggression has helped much to overcome the second difficulty; and it is to be hoped that far more extensive opportunities will be provided after the war to enable the youth of China to visit foreign countries. In the past, by reason of proximity, Japan has received most Chinese students; followed by the United States, where special endowments, arising initially from the excessive claim made for indemnity at the time of the Boxer trouble, and the facility of “earn while you study”, have attracted students. A few, far too few, have come to England. Michael spoke fluent English, had seen much of his own country, and for his years carried a wise head on his shoulders; he had, moreover, a most engaging personality. For a year he was my constant companion, on whose advice I came to rely much. I found also awaiting me at Kweilin members of General Ku Chu Tung's staff. We left for Hengyang by train, and thence motored a thousand kilometres to Shangjao, the headquarters of the 3rd War Zone. I was the first foreign officer, Russian liaison officers apart, to visit the 3rd War Zone in two years: I was, in fact, a visible token of the assistance which China might now expect from her new allies, and my reception was correspondingly cordial. I was shown everything; the Arsenal, in a cave; The Prisoners of War cage, where some twenty Japanese were kept pending transfer further west; ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 185 high standards, and took care to employ good teachers. The school must always have had several teachers - the building is just too big to have been feasible for just one. In 1923 there were five teachers. Three were Shap Yeuk area people. One, Chan Kan-cheung, from Luk Keng, was a returned student from USA - he taught English and Physical Education. Another teacher from Luk Keng was Chan Ping-long, a graduate from Canton. He taught "the new books". The third teacher from the Shap Yeuk area was Lau Woon-kwong, from Keng Hau (Jinghou) in the Chinese part of the Shap Yeuk area. He taught classical Chinese and Music. The other two teachers were outsiders: Lei Wai-lau was a Sau Tsoi from near Yuen Long, a Punti speaker - he taught classical Chinese. The fifth teacher, Wu Fan-ng, was from Shaoguan in the north of Guangdong. He had lived for many years in Sha Tau Kok, and spoke and taught in Hakka. He, like Chan Ping-long, was a graduate from Canton, and taught "the new books". Right down to the 1930s, the desire to keep their school one of the best and most advanced in the region was a major aim of the elders of the Shap Yeuk. In the 1920s, the standard of the school was as advanced as the Government schools which the Hong Kong Government had started to open in the major centres of the New Territories. By having this group of well-educated and cultured men living in the market, the elders of the Shap Yeuk demonstrated that their town and district comprised a full and viable community - not only having artisans and labourers and merchants, but scholars and gentry as well. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 My friend, Mr. Lee Yuen Tsaan, was born in Heung Shan, China, opposite to Macau, in December 1903. This, coincidentally, was also the birth place of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (alias Suen Chung Shan), who graduated in 1892 from the Hong Kong College of Medicine. After his death the name, Heung Shan, was changed to Chung Shan in memory of Dr Sun. Mr Lee told me, as a boy, he enjoyed life in the village of Haang Mei (meaning ‘constantly beautiful”), which had a population of about 2,000. It was a single-lineage village. Every person had the surname ‘Lee’. He recalled living close to a stream with running water which contained shrimps. He is proud that his father was the first Christian in the village where he was known as ‘Christian Kwoon-hor’ (his given name on marriage). He had been baptised in Australia where he lived when he was young. Xenophobic disturbances, such as the anti-foreigner Boxer Uprising in 1900, sometimes created waves of people who had been associated with western firms on the Mainland. These Chinese often felt it prudent to move to Hong Kong. Others went there just because it was a better place to do business. In a speech to students at Hong Kong University, in 1923, Sun the Revolutionary contrasted the peace, law and order and good government of the British Colony with the backwardness and corruption of China. Until after World War II, there were no immigration restrictions when travelling from the Mainland to the British Territory. Many Chinese looked upon it as little more than moving from one part of China to another. The Lee family moved to Hong Kong, from Heung Shan, in 1987, when the population of the Colony was just over half a million. Although electric fans started to replace punkas as early as the late 1890s, when young Lee arrived in Hong Kong some punkas could still be seen. For instance in offices, schools and barbers shops. Electric fans were expensive and coolie labour (to pull the punkas) was cheap,’ Mr. Lee explained. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 8 00 until the outbreak of war in 1914. During the period when the congregation met in the Union Church Hall, the community also conducted a school there. The group meeting there was called the Deutsche Kirchen und Schulegemeinde (Rev. Albert Plag, "Bethesda and the Berliner Frauenverein Für China”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1969, v. 9: 149-150, Carl T. Smith, “The German Congregation in Hong Kong until 1914", ibid, 1975. v. 15: 292-295). In the 1896/97 the Hildesheim Mission opened the Ebenezer Home for the Blind. There were two homes, one on Hong Kong Island and one in Kowloon. During the First World War they were placed under the supervision of the Church Missionary Society, though the Sisters in charge were allowed to continue to care for the children. Among the first Germans to return to Hong Kong after the end of the war were several deaconesses of the Hildesheim Society. The Ebenezer Home and School for the Blind is now located on Pokfulam Road. Two German missionaries became Inspectors of Schools in Hong Kong. Rev. Wilhelm Lobscheid was sent to China in 1848 by the Rhenish Missionary Society, but in 1857 he changed his allegiance to the British-based Chinese Evangelization Society, yet another of the groups inspired by Gutzlaff. He was Inspector of Schools in Hong Kong from 1855 to 1859. He published in 1859 a valuable historical account entitled A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education, and the Government Schools of Hong Kong; with remarks on the history and religious notions of the inhabitants of this island. From 1861 to 1866 he acted as an emigration agent, recruiting labour for British colonies in the West Indies. His labours in this endeavour again produced a book which contains much of interest as its title suggests, Chinese Emigration to the West Indies: A Trip through British Guiana undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the Chinese who have emigrated under Government Contract With Supplementary Papers Relating to Contract Labour and the Slave Trade. Another German, Rev. Ernest J. Eitel was Inspector of Schools from 1878 to 1896. He was influential in setting policies for the development of education in Hong Kong. He was sent to China in 1862 by the Basel Missionary Society. Three years later he transferred to the London Missionary Society. He married Miss Eaton, an agent of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. She was head-mistress of the Diocesan School for Girls. Mr. Eitel became a naturalised British ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 139 Journal, this set out the basis on which the Hong Kong Branch of the Society had operated during its 30 years' existence. It explained our independent status and self-financing within an approved constitution; how we operated with complete freedom of action, without our activities being controlled, directed or restricted by the present government in any way; and mentioned the willingness of our guest speakers, and the cooperation of all the persons and institutions visited during our local tours. I emphasized that these were all vital elements in the Society's successful operation, and that they rested on the personal freedoms enjoyed in contemporary Hong Kong, stating in conclusion, that I hoped they would continue after 1997 and enable our Society to continue with its role as a cultural interpreter of Hong Kong and China to (in the main but not exclusively) the territory's expatriate population, 20 Chinese Membership of the Hong Kong Branch One of the interesting features of any voluntary society is undoubtedly its membership. A glance through the RAS membership lists for the 1960s, supplemented by my recollections of those years, indicates that the membership was widely distributed among the non-Chinese population, and that quite a number of them had been resident in pre-war China and Shanghai, the headquarters of the former North China Branch of the Society. There was a sizable Chinese component too, again largely with a Shanghai connection. The standard of English among members of that group and their knowledge and appreciation of Western culture, had struck me as being very high, perhaps even generally superior to the level among our Hong Kong Chinese members today. Educators in Hong Kong have agreed for years that, whilst the quantity of English-speakers in the population has increased, quality has not kept pace. However, such comparisons are facile, and not really helpful. It has to be remembered that English-speaking Chinese of the time were generally older and had belonged to another era and a very different world. Those able to acquire Western languages and culture in those now far-off days often came from families that were comfortably off, or even wealthy, well able to provide their offspring with an overseas education, or at schools and universities in the International Settlement at Shanghai, the main Treaty Ports, or in Hong Kong. The percentage of Chinese members in the Hong Kong Branch has never been high, amounting to not more than 15% to 20% and sometimes ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 151 Urban Historians We may discern yet a fourth group, those studying the local history of urban Hong Kong. Their work started later in the 1960s, and among the pioneers were political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists as well as historians, many being teachers at the University of Hong Kong. Again, up to the mid 1970s, most of them were Westerners. The source materials they used were primarily government publications, archival materials and newspapers, and since most read only English, they either had no access to Chinese sources, or had to rely on research assistants. There was an attempt to tap a new source, oral history, which Alan Birch of the History Department, HKU, carried out with great fervour in the early 1970s. Later in the decade, he organized two radio programmes interviewing those who had lived through the Japanese invasion and the Japanese occupation, and two books based on these interviews were published. However, since Birch only speaks and reads English, his interviewees were confined to expatriates and English-speaking Chinese, and the stories that he could reconstruct were inherently one-sided. Among urban historians, Carl Smith was rather exceptional. A genealogist by training, he began his research on Hong Kong in 1960 with the history of the Protestant church, looking at the impact of the church's activities on Hong Kong society, before going on to examine many other aspects. His studies on localities include detailed works on Shamshuipo and Wanchai. He has, moreover, written many biographies of local people and on the different ethnic and national groups in Hong Kong. His research is based on a broad range of materials, both English and Chinese. Besides government records and newspapers, he uses church records, missionary archives, wills, company records, genealogies, inscriptions on headstones, land records, commercial directories, to name just a few of them. His work opens up a whole new world to the reader, who discovers not just the lives of great men but ordinary men and women - school teachers, policemen, prostitutes, bank clerks, junior government servants, shopkeepers and their families and social circles. In his hands, Hong Kong's urban history is no longer just the story of one Governor following another, but of real people, living in real neighbourhoods, going to real churches and schools, and yes, based on cemetery records, dying and being buried in real graveyards. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 157 In addition, a number of articles and books came out of the project, including Ng Jun Ngai-ha's "Village education in transition: the case of Sheung Shui", and David Faure's "Sai Kung: The Making of the District and its Experience during World War II".25 Faure's book on the Eastern New Territories, based partly on these findings, appeared in 1986.26 The Project, both in the data collected and the interpretative writings arising from it, has significantly enhanced our understanding of traditional Chinese village life and the New Territories, elevating local history to new levels of sophistication. In particular, unlike the mainstream Chinese historians of a previous generation, Faure and others no longer look at the New Territories, or even South China, from the Great Tradition perspective, but tend to underline local culture and try to resolve the paradox between unity and diversity in Chinese culture.27 Institutional histories Local history has also been enriched by a proliferation of institutional histories from the 1970s onwards by commercial and non-commercial institutions which were beginning to celebrate their 60th, 70th... 100th anniversaries. In the course of producing the story of these institutions, be they banks, schools, churches, temples, trading companies, charitable organizations, hospitals, even private medical practices and government organizations, much information about Hong Kong on a micro-level has been uncovered. In cases where documents are lacking, and especially when a more lively approach is required, old people associated with these institutions are interviewed, yielding extremely valuable data. It is amusing that so often, the institutions themselves have no idea what a wealth of materials is sitting in their back rooms until the commissioned author starts rummaging through them. Unfortunately, histories of institutions are not generally available to the public, but in most cases they will be supplied upon request. Popularizing Local History: Museums and the Antiquities and Monuments Office Until the 1970s, the study of local history really involved an exclusive group of scholars, albeit growing in numbers, holding dialogue among themselves. There was little public demand for local history, and very little access to it. However, from the 1970s, things began to change. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 15 farmers agree that the farmers are absolute owners of the soil in perpetuity, but have been paying money or produce to the clans for generations, which the clans claim to be rent payable to them. The case for the farmers is that the land is and always has been theirs absolutely free from rent, and that the amount paid by them to the clans was the Government land tax, which they claim to pay direct to the Hong Kong Government without the intervention of the clans... The system of payment in produce is one of the farmers' troubles because the measures used by the clans are larger than those intended by the deeds, and are not the measures in general use in the district. This "taxlord" problem was settled by the Land Court which found the status of the clan taxlords to be "under Chinese law... entirely illegal" and disallowed their claims as “untenable”. In some cases, however, grants of Crown land were offered them in compensation for loss of income. Grants of Crown land to the clans were registered under the Crown lease in the name of the clan's ancestral temple, that is, in the name of mythical grandfather or Tang. The tradition is that a proportion of the rent from such land is set aside for the maintenance of ancestral halls, for the upkeep of schools and for other objects connected with the clan's welfare. No clan land may be sold or mortgaged without the consent of all the clan members who may, of course, number hundreds.9 Such clan land (tso) sometimes is leased to one of the families within the clan and they pay an annual rent to the clan accountant who is usually one of the male heads of the families within the clan who so serve for a fixed period in rotation. Sub-letting by such a family is not permissible and, if it occurs, the lease is usually cancelled. Alternatively the various families of the clan may cultivate the land for a year at a time in rotation and at a fixed annual rent. A third method whereby clan land may be leased within the clan is by auction of the tenancy for the following year. The proceeds of the auction are devoted to the worship of ancestors and for the education and welfare of clan members. That type of land tenure has a close resemblance to the traditional tenure of ancestral land or sheung t'in described by Lockhart's memorandum.2 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 4 + particular was expected to make in increasing contact between the city and the eastern New Territories: "The railway will bring the Territory into closer contact with Hong Kong and western ideas ... Country folk who used to require a full day to reach Hongkong can now go in and out and do their shopping in the day." It is, however, clear that the district officer considered that this development had not yet begun in any significant way at the date when he was writing. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the district officer felt that the broader picture in 1912 was of a generally unchanged traditional life: "A visitor to the Territory of 1899, upon returning in 1912, would find changes to remark in the outward appearance of the country, but he would not find the life or character of its inhabitants greatly altered... The domestic life of the villager does not differ much from that of Chinese in other parts of China, nor has it altered much during the few years of British occupation: if anything, it falls rather behind the general standard of freedom and enlightenment in the Canton Province.. even now the customs and habits of the people are probably little changed from what they were a hundred years ago.” The district officer feared that modernisation, when it came, would cause the inhabitants "to lose their simple old-fashioned virtues," But clearly he felt that this unwelcome development had yet to begin. In summary, therefore, the district officer's view was that the New Territories in 1912 were ripe for modernisation, but that this process had only just begun." By 1921 it is interesting to note that another well-informed European - the Census Officer - could still make very similar remarks: "The opening of the railway seems, contrary to expectations, to have produced little change", and the effect of the Government schools “is just becoming apparent *12 Thus, by 1911, the village society of the New Territories, while more prosperous than a decade or two earlier, and aware of, and at least partially receptive to, modern ideas, was still (other than for New Kowloon, the southern strip immediately around Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po) almost entirely traditional. The 1911 Census, therefore, took place in one of the last years in which the old, traditional society survived more or less unchanged. By 1921 that society was beginning ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 199 on the Canton-Hong Kong group. As shall be seen in this article, since the opening of China in 1840 to 1927, when China was nominally united by Jiang Jieshi (7), settlers in Hong Kong at least found three good seasons to invest in China - they were the Western Affairs Movement in the 1870s, the late Qing reform in the 1900s, and the post-revolution “rehabilitation” in the 1910s and the early 1920s. Each occasion was accompanied by investment blooms in China - ship-building and mining in the 1870s, railway, steamship land reclamation and port developments in the 1900s, banking (especially for currency redemption) and real estate in the 1910s and 1920s. The Western Affairs Movement Since the forced opening of China in 1840, and the subsequent establishment of trade ports in Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai and Tianjin in 1843, 1844 and 1861 respectively, a commercial axis was gradually extending northward within coastal China. This development gave rise to an urban population which was linked by telegraph, railways, steamship, printing, census, minting, urban planning and western schooling. Before the peasant population in the inner parts of China was appealed to in the political movement of the 1930s, it was this urban population in coastal China that was being appealed to in the national politics of China. Among others things, this coastal population played a significant part in the Western Affairs Movement, as well as the "late Qing reform" in 1904. Thanks to the hard work of Rev. Carl Smith, we recognize that in the late nineteenth century a Cantonese group was emerging within this commercial axis along coastal China. They were western-educated Cantonese, including Eurasians, who emerged in Hong Kong and Macau, where western missionary schools found their earliest presence. These Cantonese, without proper education in classical Chinese, were regarded by the Chinese as a group marginal to the Chinese community. Their job market was small - they could not climb up the traditional social ladder in the same way as their Chinese-educated counterparts could through the Imperial Examination, and the number of their potential employers was very few. This explains why their career paths were more or less identical - at one time or another, they were employed by the Maritime Customs, the Hong Kong government, or for the lucky few, they would be employed as compradores in western firms. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 12 Health were listed provision & operation of maternity homes, ante- & post-natal clinics and health visiting. Under Education came provision & operation of primary & secondary schools, adult education & evening institutes. Under Welfare were recreational facilities, youth clubs, community centres, sports facilities, public swimming pools, homes for the aged, infants' crêches, refuges for street sleepers, distribution of relief, entertainment (band concerts, Chinese drama & opera), pleasure grounds, playgrounds and bathing beaches. The Miscellaneous category added declaration of one-way streets, parking zones, closing of streets as playgrounds (after consultation with Police), traffic warden services, provision & management of car parks, amenity provision (eg public fountains & tree planting), museums & art galleries, and undertaking of functions (such as collection of water rates & various fees) as agents of the central government. This list went much farther in involvement of representative bodies in the affairs which closely and legitimately concerned the ordinary man and woman in the street, as well as extending what was already delegated to the Urban Council into most of the colony's growth areas. Apart from suggesting that the list might be added to in the light of experience, the bold proposition was made that in future no central department should be permitted to establish new local machinery without proving that the activity could not be carried out by a Local Authority. The report stated that it was not envisaged that the new councils should be independent Education Authorities; but it was clearly hoped that in the fullness of time the Education Department would regard local authority schools as a main component of the grant-aided system, and indeed relinquish its own primary schools to the councils. Finally, as a carrot for those in the NT who might be willing to contemplate change, it was pointed out that rural district councils should take over agricultural extension schemes, forestry lots, fish-ponds, local public works (footpaths, bridges, piers etc), local ferries, village layouts & housing schemes, and local water supplies & irrigation. This would all have to be paid for. Local authorities should have financial responsibility, including revenue-raising powers. Local accountability to tax-payers and freedom from stifling dependency on central grants (with their inevitable consequential frictions) were essential to success. New structures would increase the administrative costs of the colony overall, and it might well be that some areas would ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 152 In the next issue, there is again coverage of Chinese events and background. On 19 January 1861, two half-page illustrations show, "The Peace with China - Reading the Treaty at Pekin"27 and "Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin."2 A brief account of a lunch meeting between Lord Elgin and Prince Kung (the two signatories of the Convention of Peking) highlights what British readers would have perceived as the need for the geography lessons which Frederick Stewart was to introduce into the Hong Kong Government Central School by 1870,29 and which - by 1889 - his successor reported as increasingly being adopted into the Hong Kong Village Schools.30 (Prior to this, according to Stewart, there was no geography taught in Hong Kong's traditional Chinese schools.)31 Apparently, Prince Kung commented that until very recently he had not known, "that India was merely a province of the British empire; they formerly believed Great Britain to be a very small island, the population of which was so large that more than half were obliged to live in ships."32 Even as late as 1902, some students in Hong Kong's "Vernacular Schools", influenced by a different set of political circumstances, were reported as being, “at the last examination ignorant that Hong Kong was a British Colony: a number hazarded the opinion that it belonged to Russia.”33 It seems that the withholding of geographical teaching and its content when given were both decisions coloured by politics, whether on the Chinese or the British side. In spite of Prince Kung's tenuous respect for the British land mass, the Editor of The Illustrated London News, as published on 19 January 1861, felt that there was sufficient reason for the expression of cautious optimism for the solidity of the peace that had been won: "There seems to be good grounds for believing that we have at length fairly impressed the Chinese Government with the necessity of good faith in their dealings with us, and a reasonable hope that the treaty will be rigorously observed, leading to an interesting feeling of good will and confidence between our people and the Chinese." 34 On 26 January 1861, the view that the Chinese were now respecting their promises was supported by a full double page spread showing "The Chinese Bringing to the British Headquarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling]35 as Compen- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 162 (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) Close of the War with China: Graves of Lieut. Anderson, Private Phipps, and Messrs. De Norman and Bowlby, in the Russian Cemetery, Pekin. - From a sketch by our Special Artist", half-page, The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 67. See Gillian Bickley, The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), Hong Kong, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, p. 106. See Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 91. See Gillian Bickley, op. cit., p. 76. The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 49, c. 3. See Edward A. Irving, Inspector of Schools' Annual Report for 1904, Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30 June 1905, p. 1031, quoting a Committee on Education Report on the Vernacular Schools, written in early 1902. The Illustrated London News, 19 January 1861, p. 64, c. 1. The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 83, c. 3. "The Chinese Bringing to the British Head-quarters the 300,000 Taels [approximately one hundred thousand pounds sterling] as Compensation to the Released British Prisoners and to the Families of those who were Murdered - From a sketch by our Special Artist", full double-page spread, The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1861, p. 82. "Curiosity-Street, Pekin - From a sketch by our Special Artist", full-page, The Illustrated London News, 16 February 1861, p. 142. The Illustrated London News, 15 February 1861, p. 147, c. 1. E "Peking Cab", sketch by our special artist, one third page sketch, The Illustrated London News, 23 February 1861, front page. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 'double happiness', to sprigs of foo paak (hibiscus), a homonym also meaning 'wealth' or 'riches'. By comparison in the West, in rural England, a horseshoe is sometimes displayed at the entrance of a cottage to bring luck. 3 The Pat Heung Valley covers an area of just over 50 square kilometres. * The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation later reimbursed the Hong Kong Government. 5 Because of the rising and falling naam moh sound of their chanting. Lo means 'fellow'. f These are normally in threes. One is offered up for heaven, one for earth and one for mankind. 7 The number of urban Chinese who have never partaken of a basin meal frequently surprises the Author. *To make them more attractive and presentable for the gods. The Author has been informed that tun fu ceremonies do take place outside Hong Kong although he has never observed them or seen anything about them in writing. Although there has been a religious revival in China in recent years, he has never observed any tun fu pots on the Mainland although that does not mean they do not exist. A fellow researcher has told him that they may be seen in Xiamen. 10 By comparison, at Pat Heung there were five pots with one talisman in each. At the Sha Tin ceremony there was one pot with five talismans and the same at Kam Tin and Tai Wo. At Ma Wan there were two pots with three talismans in each. The same applies to feng shui where different schools exist. Again, masters have their own ideas. One who the Author accompanied on assignments in urban Hong Kong believes in placing crystal in homes to absorb impure influences. A similar custom is also found in the West. 12 For which the Hong Kong Government is said to have paid $40,000. 13 It was made illegal to let off firecrackers in 1967 (the year of prolonged riots). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 135 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. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 212 A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong But, retracing our steps, in the 1870s up to 100 boys, in addition to learning the Chinese language, were taught carpentry, shoemaking and printing by Roman Catholic brothers at the Reformatory at West Point. Of course the original way of learning a trade was by an apprentice following a master craftsman from whom a lad picked up 'tricks of the trade'. These were seldom written down or made known to those outside the fraternity. A Chinese apprenticeship implied being almost a slave to one's master. In early years it meant being the master's cook, servant, laundryman and general dogsbody. In addition to paying respects and burning joss sticks to patron deities (such as Lu Pan for the building trades), in the first year or two a boy did little more than watch a master craftsman ply his craft as well as 'fetch and carry'. If the lad disobeyed he was scolded or beaten. Life was never intended to be easy. But returning to institutional training. The first prize-giving ceremony at the Li Shing Scientific and Industrial College was held in 1905. Over 70 students had enrolled but by examination time, with a high dropout rate, only 35 remained. Some things never change. The founders of that college considered the objectives were to raise China from her 'low industrial condition' and to educate her sons in modern science and industry, and to train them to use their hands as well as their brains. "We hope to train independent workers and not mere 'hands' to be always under the direction of foreigners.' Fine sounding words indeed at a time when the aim of most schools in the Colony was to train clerks and typists. During the Governorship of Sir Matthew Nathan (1904-1907), the Government started to show some interest in elementary technical education. This culminated in the founding of the then, so called, Technical Institute, in 1907. It was completely different to the technical institutes that we have in Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g Imperial Ideals and Chinese Practical Common Sense in Chan Lau Kit-ching and Peter Cunich (eds.), An Impossible Dream: Hong Kong University from Foundation to Re-establishment, 1910-1950 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002). Governor Frederick D. Lugard and the Hong Kong Chinese featured prominently in this article (ahylin@hkucc.hku.hk). Professor Norman Miners, was the former Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong. He is probably best remembered for his seminal work The Government and Politics of Hong Kong, first published in 1975, which ran to five editions. Robert Nield, F.C.A., F.H.K.S.A., is a certified public accountant and was a former partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers (Hong Kong). He is a Vice-President and the Treasurer of HKBRAS (hiflyer@netvigator.com) Kirsty Norman is an active member of HKBRAS. Keith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office until his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history, and has written prolifically on these subjects. His articles are noted for the splendour of the illustrations (keith.stevens@chgods.freeserve.co.uk). Dr Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather gained her B.A.(Hons) and Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at University College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Born in Britain, she spent some years overseas as a teenager (Iraq and Cyprus), emigrated to New Zealand in 1973 and moved to Australia in 1984. She joined the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, in 1988. She has a second Honours degree in Theatre Studies completed in 1986, and is also a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (Singing - Performance). From 1995-1997, 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 she was Scholar in Residence, David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University Dan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D., is a retired assistant director of education of the Hong Kong Government. He has written prolifically on the culture and history of Hong Kong. He is the immediate past-president of HKBRAS (benefit@netvigator.com). Jenny Welch, M.A., now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history. xiii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 340 and the 1967 Riots. The former were sparked by a five-cent increase on the lower deck of the Star Ferry. Nevertheless, the root cause was largely the community's displeasure with social conditions, shortage of schools, housing, and the like. It was reported that in 1966 in the district of Tsz Wan Shan, in Kowloon, with a population then of 70,000, there was not a single telephone. The Kai Fong Association requested that at least a few public phones be installed. Soldiers marched down Nathan Road with fixed bayonets during the 1966 Riots. The protracted 1967 riots were a spill-over from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Firecrackers were banned from then on. The military kept in the background during the 1967 Riots because of fear that China might react. The riots badly affected community stability and, in 1968, office space in Chung King Mansions, in Tsim Sha Tsui, was advertised at 60 cents a square foot. The 1966 and 1967 riots were really a watershed. From then on, the government started to listen to the populace more. Social conditions improved, and Hong Kong started a process of de-colonisation. In 1972, government servants were instructed to use the word 'territory' rather than 'colony', other than in a historical context. The Colonial Cemetery became the Hong Kong Cemetery, and so on. A Hong Kong identity and a larger middle class began to form. It is interesting to recall that the sparks which ignited the 1956, the 1966, and the 1967 riots all occurred in Kowloon. Hong Kong Island has generally been a more peaceful place. That was why, when I came to the colony in the mid-1950s and there was talk of building a cross-harbour tunnel or a bridge, some Hong Kong Island residents expressed fear, if this happened, of being 'swamped' by 'hordes' from Kowloon. Corruption Corruption had long been a serious concern in Hong Kong, and, as the Territory became richer, the problem became more serious. When a colleague of mine said there was a price for everything, our old boss soon shut him up. That was part of the trouble. Most Europeans did not appreciate the magnitude of the problem. I recall a Chinese girl telling me, in 1955, that her grandfather had been caught by a policeman smoking opium. The old man gave the copper $20, and the whole matter was conveniently forgotten about. Squeeze affected the Chinese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 214 previous life had led her to the Directorship of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, the first person to hold the post after the Government of Great Britain returned Hong Kong to Mainland China on 30 June 1997. 'I had come to love Chinese people and culture with a passion, yet over the years I always felt like a guest, honoured and cared for, but never fully accepted within Chinese society. In a way, this was inevitable, given China's socialist system and the kinds of roles I had played in China. Now, however, the government and people of a Hong Kong returned to China had entrusted me with leading the institution responsible for preparing teachers for their schools... It was an awesome responsibility and an honour that made me know, deep within myself, that I was now one of them. Somehow I had been searching for that acceptance all of my life.' (pp. 238-239) With Full Circle as a teaser, I look forward to the Biography, which might perhaps suggest that Hayhoe's desire to speak out (even apparently for others) is a product of her previous membership, through her family, of the Christian Exclusive Plymouth Brethren, where women had (and possibly still have?) no voice (p. 59). It might suggest that Hayhoe's embrace of the notional worldwide university and its ordered enclosed ways derives from at the same time as it is an escape from -- the narrow discipline that the Brethren imposed on her early life. —— In the meantime, we have this Autobiography; and it is compelling and inspirational reading. The first edition of Full Circle is bound to sell out quickly. Perhaps the publishers will then take the opportunity to pay attention to the couple of dozen editorial lapses, including one on the book jacket. If possible, it would be good to enhance the already useful index to reflect Hayhoe's feelings and thoughts, as well as to indicate some themes; and also, the addition of a bibliography and List of Illustrations would do the book better service. Some errors of fact could also be corrected. - was not For example, the Hong Kong Institute of Education -- Hayhoe considers her position there as the apogee of her career to date created out of 'five traditional teachers colleges' (pp. 208, 211, 227), but was constituted of four Colleges of Education and the much newer Institute of Language in Education, the latter established and staffed at a higher academic level than the Colleges. In fact, the Institute formed the ================================================================================