RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811
62

HERBERT FRANKE

gols and in China merchants were more powerful and influential than under previous dynasties. The Mongol rulers in China followed in their attitude towards trade and private enterprise a policy of compromise between non-interference and the traditional Chinese bureaucratic hostility to free trade. It was normal for the Chinese scholar-literati class to view the rise of merchants with misgivings and whenever they could they tried to curb the activities of the merchant class. Some of these traditional features can be found in Yuan Dynasty legislation. Yet rich merchants, mostly foreigners, found access to offices in great numbers. Tax-farming became a common practice, and some Westerners rose to positions of power and prestige by their activities in tax-collecting and in the state monopolies. The best known among these careerists is the famous or rather infamous Ahmed who became a minister of state under Kublai Khan and whose assassination is described with many colorful details both in Marco Polo's book and in the Chinese sources.13 As late as the 1350's we find foreigners mentioned as office holders in the state monopolies administration. A text published in 1360 tells us that the officers of the Hangchow Sugar Bureau were all "wealthy merchants of Jewish and Mohammedan extraction".14 It is not surprising that the Chinese historical sources for the Mongol period have not many friendly things to say on these foreigners and their techniques of money-making. At best tax-collectors are not popular in any country, and if they happen to be foreigners some additional venom is apt to appear. Historiography under the Mongols remained firmly in the hands of the Chinese, and therefore the picture that they give is inevitably distorted and biased.

It cannot be denied that international and transcontinental trade and relations on a non-official level contributed greatly to cultural contacts. Yet these contacts remained marginal and did not affect the basic features of Chinese civilization. The spread of Western music in China under the Mongols is a repetition of what had happened in the Six Dynasties and T'ang periods (third to ninth centuries) when dances, musical instruments, melodies and whole music bands were introduced from Central Asia and had a lasting effect on Eastern Asiatic music. Exotic music has, it seems, always found acceptance in high civilizations and been more easily integrated than other cultural elements. Europe is no exception — some of the names of our most common instruments
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS

19

an outstanding job in these difficult times in enlightening the Chinese masses and in explaining to them the purpose of the Government measures. For these invaluable services he was later presented with a gold medal and a letter of thanks from the general public of Hong Kong.

Wei Yuk was also a far-sighted person, for it was he who first seriously pursued the idea of constructing a railway from Kowloon to Canton and thence to Peking. He spent large sums in furtherance of the scheme which failed, however, owing to the obstacles placed in its way by officials in China.21

Wei Yuk served on many Government and public committees. While not being noted for long speeches, he was always clear and precise in expressing his views and advice. He retired from public service in 1917 at the age of 68. For his invaluable services to the Colony, he was awarded the C.M.G. in 1908 and knighted in 1919. He died in 1922.

When Sir Kai Ho Kai retired in February 1914, his place in the Legislative Council was filled by Lau Chu-pak, who was born in Hong Kong in 1866. He was a brilliant scholar at the Central School and in 1885 was the first boy to be awarded the Stewart Scholarship.22 After leaving the Central School, he was for a time chief clerk at the Hong Kong Observatory. Later he became a tea merchant and amassed a fortune. He was a generous benefactor of education and helped financially many poor children to complete their schooling. With Ho Fook, he was co-founder, in 1900, of the Chinese Merchants Bureau which was renamed in 1913 the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Before he was appointed to the Legislative Council, he was for many years an active member of the District Watch Force Committee, the Sanitary Board, the Board of Education and the Council of the University of Hong Kong. He was Chairman of the Po Leung Kuk in 1903, a founder-director of the Kwong Wah Hospital in 1907 and Chairman of Tung Wah Hospital in 1909/1910. In January 1909 when a powerful committee was nominated, with the Governor Sir Frederick Lugard as Chairman, to raise funds to start the University of Hong Kong, Lau, Dr. Ho Kai and Wei Yuk were all members of the Committee.

Lau Chu-pak's concern in education was demonstrated in 1916 when he suggested, in a Legislative Council meeting, that the
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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
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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

139

36 In 1917 there were 31 guilds for employers only (in trades such as silk, sandalwood, wicker furniture and copper), 35 skilled craftsmen guilds (sandalwood workers, masons, tinsmiths, etc.) and 5 guilds with mixed membership (employers and workers). There were also 17 district societies, such as the Heung Shan (Hsiang-shan) resident merchants association and the General Commercial Association of the Tung Kun (Tung-kuan) merchants resident in Hong Kong. See the list of exempted and registered societies in the Gazette, 27 April 1917.

37 Wei Yuk was appointed in 1891 and served until his death in 1929. He resigned several times in order to allow a newcomer to join the Committee but was soon re-appointed. Lau Chu-pak was appointed in 1902 and served until his death in 1922. Sir Shouson Chow was appointed in 1917 and was still a member in 1949, the year of the demise of the Committee.

38 During the years 1929 to 1931 and in 1936 the Committee met four times a year at Government House. Lennox Mills states that members had the right to a guard of the District Watch Force on the occasion of weddings and other festivities'. The Secretary for Chinese Affairs tells us in his report for 1936 that through the kindness of His Excellency the Committee was able to meet the members of the Mui Tsai Commission on the occasion of their first visit to the Colony, 'All members attended and there was a valuable discussion with frank interchange of views'. When the Governor, Sir Henry Blake, left the Colony in 1903 on the day of his departure he inspected the District Watchmen. Clearly, everything was done by the government to give prestige and éclat to the Committee and the force.

19 T. C. Cheng, op. cit., p. 18.

40 Of the Chinese land population in the 1901 census 227,615 returned themselves as natives of Kwangtung Province, 179,296 of this number belonging to the Kwong Chau Prefecture, 28,844 came from Tung-kuan hsien, 28,587 from P'an-yü hsien, and 27,221 from Nan-hai hsien. The situation was substantially the same in the censuses of 1911, 1921 and 1931. In 1911, for example, 311,992 out of 350,418 Chinese in Hong Kong, exclusive of the New Territories, spoke Cantonese,

41 Op. cit., pp. 399-400.

42 Heung Shan, present-day Chung Shan, is the arid county on the west side of the Pearl River, stretching down to Macau. It was the Heung Ha, the Cantonese term for the province, district or village from which each person derives his ancestry, of many prominent Chinese, including Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang), Yung Wing (Yung Hung), Wong Shing (Huang Shêng), and Sun Yat-sen. Many Chinese merchants in Hong Kong came from this county; for example, Wei Yuk, Ma Ying-piu (founder of the Sincere Company), M. Y. San (before 1941 the largest biscuit manufacturer in China), Tsang Foo, Look Poong-shan (founder of the Bank of Canton). Su Chao-cheng, organiser and leader of the Seamen' Strike in 1922, came from this county; in 1928 Su was elected to the Central Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. The anarchist, Liu Ssu-fu, was also born there. In 1938 the Chung Shan Commercial Association had a membership of over 4,000 in Hong Kong.

43 In 1905, for example, at least seven members of the Committee were compradores to important western firms; one was manager of a native bank; another of a prosperous pawnshop; a third ran a large export firm. Ho Kai was primarily a financier rather than an entrepreneur. See on this point the Chinese speculator Marie-Claire Bergère, "The Role of the Bourgeoisie' in M. C. Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase 1900-1913, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968, p. 236.
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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

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in the Colony. In 1948 they were taken over by the Medical and Health Department.

58 G. W. Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Yale University Press, 1958, p. 79.

59 James Michie wrote: "The means taken to conciliate the Chinese (in Hong Kong) must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colony Legislature and on the Commission of the Peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government." The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood, 1900, vol. 1, pp. 280-1.

60 The Labour Advisory Board was established in 1937 and consisted of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Secretary and Cashier of His Majesty's Naval Yard, the Assistant Director of Supply and Transport of the China Command, a representative of the Public Works Department, the Manager of the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, the manager of the Hong Kong Electric Company, and the manager of the Taikoo Dockyard. The members consisted entirely of representatives of large government departments and employers of labour. The board rarely functioned.

61 The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1896 principally by Ho Kai and Wei Yuk. It was called at first the Chinese Merchants Bureau. In 1913, after a period of decline, a new building costing $40,000 was erected in Connaught Road. After 1913 the Chamber became one of the most influential bodies in Hong Kong, and many members of the District Watch Committee served at one time or another on its executive committee. The Chinese Club was founded in 1899 by Sir Robert Ho Tung and modelled on the European Hong Kong Club. A description of the Club's premises is to be found in Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1902, p. 323: "We were taken by the Committee into an upper room, where European comforts of curtains and cushioned arm-chairs were judiciously intermingled with Cantonese elegances of black carved wood and landscape marble." Mrs. Little was a member of the Anti-Footbinding League or Natural Feet Society.

62 See G. William Skinner for a detailed analysis of Chinese associations. See especially ch. 6 of his Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand.

63 For Overseas Chinese associations, see important works by the following: Maurice Freedman, "Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth Century Singapore," Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1960, and Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London, H.M.S.O., 1957; G. W. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1957, and Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1958; William E. Willmott, The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London, The Athlone Press, 1970; and Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1965.

64 See Wilfred Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, London, Oxford University Press, 1969.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m
110

CARL T. SMITH

The Chairman seeing that the meeting was getting beyond his control announced that there would be no further discussion and declared the meeting closed. Pandemonium broke out. The meeting began to take on an angry tone. Some, fearing trouble, slipped out. The crowd was standing on its feet shouting for a vote and began to press forward in a threatening manner toward the long table at which the Chairman and his supporters sat.

At this point Mr. M. K. Lo arose and eventually quieted the crowd sufficiently for his voice to be heard. He asked permission of the Chairman for the use of the hall for a few minutes. He pointed out the irregularity of closing a meeting without taking a vote to ascertain the sense of the meeting on the issue under discussion. He suggested that as the Chairman had closed the meeting, a new Chairman should be elected who could then take a vote. His idea was warmly approved. Backing down, the original Chairman, after some hesitation, then reopened the meeting and asked for a vote. By a show of hands the meeting overwhelmingly expressed its support for the Bill. The organiser skulked away chagrined and shaken.

Meetings of Anti Mui Tsai Society and of Labour Unions

In a spirit of jubilation the Anti Mui Tsai Society convened a delayed general meeting on January 15, 1923 to follow up the success in thwarting the hopes of the merchants who had called the Kai Fong meeting at Tung Wah. It unanimously passed a resolution supporting the Bill, though it noted that the Ordinance had excluded suggestions for an employment bureau and an industrial home. It expressed surprise that at the recent Chinese Chamber of Commerce meeting three of the representatives of the Protection Society on the joint draft committee for the Bill had spoken in opposition to it. These were Messrs Wong Kwong-tin, Ip Lan-chuen and Wong Ping-suen.

The meeting of the Anti Mui Tsai Society was followed a few days later by a meeting of three hundred delegates from 154 labour guilds of Hong Kong at the Chinese YMCA. Mr. So Chui-chung, the Chairman of the Chinese Seamen's Union, was elected Chairman. In his remarks to the meeting he reminded his listeners that they had methods to bring their grievances before their employers, but servant girls had no such opportunity. It was therefore, he said "the duty of Labour to second efforts of people interested in abolition."

Dr. Yeung Shiu-chuen as a representative of the Anti Mui Tsai
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641
205

different parts of China As the Manchu government was drumming up a "commercial war" between Chinese and foreign enterprises, overseas Chinese merchants were targeted by Beijing as a source of wealth for new industries.

In Hong Kong, the first groups of Hong Kong Chinese to respond to this reform were a group of newly returned migrants of Siyi and Xiangshan origins. They returned from America and Australia, where exclusion policies against Chinese immigrants had been implemented during the 1890s. Once settled in Hong Kong, they found themselves left outside the established leadership hierarchy in the colony (the Legislative Council-Tung Wah circle). They had to vest their interests in other institutions They looked northward and, immediately, they saw hope in China, where the late Qing reforms offered them ample chances for political and economic advancement. The Governor recalled with contempt the composition of the Siyi Chamber.

[It is] composed of Californian and Australian coolies, artisans who though [they] could often talk fair English, could not write their names in any language

Thanks to this rhetoric of "commercial war", these overseas returned migrants penetrated into south China. They formed themselves into regional chambers of commerce and through which they raised capital for such large-scale investments as railways, public utilities and land reclamation in Guangdong. Among others, these enterprises included a Siyi Steamship Company, a Sunning (of Siyi) Railway Company and two companies, with respectively 500,000 and 580,000 silver taels in capital, for “port-building” against Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong. With the approval of the Qing government, these two port-building companies initiated two large-scale port and market development schemes in Siyi and Xiangshan which were intended to recover benefits lost to Hong Kong and Macau. The channel that these merchants went through was the following, the chambers of commerce submitted petitions to the Commissioner of Industrial Promotion and thence to the Bureau of Commerce in Beijing

Conservative in design, this late Qing reform led to revolutionary consequences. Among these policies of centralization was Beijing's attempt to nationalize economic resources in the provinces. It was the
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