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 19 the density of nesting birds is considerably less owing to the lack of suitable cover and nests are in any case difficult to find, there is a wide variety of nesting birds ranging from the great family of egrets and herons, with eight or nine species, through a list including the Black-eared Kite, White-bellied Sea-eagle, Francolin, Koel and Crow-Pheasant, drongos and mynahs, bulbuls and babblers down to the Tree-sparrow and Spotted Munia—altogether a large range. Now I shall discuss Hong Kong's birds in more detail, taking them roughly in the order of the new Check-List* so that gaps, especially in the case of rarities, may be filled in by reference to that book. The Great Crested Grebe and the Little Grebe are both common winter visitors but are very localised. The favourite haunt of the former is Deep Bay, whilst up to forty of the latter may be observed on Tai Lam Chung Reservoir. They are rarely seen in breeding plumage and are consequently rather dull-looking. In Deep Bay, along with the Great Crested Grebe one may also see quite large numbers of cormorants, big black diving birds which feed voraciously on fish. An even larger companion of these two varieties in the same area is the Spotted-billed Pelican. Up to twenty of these enormous white birds may be seen, especially at low tide, during the coldest months. One of the greatest attractions to bird-watchers in the Colony, particularly in June and July when there is little else to see, is the great variety of egrets and herons which visit and nest here. There are the small Yellow Bittern and Little Green Heron which may be seen in the mangroves on the edge of Deep Bay; the Great, Little, Swinhoe's and Cattle Pond Herons which nest widely in heronries throughout the northern New Territories; and the lonely Reef Egret which nests on Tung Lung Island, Waglan, and perhaps elsewhere in the southeastern part of the Colony. These birds are an ever-present source of delight with their fine plumage and graceful flight and movements. There are others in the same family, such as the Grey and Purple Herons, but they unfortunately are only visitors. Despite the abundance of water surrounding the Colony and a good deal of suitably marshy ground in the north-west, duck are by no means common, and apart from the Falcated Teal at the mouth of the Shum Chun River, and the Yellow-nib Duck and Teal in evening flight near Lok Ma Chau, very few can be expected. This is a pity, for duck are exciting birds to watch. Annotated Check-List of the Birds of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., 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 RASHKB and author 84 Vol 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 saw a dazzling light penetrating into his palace making the walls transparent. He dispatched his son, Prince Mo Chieh (E), with a group of mariners to go around in the sea to investigate.” 26 This Mo Chich, probably a re-incarnation of Bimbisara, who was a king of Magadha () converted by Sakyamuni and who died and was re-incarnated as a son of Vaisravana, has been changed into Ao Ping in the above quotation from the Fêng-shên Yen-i, and has lost his original Buddhist flavour. Comparing this short paragraph from the Tung-yu-chi with the composition and description of the corresponding paragraphs in the Fêng-shên, we can see the artistic superiority of the latter. The combat between No-cha and Ao Ping, the third son of the dragon-king, has a tragic end. No-cha put his foot on Ao Ping's neck and struck the latter's forehead with his bracelet, thus killing him. No-cha pulled out the sinews of the little dragon and went back, saying he would make a good belt of it for his father to fasten his cuirass on. The dragon-king, hearing of the death of his son, went to see Li Ching, and put the latter in a very embarrassing position. Li Ching, being ignorant of his son's prodigious feats, denied his guilt. But No-cha came out and apologized for what he had done, and told the dragon-king that his son's sinews were intact. The dragon-king was exasperated and told Li Ching that he would lodge a complaint at the court of the Jade Emperor against father and son. The story continues: After No-cha had calmed his parents he went to the Chin-kuang Cave and told his master, the Taoist Immortal T’ai-I, of his adventure. The master ordered him to unfasten his coat, drew spells on his bosom, and told him what to do the next morning. "After that," the master said, "you may go back to Ch'en-t'ang Pass. If anything unusual happens, you must tell your parents that I shall be responsible for your misdeeds.” The next morning No-cha reached the Pao-tê Gate (F),27 the gate of heaven. After a while he saw the dragon-king approaching wearing his celestial robes, but because of the magic spells on No-cha's bosom, the dragon-king could not see him. No-cha was so angry that he strode forward from behind and dealt the dragon-king with his bracelet such a heavy blow that immediately he fell to the ground. (Ch.12) • 26 No. 9, Fu-shuo Jên-hsien Ching (MA), The Tripitaka in Chinese, 27 Ch. 39, Hsi-yo-chi of the "Four Travels", the Pao-tê Kuan (OH) is the Gate in heaven where Li Ching dwells. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 93 The graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring 清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow1. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau. At New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able-bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties. 550 The whole ethos and action of the clan was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads, who were educated to the Confucian tenets, were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture, and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness, and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 100 J. W. HAYES exerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati "have hitherto lived by irregular "squeezes" from the people" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to "gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554. 26 Papers 1899 p. 194. 27 Papers 1899 p. 554. 28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121. 29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon. Piracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925. 30 Papers 1899 p. 528. 31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894. 32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs. **F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895. 34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896. 33 Papers 1899, p. 540. Brenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly "The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37. 31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894. ================================================================================ 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 101 11 "The whole of the island (Cheung Chau) was adjudged to belong to the WONG family and it is let out to various tenants on leases renewable every five years. All these leases were registered in 1906". Administra-tive Report for 1909, District Officer, New Territories. But see also G. N. Orme's unfavourable opinion of the initial survey and Crown rent roll in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46. 12 For example, before its tax-lord rights were extinguished (along with others') by the Hong Kong Government after 1898 as "not compatible with the principles of British administration" (Orme, Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46), the LI Kau Yuen Tong of Sha Wan appears to have owned a considerable proportion of all the cultivated land on Lantau island under an imperial grant made in the Sung dynasty (see LO Hsiang-lin "The Sung Wang T'ai and the location of the Travelling Courts by the sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung", Journal of Oriental Studies III No. 2 (July 1956) p. 217, note 29). Nineteenth Century land deeds from the village of Shek Pik show that much of the village land paid tax to the LI family, a burden which was passed on to the purchaser when a "sale" took place. It is not known whether this Tong owned land elsewhere in the present New Territories but its main estates lay elsewhere. It is curious how the WONG Wai Chak Tong maintained its tax-lord position whilst the LI family's was extinguished. It is a pointer to the island's increasing prosperity, as well as to its favoured geographical situation, that when the Chinese Maritime Customs first began to operate in the Hong Kong region in 1887 they set up a post on Cheung Chau. This had previously been operated by the Canton authorities as part of the "blockade" system set up in 1868-71. See Stanley F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1950) pp. 385-6, 584-6 and 708, and his earlier Hong Kong and the Chinese Customs (Shanghai 1930) which I have not yet seen. See also note 15. Old villagers on the Lantau coast opposite Cheung Chau can remember having to pass through the customs every time they came to the island to buy daily necessaries and sell their produce in the market. It is not the place to discuss whether Cheung Chau's expansion was due to the rise of Hong Kong, or whether it was already in a flourishing condition by the time Hong Kong's expansion began in the 1840's, but available information points to a community which was already well-established and prosperous by the Hsien-feng period (1851-61), which would be rather early for Cheung Chau to owe its rise mainly to Hong Kong. The preamble to the tablet in the defence bureau mentions that "our forefathers came and lived in Cheung Chau several hundred years ago"; whilst the attention of pirates in the early years of Hsien-feng, also mentioned in the same tablet, seems more conclusive proof of the island's established prosperity than any other. A spate of repairs and expansion seems to have been going on apace in the T'ung-chih period (1862-75) when most of the island's temples were repaired, the CHU family ancestral hall enlarged, many old houses were built or reconstructed, and the public buildings erected which these tablets commemorate. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 2 May 13th June 17th August 19th Professor C. P. FitzGerald "The Succession Crises in the Manchu Dynasty after the Death of the Tung Chih Emperor" Professor Yao Hsin-nung "K'un Ch'u — The Classical Chinese Drama” (Illustrated with colour slides and a demonstration by Miss Hsiao Fang-fang in full make-up and costume) Mr. Ho Tickon "Method and Technique of Chinese Painting" (Illustrated by the artist/lecturer) September 30th "Conquest of Everest"-film (British Council) October 20th Expedition to Tung Chung, Lantao island to visit the old fort. October 25th Dr. W. Hellmich "Tasks and Results of the Research Scheme Nepal Himalaya” (In co-operation with the Faculty of Science, University of Hong Kong) November 18th Mr. K. M. A. Barnett "Hong Kong before the Chinese — the Puzzle and the Missing Pieces" December 10th Documentary films on Hong Kong:- "This is Hong Kong" "Sea Festivals of Hong Kong" "The Boat People" the Frame, It is no mean tribute to the standing of the Hong Kong Branch of the Society that it has succeeded in attracting as guest speakers such eminent and world-wide authorities as Professor Hansford, Dr. Freedman, Professor Fitzgerald and last month Professor Fairbanks. It is equally a tribute to the rich local talent of the Society that six of the addresses — all of high standard and of great interest — during the year were given by local members, while the more recent address by Mr. Cranmer-Byng proved to be one of the most appreciated of all. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 87 Chinese New Year, were accustomed to visit their parent villages, which were in any case not far away. However, there seem in mid-century to have been close links with the Tung Kwun association of Cheung Chau. Fifteen Peng Chau shops47 subscribed to the repair of the association's premises in 1866, and Peng Chau residents may have been members of the association, as is the case with several of the Cheung Chau district and other organisations today. today. The extent of the help given on that occasion may be attributed either to this, or else to some very energetic canvassing by the Cheung Chau organisers.48 However, the gradual expansion of the local community did bring with it various manifestations of communal endeavour. There was an interesting building, now in ruins, known as the Yee Chee, which was a poor house rather on the lines of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau. It was a substantial structure constructed from the dark grey-blue bricks of the region, and rather like a temple in appearance. There were three rooms: one for sick persons, one for the dying and one for the caretaker. There were idols inside, the principal one being that of the God of Ghosts. The Yee Chee is said to have been constructed by the island Kaifong from funds specially raised for the # purpose and was maintained by them as occasion required. It was intended for use by destitute persons in poor health and as a place where they could die in peace. No one with relatives able to support him would ever let himself be taken there. Free coffins were provided by the Kaifong. It was available to all, land and sea dwellers alike. The caretaker was supported by collections and was allowed to cultivate land under the control of the Kaifong. The building was not in particularly good repair when Mr. CHUNG was a boy, and its origin can therefore be dated with confidence to 1850 or before. The Peng Chau Kaifong mentioned in the previous paragraph had premises on each side of the Tin Hau temple. They were renovated in 1876-77 about the same time as the temple. Present elders clearly recall a tablet in the office building to one side of the temple which said it was enlarged. The annexe on the other side served as a school or guest house as the need arose. It is not certain when the Kaifong began,50 but it appears to have existed before this office was repaired and it has been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r PENG CHAU 89 coastal and riverine areas of Kwangtung were always receiving the unwelcome attention of pirates and robber gangs, right up to the end of the nineteenth century and well into the present one. The Taiping rebellion occupied the middle years of the century and, though it does not seem to have caused much bloodshed in the San On district, the large-scale struggle between Hakkas and Puntis in the parts of the province west of the Delta must have increased mutual antipathy between the two groups elsewhere. The Opium War and the War of 1857-60 saw increased foreign activity in Hong Kong waters. There were therefore both internal and external dangers to be expected on a small island settlement like Peng Chau at this time. Internally there was probably less trouble than there was potential. There are no recollections of fighting between the various groups of settlers on the island, though the Hoklos, who are generally credited with a more turbulent disposition than the Cantonese and Hakkas, perhaps in most cases having fewer possessions to make them cautious, sometimes fought among themselves.51 The Cantonese shops in the main street were ever fearful of robbery and violence and until ten years ago one could see the last of the protective gates known as ... There were three of them, barred every night, one at each end of Wing On Street and a third at the entrance to a large lane which left the main street at right angles and led to the Hakka settlement. Within living memory one or more watchmen were employed at night by the Kaifong and collected contributions from shops according to their size. These night defences were erected as much to keep out bandits and robbers coming from the sea as thieves or dissatisfied elements from within the island. There was, as Mr. CHUNG recalls, a small military post on the island in the late nineteenth century, but this would scarcely deter would-be assailants, especially if they were numerous and well-armed, and there can be little doubt that the first farmers and shopkeepers lived in genuine fear of such assaults. There are sufficient instances of violence from neighbouring places at various times to show that such fears were fully justified3½ and an isolated town like Peng Chau would have offered better prospects for pillage than a lonely village of farmers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 95 from his own or adjoining villages worked with him. The Shek Pik people were therefore closely connected with the sea despite the fact that their fields were extensive and well-watered. Elsewhere on Lantau, an old account book of the Hakka CHEUNG Kung Tak Tong at Pui O, which is dated 1897-99 (Kuang Hsu 23rd-24th years), shows that the Tong had a regular income from a fishing sampan. 41 It has been shown that the Peng Chau shopkeepers always contributed to the temple repairs. A more illuminating instance of merchants' concern for the safety of local waters is to be found in the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau on the south-west tip of Lantau, facing Macau and the mouth of the Delta, a remote area two hours' walk from Tai O Market. Here tablets survive from the Chia Ching and Hsien Feng periods (1796-1820 and 1851-61) and contain the names of many Tai O shops. One imagines that few of the donors would ever visit the temple, but they were obviously intent to ensure Tin Hau's benevolent care. 42 Information received from CHEUNG Kai Chun of Ham Tin, Pui O, Lantau (born 1886). But this was not true everywhere. At Shek Pik several families of Tanka used the anchorage for at least fifty years. There was no remembered animosity during this time and these fishermen were allowed to cut grass and firewood without charge. However, they rarely strayed far from the beach and the two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with each other, except in casual contact at the main festivals and when villagers bought fish from them at the jetty, which was over a mile from the village. The fishermen would not go to the village to sell their catch. 43 Information received from the present leaders of the WONG Wai Chak Tong ✯ of Cheung Chau. 44 This statement is based on close knowledge of the Southern District of the New Territories and of the District land registers. 45 Barbara E. Ward "A Hong Kong Fishing Village”, Journal of Oriental Studies (University of Hong Kong) volume 1, no. 1 (January 1954) pp. 195-214, especially p. 211. See also note 42. 46 See my Cheung Chau article for the Cheung Chau district associations before the British lease. At Tai O in the same period there appear to have been associations of Tung Kwun and San On origin, each with a club-house. 47 The number is wrongly given as 28 in note 14 to the Cheung Chau article. 48 A tablet in the Pak Tai temple at Cheung Chau dated January, February 1906 (a lucky day of the first month of spring of the thirty-second year of Kuang Hsü) shows that Peng Chau people also contributed to its repair. 49 See the Cheung Chau article for this institution. 50 The Kaifong of the Hong Kong region, and their like, are local institutions with a fairly long history. The Peng Chau Kaifong is quite likely to have an early date in relation to the age of the present settlement. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 118 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD 14 They had every reason to be alarmed on account of the continual attacks from pirates on coastal villages in Kwangtung and other places during the period from about 1787 until 1810. See A. W. Hummel: Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 446-8. Also C. F. Neuman, History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810. 15 Macartney took with him on the embassy a "gardener and botanist”, David Stronach. For the botanical side of the embassy see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit., 317-19. 16 These nets are known locally as "stake nets" or tsang pang are lowered and raised by means of a tackle. They are frequently used along the coasts of Kwangtung today. The fishing season is from February to mid-September, 17 The island is now reasonably well covered with pine trees and there are a few small feng-shui woods of deciduous trees. A large number of kites have been observed using pine trees on a ridge in the centre of the island as a roost during the winter months. 18 Parish knew the island, which he had been sent to reconnoitre, under the name of Cowhee. Now he learned that the inhabitants called it Toong Shing-ow-a. However, this name does not appear to have survived and the island is now always known as Ma Wan4 and was so called as far back as 1859. See Rev. Krone, op. cit. (note 8) p. 73. The word Cowhee was probably a phonetic rendering of the name of an island between Ping Chau island and Hong Kong island known as Kau I Chau 交椅洲. 19 By the small island to the south-east Parish presumably meant Tang Lung Chau## which now has a small light-house on it. There is now a small harbour with a jetty at Ma Wan village, and this is the normal place for landing on the island today. 20 This is a doubtful statement. 21 The word as written in the manuscript report is clearly "profil". I can only suggest that Parish meant "profile", and was using it in a technical, military engineering sense, meaning "outline". A reading of Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth century books about sieges and defence works might give a clue to its technical meaning at that time, 22 From the anchorage position marked on the chart this must refer to the bay of Tsing Lung Tau. Today Ma Wan is connected to the mainland by a regular ferry service running from the bay of Sham Tseng, where the Hong Kong Brewery is situated. 23 By the word "bay" in this context Parish appears to refer to the wide bay formed by the northern coast of Lantao from its headland opposite Tsing Lung Tau to Chek Lap Kok opposite Tung Chung bay, but the wording is somewhat ambiguous at this point. 24 Probably the western arm of Luk Kang - · + + on Lantao. 25 Tung Ku #island opposite Tap Siak Kok on the Castle Peak peninsula. It forms part of the Urmston Road. 26 See Charles Tulse, Local Master's Handbook. Seamanship Illustrated (Hong Kong University Press, 1960). 27 See photograph of the "race" between Ma Wan and Lantao on page It is interesting to know that Professor Deryck Chesterman of the Department of Physics in the University of Hong Kong is carrying out research into the currents off Ma Wan and their effects on the sea bed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 149 An expert could say what the ranges of such cannons were, but after you have landed at the pier and walked to the fort, you will appreciate that it is 1,200 yards from the coast. It is unlikely that guns in the fort could be really effective at this range, so that one questions the wisdom of its planners in placing it so far from the sea, if it was meant to be a work of coastal defence. What of the garrison? In the later Ching period there were at least three military installations on Lantau at Tung Chung, Tai O and Fan Lau, another on Cheung Chau, and a considerable number of troops in the Kowloon Walled City. These were all sedentary garrisons drawn from the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the Chinese regular forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts all over the eastern and southern part of the Sun On district, of which the present Crown Colony of Hong Kong formed the major part. The garrison at Tung Chung was commanded by a subordinate officer and probably consisted of a score or two men who were very likely without modern weapons. Writing in 1903 Dyer Ball said of the Chinese military forces that "matchlocks, gingals, bows and arrows, spears and lances are still the weapons of many". Their military efficiency was probably very slight. A missionary, who wrote an interesting account of the San On district for the last number of the transactions of the old Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1859, has an amusing description of the guard post at the Shatin Pass. However, they probably had a deterrent value, but owing to the poor state of local communications at that time, they were much too far away to assist if anything happened elsewhere on Lantau, particularly on the south side, though their influence was felt there. When the local leaders of the Pui O community (South Lantau) rebuilt the Hung Shing temple there in 1875, they persuaded the garrison commander at Tung Chung to make a contribution. In the commemorative tablet recording the event he is styled Fu Ye, a respectful form of address for this subordinate officer. To bring these rather rambling notes to a close, the fort was used after 1898 as a police station. The District Officer who recovered the cannons for the fort has left a vivid picture of his occasional magisterial visits there about 1920: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 150 NOTES AND QUERIES The Police Station at Tung Chung was in an old Chinese fort, walled in. I heard my cases under a huge tree there and always had to drink a large tumbler of goat's milk provided by the Indian Sergeant in charge. He would have been awfully hurt if I had refused. It might be O.K. with half a pint of rum or whisky, but I had not the heart to do it! J. W. HAYES SOME NOTES ON TUNG CHUNG1 Tung Chung, Eastern Stream, appeared on the historical scene of the region earlier than most other places in the New Territories. The valley acquired its eminence because the last of the Sung emperors was proclaimed there and upheld some sort of a Court in the valley for at least three months in 1278, the last year of the Sung dynasty. Though the place of proclamation cannot be ascertained to be Tung Chung itself, Chinese historians have been tackling the problem from the name Huang Lung Hang*, Yellow Dragon Valley, which refers to the inhabited part of the valley of the Eastern Stream. Historical documents have indicated that a yellow dragon appeared in the sea when the boy emperor was proclaimed and the fact was recorded because it was thought to be a good omen for the fast vanishing dynasty. Apart from legends, there is more vivid evidence of the brief stay of royalty in the area because wherever the fugitive Sungs held court, the people erected temples to remember a loyal courtier, Lord Yeung, a member of the royal household who followed the Court to the very end. Today, we can find three of such Hou Wong temples in our region: Kowloon City, Tai O and Tung Chung. The temple at Tung Chung cannot, of course, be dated as far back as 1278 but it is certain that it was renovated around 1870 and subsequently in 1910 and 1959. There is next to nothing to tell what happened in the region between the fall of the Sung dynasty (1278) and the coastal 1 The above historical note on the Tung Chung area contains material collected by Mr. C. Y. Ng of the University of Hong Kong for his Ph.D. thesis on "Rural Development". A more detailed historical paper on Tung Chung by Mr. Ng is expected to be published next year. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 151 evacuation (1662-1669). But it is certain that Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan had a share in the incense trade which terminated with the evacuation. Wild incense trees can still be found but the art of making incense sticks has vanished. The ancestors of the people living in the valley may have migrated into the area from the north in 1669 but the area has been, until recently, notorious for occurrences of malaria which claimed heavy tolls. The entire population may have been completely wiped out several times, as the oldest of the families has a family history of no more than seven generations. Tung Chung came into the limelight again when Cheung Pao Tsai and his pirate band who had been using the bay as one of their bases to prey upon the coastal trade of the South China Sea, successfully repelled a Ching naval contingent after a ten-day battle in the Ping Chung Bay in the twelfth year of Chia Ching's reign (1807). The trouble was finally quelled in 1809 when Cheung Pao Tsai surrendered and his pirates were disbanded. 2 With the suppression of the pirates, trade flourished. The Viceroy at Canton petitioned the Ch'ing Government in 1817 saying that "Ta Yu Shan of San On District, an isolated island, is on the (trade) route of the ships of the "barbarians". Tung Chung and Tai O are the only places where these "barbarian" ships can anchor. A fort at Chi Yi Kok2 with a Captain(?) and soldiers from the Tai Pang Camp has been maintained but there is no garrison at Tung Chung. As the two places are very far apart, eight garrison houses should be built at the mouth of the Tung Chung Rivers and two batteries (the fort), seven garrison houses and one arsenal should be constructed on the foot of Shek Shee ShanJ. "6 The petition was accepted and the work was completed in the same year. Whether the work was carried out as requested by the Viceroy has still to be proved. However, the fort has been relatively well preserved and seven old 2 Fan Lau (), 24 miles from Tai O. 3 Nan Tau (南頭), Po On District, 15 miles to the north of Lantau. 4 The distance is 6 miles across the main watershed and about 9 miles along the coast. 5 The idea was to prevent the "barbarians" from drawing fresh water for their ships. 6 Kwangtung Annals (廣東通志), p. 2,530. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 152 NOTES AND QUERIES cannons still point to the sea. The inscription on two of these both on the eastern wing, is relatively clear. The words on the easternmost one show that the cannon was cast in the eighth moon of the fourteenth year of the reign of Chia Ching (1809), serial number Ching 80, weighing 1,000 catties (1,333 lbs.) and was cast by the master of the Man Shing Furnace. The second cannon was cast by order of the Fat Shan Magistrate in the tenth moon of the twenty-first year of the reign of Tao Kuang (1841) by Craftsmen Lee, Chan and Fok. The two dates are rather interesting. It can be imagined that the first cannon was transferred from the Fort at Nan Fau when the fort was first built and the second was cast in Fat Shan specifically for this Tung Chung Fort when Viceroy Lin wished to strengthen coastal fortification as he feared that Captain Elliot might attack the coastal areas of Kwangtung. Two of the cannons on the western side have shapes distinctly foreign to the Chinese, and they are more subjected to weathering than the others. As these rather remind the observer of those kept in the Raffles National Museum and the Malacca Museum, it is possible that these pieces might have been captured from the Portuguese or might have been cast with their help earlier on. The granite slabs used for building the fort are foreign to the valley. They might have come from Chek Lap Kok Island across the Bay or might even have been brought in from T'un Mun (Castle Peak). There are many of these slabs lying about the fort and some have found their way to becoming part of a rural house. Recent site preparation for an extension of the school building revealed a tiled floor below the present ground level. Had some sort of a garrison been maintained throughout the dynasties? Is the present form of the fort a result of several expansions in the nineteenth century? Were there originally more cannons mounted on the battlements? Where are the sites of the other constructions mentioned in the Annals? The answers to these questions would be of great value in establishing the important role played by Lantau in the history of the region. LOAN-WORDS IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE A gap in our knowledge which I suggest should be filled would be to establish the date of the introduction into China of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY 11 found. The explanation for this is that this part of South China has been rising relative to sea level. This positive rise is connected with isostasy and eustatic movements of the oceans that cause cycles of submergence and emergence. Assuming a rise of one foot every hundred years then, Hong Kong in the last 2,500 years has risen 25 feet, Dr. Heanley and his friend Mr. Walter Schofield, a government administrator, gathered a large and varied collection of celts from Kowloon, Cheung Chau and Lantau Island. Examination of this collection by experts soon established that they were not just freaks of nature but definite human artifacts. Since Heanley's first notification, other workers have found them in practically every part of the Colony, and contrary to his belief that they were principally found on granite hills, they have been found often in abundance on every other rock outcrop represented in the area — especially volcanic rock. It may be that because of the extreme susceptibility of granite to erosion, which causes 'badland country' with thin or no vegetation cover, the celts can be seen more easily, Including the places mentioned by Dr. Heanley, celts can still be found in the fields, on raised beaches or on low hills at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan, Aberdeen, Tai Po, Castle Peak, San Hui, So Kun Wat, Tsun Wan, Shatin, Shataukok, Man Kok Tsui, Ha Tsuen, Sheung Shui, Shek Pik, Sai Kung, Lai Chi Chung, Sok Ku Wan, Fanling and Kau Sai Chau. Much is owed to Dr. Heanley, Mr. Schofield and Professor J. L. Shellshear, who was head of the Anatomy Department in the University of Hong Kong, for their conscientious and patient work in combing the Colony for other archaeological remains and sites after the celts had been identified. I have been told by our Vice-President, Sir Lindsay Ride, who knew all three intimately and often accompanied them on their field trips, that they were superbly energetic and covered tremendous distances in a day at great speed. Only fit and enthusiastic walkers could hope to last a whole day with them. They located several prehistoric sites, the most notable being So Kun Wat, Shek Pik and those at the northwest end of Lamma Island. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 NOTES AND QUERIES THE TSANG'S BIG HOUSE IN SHATIN 125 The Tsang's Big House, with its bluish bricks, green tiles, thick walls, strong iron gate, and a history of more than 120 years, is probably the oldest building in Shatin. It is fifteen minutes' walking distance from Shatin Market. The Big House has an interesting history, which can only be touched upon in this note. Its site was formerly a deserted sandy beach near a Shatin hillside. The house was built by Tsang Kwan-man, who had immigrated from his native town in Wu-wah (24) to settle in Shaukiwan on Hong Kong Island. There he established himself in the stone quarry business, and soon became rich. Tsang later moved from the island which was ceded to Britain to live in Shatin, which then belonged to the District of Pao-an under Chinese jurisdiction. Tsang used coarse sand to reclaim the beach from the sea, and built the Big House on the reclaimed site. Strong solid stones were used for the foundation, and bluish bricks for the surrounding walls, which were then plastered with the ashes of grass roots. Although it was built in traditional style, it is said to be no less strong and solid than modern skyscrapers constructed by machinery. When the Big House was first completed, it was inhabited only by Tsang and his wife. However, they employed many servants and workers to exploit the virgin land in the vicinity for productive purposes. They gave birth to six sons, and the descendants multiplied. The Tsang family on this site is now in its sixth generation. During the reigns of Emperors Chien-lung and Chia-ching in the Ch'ing Dynasty, the Tsangs often contributed gold to the Government in return for official titles. These were limited to a certain rank in the officialdom, and did not carry any definite appointment in authority or official duty, being somewhat similar to the title of Justice of the Peace conferred by the Hong Kong Government. With the official title the Tsangs were entitled to hang a guilded board in their Big House with characters Ta-fu ti (✯✯✯) carved on it, meaning "The residence of an official,” distinguishing it from the houses of commoners. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 50 HERBERT FRANKE monks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier. However that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung 35 its followers to a nearby islet, Ku-ta (†) or Ancient Pagoda, Tung-lung Island.19 In the autumn they proceeded to Ch'ien-wan (*) which is now definitely identified as Tsun-wan (now written) along the western coast of Kowloon. Two months later, the Mongol army, which had been pursuing them along the shore, began to attack. The boy Emperor sailed to Hsiu-shan (ƒ), now known as Hu-men or the Bogue. Continuously under pressure from the Mongols, Tuan Tsung passed by Hsiang-shan District (at present Chung-shan) and reached Tseng-o (#4), south of Macao, where his ship was badly damaged by a typhoon. He himself fell into the sea but was rescued. The terrible shock led him to contract a fatal disease. He was sick on board ship until the spring of 1278, when the whole fleet sailed northward back to the harbour at the mouth of the Pearl River. By that time Canton had been recaptured by some royalists and so they felt safe enough to anchor and encamp at Kang-chou which is identified as Ta-yu-shan or Lantau Island20. Two months later he died there. His younger brother Ping succeeded him on the throne and became the last emperor of Sung. He named the new reign Hsiang Hsing (#) and the 1st year began in the next month, still 1278. In the 6th month the new emperor had to sail away with the whole fleet southwestward until they arrived at Ya-Shan of the Hsin-hui District. Finally, in the 2nd month of the next year (spring 1279), they fought the last battle against the Mongol forces commanded by the arch-traitor Chang Hung-fan (K). As a result of the defeat the whole army perished. The boy Emperor with his royal seal was tied to the body of his prime minister, Lu Hsiu-fu, who plunged into the sea, to be followed by thousands of court officials in a mass suicide. When the Queen Mother Young heard of the tragic and heroic death of the Emperor she also drowned herself, thus ending the long reign of 315 years of the Northern and Southern Sung Dynasty. Before concluding this talk let me point out that besides the above story there is a deep and important meaning to be derived from our study of the Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon. Throughout the Sung Dynasty, China was frequently invaded by neighbouring foreign tribes. Almost every year there was war, not only against the Hsi Hsia (the Tangut), but also, in turn, the Liao (Khitan), the Chin (Nuchen) and the Mongols. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 156 NOTES AND QUERIES ADDITIONAL NOTE to the above, kindly supplied by Professor LO Hsiang-lin, Professor of Chinese, University of Hong Kong, at Professor Goodrich's suggestion and the Hon. Editor's request. Professor Lo writes: “I am pleased to provide a note on Tu, Fan and the Superintendent of Inland Seas, Chief military commissioner, installed as Ting-hai General. I regret that I have not been able to identify the other two persons, namely Hsiao Li-jen and Su. Tu, Fan and the Superintendent of Inland Seas also appeared on the inscription of the cannon constructed in June 1650, discovered in 1956, for which I have written a short treatise entitled "Researches on a Cannon made in the Fourth Year of the Yung-li Period of the Southern Ming (1650 A.D.), in Hong Kong”, (in Chinese) Ta-hsüeh Sheng-huo★ Vol. II, No. 10 (January 1957). For detailed information the reader may refer to my treatise on the cannon discovered earlier. TU, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF KWANGTUNG AND KWANGSI ✯t, who re- 1648 and offered Tu can be identified as Tu Yung-ho † †¤, a follower of the Governor of Kwangtung. Li Cheng-tung volted against the Ch'ing dynasty in Canton in his allegiance to the Emperor Yung-li (Chu Yu-lang *. formerly prince of Kuei) of the Southern Ming dynasty. When Li Cheng-tung died in the following year, the Ming emperor appointed Tu as Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi with his head-office at Canton. Thereupon Tu took up the responsibility of leading his men in their fight against the army and fleet sent by the Ch'ing government to crush the revolt. The Ch'ing general Shang K'o-hsi laid siege to Canton in February of the fourth year of Yung-li (1650). To check the enemy's advance, Tu used the two forts built by Li Ch'eng-tung which stretched out into the sea outside the city of Canton. However an officer under Tu conspired with the Ch'ing army and assisted the latter to land on December 2nd. The forts fell into the hands of the Ch'ing army and the city met the same fate. Tu and his fleet consisting of several hundred vessels made their escape through the sea route and headed for Kiungchow ] (the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 82 FAN LAU AND ITS FORT: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ARMANDO M. DA SILVA* Site and Situation Fan Lau is located at the extreme southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan or Lantau Island. It is almost equal in distance from Hong-kong and Macau and it is situated about twenty-five miles due east of the latter. Fan Lau can be reached by sampan or fishing boat either from the market towns of Cheung Chau or Tai O, or by walking along the water catchment from Shek Pik reservoir to a point above and beyond Kau Ling Chung, and then by descending a steep stony path towards the settlement. Another route is to strike out from Tai O, taking the coastal footpath through Yi O, and thence to Fan Lau. There is no motor road to Fan Lau. The area of Fan Lau includes a headland known as Kai Yik Kok (†) meaning "chicken wing point" where an old fort is located (see map 1).† The high point of the Kai Yik Kok promontory rises to about 380 feet above sea level. In the north of this headland lies the cultivated waist of Fan Lau where a small settlement is located. Looming above the settlement is Kai Yik Shan1 from which two streams supply irrigation water to the padi fields. Two fine beaches, Tung Wan and Sai Wan, flank the waist of the peninsula. Tung Wan, though exposed to prevailing easterly winds and a long fetch from the village, can accommodate deep-draught junks. The actual territory associated with the village extends beyond the physical boundaries of the settlement. Fan Lau villagers, for example, cultivate fields located in Tsin Yue Wan (see map 1) and records show that, at least in 1904, padi fields in Kau Ling Chung (since abandoned) were also cultivated. Situated at the entrance of the Chu Kong or Pearl River estuary, Fan Lau enjoyed a strategic location in the past. This position was reflected in the construction of numerous forts and guard stations * Mr. da Silva has a Master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and is at present with the Department of Geography, University of Hawaii. † Maps 1-4 are located at pp. 92-95. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FAN LAU AND ITS FORT 85 Lau, meaning "division of flows" and the name of that point on the southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan, describes accurately and specifically the abrupt change of colour of the sea off the point, from a clear green to a muddy brown, as any traveller from Hong-kong to Macau can attest. The name Fan Lau is not only appropriately but propitiously applied. In fung shui the confluence of streams or sea currents is considered auspicious (conversely, a site flanked by forking streams is not considered lucky). Fan Lau, situated as it were at such a confluence, is considered a lucky site; hence the presence of a fort, a temple, and a settlement. Conditions must have deteriorated in the Chu Kong estuary some sixty years after the return of Ch'ing control in 1669, for we hear of the garrisoning and reinforcement of troops in Tai Yu Shan in 1730 to shore up existing coastal defences there. "In the 7th year of Yung Cheng (1730) forts were constructed on two hills, to deploy garrisons for their defence and to reinforce the troops garrisoning Tai Yu Shan, thus forming an angle similar to that made by the horns of an ox, to serve the exterior defence of Macau and the Boca Tigre". The Kai Yik Kok fort must have been one of the two strong points mentioned, the other being probably the fort at Tung Chung. The analogy between the location of the fortifications of the estuary and the shape of an ox's horns is interesting. A glance at a map of the Chu Kong estuary would show Macau (in reality, the Heung Shan district forts) and Fan Lau to be the tips of those horns. Both these strategic areas cover the entrance to the estuary. The Boca Tigre (Fu Mun19) at the apex of the near-isosceles triangle formed by these three points, served as the pivotal central fortification. We know too, that the Fan Lau fort was designated as the administrative boundary between the San On District and the Heung Shan District on the other side of the estuary from Fan Lau. A map of the Chu Kong estuary in the O Mun Kei Leukaz depicts the Kai Yik Kok fort with the accompanying caption “San Heung Fan Kai” (***), meaning "This is the dividing boundary between the San On and the Heung Shan districts". It is very likely that some of the fort's soldiers were allotted plots of land for their own use. Another interesting possibility is that the soldiers and officials appointed to preserve law and order came from the very ranks of rebels and pirates who had previously Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FAN LAU AND ITS FORT 91 11 A lorcha is a specialized fighting craft from Macau that combined a Western-style hull (for speed and maneuverability) with Chinese batten sails and rigging (for easier sail-handling and disguise). 12 Charles F. Neumann, History of the Pirates (š), who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray, 1831) P. 58. 13 J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide (Canton, Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848) pp. 70-71. 14 The Last Year in China to the Peace of Nanking as sketched in Letters to his Friends by a Field Officer actively employed in that Country (2nd edition, revised, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1843) pp. 51-52. 15 There is, in addition, the possibility that the fort had a temporary garrison in 1834 see the imperial directive given respecting defence and patrolling at Lantau and Macao quoted by J. L. Cranmer-Byng in his brief note "An old fort at Tung Chung on Lantao Island” in J.H.K.B.R.A.S. Vol 3 (1963) pp. 144-145. 16 Hong Kong Government. New Territories Administration. Block Crown Lease Demarcation Districts 322 and 327, Shek Sun village, Lantau Island. BIBLIOGRAPHY CITED J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Sailing directions of Chinese voyages", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 230-237, "The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412. Luis B. Gomes, Monografia de Macau, Macau, 1951. Hongkong Government. A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hongkong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, Hongkong, 1960. Lo Hsing-lin, Hongkong and its External Communications before 1842. Hongkong, 1963. J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide, Canton, 1848. Charles F. Neumann, The History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, translated from the Chinese original, London, 1831. Ch'ing dynasty work: Chinese Sources Mo Pei Chi (AA) A.D. 1621 The provincial Gazetteer of Kwangtung: Kwong Tung Tung Chi (♬✯ ih sk) 1864 edition The District Gazetteers for the following: San On Yuen Chi (%) 1819 edition Tung Kwun Yuen Chi ✯✯✯) 1797 edition Heung Shan Yuen Chi (3) 1827 edition O Mun Kei Leuk (39 1932) 1800 edition ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 166 NOTES AND QUERIES tions and answers produced an interesting picture of life among the soldiers at the Fort in the few years before they withdrew from it after Lantau and other parts of the present New Territories were leased to the Hong Kong Government in 1898. Put together they amount to this: I was 24 sui when the British came to take over Lantau. Tung Chung Fort had a permanent garrison of Chinese troops before then. I can't remember exactly how many troops there were or what the rank or title of the officer-in-charge was, but they were none of them local people. Their families lived at Tung Chung too, in several rows of brick houses outside the Fort and some inside the walls also. There was a house nearby in which soldiers or their family members were put when sick, with a burial ground behind. The garrison's provisions were brought in by ship, though they bought fish and vegetables locally at Tung Chung. There were military boats at Ma Wan Chung [where the main stream empties into the sea], about 7 or 8 of them of different kinds, but they were not under the command of the Tung Chung officer and came and went between such places as Canton [the provincial capital], Nam Tau [the district city], Shum Chun etc. The soldiers at the Fort had a big parade each year on the 1st day of the seventh moon. It was held on the level ground beside the Hau Wong temple (1) near the beach. Inspecting officers came from Nam Tau, Shum Chun and Canton, I think. There was much drumming and noise on that day, and the troops paraded with all their weapons. The soldiers had uniforms of all sorts, and many kinds of weapons too, but there was no uniformity of clothing or equipment. The soldiers were generally well-behaved and gave no trouble to us local people, though they did not have much to do as they didn't cultivate any fields, inside or outside the Fort. They did not ask for money, but kept watch. There was a guard station at Ma Wan Chung, though there were rarely soldiers in it. There were lots of robbers and pirates in this area when I was young. They came from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 A BRITISH WARTIME CHART SHOWING HONG KONG 131 The name "Iron River" given to the present-day Hebe Haven may be related to the fact that Ma On Shan to the north has iron-ore (Magnetite) deposits on its south western side. It would seem to indicate that the deposits were known in the eighteenth century, if not worked. Mers (Mirs) Bay is shown as being very small. A number of soundings near the entrance indicate the visit of a ship, so the error in its size and shape would seem to be yet another indication of poor visibility causing errors in observation. Suggested Identification of Place Names (Alphabetical Order) Botoe Is. East Brother (Siu Mo To) Cape Lintin and Bay South West Point and Deep Bay Castle Land Nam Tau Peninsula Chang Cheou Is. Cheung Chau Chin-falo Tsing Yi Island Co-chee Ma Wan Island Co-long Kowloon City False Hook Wong Chuk Kok (on Lamma Island) Fan-Chin-Cheou or He-ong-kong Hong Kong Furado or Poo Toy Po Toi Island (N.B. Fury Rocks, 1 Sea Mile to N.E. on modern charts) Hay-tae-man Bay Tai Shan Bay Ichou Chi Chau I of Gatto Shek Wu Chau Iron Point Fat Tau Point Keyzers Hook Fan Lau Point Lammon Lamma Island (Nam A Island) Lang Shitoe or Chato Id. Lafsami Lantoe or Magpyes Island Lantao Island Lantoe Bay Bay at Sham Tseng Lentua Lantao Island-Peninsula north of Cheung Chau Lintin Lintin Lon-ko Lung Kwu Chau ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 132 HENRY D. TALBOT Lo cheou-Lo Chau (Beaufort Island) = Mers Bay Mirs Bay Mew Is.-Mo Chau Nako chau-Papai (Nei Kwu Chau or Hei Ling Chau) Nine-pin-Ninepin Group Po-ke-long Point=Lei Yue Mun Point Psang-chau-Kau Yi Chau Ragged Island Steep Island Rat Island or Ling Ting-Ling Ting R. Povado or Iron River-Hebe Haven Sin-can-hien-Hsin-an Hsien (San On Yuen) or, rather, the district city of Hsin-an Singan Islands-Siu Chau and Tai Shan Shu-lap-ko Is.-Chek Lap Kok Island Sui-pak Siu Kau Yi Soko Cheou Is. the Soko Islands Song-kco Sung Kong Ta baco=Chung Chau Tat-hong Moon-Tathong Channel = Tay Pak Peng Chau Tay-pak-hoe Green Island (or perhaps the sea between Hong Kong and Lantao Islands) Tsa-cheou Is. =Sha Chau Tsan-Cheou-Kau Pei Chau (off Cape D'Aguilar) Tysa=Small island 1⁄2 mile south of East Brother Wang Laang-Waglan Island NOTES 1 Cf. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books (London, 1961) Vol. 100, Col. 222. The British Museum Catalogue of Printed Maps. Charts and Plans (London, 1967) Vol. 7, Col. 359, Morse, H. B. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834 (Oxford, 1926-29) Lists of Ships. 2 Cf. Bonacker, W. Kartenmacher Aller Lander und Zeiten (Stuttgart, Hiersemann, 1966) p. 200, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 155 not a general practice, it was probably due to the easiness of running before the wind that the ships could become such large hulks. Unfortunately, we do not know who built them. By the eighth century, the boats had become huge. "Ladders several tens of feet high had to be used to get on board." The trade was organised. Foreign captains had to be registered with the Office of Trading Ships, which inspected manifests and collected export and import duties. These captains had legal powers to deal with offending passengers when at sea. In 758, the Mohammedans had so much the upper hand in Canton that they yielded to the temptation of sacking and burning the city and making to sea with the loot. However, trade continued to flourish, the principal imports being, according to Soleyman, ivory, frankincense, ingots of copper, turtle shells, and rhinoceros horns (with which the Chinese used to make girdles), and the principal exports: silk and porcelain. The foreign ships also carried as passengers Chinese Buddhists visiting the holy places in Java and India. In the biographies of sixty pilgrims composed by I Ching,12 37 of them took the sea route to India. Some of these went from the Tonkin delta region, but the majority started from Canton or returned thither. The compass was still unknown in those days, and the first mention of its use for navigation in Chinese literature occurs at the beginning of the 12th century. V. T'UN MUN In the preceding sections, a picture has been given of the elements which made up the population of South China up to the end of the T'ang dynasty. We now come to our region — the peninsula South East of the Canton delta, and we must do our best to piece together such fragments of historical knowledge that we can find into a sequence which will indicate how its population developed and thrived. The first historical reference to any place in the region occurs in a list of itineraries from China to the Persian Gulf collected 11 Tang Kuo Shih Pu, by Li Chan. 12 義淨,大唐西行求法高僧傳 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 168 S. F. BALFOUR Emperor and his court were at a place called Ngai Shan in San Wui district. The army was gathered round him, waiting for news of Wen Tien-chiang's attack on Canton. But Wen Tien-chiang was defeated at Waichow and finally captured at Hai Fung. He was brought as a prisoner on a Mongol ship, from which he witnessed the final assault on the Emperor's army and fleet, which was conducted by the commander of the Mongol armies, Cheung Hung-fan. It is recorded that during the battle Wen T'ien-chiang received a message from the Mongol Emperor offering him a post in the government if he would change sides. In reply, he wrote a poem often quoted in books about our region since it mentions the Ling Ting Yeung or Desolate Sea between the islands of outer and inner Ling Ting in the Canton estuary. The poem may be freely translated as follows: "After many hardships I am come to a place where the stars foretell the doom of my arms. The waters toss my broken body like a tiny thread, the wind strikes at the wreck of my life. By the Sands of Huang Kung I tell my despair, in the waters of Ling Ting I sigh my desolation.23 Since life began nobody has escaped death, only honour has immortal record among men." This poem was sent in reply to the Yuan Emperor and Wen T'ien-chiang remained loyal to the Sung cause until his death which occurred in prison some years later. At the battle in the Canton estuary the Sung forces were finally dispersed. The last prime minister then took charge of the Emperor's person. Separating them from the army, whose treachery he feared, he led all the surviving members of the royal family to a place on the sea and exhorted them to commit suicide, saying that it was preferable to surrender. When the women had drowned themselves he walked into the sea with the boy Emperor on his shoulders. It remains to tell the legends which sprang up over the burial places of the Emperors. According to a story of the Yuan dynasty, one of the Mongol soldiers found a garment floating in the sea 23 惶恐灘頭說惶恐,零丁洋裏歎零丁。 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 96 CARL T. SMITH Wong Shing, newspaper editor and manager of the London Mission press; and Cheung Achew, a wealthy carpenter.29 The Rev. Ho Fuk Tong and his family lived at the nearby compound of the London Mission Society. In time this area around Peel, Graham, Gage Streets and Hollywood Road became a centre for Parsee and Indian merchants, as well as European brothels. Some of the old families stayed on, but the opening up of the area bounded by Wyndham, Wellington and Pottinger Streets by the Dents provided a needed location for the houses of the better Chinese. After the Peak was developed in the 1870s and 1880s, the wealthy Chinese moved up to Mid-levels occupying the mansions of the Europeans who moved to the Peak. Of the individuals who had their family residence in the former Middle Bazaar area were two who were on the organizing committee of Tung Wah Hospital, Wong Shing and Ho Asek alias Ho Fai Yin #alias Ho In Kee. Ho Asek first appears in Hong Kong records in 1849 when he purchased a lot in Tai Ping Shan. At the time he was compradore of the opium firm of Lyall, Still and Company. It failed in 1867 and Ho Asek embarked upon his own business ventures under the firm name of Kin Nam. According to a newspaper account, he was subject to a $2,000 “squeeze” from the mandarins during the second Sino-British War.30 He traded extensively in opium as well as rice, and in 1871 held the gambling monopoly from which within a year he realized a $28,000 profit. In an action brought against him in 1871, he testified that he operated with a capital of $200,000.31 In 1868 two of his employees were brought before the court on a charge of extortion. In the evidence presented it was stated that about September 1866, some influential Chinese started a system of subscription or unofficial taxation to support district watchmen. The city had been divided into two sections, East and West. The West District was superintended by Tam Achoy and Ho Asek, "a most respectable and honest trader”. A shopkeeper resisted the pressure put upon him to contribute and brought the charge of extortion against two of Asek's employees who had been collecting for the scheme. The court gave judgment in favour of the defendants.32 Ho Asek was still a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872. He died in Pang Po (likely Ping Po+), Shun Tak District in 1877. His wife was granted letters of administration on his estate, but she being blind, gave her power ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r PERSIANS, ARABS IN T'ANG CHINA 63 century. The Persians and Arabs, apart from importing foreign goods to China, also became the middlemen of the maritime trade between China and the rest of the world.23 T'ang China realized that certain steps should be taken to govern this trade and the commercial activities of foreigners. The office of the Shih-po-ssu was first established in Canton in A.D. 714. The governor of Kuang-chou concurrently acted as head of this office. The duty of the office was to levy taxes on imported goods. The office also had regulations dealing with exported goods. According to T'ang law, a number of items were prohibited to be exported, like silver, copper, iron and T'ang currency. Naturally some of the governors in Kuang-chou were greedy, dishonest and corrupt. As a result of this, relations between Canton officials and foreigners were not always amiable. The murder of the Kuang-chou governor, Lu Yüan-jui 路元叡 by the K'un-lun was the result of the evil-doings of these corrupt governors in Kuang-chou.24 Tzu-chih t'ung-chien records this incident as follows: + + the governor of Kuang-chou, Lu Yüan-jui, was killed by the K'un-lun. Yüan-jui was ignorant and weak; his officials were licentious and extortionate. When merchant vessels came, these officials appropriated (the goods for themselves) without stop; foreign merchants, therefore, complained to Yüan-jui. Yüan-jui wanted to punish (the foreign merchants) so he ordered them to be tied up. The group of foreigners were very angry. Then a K'un-lun came straight into the office with a sword hidden in his sleeves and killed Yüan-jui and more than ten other people around him before he escaped. No one dared to get close (to this man). He boarded a ship and entered the sea. The port-officials gave chase, but it was too late.25 Lu Yüan-jui's successor, Wang Fang-ching, was described as a reformer who held the post for several years without any exploitation (of the merchants).26 The opening of the Ta-yü Ling Pass by Chang Ch'iu-ling in A.D. 728 together with a period of comparative honesty and good administration in Kuang-chou, rendered maritime trade again very prosperous. Communications between Kuang-chou, Lo-yang and Ch'ang-an were no longer a problem, for: The (merchants of the) various countries from across the sea may now daily transport their merchandise, so that the wealth ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 124 JAMES HAYES Local people were placed in a difficult position when pirates or, in periods when China was at war with Britain and her allies, imperial war junks occupied their anchorages. At least two such instances occurred in the 1850s. In February 1857 two British vessels attacked war junks at the Chinese naval anchorage of Tung Chung on Lantau where there was also a fort and permanent garrison. The local population which had probably taken no part in the fighting had to make its peace with the squadron the day after it had burned the junks and dismantled some of the batteries on shore. An offering of two bullocks and some pigs, was sent with a letter from the elders begging the commander to spare their settlement.1 The same thing happened at Tai O, also on Lantau, in November 1854, when an expedition was sent to deal with pirate junks that had fired on the chartered steamer Queen, an American naval vessel. After shelling and an attack by the boats of the squadron, the pirate junks and storehouses were destroyed. An American naval officer, Lieutenant G. H. Preble, captured a pirate flag, inscribed with characters which, he wrote, 'state it is the flag of Lue-ming-suy-ming of the Hong Shing-tong Company, Chief of the Sea Squadron, and that he takes from the rich and not from the poor, and his flag can fly anywhere'. Local people did not see him in quite this light, for Preble records that ‘no sooner had we destroyed the piratical vessels, than a large fleet of fishing junks came into the Bay rejoicing and anchored'. These persons had to drive off a pirate attempt to take and make off in their boats during the night. The next morning a deputation of the chief men of the village came on board his steamer 'with a present of chickens, pork, fish, etc.'2 In this period, as at an earlier time, villagers took what measures they could to protect themselves from such villains. In the larger places like Cheung Chau, it was apparently possible for local people to prevent their being taken over by pirates as had happened at Tai O. As I have described in another place, their leaders established a Security Bureau in the early 1850s and repaired it when trouble again threatened some years later. In the villages 1 Illustrated London News, 9th and 16th May 1857, pp. 463, 473-474. 2 Szczesniak, pp. 262-266. Another account of this expedition is given in Tronson, pp. 61-62. He calls the place 'Tyhoo', and Preble, 'Tyho'. 3 Hayes 1963. Cheung Chau itself had previously been thought to harbour pirates; see CO129/6, No. 26 of 21 June 1844, in PRO London. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 142 K. M. A. BARNETT O.S. S.S. 6 chun 圳圳畎: zeon 7 chung 涌 chunq1 8 fan 填 frann 9 ha 下吓 xraa6 厦 xraar 10 hang 坑 xhaanq 11 hon 旱 xrorn 12 kan 簡 gaarn 13 kang 14 kau 潑 gaau1 Meaning or Remarks An irrigation channel. A stream, especially one from which the boat-people get water or up which they take boats. A grave-mound (i.e. not one of the usual graves cut from the hillside). Also read in names wan, wrann (110) and wang, wrang (111). Very common in place names, in most of which it cannot possibly mean 'below'. Sometimes seems to stand for hang (10). This is the usual word for a river in use by land dwellers. It includes the valley in which the river flows. See also lek (32). Land for dry cultivation is xrorndrei and hill-paddy xrornwroh but in names of villages and localities this word (like ghonn) is usually tabooed in some cases being replaced by the word tso (102) (early) which is written with one stroke less: 4. A bamboo water-pipe for irrigation. This is a Yao179 word. Mis-spelling of keng (19) A channel. Sometimes confused with au (2). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 198 NOTES AND QUERIES Dock Company for $150,000. In turn, the Company sold the property in 1883 to a Chinese consortium composed of three members of the Li Family and Chan Kun, with the proviso that the premises were not to be used as a dock or slip except for Chinese style ships. This was to prevent Chinese competition to their Dockyards at Hung Hom and Aberdeen. In time other industries were developed on the site: a soy factory, and a lard manufactury, and godowns were built along the Praya. The Li family of Tsat Po Heung, San Wui District, had established its interests in Hong Kong as early as 1854, and under the astute leadership of Li Sing it had become probably the wealthiest family in Hong Kong by the turn of century. Shortly before the death of Li Sing in 1900, he divided his extensive real estate holdings among his eight sons. Marine Lot 239 was included in the share of Li Po Lung (***), also known as Li Wai Tong (*). He sold out most of his interests in the property in 1921. ** In 1918 new Crown Leases were granted to Li Po Lung in lieu of the original lease of 1873. The upper part of the original lot was then set off as an Inland Lot numbered 1355. The top left-hand corner of the Lot (as seen when standing on the seafront facing the hillside) had some years previous been given to the Contractor's Guild to build the 'Lo Pan' Temple, and a path led up to it bearing the name of Li Po Lung. The hillside was terraced for building sites. The first row was known as Li Po Lung Terrace, situated between Belcher Street and the present Tai Pak Terrace. Ching Lin Terrace upon which the Temple is located was formerly known as Li Sing Kui Road and To Li Terrace was formerly Tam Woon Tong Road. 44 Li Sing Kiu, Tam Woon Tong, Look Poong Shan, Li Tsz Chung and Chung Sek Fan had purchased the site of the Temple along with other land from Li Po Lung in 1921. They, in turn, in 1923, sold the Temple site as Section E of Inland Lot 1355 for a sum of $4,222.40 to Lam Lau, Lam Sheung, Yu Cheuk, Ng Wah and Ng Tsz Mei, representatives of the Temple, though the conveyance stated they were tenants in common in equal shares rather than Trustees. 44 Due to difficulties over payment of the Crown Rent for Inland Lot 1355, the Government re-entered the lot in 1926 in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 314 NOTES AND QUERIES the plaque with its inscription there was a pavilion [inside the City] with the title of "Spare the Waste-Paper Pavilion" (*) built through his financial contributions, with the object of advising the people to save the used paper and then try to make the most use of it.* The Pavilion was originally built at the East Gate of the Walled City, but now it is almost demolished with the ruins of only 2 walls left, one at the back, the other on the left. In meditating over the past one can hardly refrain from sighing and grief whenever we come across such valuable things in connection with the General, General Cheung's ability is two-fold—civil as well as military administration. In spite of being a military officer he was well-versed in letters, and talented in the composition of verses and Chinese calligraphy. He was not only skilful at handling brushes but also acquired the technique and skill in applying his fist and fingers to writing. The method he adopted for fist-writing is to wrap his fist with moistened cotton. On the four walls of the Spare Paper Pavilion there used to be his fist and finger calligraphy, but unfortunately all these valuable things have disappeared. The only remaining fist-writing by him is the sole big Chinese character of (literally means longevity) which still exists in the Hau Wong Temple at the wall exposed to the open air. In addition there is another wooden plaque, about 10 feet in width, on the inscription of which are two big Chinese characters" (literally "the mirror of the sea") which appears inside the Ma Kok Temple ( * M) in Macau. Among the General's literary works, there are two books written by him; one being Poems Composed at Leisure (2 volumes); the other being Journal at Leisure (1 volume).† From this, we may say that General Cheung is a scholarly general. ANOTHER ACCOUNT (translated from p. 96 of the same Journal, again by Francis Sham). Cheung Yuk-tong (†), alias Hon-sang (±), was born in Wai Yeung District () until the early Republic known as Kwei Sin district (歸善縣) Actually to prevent written papers, which were held in respect because of the Chinese characters on them, from being trampled under foot or otherwise disregarded. ↑工餘日记,and 工餘開詠,Regrettably not available in Hong Kong libraries. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q In Tibet Kidling Chength ZE – CHUAN Min Sulfu 1 NAUTICAL MILES 50 WANHSIEN 100 150 "wanting Wind box Gorge B.B Dasually. Fam (Rapid) |chaug sh CHUNG KING TOP RIVER. 105* t K WEI CHAU F 1 Note: CHANG 1 T 1 HU - P ICHANG $7 Shast gl HANKOW 18t2 Yoshow 1896! Tungling LAKE ANHUI -Maturg Bluff. TRIANG POYANG LAKE I Hu- NAN F CHANGSHA 17H KIA Siantan WPPER RIVER 1 Кал Nanchang SI MIDDLE RIVER. YANGTZE RIVER LOWER RIVER Kiangsu CANAL 122 35 YELLOW SEA 1899/NANKING •Chanklang isiz WUHU 1877 TAI Hu Soochun | SHANGHA Hangchun 1897 181 30 NINGPO CHEH XIANG 120* 115* This and the other sketch-map/chart overleaf supplied by Mr. A. D. Blue and original sources are gratefully acknowledged EASTERN SEA ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CHEUNG CHOW – LONG ISLAND W. J. HINTON, M.A.* The island we are to describe is not the Long Island of New York society but another Long Island altogether, in the latitude of Havannah, and in the South China Sea called Dumb-bell Island in Hongkong, it is Cheung Chow to some eight thousand souls, three thousand ashore and five thousand afloat, who live there, or thereabouts on the fishing grounds. The little community is small enough to be understood by sympathetic observer, and interesting enough to merit description in some detail. So in the hope that some better qualified observer will be provoked to come forward and take up the tale, we will attempt a description. As to geography: the place lies in that archipelago which stretches across the mouth of the Canton River between Hongkong and the four hundred year old settlement of Macao. The River boats which ply between those towns pass by it disdainfully, or perhaps the police fear that if they touched there the problem of smuggling, already formidable would become altogether unmanageable. For they seem to be inveterate smugglers, these Cheung Chow fishermen like fishermen elsewhere. Cheung Chow is quite close to Hongkong, about one hour's steaming by launch, and on clear days the sails of its anchored junks are visible over the low spit of sand which forms the handle of the "dumb-bell" from Cheung Chow and Hongkong is a glorious sight, by day a long line of high ridges above which the clouds tower and at night a dim mass on which the mountain roads prick out white festoons and necklaces of light, still and shining above the winking beacon of Green Island. Across that dozen miles of sea a small ferryboat like a slow shuttle carries a slender thread of communication six times in the day. The Police can talk by wireless with their waiting launches in Hongkong, and for the unhurried there are the junks and sampans. This article is reprinted from the Hongkong University Journal of Law and Commerce, Vol. II, April 1929, No. 1. It was brought to the Editor's attention by Dr. Peter Wesley-Smith. * The author served the University of Hong Kong first as Registrar 1912-13, then as Professor of Economics and thrice as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, until his resignation to take up a post in England in 1929 ---- Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CHEUNG CHOW -LONG ISLAND 131 Junks are the reason for Cheung Chow which only exists to take over their cargoes of fish, salt, or hides, and to supply them in return with all that junks need, ship chandlery and stores, gear of all sorts, and certain amusements for the fisherman, some of them innocent and some not. It stands between Hongkong with its population of some 600,000 persons clamorous for food, and the fishing fleet which cannot afford to lose time beating about in narrow and often becalmed waters under high hills. At Cheung Chow the wind is almost always blowing, but the deeply indented bay and the sheltering spit between the hills give shelter. The junks can run in, unload their catch, revictual or refit, and stand out to sea in any wind, with no delay. The steam ferry carries their fish to the waiting markets for them. But the islanders have a second string to their bow for the presence of the ferry has made it worth while to grow vegetables for the same market, and the little glens of the island are terraced to the limit to provide vegetables to the inhabitants and a surplus for that export. Subsidiary trades have grown up from the same root, if fish can be called a root; fish must be salted and dried, so there is a great trade in salt, though most of the salt which comes into Cheung Chow is not rubbed into the fish there but is re-exported to China. When we have pictured the little land to ourselves, described its climate, the races and tribes of its inhabitants, we will wander along the busy main street, and so take ship and depart from this little place so like some ancient Greek kingdom set in the wine-dark sea smelling of fish, overrun with pigs. Later we will return to see the Moon-cake festival, and after that let someone more capable take up the tale. The Little Land and City Cheung Chow is shaped as the photograph shows.* It would seem that one of the very numerous saddle-shaped ridges in which Hongkong abounds has sunk here so that the ridge between the two peaks makes a long double beach, only one hundred yards wide at its narrowest. On the Western Side the bay is large and partly sheltered by other islands, but on the Eastern it is open to the sea, and the N. E. Monsoon pours aslant into that bay, and rages against its headlands. So the town turns its back to the * Not reprinted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH 155 crews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. One of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. As I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap * Public Works Department. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 156 W. SCHOFIELD on the ridge.* Further afield, on the Hang Hau peninsula, is the paved road referred to above, which runs as far as Ha Yeung: and on Nam Tong, commanding the strait, is the robbers' stronghold with its gun platform. Porcelain near its gate looked fairly modern, from what I remember. Remains of a similar kind can be found on the other islands of the Southern District. Just above the village of Shek Sun at the west end of Lantau stands a Dutch fort built about 1610, rectangular in plan. A few cannon balls and other relics have been found in it, but it is very overgrown and needs clearing if any research is to be done there, or sightseers enabled to visit it. The old fort and cannon protecting the small yamen were repaired when E. W. Hamilton was D.O., I think between 1927 and 1929: I remember that one room in the yamen was inscribed shu shat (library). Another relic of old coast defences, close to Tai O, is the old Chinese guard station already referred to, outside Po Chu Tam creek, and quite ruined. On the south coast, near Shek Pik, a very ancient rock carving on a cliff was found quite recently. In the outlying islands are three interesting structures: one is on the North Soko island, where in a small valley on its south coast are two converging lines of megaliths. The other two are on Sha Chau, one a stone burial chamber on the south isthmus in the form of a 'kistvaen,' the other a ruined guard station on the flat area northwards of the chamber, with an earthwork protecting the landing place to eastward. No doubt there are many other places of interest, especially temples and their contents: one of the finest is the Pak Tai temple in Cheung Chau, with its coloured relief showing the local ferry boat nearing the pier in Hong Kong harbour. Lastly, there is one place of much interest with which I had to deal in 1917 or 1918. The Tang grave at Hau Tei, beside Tsun Wan, made in the Sung dynasty, was naturally affected by the new Castle Peak motor road and a projected reclamation of the shallow sea area beyond it. The Tang elders come to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, where I was 2nd A.S.C.A.,† and partly I think on my suggestion the hill of the grave was made into a public park, so as to preserve its surroundings and outlook. The grateful elders presented me with a 'fung shui' map of the grave site for my efforts on their behalf; and the good influence of their virtuous ancestor continues to augment the prosperity of their descendants, and of Hong Kong generally, if there is anything in 'fung shui'! * See Mr. Schofield's note in JHKBRAS 9 (1969): 154-156. † Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 168 NOTES AND QUERIES ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VISIT TO TAI MO SHAN, 3RD APRIL 1976 HISTORICAL AND GENERAL NOTE 1. Tai Mo Shan is 3,140 feet (957 metres) in height, the highest mountain in Hong Kong territory. 2. It is a curiously unimpressive mountain at close quarters. Viewed from Tsuen Wan, the former small market town at its foot on the southern side, the visitor could be forgiven for not noticing the mountain at all. It is, from there, only part of a large hilly area that arises quickly from sea level and extends in all directions, with occasional higher points of which the Tai Mo Shan summit is only one, in no way outstanding or separating itself from its neighbours. 3. From a distance, however, the true splendour of its peak and general mass is revealed. A visitor looking north from Magazine Gap or Wong Nei Chong Gap on Hong Kong Island, some 10-12 miles distant, cannot fail to notice, to the north, the bulk and height of the mountain, overtopping all around. The Lion Rock range of hills behind Kowloon Peninsula, closer to the viewer and usually so impressive from low ground, then appears in its true and diminished scale. 4. Mountains figure prominently in Chinese historical geography. There is, in every district, prefectural, provincial or general gazetteer, a section devoted to Shan-chuen - 'Hills and Streams'. As befits its size, Tai Mo Shan always receives a notice in the local works. The earliest mention I can find so far is in the 1688 edition of the Sun On District Gazetteer. This is repeated with much the same text in the 1819 and last edition, and in the 1822 and 1879 editions of the provincial and prefectural gazetteers respectively. The 1688 notice may be translated as follows: Tai Mo Shan is 50 Chinese miles east of the District City. It has the shape of a big hat. It extends south and west from Ng Tung Mountain. Its peak measures 2,000 Chinese feet. It is a big mountain in the Fifth Division, with a stone pagoda and many tea plantations. 5. So far as I know, there never has been a separate gazetteer of Tai Mo Shan such as has been provided for the more famous mountains of the Province; e.g. the White Cloud Mountains near Canton or ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895 59 Ibid. (Wang), 8. 37 60 Ibid. Wang notes that branch schools of the Tientsin Military Academy were established at Shan-hai-kuan and Wei-hai-wei. 61 Ibid., citing LWCK, Memorials, 74: 25. 62 Ibid., 8-9. 63 Ibid., 7. On Li's financial difficulties, consult Wang, Hual-chin, 275-290; Spector, chapter 7. 64 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang," 9-12. The major problems, according to Wang, were: (1) The administrators of the academy were not well suited to their tasks (non-specialists); (2) the foreign instructors were arrogant, overpaid, unappreciative, and remiss in their teaching responsibilities; (3) heavy reliance on interpreters was inefficient and confusing; and (4) both academic and practical training tended to degenerate into formalism. Other problems included capricious grading, reports of cheating, and shortages and lack of standardization in equipment. For problems in China's other military and naval schools, consult Ayers, 108-113, 179-180, and John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), passim. 65 Rawlinson, 163, 169; Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression (Tucson, 1965), 140-141; NCH, September 21, 1894. 66 For a summary of the fighting on land and sea, consult Liu and Smith, "The Military Challenge." ** 67 See, for example, E. Bujac, Précis de quelques campagnes contemporaines (Paris, 1896), vol. 2; N.W.H. Du Boulay, An Epitome of the China-Japanese War, 1894-95 (London, 1896); Lieutenant Sauvage, La guerre Sino-Japonaise 1894-1895 (Paris, 1897); Richard Wallach, "The War in the East," Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, 21, 4 (1895); T. A. Brassey, ed., The Naval Annual (Portsmouth, 1895); Vladimir (pseudonym for Zenone Volpicelli), The China-Japan War (London, 1896). 68 On the Japanese response to the war, see Donald Keene, "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan," in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971); also Jeffery Dorwart, The Pigtail War: American Involvement in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (Amherst, Mass., 1975), 94-96. 69 Professor Samuel Chu of Ohio State University is currently studying the Chinese response to the war, and has produced several illuminating but as yet unpublished papers on the subject. For the time being, the best available discussion of Chinese attitudes is Kuo Sung-p'ing, "The Chinese Reaction to Foreign Encroachment" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1953). 70 See Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's critique, cited in Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 111; consult also Kuo, 49-50, 81-83, etc. 71 Cited in Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China 1840-1928, translated and edited by S. Y. Teng and Jeremy Ingalls (Princeton, Toronto, London and New York, 1956). See also Japanese Imperial General Staff, eds., History of the War between Japan and China (Tokyo, 1904), 1; 30-32. 72 Rawlinson, 190. 73 Liu Feng-han, "Chia-wu chan-cheng shuang-fang ping-li ti fen-hsi," Chung-kuo i-chou, 829 (March 14, 1966) and 830 (March 21, 1966); CJCC, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 198 NOTES AND QUERIES * The evacuation of the South-east coast of China was carried out from the 1st year to the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1662-1668). It was because of the disturbances of pirates and the followers of Koxinga (Cheng Shing-kung) along the coasts of Kwangtung and Fukien. The disturbances were so large that the Ch'ing Army could not stop them. The government evacuated fifty li from the coast. The lands were abandoned in order that the pirates and the followers of Koxinga could not obtain supplies from them. (see my article: "The Chow Wang Yi Kung Chi of Kam Tin", published in the Wah Kiu Man Fa of Wah Kiu Yat Po for 13th September 1976 綿田之周王二公祠,原载1976年9月13日華僑日報文化版) + * In the O Mun Kei Leuk ME 1800 edition, it was recorded, "During the 7th year of Yung Cheng reign, there were forts erected on the two hills. This strengthened the guards of the Tai Yue Shan Shuen”. The Tai Yue Shan Shuen was probably at the place of Tai O today. The forts on the "two hills" are most likely to be the Kai Yik Fort on its south-west and Tung Chung Fort on its east. This shows that the Fan Lau Fort was probably rebuilt and refortified in the 7th year of the Yung Ching reign. 19 See my article: "A Short History of the Pirates of Hong Kong before 1842", published in Volume 8, No. 4 of the Kwong Tung Man Hin 廣東文献(1979). 11 see Chapter 13 of San On Yuen Chi Chapter 81 of Kwong Chow Fu Chi A **** 1819 edition and 1879 edition. 12 Chapter 12 of San On Yuen Chi (1819) stated, "During the K'ang Hsi reign, it was because of robbery and piracy along the south-east coast that the Ch'ing government evacuated the coastal regions. Later, with the surrender of the pirates, the Ch'ing government extended the coastal boundary. More forts and guard-stations were set up. Those of outstanding importance were the Kai Yik Fort on Lantau Island, the Nam Tau Fort, and the Chik Wan Fort." The book was written in 1819, and the famous pirate Cheung Po-tsai had surrendered in 1810. This shows that the fort was again under the control of the Ch'ing government after 1810. 14 1a Chapter 130 of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi 4 1822 edition recorded, "Tai U Shan, an island which lay in the midst of the sea, was a place where foreign ships anchored. There were only two inlets for the anchoring of these ships: they were at Tai O and Tung Chung. At that time, Tai O was guarded by a garrison of thirteen men. There was already the Kai Yik Fort under a Tsin Tsung (lieutenant) of the Tai Pang Battalion." The book was published in 1822. This proves that before 1822, there was the Kai Yik Fort guarding the south-west tip of Lantau Island. 14 see Armando M. De Silva's article, op. cit. 15 also called Tung Chung Hau in the past. 10 To the south-east of the valley is the Sunset Peak (Tai Tung Shan 大東山); the Lantau Peak (Fung Wang Shan 凤凰山) lies to the south-west. 17 Sheung Ling Pei Village is one of the largest villages in the Tung Chung Valley. It is situated to the east of the Tung Chung Walled City. 18 Ha Ling Pei Village, an adjacent village to Sheung Ling Pei Village, is situated to the west of the Tung Chung Walled City. 19 See my article: "Distribution of Forts and Guard-stations on Lantau Island during the Late Ch'ing period", JHKBRAS vol. 18: 1978. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 204 DAVID FAURE hsü 12 (1886). In the Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple, the lintel is dated Kuang-hsü 15 (1889), and the altar Kuang-hsü 20 (1894); and in the Hang Hau T'in Hau Temple (besides the 1840 bell), the lintel is dated Kuang-hsü 1 (1875), a tablet Kuang-hsü 2 (1876), an altar is of the same year, a wooden board of Kuang-hsü 4 (1878), a shrine of Kuang-hsü 10 (1884), a pair of stone lions of Kuang-hsü 13 (1887), and a pair of incense burners of Kuang-hsü 20 (1894). The bell and the incense burner at the Tin Ha Wan T'in Hau Temple are both undated, but Mr. Ip Ch'un, who lived nearby, told us that the temple was already in disrepair over fifty years ago. Historical inscriptions found in Sai Kung and elsewhere in Hong Kong and the New Territories have been transcribed as a special project and may be found in David Faure, Alice Ng, and Bernard Luk, "A collection of historical inscriptions in Hong Kong". The report is available in the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and will, it is hoped, be published shortly. 7 Mr. Hoh Taai of Ko Tong, aged over 60, knew of the whereabouts of a charcoal burner, but never saw it in operation (Int. 10.6.81). Lime kilns were reported in Wong Yi Chau, Wong Keng Tei, Tai Mong Tsai Tso Wo Hang, Tai Wan, Kiu Tsui, Sha Ha, Pak Sha Wan, Che Keng Tuk, Ta Ho Tun, Tai Tan, and Yau Yu Wan (Ints. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, 22.5.81, Mr. Wong Yung Ts'ing 20.5.81, Mr. Tang Kei Faat 25.6.81, Mr. Lei Yau 28.6.81, Mr. Wong Ping Lin 29.6.81, Madam Liu 20.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81, Mr. Tse Wing 9.6.81, Mr. Tse Shui Kam 24.6.81, Madam Lo Koon Mooi 21.6.81, Mrs. Hoh née Lei 28.6.81, Mr. Chung 23.7.81, and Madam Lam Yau Ch'un 19.8.81.) The Liu family at Kiu Tsui built the ancestral hall that can be seen today on the main road into Sai Kung Market. For an impression of the long history of lime making in Sai Kung, it should be noted that Madam Lo Koon Mooi was 85 and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 87 in 1981, and it was their fathers who were engaged in the lime business. Mr. Yau continued working the kilns until his early 40's. Brick kilns were reported in Chek Keng and Pak Tam Chung (Ints. Mr. Chiu Sz 7.5.81 and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, 22.5.81). The lime industry, of course, also provided income for fishermen who collected coral for the kilns. See "Return of the approximate number of fishermen employed in taking coral and shell from the sea adjoining the New Territory", in Hong Kong Legislative Council, Sessional Papers, 1901, p. 685. "The best indication of the growing importance of the trade in pigs is a set of account books that belonged to Mr. Yung Sz Ch'iu of Pak Sha O, a photocopy of which is held by the Oral History Project. See also ints. Mr. Chan Tsz K'eung 28.5.81 and Mr. Hoh King 5.6.81. • There are many instances of seamen recruited by recruitment firms (haang shuen koon); see, eg. Mr. Chiu Sz (Int. 7.5.81). Remittance from abroad was sent back to the village through import-export houses (kam shan tsong), see Mr. Yau T'aai Hong (Int. 11.8.81). 10 Mr. Cheung T'o's grandfather was a cook on Hong Kong Island, and his father was employed on the Kowloon-Canton Railway. Mr. Cheung, of Ho Chung, was c. 70 in 1981 (Int. 15.6.81). Mr. Tsang Yau of Tai Mong Tsai (age unknown, but who married before World War II) worked in a shop started by his father in Shaukiwan on Hong Kong Island (Int. 23.6.81). 11 Ints. Mr. Cheng Chung Ting 21.5.81, Mr. Chan P'aang Hing 29.5.81, Mr. Chan T'aai 22.7.81; Bernard Williams, "Visit to Ho Chung and Sheung Yeung villages in the Sai Kung area”, in Marjorie Topley, ed. Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Hong Kong, 1965, pp. 46-47, and "The Chan family of Tseung Kwan O", JHKBRAS 7 (1967), pp. 158-160. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 7 A shrine and two Chaozhou squatter temples on a hillside at Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island were removed during 1979 to permit road widening and the building of new housing estates. Temples, seemingly built to last forever, also disappear. A long destroyed and unidentified Cantonese traditional temple depicted in an old photograph in a published collection of photographs of old Hong Kong, may well be the temple which used to stand in Wong Nei Chong village approximately in the area of the present day King Kwong Street.13 The population explosion in Hong Kong has surrounded on all sides some of the originally relatively isolated temples by high-rise blocks of flats. Some recently opened temples have even been established in shop houses, in ordinary flats in the high-rise blocks, and in flats and huts in resettlement areas.14 Geomantically such accommodation may be adequate for their purpose, but for ideal conditions the exact orientation of all temple buildings should be determined by geomancy and the feng shui expert's calculations. Traditional temples are often on the best feng shui sites in the vicinity. According to Chinese laymen, temples should, as far as possible, face south. This south-facing orientation would mean that the main god or gods on the altar would also face the "geomantic South" which approximates to due south, and thus places the auspicious Yang on the east, and Yin on the west. However, even a casual examination of the temples in both Hong Kong and Macau shows that they can and do face in all directions. The two immediately obvious criteria in the siting of traditional temples, as can be seen from any large-scale map, are that either they back onto a hill (presumably having a powerful and beneficial geomantic influence), or face the sea. Many, of course, do both. Temples and monasteries are open from around 8 am to 8 pm, the exception being for those individuals whose need is great, and they may call at a monastery at any hour. Buddhist temples There are some one hundred and thirty-five Buddhist temples or monasteries in Hong Kong built or funded by individual monks or nuns, or by individual devotees or groups. In addition to Buddhist temples, there are organizations and services in Hong Kong which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 14 interfered, and had the fence removed, to the detriment, we think, of the villagers, who had they hereafter been ousted from their homesteads, would have been glad, as the amount of compensation uniformly adjudged to the aborigines, has far exceeded their expectation". (Friend of China, 25 May 1843) The bay of Tung Lo Wan where the village of So Kon Po was located became the centre for the salt trade. Early Government-financed improvements in the area included a road from Wong Nei Chung to So Kon Po built in 1845 at a cost of $2,000, and a sea wall under three contractors employing some six thousand men (C.O.129-11 No.73). In 1844 an order was issued forbidding the cultivation of rice in the Wong Nei Chung and So Kon Po valleys. It was thought the miasmic vapours arising from the paddy fields made the area unhealthy. The cultivated land of the Wong Nei Chung valley was seventy-five acres and of So Kon Po thirty-seven acres. Following this prohibition of rice growing, the land was purchased by the Government from its Chinese owners. The area was drained, and health improved. The Governor, in a report submitted to the Colonial Office dated 10 March 1845, said he was contemplating letting the So Kon Po valley to Chinese for market gardening (C.O.129-11, No.28). An advertisement in the Hong Kong Register dated 16 July, 1846 indicates that the introduction of the new crops to the valley took place very shortly afterwards: "Farm to let the Hinton Farm, district of Su-kun-pu, comprising about 30 acres, six and upwards of which are of the best arable land. Possession can be given immediately on removal of present Crops, consisting principally of Flax and Vegetables. Apply to the Proprietor at the Land Office, Mr. Tarrant." 52 At the time William Tarrant was clerk in the Land Registry Office. After purchase from the Chinese, the valley was laid out into five Farm Lots. These were sold at a Land Sale on 1 July 1846 on twenty-one year leases. The purchasers were George Duddell, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 102 The first valley is that of Shek Pik ("Rock Wall"). This lies right under the steep south-west face of Lantau Peak. The main village stands at some distance from a creek with a big sandbar which makes a good harbour for small boats. To the east is a little hamlet, Tung Wan ("East Bay"), where a sandbar has silted across the mouth of a stream, making a marsh. A bay a little west of the creek faces the surf, and so has no landing and is in consequence deserted except for cultivation and pasture1a. Shui Hau and Tong Fuk ("Creek Mouth" and "Banked Happiness"), which form the second group of villages, have poor landing-places. They lie at one end of the long stretch of beach which extends to Pui O (“Cup Haven")14 which is the name of the third group of villages. The chief features of Pui O are its fine woods with their ancient trees: the very long sand-spit enclosing a lagoon where boats can lie: and the double storm beach, the second one to the rear being the older. There is an old brick or pottery kiln built on this beach. Passes go from Pui O to Mui Wo and Shap Long. Beyond Pui O to the southeast is a rugged granite peninsula; it only has one village of importance, Tai Long ("Great Waves"). This village has one very fine sand beach with another to the west, which, because it is much more exposed, has no village15. To the east of Tai Long are the wells from where the Cheung Chau waterboats get their water. On the north coast of this granite peninsula are bays and hamlets where sand junks used to dig sand. At its innermost point is Shap Long ("Ten Ridges", but this translation is particularly doubtful), a plain with a sandbank in front; the sea is so shallow sand junks cannot approach. A few years ago an epidemic of smallpox made the villagers think something was wrong with their abode, so they left the houses all standing and moved into huts further down the valley, on its northern side. The next point of interest on the Lantau coast is the Silver Mine Bay, a beautiful valley with a big sand beach in front, and with four villages, Mui Wo ("Plum Nook"), Tai Tei Tong ("Big Land Pond"), Luk Tei Tong ("Deer Land Pond"), and Pak Ngan ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 104 Before moving on to discuss the larger islands to the south-east of Lantau, it is worth just mentioning the small islands off Lantau. There are small islands both to the north and the south of the main island. The Islands north of Lantau are six in number. East Brother, Reef Island and West Brother; fishermen sometimes live there. Chek Lap Kok ("Red Sea-perch Point") is a barren island of low granite hills which lies in front of Tung Chung, sheltering its harbour. Big reefs of quartz run through it. Two formerly prosperous quarries on this island were ruined by the 1925 strike. Now there is only farming and fishing. Kwo Lo Wan is a ruined village on the southern isthmus: it is a common placename. Shau Chau ("Guard-station Isle") 18; has three dumb-bell isthmuses, two covered at high water, and a third, on which there is a settlement of early man. There is a deserted temple here. Tongkwu (“Brass Drum") 19 has the chief early settlement of men in this area. The objects found show very little Chinese influence. Later settlements in Sung and Ming times were at the northern end of the beach. The island is used now for fishing and pasturing cattle, and there is a lighthouse. It is a very good example of a dumb-bell island - a sandy isthmus connecting two hills. Urmston Roads, as the waters between Tongkwu and the mainland are known, was a frequent anchorage for foreign fleets in the 1839 and 1857 wars, despite a strong tidal flow. It was used by a French squadron in 1857, and one ship left a record of her presence by inscribing a stone at Castle Peak with "Nemesis 1857". We now pass south of Lantau. All this coast suffers from lack of harbours: only bays facing south-west are any good. There is always some swell; and it can be very violent sometimes. Taking the small islands to the south of Lantau, we have firstly the Soko Islands. There are eight islands in this group ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 116 In selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7 Ap Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival Ap Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than "two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 113 produce from the sea near the present Aberdeen Country Club. Some villagers operated stake nets lowered by windlass into the sea from a rocky headland, and others used lines catching fish like nai mang (鯺鏝) to make a sweet congee. The old lady's mother, born about 1860, planted hemp and made it into string used for tying and mending clothes until she was sixty years of age. The village people also grew a kind of rush (cheung po) (菖蒲) when she was young, using it as a charm to hang over their doorways, especially in the fifth moon, in the manner reported in old works on China.2 25 - The stake nets were an especially favoured form of fishing in local waters. One can see a few surviving sites round the southern coast of Hong Kong island to this day. In the Tangs' time as sub-soil owners see below they may have leased sites to local persons, as they were doing in the New Territories in 1899. It is also of interest that no less than 13 sites on the south side of Hong Kong island were leased out by another absentee landlord family of scholar gentry, the Wongs (王) of Nam Tau (南頭) and Cheung Chau, as shown in maps in their printed genealogy issued in the 1860s. People walked far to secure a livelihood in those days. One of the persons interviewed in the investigations into the murder of two British officers near Stanley in 1849, was a villager of Little Hong Kong who had a hut and operated a stakenet on the point where Stanley Fort now stands. 26 27 However, farming was the principal occupation. The Little Hong Kong fields can be seen on the Hong Kong Government's first survey sheet for the area, whilst the extent of the Wong Nai Chung fields can be gauged by the race course at Happy Valley which was built over them.28 Rice was favoured because there was a plentiful supply of stream water available that only required damming, leading and terracing, albeit by dint of hard labour, to provide fertile land that would support two crops of rice yearly. An account of harvest time in one of the Hong Kong villages appeared in one of the numbers of the Illustrated London News for 1858. "On the 1st of November (1857) I took a walk with a friend into the interior of Hong Kong and saw the process of rice-harvesting, beneath a bright, hot sun, the entire village popu- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 132 temples. JAMES HAYES The village temples of Hong Kong Island were the centre of community activities at more than a single village level, as elsewhere in South China. A letter from Collinson of 29th April 1845 refers to: "a great feast... celebrated in Chuck Chu [Stanley] for the last 3 days, which was nothing more or less than a fair in front of the principal Joss house."82 This "fair" was clearly celebrating the birthday of Tin Hau, which falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd moon, which in 1845 was 30th April. A temple fair to celebrate Tin Hau's birthday, still held on the land in front of the main Stanley temple, is still celebrated at that season each year. There can be no doubt, too, that the double festivities at Aberdeen, on the birthday of Tin Hau, and on that of Hung Shing (23rd of 3rd moon), on each of which celebrations the statue of the deity whose festival is not being celebrated is solemnly carried in procession to the other's temple “as a guest”, as a concrete demonstration of the local people's feeling that their prosperity and safety at sea depends on both deities, also date to before 1841. Temples required management committees, and it was usual for temple management committees to take on, as the Kaifong, the general oversight of the market towns or the community of villages in or near which they stood. The towns on Hong Kong island certainly had kaifongs. A couplet of 1820 in the Tin Hau temple at Stanley was given by the Chik-sze (managers)83 which certainly implies the existence of a management committee at that date. If the tradition that the Pak Tai temple was founded in 1803 by the Hoklo community of Stanley is correct, it is possible that the Kaifong was built around ethnic groups, as was almost certainly the case at that date in Cheung Chau, and which was common later. **Certainly the 1820 Chik-sze are typical of later kaifongs in that, of the eleven Chik-sze named, five certainly, and at least a further two in all probability, were names of commercial enterprises, showing dominance of the kaifong Temple Committee by the market shopkeepers. Equally typical was the likelihood that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 230 THE CHINESE “YUE LAN” GHOST FESTIVAL IN JAPAN: A KOBE CASE STUDY, AUG. 31 SEPT. 4, 1982* CHOI CHI CHEUNG Kobe is one of the three places in Japan where the Chinese hold a community-wide celebration for the "Yue Lan" festival.1 According to 1974 statistics, there were 8585 Chinese living in Hyogo prefecture of which Kobe is the capital. About 82% of them lived in Kobe.2 Although only 11% of the Chinese living in Hyogo are Hokkienese, yet the Hokkienese Association has been in charge of the festival since the end of the Second World War. The festival I am describing here took place at the Kobe Kwan-ti Temple (關帝廟). I. The Location The festival area can mainly be divided into four parts:3 1) The Tao-ch'ang (道場) area, where the priests performed most of the rituals (this used the building normally the offices of the Association). 2) The Ming-che (冥宅) area. (Min-taku in Japanese meaning House of the underworld) (this used the temple courtyard, with a temporary tented roof). 3) The Temple area. 4) The Association Hall and the Kitchen area(s). All rituals took place at these places except the Lantern Floating ritual which took place at the sea-shore half an hour's ride from the temple by mini-bus. In addition, there was a screen between the temple and the Tao-ch'ang where Chinese movies were shown for three nights. * Unless specifically stated, all explanations of the rituals during the festival are as given by the participants. See Plates 15-32. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 234 CHOI CHI CHEUNG of water (Kan Lu #), the chief priest passed the dish to the priest on his right-hand side, who then used a small pine leaf to sprinkle water as he walked through the festival area himself. (See routes 1 and 2 in the plan of the Festival Area at the Appendix to this article.) The participating worshippers regarded the former walking ritual as one to show respect to their 'Ancestors', and the latter one as a kind of offering and purification of the area. 13 The 'Reporting' ritual, which took place between entrance A and entrance C, started with the throwing of several Man Tau (Man-Juu in Japanese, a kind of bread) and ten-yen coins to those attending. It created a lot of excitement among those attending as well as the priests. Then the chief priest, who was standing on a table, read a Pang (a name list =, yellow in colour, which was burnt on the last night) of 165 names, and then a Shi-ma (a paper-made figure riding on a paper-made horse), the supposed messenger to Heaven, was burnt with paper money and incense sticks. The 'messenger' was to report to Heaven that this place was now holding a festival for (a) all the soldiers who died during the World Wars, (b) the Ancestors of all surnames, and (c) all wandering spirits. It was hoped that through this generous offering (Gong De), the worshippers could obtain family happiness and good luck. = 16 = 17 #3). At about 3 p.m. on Sept. 2, a bus took fifteen Hokkienese committee members (including 3 females, 1 boy, 2 youths in their 20s) and six priests to the Shumanoura beach, which is in Hyogo Prefecture. There, 21 lotus lanterns (Lien Dan, each with a burning candle inside) were sent out to sea. At the same time, two women put 60 sets of 3 small incense sticks and 2 sets of 3 middle-sized incense sticks into the sand, while the priests chanted facing the sea. After that, the committee members threw vegetarian food around the site. The whole ritual took fifteen minutes. The ritual, according to the Japanese priest, was to send off the ghosts and the ancestors, and some committee members said that it was to send off the orphan ghosts (Wu Zhi Gui 無杞鬼 = Muen butsu in Japanese, meaning ghosts which have no worshippers). During the night offerings, the chief priest first made some Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 115 differences between liners and seiners can be expressed in the following diagram, which contrasts their basically different patterns of daily movement (blue and red solid lines) and annual (festival) movement (broken lines) with their basically similar territoriality (solid black line).” Unfortunately, the diagram was never prepared. 33 Readers interested in Chinese junks from the marine architect's point of view are recommended to the several beautiful studies by Worcester listed in the Bibliography below. See also Stanley S.S. Yuan Fishing Junks, a paper presented to the Engineering Society of Hong Kong, Vol. IX, No. 2, January 1956, pp. 41-78 (and 78a-y), and Needham (1971) [Possibly G.R.G. Worcester, The Floating Population in China, an Illustrated Record of the Junkmen and Their Boats on Sea and River (Hong Kong reprint, 1970) and Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, 1954-)]. 34 Reference to Needham (and Yuan op. cit., p.53). [See n.33]. 35 Yuan: ibid. 36 Ref. Worcester and Needham et al. [See n.33]. 37 [A diagram showing the layout of the holds and deck space was to be provided at this point]. 38 [Not found in manuscript.] 39 [A note was planned at this point but not written.] 39 [Chapter 6?] 40 [An unfinished paragraph follows: "In 1970 I asked my friends in Kau Sai to make another count at the time of the festival, and to indicate which members of which boat families were now living ashore. The results, received by post, were as follows:") 41 [Term marked in manuscript, probably to be replaced in subsequent revision.] 42 [Not included in manuscript.] 43 [Manuscript includes this line in parentheses: "(etc. see annual report on this and include details)."] 44 [See p. 112.] 45 [Not included in manuscript.] 46 Particularly in Chapter 9 below. For economic aspects see also Chapter 8. [Unfortunately, neither chapter appears in the manuscript.] 47 Indeed, the boat itself and all the persons aboard were always (and solely) identified by reference to the master's (personal) name. Thus one heard of Wing Toh's boat, Fuk Hei's employee, Fung Shang's wife, Shing Chui's son, etc, etc. 48 Other terms used, usually more formally and in written contexts were shuen cheung (lit: boat exalted, boat leader) and shuen chu (lit: boat lord). Each of these also translates fairly well as "boat's master". (Cp. also uk cheung, uk chue (house leader, house lord, i.e. head of household); ghaah cheung (family leader, mandarin: chia chang); tsuen cheung (village leader) etc. 49 [Not found in The Census Report of 1961, K.M.A. Barnett, a long-time member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, was then Commissioner of Census.] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 116 BARBARA E. WARD 50 Two of these men were already married and with several children; each was master of a second boat in a purse-seine pair. The third, aged only 20, was the very recently bereaved son of a man who had died in an accident. This boy later took a paid job ashore in Sai Kung. The father of the fourth (aged 24) was still living with him on his junk. This case is described further in the text below. 51 [The manuscript at this point allows almost three blank pages after this phrase: "The data for 1970, compiled for me by". The blank pages are followed by this paragraph: "One major difference between the figures for 1953 and 1970 is the disappearance from the latter of the two-boat firm of purse-seiners. Concomitant with this, there has been a general diminution in the number of purse-seiners and some raising of the age of boats' mastership. We have already seen how it is linked also with mechanisation and the move ashore."] 52 For example, the 20-year-old master and his mother mentioned above, and the blind man with a sick wife and one ten-year-old son were both hand liners. 53 Cp. above Table 1. The discrepancy between the figures there and in Table 3 is due to the fact that the ages of the crews of 2 small liners were not recorded. Both housed nuclear families with father as master. 54 Barnett's hypothesis (above p. 101) was formed on the basis of the Census in 1960. If improved living standards among the Boat People date (as I believe they do) from the acceptance of mechanisation, they would only begin to become generally apparent from about that date onwards. 55 The economic arguments for and against division in such circumstances could be very evenly balanced. With mechanisation, it might well pay a group of brothers to stay together and convert to medium long-lining. See Chapters 8 and 9. For family division in general, see Chapter below. 56 So much so, and so well authenticated by magical signs, that it was difficult to find him a bride. See below Chapter 9. 57 Cp. D. above. [A table, similar to Table 4, probably intended.] 58 See my forthcoming study of the Boat People of Hong Kong. [Not written.] 59 Above, pp. [105-6]. 60 Above, pp. [96-7]. 61 The most poignant incident during my stay in Kau Sai concerned a young Sai Kung-based fisherman who left his wife and two tiny children on board their small junk while he went off in a sampan to set fish traps. On his return about an hour later, the junk was empty. Presumably the toddler had fallen overboard, and the distraught mother trying to reach him had toppled in herself, taking the baby, who was slung upon her back, with her. 62 m gon ching: this term can be used with either ritual or secular connotations. 63 Women were said to suffer more often from sea-sickness. 64 To staunch the flow, they used sheets of locally made absorbent paper (iso chi, lit: coarse paper; the adjective can have the same double meaning as in English). This was tucked between the legs and held in place by the close-fitting underpants which were worn by both sexes and sometimes also by a waist cord. The paper was cheap, easily available, bulky, uncomfortable, and almost impossible to dispose of privately at sea. Once convinced that, contrary to their... Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 33 save it from defilement, they often built incinerators to burn paper with words written on it. In 1859, the Commodore, Chang Yu-tang ski, erected a fine pavilion over an incinerator and old men were hired to gather abandoned paper for burning. On the plaque over the entrance were engraved the characters “Ching-hsi tzu-chih-ch'u”**(A pavilion for revering word-bearing paper) in Chang's calligraphy. Though a military man, Chang had pretensions to being a scholar and calligrapher, and his inscriptions found in the pavilion were reportedly much copied in the region.' 16 Up to 1898 there were no shops of any kind within the City.1 In fact, the word "ch’eng” is rather arbitrarily translated as "city", which to a modern person, immediately conjures up visions of shops and other commercial facilities. This is misleading since traditionally, a Chinese ch'eng was simply an area enclosed for defence, and where officials resided. However, a cluster of shops lined the street Kowloon Street — which stretched for about a quarter of a mile from the East Gate to the water front. This became an increasingly prosperous market town, serving not only the Walled City but more distant areas such as Saikung and Shatin. From a fairly early date, a kaifong (chieh-fang i.e. neighbourhood) association, which organized such public functions as health, safety and good order, had existed.ii By 1880, the Lok Sin Tong (Luo-shan-t'ang; lit. Hall of Willing Charity) was founded. Like many Chinese "charitable societies”, it exercised great social and economic influence, and its contribution was most strongly manifested in providing free education and free medicine in the area. 18 As trade grew in the area, a Kwangtung Provincial Customs station was set up in 1871 to prevent smuggling, especially opium from Hong Kong. In 1886, it was replaced by a Chinese Maritime Customs station.iii A pier, the Lung-chin jetty, completed in 1875 after two years of construction, extended some 700 ft. into the sea. As the beach silted up and the jetty became worse for wear, it was repaired in 1892 and extended for another 260 ft. with a subscription of $1,700 raised by more than a hundred shops and individuals, 20 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 94 associated with the organization after interviewing the surviving founders in the 1960's, and there is no reason to question its veracity. Where, then, did the old lady's account come from? First, it should be noted that few people who visit the temple are even aware of the name of the private organization which has managed the temple for the past 60 years (Chin, et al., 1977:29). Fewer still will have read the temple's history, written in Chinese in glossy brochures which are provided mainly to the members, government officials, and other dignitaries on ceremonial occasions. Hence, it is not surprising that details of the founding of the temple are not widely known even among devotees of the god. How then do worshippers account for the temple's origins? In this particular case, the informant appears to have adopted a miracle story which is not uncommon in the Hong Kong area: the recovery from the sea of a god's statue. The statue of Pak Tai in the temple of Cheung Chau island, near Hong Kong, for instance, was allegedly found by fishermen floating in the sea off Guangdong, and became the object of worship (Savidge, 1977:82), displacing other statues of the god. Another instance has been related by adherents of the Kuan-yin temple near Tai Ping Shan Street on Hong Kong Island, in which the statue of the goddess displayed in the temple was “carved from a block of wood floating in the sea and, according to the local story, giving off mysterious golden rays” (Topley and Hayes, 1966:126). The main icon in the Tin Hau temple at Shek Tong Tsui on Hong Kong Island was also said to have been recovered from the sea (Hayes, 1966:89). This kind of story is superficially similar to the “drifted deities” worshipped by fishermen in the Noto Peninsula area of Japan (Ogura, 1980). Many worshippers in Hong Kong will have heard this kind of story about a god's statue being recovered from the sea. When many years have passed, it is difficult for some people to remember which god's statue was found in the water. One's favourite god may then become the subject of the story. Another case we have discovered suggests that the process of transfer can occur quite rapidly. In 1966, in a paper on temples on Hong Kong Island, Topley related the account given her by a Cantonese lady of the life of the Taoist hermit worshipped in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q If the pirate's ultimate growth was not a result of external patronage or protection, might it have been owing to some internal element such as religion, ideology, or leadership that served in a special way to unify and integrate their force? For the time being I will dismiss religion and ideology as relevant factors with the promise to return to them in the conclusion and argue instead that indeed it was to the extraordinary leadership that emerged from within their ranks that the pirates owed not only their survival during the crisis of 1802, but also their subsequent success. The one individual, more than any other, upon whose shoulders such accolades must fall, was Cheng I, a pirate whose pedigree can be traced to the sixteenth century. From the imbroglio that emerged after the death of the Tayson, Cheng I was responsible for transforming a motley crew of quarrelsome refugees interested primarily in internecine warfare and mutual slaughter into a well-ordered confederation divided into the Six Fleets of the Red, Black, White, Yellow, Blue and Green Flags. To bring order to the confederation, each vessel was to be registered with one fleet whose banner it would subsequently fly. Because the stability of the confederation would be threatened by individual junks switching affiliation or by fleet leaders encouraging them to do so, anyone caught tampering with the identification process was subject to punishment. Provisions prohibiting pirates from fighting one another for prizes already taken or from undertaking unauthorized activities on their own sought to prevent internal conflict. Clear regulations also defined the procedure for sharing prizes while a kind of implicit territorial division characterised the cruising grounds of the various fleets. Despite his many accomplishments, however, Cheng I's days as a pirate were short-lived, but when he died unexpectedly in 1807, his tradition of exemplary leadership was continued by his wife Cheng I Sao, who assumed his position as leader of the confederation. Just as Cheng I had been the confederation's unifier, so did Cheng I Sao become its consolidator. Realizing that an association of several thousand individuals could not live from the chance capture of a few vessels at sea, she took measures to regularize its finances through the selling of protection to seafarers, no matter who they were employed by, along the entire coast. Such was the authority of this "dragon lady" of the South China Sea that when she spoke the men rushed to obey. Under ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q to be the official collectors of pearls. They were paid by the Government, and in the fourth year of Yin Yau (#) A.D. 1317, three government officers were put in charge of them, who were very highly paid, and ranked among the highest officials. The collecting was thus carried on, the same primitive methods being used, until the first year of T`aai Ting (4) A.D. 1324 when a local elder Cheung Wai Yan (30) protested with such force against the loss of life and suffering involved that in the seventh month of the same year an order was sent out abolishing all the pearl fishing. During the following fifty years the industry was resumed and discontinued several times, but the pearls were gradually getting less and less in number. Eventually in the seventh year of Hung Mo (PA) A.D. 1374 of Ming (]) dynasty, it was found that half a catty was all the result of five months labour. It was then finally stopped, and pearls for imperial use were collected from the sea near Lui Chau (HM) and Lim Chau (EH) instead. The present Tai Po market is not the original one, which was situated to the east of the present one, and is now called Old Tai Po market by the country people and can be found on the map under the name of Yin Pun Ha. Old Tai Po market was built in the time of Maan Lik (46) A.D. 1573-1619 of Ming dynasty, to commemorate the devotion shown by the son of an inhabitant of Lung Kwat T'au ( ), a village near Fanling. (See Note 2). This young man, named Tang Sz Maang (BE) lived during the period of Lung Hing (M) 1567-1572 of Ming dynasty. Maang's father was captured by a noted pirate Lam Fung (#) who held him up for ransom. (See Note 3). Maang went to his father-in-law and said, "We are too poor to pay the ransom and redeem my father, so I shall beg the pirates to take me in his stead“. His father-in-law would not agree and tried to stop him, but Maang slipped away secretly and found his way to the pirate ship. With much eloquence he pleaded for his father, saying, “If you keep my father it will mean that I and my brother will have no father, and my father will have no son, but if you free my father then my younger brother will still have a father, and my father will still have a son. Moreover my father is old, he cannot work as well as I, because I am young and strong”. Then he knelt to the pirate and kept on begging with many tears, until his request was at last granted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 74 Tang family had the right of building shops there, and a stone with an inscription to that effect, was put up in the temple of T'in Hau Kung(g) which can still be seen in old Tai Po market. When the Man family lost their case a wealthy friend called a big meeting of the elders of the seven districts round about Taai Haang (林村), Fan Ling(K), Lam Ts'un(#1), Yip Woh(), Sheung Wan(), Ting Kok(TM) and Cheung Shue Tan(). At his suggestion, and financed by him, they built a new market where the present market now stands. It was called Taai Woh Shei (utmost friendship market)(★Fifi) and was officially opened on the twenty-third day of the 6th month of the twentieth year of Kwong Sui, A.D. 1894. All the trade at once went to the new market and the old one gradually fell into disuse and can now be seen as a very poor and derelict village. Note. 1. The district of Sun On was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing() A.D. 1572 of Ming dynasty. Fourteen years later the **History of Sun On District** was written by Yau Tai Kin the district magistrate. It was revised for the first time in the eighth year of Sung Ching(), but this edition was not published until eight years later when a third magistrate Chau Hei Yiu(2) added slightly to it. A second edition was published in the eleventh year of Hong Hei(E) A.D. 1672 of Ts'ing dynasty, a third appeared sixteen years later, and the present edition was published in A.D. 1819. Note. 2. The second character(W) is read yeuk in Cantonese but in the New Territories dialect it is read as Kwat. # Note. 3. Lam Fung is "Limahong" (= Lim a hong, not Li ma hong) whose name is already mentioned in the history of the Philippine Islands. It is also translated as in some Japanese books, and Limahong or Lin Ah Hong in some of the European books. = Lam Fung Limahong was a native of Raoping district(ATM) In the 10th month of the 2nd year of Lung Hing(), A.D. 1568 of Ming dynasty, he took sixty-two battleships with 2,000 sea-soldiers, 1,500 women, and a large store of food and ammunition to attack the Philippines. He was defeated and his fleet dispersed by the soldiers of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 59 deities are not pestilence deities. The confusion has been compounded by the Fukienese themselves when over the years they unconsciously accepted all deities bearing the honorific Wang Yeh as protectors from epidemics. NOTES The term Wang Yeh is best translated perhaps as 'The Excellencies'. It was a title given to imperial princes or lords, and interestingly it was also a term used by robbers for their brigand chief. See Plates 9-14 for illustrations to this article. 2 There has long been controversy whether the Pestilence Wang Yeh are shen (Supernatural beings, spirits or deities) or kuei (shades of the human dead and pejoratively used for ghosts, spectres and demons). One god carver in Singapore explained that Pestilence Wang Yeh are "half-deities", (pan shen) that is half-shen and half-kuei. However, whilst a number of Pestilence Wang Yeh have ferocious faces, the great majority are portrayed as standard deities with no indication of demonic characteristics. An elderly and authoritative Fukienese god carver in Singapore explained in hushed tones that the Pestilence Wang Yeh are neither gods nor demons, are feared but not revered, and not only protect against plague but also cause it. They are, he repeated, semi-deities from the lower echelons of the bureaucracy of the Afterworld who do not like the human world and therefore cause trouble and bring calamity and misfortune. However, if prayed to they are quite prepared to care for devotees who seek protection. For this reason, more often than not the scale of devotion and offerings to the Pestilence Wang Yeh is greater than that provided to more powerful but orthodox gods. E Doolittle J. Social Life of the Chinese 2 Vols: New York: (1865). A god carver in Singapore suggested that Pestilence Wang Yeh have been given surnames so that no particular surname group is left without a specific deity to worship. The only time that all images can be guaranteed to be on their altar in their temple is during the temple's annual festival. The altar of Chu Wang Yeh in a temple in Lukang, Taiwan was destroyed by a flood some fifteen years ago. Of the three Wang Yeh images in the temple at that time (Chu, Ting and Nieh) only one image, that of Chu, was recovered. Although a new temple has been built for the three but only containing one image, the one of Chu recovered from the flood, devotees have largely stopped away. They seem to have lost confidence in deities who were unable to protect themselves against disaster. 7 **At Cheung Chau Island in Hong Kong in the afternoon of the third day (of the chiao festival of ritual purification held every ten years) a ('paper boat') ritual to chase away the Demon of Pestilence is performed. A Taoist issues orders to a Heavenly Envoy to carry off the boat and puts the Demon of Plague on a boat and leaves it in the outer seas. The Heavenly Envoy, like the King of Ghosts (Yenlo Wang), has a fierce-looking face. It is an image of about one metre high and the boat is a small one of about one and a half metres long. A Taoist lifts the Heavenly Envoy to a stage in the matshed theatre and chants a question-and-answer song which instructs the Heavenly Envoy. Having finished that, the villagers then put the Heavenly Envoy into the boat loaded with offerings. The boat is taken to the sea shore and left on the waters." Tanaka Issei: "The Jiao festival in Hong Kong and the New Territories", The Turning of the Tide Religion in China Today: Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, and Oxford University Press (Hong Kong); (1989), p. 287. 8 There is a K'ang Yuanshuai, ie Marshal K'ang, on several Taiwanese altars where he ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 311 recorded by Sung (1974:181-182), Wan-Guk "was a very rich man, and he owned a lot of cultivated land in [Xin'an County]". He died before 1513 (ibid: 182). We have more detail about some of his great-great-grandsons, among them Dang Yun-Fan who made a donation of 1,000 sek of rice to the county government for relief during a bad famine. The details of Dang Yun-fan's descent from Wan-Guk are obscure. Because of this act of generosity Kam Tin was given its present name in 1587, instead of the Sham Tin used earlier (Sung 1973:111-112). The story must be quite close to the truth. Siu (1982:23:24) has checked the Xin'an gazetteer to verify it. He found an entry for a serious drought in 1583, and the County Magistrate named in the anecdote assumed his position in 1586. I have found other supportive data in a local manuscript that records some of the inside inscriptions of the spirit tablets in one of the ancestral halls of Kam Tin. Two ancestors of this period had "pen-names" (hou) that probably alluded to the new name of the settlement. An elder I interviewed attributed the change of the place name to Kam Tin to his ancestor Pou-Am, another great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's, and provided the following information. Pou-am's holdings reached Chuk Yuen near San Tin. He had house(s) where the rent collectors could stay when collecting the payment and being entertained by the tenants. Pou-Am's grandson Lok-Sin had comparable holdings. It was probably in the second half of the 16th century that an ancestral hall was built in honour of Ching-Lok, Wan-Guk's father. It was in all likelihood the earliest ancestral hall ever built in Kam Tin. We know the approximate date of the ancestral hall because a handbook for its rituals prescribed that extra portions of ritual pork were to be given to the descendants of certain individuals, some for their part in the initial building of the hall and some for their contribution towards subsequent repairs and rebuilding. These involved six people. Among them the two rewarded for the original building and another two rewarded for the first rebuilding were all Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. It was only in a subsequent repair in 1788 that one of the descendants of the other sons of Ching-Lok became involved. The spirit tablets in the hall confirm the dominance of Wan-Guk's segment. The two Dangs honoured for the initial effort, as already mentioned, were Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. The time when the ancestral hall was first built was probably not later than the time of Yun-Fan, the great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's who made the donation to the county in 1587. It was also in the second half of the 16th Century that Kei-Fong (not a descendant of Ching-Lok) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 the second half of the journey, through Mirs Bay, where The station is to be found on the western coast. With a favourable wind and a good boat the trip can be completed in a day. Should the conditions be unfavourable, however, it is very difficult to estimate the time. In addition, you have to consider that Chinese waters are very often unsafe because of pirates, and travelling this route you are continuously exposed to danger. Use of small boats is perhaps safer. If using the other route, you first of all cross to Kaulung, which lies immediately opposite the island of Hong Kong. From there you cross the mountains until you cross the first range running west from Mirs Bay. At the village of Saten [Sha Tin] you can get a passenger ferry, or hire a boat, in order to reach Wo-Ang-Tschung (Wo Ang Chung, Wan, today called Chung Mei) to the north. Now you have a strenuous hike over the mountains before you reach that arm of Mirs Bay (Sha Tau Kok Hoi) which stretches to the west. Having reached the village of Kiuk-pu [Kuk Po] you have to take another boat. In about 20 or 25 minutes the sea has been crossed and you have arrived at Tunglo. This journey can be completed, if all goes well, in a day. It is a difficult journey, but avoids the perils of the sea. But where in China is there a route free of difficulties and dangers? If you look down on Tungfo from a high place, you can see, in the first place, the sea to the south and east, whereas to the north and west you see a narrow strip of cultivable land, while, further away, the horizon is limited in all directions by mountains. The range to the north stretches from the east to the west and bends round in a bow shape to the south. This mountain range forms the border of the strip of cultivable land to the north and west, with the other sides being open to the sea. This range has no collective name, whereas the individual mountains that appear within it carry names, which it can be of very little interest to mention here. The highest of them, which is also the highest point in the Sinon District, is called Ng Thung San [Ng Tung Shan, #1]. Its height is, according to the measurements of English technicians, 3095 feet. It is Page 283 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 52 Zang Yungtang (1767-1811) had studied in Suzhou in 1793, the centre of Han Learning at that time, and was invited by Ruan Yuan to edit the classical dictionary, Jing ji zhuan gu. In 1800 he was asked again by Ruan Yuan to collate the Thirteen Classics. He stayed on Ruan Yuan's personal staff until 1802. After failing the Metropolitan Examination, he went into business; then joined the personal staff of Yi Bingshou (1754-1815), who was then the Prefect of Yangzhou, in 1804, to write about the topography of Yangzhou. From 1807 onwards, he went back on Ruan Yuan's payroll, compiling Wu Dai shi [History of the Five Dynasties] at the behest of Liu Fengao (1761-1830). Qian Taxin (1728-1804) came from a scholarly tradition, a grandson and son of noted men of learning. After obtaining his first degree at the age of 17 sui, he became residential tutor in a family with an excellent library which he used extensively. After attaining the jinshi degree in 1754, he remained in Beijing where he became friends with Dai Zhen and Ji Yun (1724-1805) who later became chief editor of the Si ku chuan shu. He directed the Chong shan Academy in Nanjing, and joined Ruan Yuan on the dictionary project in Hangzhou. He was the author of the critical notes on Er shi er shi kao yi [Twenty-two dynastic histories], 100 juan, 1782. Ruan Yuan's subordinate wife, Liu Wenru (1777-1849) was to compile the same for Er shi si shi [Twenty-four dynastic histories]. Chen Shouchi (1777-1834) of Minxian, Fujian had started his career with Zhu Gui. Afterwards he joined the faculty of Gu jing jing she and the Fu Wen Academy. He was recruited to work on Jing fu and Hai tang zhi by Ruan Yuan. At a later date, he served as editor-in-chief of Fujian tong zhi [Provincial gazetteer of Fujian] and Li xian fang zhi [Local gazetteer of the Li District of Jiangsu]. His own essays on the Classics, with several letters from Ruan Yuan, were printed in Zuo hai wen ji [Essays by Chen Shouchi]. Chen Wenxu (1775-1845) of Hangzhou was a “student” of Zhu Gui, who introduced him to Ruan Yuan. Ruan considered Chen one of the foremost poets of the province, and appointed him to his personal staff. He gained expertise in sea transport, salt administration, grain transport and flood control. He helped Ruan Yuan establish a humanitarian social welfare policy, including famine relief. He collected a large number of women students. Both his subordinate wives were acknowledged poets. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 57 Collectively, these secretaries were known as mu.38 There are a number of learned treatises on the subject in Chinese, but I do not think that the function of these people should be expounded here; suffice to say that they were treated as respected senior secretaries by the officials, including Ruan Yuan, and were assigned certain tasks. A few examples of Ruan Yuan's secretaries follow: Zhang Jian was with Ruan Yuan in Zhejiang, Canton, and after his retirement, in Yangzhou as well. He helped formulate and implement such policies as eradication of coastal piracy, famine relief, salt administration, and transportation of tribute grain by sea. Chen Hongshou's expertise ranged from river administration to coastal defence. Together with Chen Wenxu, Zhu Weibi, Shi Guoqi, and Ruan Yuan himself, he also drafted the memorials Ruan Yuan sent to the Jiaqing Emperor while he was Governor of Zhejiang. Scholars with "an extraordinarily fine hand"39 who worked as actual copyists for Ruan Yuan's memorials include Fang Pu, He Yuanxi, Shi Guoqi, and Wu Shucheng.40 Ruan Yuan found jobs for other scholars in academic institutions. The academies he founded, Gu jing jing she in Hangzhou and the Xue hai tang in Canton, had absorbed scores of scholars. Other academies took on dozens of others. Among the less commonly known academies founded or rejuvenated by Ruan Yuan were the An lan Academy41 in Haining, Zhejiang,42 and the Ta liang Academy in Henan.43 In appointing scholars he considered worthwhile to these academies, Ruan Yuan in fact helped to spread Han Learning throughout the country. Ruan Yuan must have been at his wit's end in trying to find a suitable place for so eccentric a scholar as Fang Dongshu (1772-1851). Fang, from Tongcheng, who only attained the first degree, was noted for his poverty and his inability to get along with anyone, except perhaps Ruan Yuan. In 1819, Ruan Yuan brought him to Canton to work on the Guang dong tong zhi under Jiang Fan. Jiang assigned him research and writing which was supposed to take two years to complete, but Fang finished the task in one month. Ruan Yuan then found him a job at Hai men Academy in Lianzhou, where he lasted less than one year; with a repeat performance at the Chang yang Academy for a similar period. Exasperated, Ruan Yuan took Fang onto his own personal staff. For scholars who worked on various literary projects sponsored by Ruan Yuan, see the Appendices to this paper. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 201 but recognisable environment. On the whole we preferred Cheung Chau and it was to Cheung Chau that I was taken after my appendix operation. During my stay in hospital when I had to stay in bed for some time, I had forgotten how to walk or even stand up! I protested that I could not possibly walk up to the bungalow so a sedan chair was sent for. I had not seen one on Cheung Chau before, though they were a common sight in Hong Kong and were used to carry children up Lantau Peak. I was lured out of my invalid bed by the present of some stunning bathing shoes. These were brightly coloured rubber shoes that were meant to protect your feet from stones on the beach. I do not remember ever actually using such shoes but, with the sound of the waves lapping on the beach, they were enough to remind me of the delights of swimming, and messing about in the sand, and playing with model boats, the largest of which had been made specially by the building contractor in Fatshan. 4 Swimming played a central part in our lives on Cheung Chau. I can remember my first unaided swim, which was rewarded by the present of a trumpet much regretted by my parents in subsequent days. The beach was the highlight for our lives. We would walk through the thick pine woods across the island from our bungalows, down through the screw pine to the beach. The smells of the pine trees, of the screw pine, and of the beach and the sea still evoke the thrill of arriving at the beach and dashing into the sea. Some of the grown-ups were able to swim out to a large rock off the Evening Beach (Kwun Yam Wan) to which the Residents' Association had fixed some iron rungs for climbing out. I was only able to achieve such an exploit when I had come back to work in 1950, but by then the iron rungs had mostly rusted away. The Association also arranged with some fishermen, who fished at night, to anchor their boat in the bay and fix steps and a diving board for us to use by day. This did come in reach, and I can still recall the thrill of climbing up the steps after the swim out. The boat had a delicious smell of fish and sea water and was swarming with the little black creatures with lots of legs. It was a great place to play as well as being an excellent diving platform. The Morning Beach (Nam Tam Wan) was much smaller, but it too had a large rock equipped with rungs to climb out on. We did not go often to the Police Beach (Tung Wan), which adjoined the Evening ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 The road and terry junction in this area attracted attention from the military authorities from an early date. While the Salt Commission and the Pearl Monopoly were active in Mars Bay, law and order were probably maintained by the special salt and pearl troops. After these were withdrawn, a military post was established at Shek Chung Au, with a watchtower nearby. This was close to the Wu Shek Kok ferry pier, and near to the road junction at Wo Hang Au. Other troops were established at Yim Tin. In various formulations and strengths, this military position remained at Shek Chung Au for several hundred years, until the mid-nineteenth century - eloquent testimony to the continuing importance of this traffic node. Sha Tau Kok's position in the road system of the area gave it two economic advantages. The first was the Sha Yue Chung Ferry. There was only one a day in the early twentieth century, and this can safely be assumed to have been the case earlier as well. Many travellers, therefore, would be obliged to spend the night in Sha Tau Kok, or at least several hours, waiting for the ferry, and, if the weather was bad, these enforced waits could stretch out to several days. There was, as a result, plenty of opportunity for merchants in the town to profit from servicing travellers held up there. As noted already, in the 1920s Sha Tau Kok had more guesthouses, restaurants, and entertainment facilities than most towns in the area, and although most of those facilities were new, servicing the new frontier garrison and Customs staff, some at least were certainly a feature of the town from an earlier period. The other great economic advantage was the geographical location of Sha Tau Kok in relation to Sham Chun. Sham Chun was at the head of navigation on the Sham Chun River, and was a busy port for the small junks that came up the river from Deep Bay. Sham Chun was, therefore, well located as far as water-borne traffic from the west went. But Sham Chun had no water route to the east, to Mirs Bay. By sea from Sham Chun to Sha Tau Kok is a good hundred miles: by land, barely seven. There were three important commodities not available in the Deep Bay area which could be had from the Mirs Bay area - rice, some sorts of quality fresh fish, and salt. Sha Tau Kok was, in effect, the port of Sham Chun to the east, where these commodities in particular were landed, and then carried by coolies over the Miu Keng pass to Sham Chun. Mirs Bay was usually - despite occasional famines - a rice surplus area. The Sham Chun and Deep Bay area was a rice shortage area, even ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 168 China through the centre of the area caused some of the routes to reduce in importance, and made others more important, reflecting the new political realities. From the late 1920s, and especially from the 1930s, the new motor roads and other new routes, which ran on very different lines from the old roads, also caused major changes to traffic flow in the area. After about 1925, the old carrying trade to Sham Chun rapidly declined away to almost nothing, and the market at Sha Tau Kok began to decline in importance as a result. In 1926, a new ferry to Sha Yue Chung, direct from the mainline railway station at Tai Po Kau, was introduced, which immediately took a great deal of the traffic away from the Sha Tau Kok to Sha Yue Chung ferry. After 1949, when the border was effectively closed to local traffic, Sha Tau Kok became far less important as a traffic nodal point. Nonetheless, from the establishment of the market at Sha Tau Kok down to about 1925, the prosperity of the town rose from its location at the junction of the district's land and sea traffic routes. Sha Tau Kok Market in 1925 Topography The aim of this section is to outline what the market was like in 1925, about a hundred years after it was first founded, on the eve of the move of the market across the frontier. It is drawn principally from the oral testimony of village elders who can remember the old market. This oral testimony is supplemented, in particular, by the 1924 aerial photograph, which forms the basis of Map 4. In 1925, the market consisted essentially of four streets. These were the three streets of the original market - Upper Street (E), Lower, or Main Street (下街, 正大街), and Old Street (老街) - together with Wang Tau Street (王頭街).* In 1853, this last had been an open track leading past the western edge of the market, and running down to the Ferry Pier. By 1925 it had become lined with shops on both sides, all the way to the seafront. At some stage, the three or four shops at the western ends of Upper and Lower Streets had been demolished and rebuilt facing into Wang Tau Street. This gave them a far shorter depth of building lot - only about 45 feet instead of the 65 or more of most shops in 1853. On these shorter lots, two or three storey shop-houses had been built, with a * See Map 4 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 193 H Details of the early Hakka examination successes are known from a recently recovered genealogy, of the Chan (陳) lineage of Nam Chung. It is understood that a copy of this genealogy will be deposited with the Hong Kong Museum of History. I am indebted to Mr Chan Wing-hot for drawing my attention to the information in this genealogy. Q Seen 8 At the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905), 12.68 acres of saltpans were recorded. However, the serious inadequacies of the first survey here led to another being conducted in 1912, when 17.11 acres were recorded. However, in 1912 two areas were left unclaimed, probably because storms had breached their bunds and ruined them. These two areas totalled about 3.3 acres. In addition, there were about 0.6 acres of houses, huts, and waste within the saltpan reclamation, which, therefore, totalled about 21.2 acres. The saltpans were very valuable property in the nineteenth century - the Basel missionaries (see below, n. 17) record the sale of a share by a Tam Shui Hang villager in 1882 for "several hundreds of dollars" (Basel Mission archive, doc. AT-16, Nr. 45). In the 1920s, however, and still more in the 1930s, cheap imported salt caused ever-growing problems, which led to the closure of the saltworks before the War. A bridge was built to the saltpans in 1934 (Administrative Reports for the Year 1934, App. J, "Report on the New Territories for 1934", p. J17). After the War, the abandoned saltworks became the site of a major squatter settlement, recently cleared. Today, the saltpan area has disappeared under new reclamation, and all that remains is a new Tin Hau Temple, replacing the old one previously on the saltpans, built on a new site on the new waterfront. For details of the history of the temples in the area, on the settlement of the Hakka in the area, the reclamation projects they undertook, the founding and management of the market at Sha Tau Kok, and the functioning of the Shap Yeuk as the district management body, see P.H. Hase, "The Alliance of Ten Settlements and Polities in the Sha Tau Kok Area", in D. Faure and H.S. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, Stanford University Press, 1995. 12. No details on the earlier history of the temple survived the very full restoration of 1894, but Shan Tsun elders believe it to be very old. 13. In the 1688 Gazetteer (Ch. 3) a ferry “along the coast” is mentioned called the "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry". There can be no doubt that this is the ferry to Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong, etc.), 12 miles down the coast. Ma Tseuk Ling, at the head of Starling Inlet, is the nearest old village to the Wu Shek Kok Temple (Wu Shek Kok village - probably a foundation of the early nineteenth century). The coasts of Starling Inlet within two or three miles of Ma Tseuk Ling were blocked with mudflats and mangrove everywhere except at Wu Shek Kok, where alone a hill falls steeply into the sea. Wu Shek Kok is, therefore, the only possible site for a "Ma Tseuk Ling Ferry" landing place. The Ma Tseuk Ling villagers owned the Wu Shek Kok Temple, and the Ma Tseuk Ling military post (1688 Gazetteer, ch. 7), was at Shek Chung Au, just a few hundred yards from Wu Shek Kok. These Ma Tseuk Ling connections with the Wu Shek Kok area strongly suggest that the Wu Shek Kok hill was regarded as forming part of the Ma Tseuk Ling area. Later, Wu Shek Kok formed part of the Ma Tseuk Ling Yeuk of the Shap Yeuk. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 173 Thus, the worship of Tin Hau had no connection to the legend of Cheung Pao. She might be worshipped by other pirates at that time. NOTES 1] pp. 12-13, History of the Pirates who infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810 (by Murray), 1831 edition. 2] p. 2, A Brief Record of the Pacification of the South China Sea (TCA), 1842 edition. 3] pp. 13-15, History of the Pirates who infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, 1831 edition. 4 For the detail of the sands made by the pirates of the Red Flag Squadron and its allies, see Ch 81, Kwangchow Fo Gazetteer, 1879 edition, Ch 22, Pan Yu Gazetteer, 1871 edition, Ch 22, Heong Shan Gazetteer, 1879 edition, Ch 31, Shun Tak Gazetteer, 1856 edition. Ch 33, Tung Kwan Gazetteer, 1911 edition and Ch 14, San Hui Gazetteer, 1841 edition. 5] Ch 81, Kwangchow Fu Gazetteer, 1879 edition. 6] * Ch 10, Chia Ching Tung Wah Gazetteer, 1884 edition. 7 Legends said that there are caves of Cheung Pao Tsai on Cheung Chau Island, Tap Mun Island and at Chung Hom Kok and Stanley on Hong Kong Island. * 8] pp. 11-12, History of the pirates who infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, 1831 edition. 9] pp. 2-3, A Brief Record of the Pacification of the South China Sea, 1842 edition. 10 p. 7, History of the Pirates who infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, 1831 edition. [Ibid., pp. 15-16. 12. The Temple of Samui Po is at Lung Tau Wan (Long Chau Wan) on the Island of Taipa in Macau – it is in ruins. However, the stone tablets of the 1859 and 1864 repairs can still be seen. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 177 scheme a success. The hospital and the tomb established in 1878 are still in existence to this day, and a memorial tablet for the deed was mounted on the front wall of a shop near the hospital. It is still in existence, too. NOTES 1 Ch 2-7, A Brief Record of the Pacification of the Kwang-tung Rebels. A 1865 edition. 2 Ibid. Ch 8. 3 Ibid. Ch 9-10. 4 Thick, Ch 1-12. 7 Ch 72, Fung Kwan Gazetteer. 45, 46. By that time, Lai Chun-hot was the commander of the 'Shung' Naval Battalion stationed in Chikrang. In the 5th Moon of the 2nd year of Tung Chi reign (1863), he found that his Battalion had only a few sloops but too many officers. Thus, he transferred his brother Lai Chun-pin back to Kwang-tung. During his time in Kowloon, he had dedicated a memorial board to the Hau Wang Temple in the Kowloon City in the 6th year of the Kuang Hsu reign (1880). The board is still hanging inside the temple today. As per note 6. The charitable hospital was called the Fong Bin Hospital. The tomb was called Yee Chung Yuen, and was situated on the slope facing the sea at Tai Shek Flat, not far from the Tin Hau Temple of the region. To my knowledge, Jar O on Lantau Island had one, formed by charitable subscription, and indeed, there was one at Lai Chi Kok, Sai Ying Pun and at Lai Ping Shan Street on Hong Kong Island. It was known as Kong Fuk Yee Charity Hall but in 1851, also formed by charitable subscription. It was taken over and extended as the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870, after which it became a hospital in the western style. Detail of the story of the scheme can be seen on the memorial tablet established in the 4th year of the Kuang Hsu reign (1878). It is still in existence. Because of recent development on the island, the slope with the charitable tomb was levelled. The tomb has been moved to the cemetery which lies on the north of the island. The shop, with the one next to it, were purchased with the charity fund at the time of the establishing of the Fong Bin Hospital. They were rented, and the money so got was used as the expenses of the hospital. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 9 By their differences in dwellings and occupations, already observed, these four communities can be grouped into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers, the Cantonese and Hakka being the former and the Tanka and Hoklo the latter. 43 The Cantonese, or Punti as they are sometimes called, had their origins in North China and speak a Chinese dialect of the western section of the Yueh language which evidences their claim to be of pure Chinese stock. There is no record of their arriving in the province of Kwangtung, which they colonised, earlier than the Sung Dynasty (960-1278 A.D.). In the van were a clan surnamed Tang who settled in the Yuen Long district of the New Territories late in the 11th century. This clan became the largest landowners with their main centres at Kam T'in, P'ing Shan, Lung Yeuk Tau and Ha Tsuen. They exercised "a kind of feudal power, and the tradition they had brought with them was so strong that they not only became the founders of the Cantonese settlement but to this day exert a great influence in affairs. The Cantonese occupy most of the two principal plains in the northwest sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty in the late thirteenth century. The livelihood of the Cantonese is dependent mainly on the cultivation of rice. The Hakka migrated originally also from North China and, moving gradually southwards through Fukien and Kiangsi in the 10th century, reached Kwangtung Province during the latter years of the Southern Sung Dynasty. They speak two dialects or sub-dialects of the eastern section of the same Yueh language that the Cantonese speak. Arriving after the Cantonese, the Hakka settled usually upstream of them, that is, on the poorer ground. They have, however, steadily over the centuries encroached on the land first occupied by the Cantonese. For example, after the Manchus in the 17th century had evacuated the entire population of the China Coast inland to guard against the fleet of the Ming Dynasty based on Formosa, the Hakka apparently took the opportunity of resettling in the abandoned coastal area. Again, Hong Kong island is said to have been originally occupied by the Tang clan but the British in the 19th century found it almost entirely inhabited by Hakka. A third example of Hakka encroachment is said to be Lantau Island which in recent times was depopulated by... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 62 picture of the situation was given by L. Yu. He stated: “At the time they built their fortress with the backs against the hills and the fronts facing the sea. The two fortifications acted as two watchtowers. It made the Ching army difficult to attack or even try to get near to the island. On the slopes above Sai Ying Pun, at the midlevels, there was a fort and it helped to reinforce the defence." (Lai, 1948, P.13) Secondly, it is because Sai Ying Pun was situated at the foothill of the highest peak of the island. The peak (i.e. Victoria Peak 1917 ft. which was called O Tau Shan or Ngan Tau Shan at that period) formed the look-out of the pirates in those days. They wanted to keep an eye on the harbour which was a very important water route in that part of the South China coast. Whenever a vessel appeared, the watchmen would signal the pirates who were stationed at the foothills at Sai Ying Pun. The pirate fleet would then sail off to plunder and loot the vessels. Thirdly, the pirates chose the place because Sai Ying Pun possesses some peculiar physical characteristics. Before the waterfront was reclaimed in the late nineteenth century, Sai Ying Pun was the only area in the northwestern sector of the Island, which controlled the western inlet to the harbour, with a fairly long coastal slope. The slopes were made up of colluvial fan. In other words, the soil in the area was derived from the decomposition of granite or other primitive rock. It was not, however, formed of detritus of rock washed down from above, but solid rock altered in situ. In the area west of Sai Ying Pun, Shek Tong Tsui, the granites outcropped nearly to the sea front. It was possibly the reason why as early as 1771 the Hakka people came to the area and quarried the granite and carried them to Shek Pai Wan. Therefore we can see that Sai Ying Pun was the only area in the northwestern sector that was suitable to set up a fortification. I think this is also the reason why the British commanders chose the same area to set up a barrack in 1841. So Sai Ying Pun during the early years of Chiaching period was probably occupied by scores of pirates. They guarded themselves against the attack of the Ching armies and waited patiently for the signals that came from the peak and were always ready to sail off to plunder any trading vessels that happened to sail past the Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 recorded as having 29 males and 10 females resident. The boat people at Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po may have been included in the Victoria Harbour grouping. But it seems likely that the bulk of the Northern boat-people population was omitted from the statistics in 1911. At Cheung Chau, 4,442 boat-people are recorded in 1911, 2,601 of them male. This probably includes those boat-people usually anchored at Ping Chau and Mui Wo. At Lantau, 5,413 are recorded, 3,159 of them male.** The Lantau figure probably includes, not only the floating population at Tai O, but also the people living in "boat-huts" on stilts there. It also probably covers those boat-people anchored at Tung Chung, and may cover those at Tuen Mun as well. In 1921, 3,552 boat people are enumerated at Cheung Chau, and 3,894 at Tai O (probably not including the “boat-hut” residents). Given the absence of some deep sea fishing boats during the 1921 Census period, it seems that the Southern District floating population statistics are broadly similar in 1911 and 1921. The careful notification of New Territories residents as to the purpose of the 1911 Census, and the use of local men as enumerators, led to a lack of practical problems with villagers, who seem to have responded surprisingly well to the process. The police escorts had "not very much to do,” and “no trouble whatever" occurred. On a more detailed basis, the civilian enumerator teams in the mainland New Territories, and the police on Lamma, in the Sham Shui Po area, and, to a lesser extent, on Lantau, seem to have done a more careful job than the police on Cheung Chau, and in the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas. 598 villages were separately enumerated in the nine mainland civilian enumerator districts," 18 on Lamma, 49 on Lantau, and 23 in the Sham Shui Po district." Very few of the villages or hamlets on Lamma or in the mainland New Territories outside the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas were not separately enumerated. The few that are not are hamlets closely connected with a nearby village and enumerated with it. On Lantau, however, some villages are not separately enumerated. The villages to the south of Tai O (Fan Kwai Tong, Yi O, Fan Lau), those immediately east of Tung Chung and along the upper edges of the Tung Chung valley (Tai Po, Tung Chung Hang, Wong Lung Hang, Lam Che, etc.), most of those in the Chi Ma Wan peninsula (except Shap Long), and most of the very tiny villages in the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 69 males, while their families remained behind. In other words, those villages with an excess of females are the inevitable reverse side of the coin, off-setting the towns and cities of the area, with their excess of males. Not surprisingly, given the more urban character of Southern District, most of the villages with excess females were in Northern District, as this temporary male emigration was a feature of rural villages, just as temporary male immigration was a feature of the industrial villages, towns, and cities. Appendix I lists the villages with significantly low ratios of males to females (less than 47.0% of total population male, excluding villages with total populations of less than 35, except where the imbalance is extreme) Table 31 maps these villages It will be seen at once from the map at Table 31 that the villages with low percentages of males are concentrated in the mountainous east of the New Territories, and on Lamma. Because of this, more Hakka than Punti villages are low in males. This is, however, a factor of social and geographical conditions, rather than racial or cultural ones: large Punti villages within the eastern New Territories (such as Siu Lek Yuen, Ho Chung, Sha Kok Mei, Wu Kai Sha, Tai Hang etc) share a shortage of males with their smaller Hakka neighbours. Indeed, in Ta Kwu Leng, it is the Punti villages (Ping Che, Lo Shue Ling, Lei Uk Tsuen, Tai Po Tin) which are short of males, the Hakka villages having either a balanced population, or even a surplus of males (eg Heung Yuen with 53.4% of males, and Ping Yuen with 55.9%). Within the richer western parts of the New Territories, villages with shortages of males are less common, but a few clusters can be seen, such as around Ha Tsuen and Yuen Long Markets. These clusters are probably mostly of villages with significant numbers of males working in the markets (the shortage of males in all the Yuen Long villages with shortages was in total 242: the number of excess males working in the markets at Yuen Long and Ha Tsuen was 197) Similarly, it is likely that at least some of the absent males from Lam Tsuen were working in the market at Tai Po The shortage of males in the eastern New Territories is to be explained by emigration. The missionaries of the Basel Mission, who were active in the north-east New Territories from 1849 onwards, remarked on the high levels of emigration from villages in this area from 1851 onwards. By 1880, the missionaries were speaking of "emigration fever" in their reports on the area, by 1894 of "deserted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 61 See) Hong Kong 1987, WW#ENS "明 (*1##AB) (Forts and Batteries Coastal Defence in Quangdong during the Ming and Qing Dynasties), Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1997, A Lui Yuen ching Forts and Pirates A History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong History Society, Hong Kong, 1990, p 29 5 On the foundation of Po Kong, see Jen Yu wen, "The Southern Sung Stone-Engraving at North Fu Tamg" Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol 5, 1965, pp 65-68 The founder was the great grandfather of a significant local leader in the Kowloon area in 1274, the man responsible for managing the rebuilding of the Tin Hau Temple in Joss House Bay in that year Given his local standing, it is likely that this man was in his 50s or 60s in 1274 This being so, his great-grandfather was probably born in the period 1120-1140, and a foundation date for Po Kong in the 1160s would therefore seem very likely E 6 On this incident see Jen Yu wen, "The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon" Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol 7, 1967 pp 21-38, Jen Yu-wen, ed , Hong Kong, 1960, , Hong Kong, 1959, #M, (R), op cit, Chapter 4, 蕭國健,“香港王廟奉[楊大王]”in <香港前代史論集> ed 國健 and 大厅, Taipei, 1985 7 Jen Yu wen, "The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung", op cit p 33 8 * The young princess was drowned at sea, and the body was lost the grave had buried in it, to represent the deceased, a golden figurine the grave was known locally as the 'Grave of the Golden Maiden' ፡፡ "Some scholars doubt this ascription (for instance, in his "FAI PREFLEX", op cit) but the identification seems certain to me The identification was first made by the eminent late Ching scholar, Chan Pak-to (B) in a tablet he placed in the Hau Wong Temple, Kowloon City, in 1917 (the text is to be found in 科大,陸鴻基,吳倫霞<香港碑銘彙編> (D Faure, B Luk, A Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong), Hong Kong, Urban Council, 1986, Vol 2, pp 446-449) I find the reasons given by Chan Pak-to and Jen Yu wen (loc cit) on this very compelling 10 In 1846, as shown by the drawing of that date by Lt Collinson, the market comprised just the one main street, and the pier had not yet then been built The ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 88 altered work for the railway had not been held up, as so often happens with New Territories' projects similar to this. This was in spite of the protracted discussions that had taken place regarding the removal of the graves at Pat Heung. By comparison a dispute between the Government and Ping Shan villagers, in the northeast of the New Territories, about the moving of an agnate's grave, has been going on for several years. This has resulted in the closure of some buildings along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail by the Tang Clan (Cheung; 1999, 570). At the time of writing they are still closed. After bussing the large group back to Sheung Tsuen a further ten-minute ceremony was held by the Taoist priests in the Kwan Yin Ancient Temple, opposite the matshed (see Plate 6). Again there was a repeat of chanting, bowing and the sprinkling of rice wine. This was to pay respects to the gods in the temple and was not really a formal part of the tun fu ceremony. Whether it is a wedding, a funeral or celebrating the completion of the refurbishment of an ancestral hall, in Chinese culture food usually plays an important part. Now, after the tun fu ceremony was over, it was time to feast and what and how people eat can reflect complex social messages. The banquet consisted of a basin meal. For some this was in the open and for others under cover, close to the temple. Before the meal there were speeches in Cantonese from both government officials and village representatives. These were followed by Cantonese opera. Only about 20 women (some of whom sit on village committees) were present among the over 1,000 people who sat down for the basin meal which included the crisp, golden-brown roast pigs which had been offered up to, and was food fit for, the gods. After this latter ritual the pork had taken on magical qualities. Later, by eating it, we the living were able to fortify our chi (prank or life-force) (Waters; 1996, 125) (Leung; 1992, 27). As is the custom in the New Territories on such occasions, all ‘ate from the common pot'. This was placed in the centre of each circular, Chinese table (Watson; 1987, 389). Eating together like this is intended to imply that all diners co-operate and depend on and trust one another. A basin meal is a great leveller. But it is not just how you eat. It is also what you eat. Consequently, many of the layers (frequently totalling nine which is a propitious number) of food in the 'common pot', in addition to the pork previously mentioned, were auspicious. For example faat choi, ‘sea moss' (or, as it is commonly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x ONE OF HONG KONG'S MANY HILLSIDE TEMPLES: "THE TEMPLE OVERLOOKING THE SEA' DAN WATERS 275 There are a number of hillside temples, both on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon. But very little appears to have been written about them or about the communities that worship in them and frequent their environs. This short paper looks at a small, ramshackle temple complex, including 'The Temple Overlooking the Sea', which used to cling to the hillside. Painted somewhat garishly bright red, green and yellow, it stood downhill, on the western side of where the remains of the old British Pinewood Battery are still situated. The latter, at 307 metres above sea level, was the highest of all Hong Kong's coastal defence batteries. To get to the temple you went up the winding, partly asphalted and partly concreted, Hatton Road, which starts at the western end of Conduit Road, where it joins Po Shan and Kotewall Roads. Hatton Road is steep and leads up to the Gap between Victoria Peak and the still, relatively unspoiled, High West. About half way up Hatton Road, on the way to the Peak, there is a branch off to the right, and, a further 35 metres or so along with a pavilion atop Dragon and Tiger Hill on your right, you turn left on to a concrete-paved jeep track. Proceeding downhill for approximately 300 metres you can still see the hillside scars and sorry remains of the old Temple complex. They are situated along what is sometimes called Cheung Po-tsai's Path, named after Hong Kong's most notorious pirate who was especially active in the first decade of the 19th century. Whether he actually used the path is debatable. It circles the western end of Hong Kong Island above Mid-Levels. Notices were posted up in the summer of 1999, in the area around the 'Temple Overlooking the Sea', saying that the complex was to be demolished. It was an illegal structure. The old Chinese folk who were very attached to the Temple were naturally upset and, although there were no strong protests, a few of them did attend meetings organised by government departments. Although the Temple folk sometimes ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 305 records of "old salts" who were happier "afloat" than when taking shore leave (Jones; 1985). In 1955, Sydney Frank Barnsey occasionally used to drop into the author's home in Conduit Road for a mid-morning cup of coffee. He sometimes smiled and said, 'I shall leave my bones in Hong Kong.' The author did not realise at the time what he meant. In fact, in his will he requested that he be buried on Waglan Island where he had spent many, what he considered to be, peaceful years as a keeper. He had deep affection for 'The Rock.' When the last trumpet call sounded government approval was sought and Barnsey's ashes were interred at a lovely spot with a small garden, 49 His Malaysian Chinese wife visited his grave at appropriate Chinese festivals, such as at Ching Ming and Chung Yeung. But after Waglan was no longer manned, with no Marine Department boats going there on a regular basis, she had difficulty in visiting his grave. His remains were then exhumed and moved elsewhere. The author recalls the grave, but what was a tranquil spot is now overgrown. How did life at Waglan over a period of years, mould personalities? Although it is an interesting question the author is not a psychologist and thus not really qualified to answer. But certainly, with a small group of men living together for 24 hours a day, one can speculate that there must have been instances of personality clashes although the author did not hear of any. But also many close friendships were, at the same time, forged. It is relevant that Roger Parry told the author that Hong Kong lighthouse men were, 'a wonderful bunch of special people.' 50 Stories were handed down by word-of-mouth and there was a kind of mythology and history belonging especially to them. A comparison: before and after automation For a time, after Waglan was automated, the island retained some of its original glory.51 But since that changeover, in many respects, it has become rather run down. Every step, leading from sea level to the top of the island, is no longer clearly numbered in brightly coloured paint. What had been a garden has become overgrown. There is litter. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 104 Pottinger Battery were relocated to Bokhara Battery, Cape D'Aguilar in 1939 or 1940 (Rollo: 201). The batteries' arc of fire at Devil's Peak in 1938 reached the southwestern tip of Lamma Island and the south of the Po Toi Group of islands, whereas those at Stanley reached beyond the southwestern part of the Lema Islands (Dangan Liedao). Thus, before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong on 8th December 1941, there were no guns at either the Gough or Pottinger Battery. However, the sites at Devil's Peak had become part of the Gin Drinker's Line in the 1930s. This Line runs from Gin Drinker's Bay (Kwai Chung) in the west to Port Shelter in the east. The Devil's Peak was a crucial component of the Kowloon segment of the Line. The Japanese had good maps about the location of the defences of Hong Kong. Some remarks on the defence works at Devil's Peak are registered in a map produced in 1939/1940 (Empson 1992). Defensive positions in the military sites on Devil's Peak were taken up by the 5/7 Rajputs of the Hong Kong Garrison on 12 December, after the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt in the western part of the Line three days before. The sites at Devil's Peak witnessed heavy defensive fighting by the 5/7 Rajputs and the First Mountain Battery of the Hong Kong and Singapore Artillery. The latter expended 400 rounds with their four 3.7 inch field guns before the evacuation of the defenders to Hong Kong Island on the morning of 13th December. The defenders destroyed all equipment before they crossed the Harbour during the night. Thereafter, the Japanese used the sites to bombard the Island and the defenders' gun returned fire. After the defeat of Japan, the Devil's Peak sites were abandoned by the British, although the batteries on the Island side of Lei Yue Mun Pass were reoccupied and put into active military use until the mid-1980s. Before 1997, there had been little news connected with British military activities at Devil's Peak, save for an air accident in the 1950s. In March 1956, two Royal Navy Sea Hawks struck fog-shrouded Devil's Peak, killing the pilots and an elderly lady (Eather 1996). A surviving example of the 9.2-inch guns that were deployed on the batteries at Devil's Peak can be seen at the Buyu Battery (Siu 1997: Plate 6 at p.76) that guards Humen (The Bogue). This battery was modernised in 1883 with the assistance of British and German military experts. ================================================================================