RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f
BRITAIN AND CHINA

121

either upon more powerful allies or groups of nations such as the U.N. or SEATO. And the policies which Mr. Luard would most like to see the British government influencing are the transfer of the China seat in the U.N. to Peking; KMT withdrawal from the offshore islands; and the abandonment of Chiang Kai-shek's claim to the mainland. These accomplished, he contends - rightly, I think - that the Peking government, mollified and with the equanimity which comes from assured status, would pursue the extension of its aims with less belligerence.

Britain's next move, in order to prevent the spread of Communism (it is a pity that Mr. Luard does not analyse for us why this should be a British policy, since, as he says, most Britons are ideologically vague) should be to cultivate friendly relations with the peoples of other nations. This is better than just being friendly with governments, which after all can collapse overnight. Further, many governments are highly unpopular and associating with them merely brings one into disrepute. Britain must also be prepared to contribute money to under-developed non-Communist countries to supply them with the capital needed for investment; otherwise they might be tempted by the economic advantages of Communism, the chief of which is the high rate of internal saving it makes possible. Britain, with her comparatively high standard of living, can well afford to give more to the shockingly poor countries of the east.

Mr. Luard's last advice to the British government is to try to make possible more visits from Chinese leaders to the west. He is undoubtedly right in his assessment of the ignorance and misunderstanding of the outside world which exist on all levels in the Chinese government, and there can be no doubt that travel in Europe would help. To think that Britain can do much in this sphere at present is perhaps optimistic; it might be worth giving the advice to one or two of the governments of eastern Europe, who are more likely to be believed in Peking than the British, and who, for all their Communism, have both knowledge and understanding of the west. Despite that, however, this analysis of the paths which British policy might follow is a splendidly thorough and practical one. To this the rest of the book leads up; the author's eye is firmly on the present and the future, his intention being to explain why China is as she is and what Britain can do about it. He succeeds admirably.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v
10

LINDSAY RIDE

Let us first go to the top of Monte Fort and view this historic spot where so many foreigners lived their eastern lives and not a few found eternal rest. From the Fort we can see practically the whole of the peninsula and the city of Macao. To the east, beyond the Guia lighthouse, stretches the South China Sea, studded by the Ladrone Islands of which the two nearest - Taipa and Coloane form part of this overseas Province of Portugal. Between these islands and the peninsula lie the Macao Roads and the Outer Harbour. To the west can be seen the narrow neck of land with its barrier gate which bars access to the large delta island of Heung Shan and to the mainland of China. Separating the main portion of this island from the city of Macao, is the Inner Harbour whose two lines of junks, Communist and Macanese, are separated only by the narrow fairway used by the larger sea-going junks, launches and the Hong Kong ferries. Just below us as we view this busy scene, stands, stately and calm, the façade of all that remains of the Jesuit Church of St. Paul, commenced in the sixteenth century, completed in the seventeenth and destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century,

Behind it, almost at the harbour's edge, is a low wooded hill whose trees shelter the Camoens Grotto and on whose lower slopes nestle the Camoens Gardens and the neighbouring cemetery.

It is but a short walk from the Fort to the cemetery and gardens, access to both of which is gained from a small grassed and treed square the Praça Luis de Camões. On the extreme right as we enter this square, is a high stucco wall pierced by a most unimpressive gateway over which is mounted a small tablet; on which is carved:

PROTESTANT CHURCH

AND

OLD CEMETERY

(EAST INDIA COMPANY 1814)

This inscription poses a number of questions, a characteristic which, as you will find out later, it shares with many of the inscriptions in the cemetery itself; in fact it is the attempt to solve these problems that supplies much of the fascination and the interest of this cemetery. What was the British East India

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653
98

COLINA LUPTON

indication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today.

The years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved.

A feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the "unequal treaties" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is.

An interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653
BOOK REVIEWS 

107

In addition to the above merits over which it has no exclusive claim, Goodrich's dictionary has two special assets which are not commonly shared by other dictionaries. First, each character is immediately followed by its radical. This indication of the character's radical improves the value of the book as a tool for learning Chinese, especially for those who learn it by the inductive method. Radicals help the student understand the etymologies of the characters, and facilitate the process of associating the character and its meaning. Thus, they help, to some extent, remove that utterly 'lost' feeling which sometimes develops in the beginner who is tempted to think that Chinese characters are just so many arbitrary symbols.

Secondly, abbreviated characters now in official use in Communist China are inserted in the new edition. This makes the dictionary particularly valuable to the student of contemporary Chinese problems, who must read source materials coming from Mainland China.

Nevertheless, the dictionary is not without its share of imperfection. It was probably considerations of space that led the author of this pocket-size book to keep the number of "terms" or "expressions" given as illustrations of the use of the various characters, to a bare minimum. Among its very limited number of illustrative expressions, some are obsolete or wrong or otherwise not commonly in use in China. The following are but a few examples:

The term shuikuo2 (or jui kuo2) (literally "Shui-country") given on page 177 to mean 'Sweden' is no longer in use at present. Chinese people coming across these two characters today would be at a loss as to what the user wants to say: Sweden (# shui tien3) or Switzerland (shui shih) or some obscure newly created state in some remote corner of the earth.

The expression hsi fu4 is given on page 71 to mean 'bride, wife'. This is a colloquial use confined to Peking and its neighbouring areas. Elsewhere in China, these two characters put together mean 'daughter-in-law'. Other expressions such as cha2 cheng1 for 'exerting oneself' (page 3) and cheng1 ching4 for 'wrangling' (page 39), which are in colloquial use in Peking, are unheard of in other parts of China. The usual related expressions in ...
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
16

SULESKI, R. S., and BAYS, D. H.

Early communist China; two studies. Ann Arbor, 1969.

(Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no. 4)

TOWNSEND, W. J.

Robert Morrison, pioneer of missions to China. London, Pickering & Inglis, n.d.

何炳棣

黄土與中國農業的起源。香港,香港中文大學, 1969.

(HO, P. T. The loess environment and the origins of Chinese agriculture)

張德昌

清末一個京官的生活。香港,香港中文大學,1970.

(CHANG, T. C, Life of a court official in the late Ching dynasty)

趙聰

中國大陸的戲曲改革,1942-1967. 香港,香港中文大學,1969.

(CHAO, T. Drama reform in mainland China, 1942-67)
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
88

EUGENE COOPER

it were triggered initially by a lockout at a plastic flowers factory in Kowloon and fanned by some arbitrary police action taken against demonstrating workers and students. Anti-colonial demonstrations occurred and anti-British sentiment ran high, fueled by stepped up anti-imperialist propaganda radiating from the mainland then in the midst of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. While most carved wood furniture factory and shop proprietors were unlikely targets for anti-imperialist attack, the Woodwork Carvers' Union seems to have taken advantage of the widespread unrest to extract a wage increase from the Merchants' Association at the time.

One school of thought (with its locus in the Far Eastern Economic Review) maintains that the Peking government was dissatisfied with its compatriots' handling of the 1967 disturbances and called a halt thereafter to revolutionary activity in the Crown Colony. While these claims are difficult to substantiate with any certainty, it is widely admitted in the Hong Kong pro-communist community that Peking was desirous of a stable situation in post-1967 Hong Kong so that it could actively pursue, from its viewpoint, more pressing diplomatic questions like its entry into the United Nations and the liberation of Taiwan.

"Hong Kong is a historical problem that will be solved at the appropriate time" goes the refrain. The Hong Kong "problem" does not have the status of a "principle contradiction" for the People's Republic. Hong Kong continues to remain valuable to the Communist government in terms of the significant amounts of foreign exchange which China earns by marketing its products in and through the port, and also as a place in which trade and diplomatic contacts are still pursued. While such functions may decline as China continues to open up diplomatically and economically, they are still a factor in Hong Kong's historical viability as a colony.

In any event, in the post-1967 period, industrial peace in Hong Kong was the common desire of the British colonial government and the communist government in Peking. This led to the assumption on the part of the communist Federation of Trade Unions of some rather odd poses in the local adaptation of Mao Tse-tung thought to the Hong Kong scene.

This was particularly so in so far as the implementation of Mao's thought has entailed a disciplined adherence to a policy of delayed
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
90

EUGENE COOPER

also keeps them closely informed of events on the Mainland. Membership in an affiliated union may also facilitate return trips to one's native village in China during New Years and at other times as well, since the Federation provides a link up with Chinese representatives and bureaucracy in Hong Kong.

The contradiction between the interest of the Hong Kong worker in his own material well being, and the requirement that he subordinate his immediate interests to the long run national interests of Peking, has surely not made life easy for the constituent unions of the pro-communist Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions in their organizing efforts in the post-war Hong Kong setting.

Nevertheless, in more recent years, as Peking pursued the resolution of what it took to be "principle contradictions", namely admission to the U.N. and the liberation of Taiwan, developments in Hong Kong tended to bear out the appropriateness of their strategy. In 1971, when the Peking government displaced the Taiwan government as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people at the United Nations, the political influence that Peking was able to exercise in the political balance of Hong Kong grew enormously at the expense of the Nationalists. Organs of Peking power like the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions gained an enormous legitimacy in the new aura that came to surround the Peking government. Allegiance to the People's Republic, long an obstacle to effective organizing among Hong Kong's largely political-refugee population, became somewhat more of an asset for groups like the Woodwork Carvers' Union. 1971 marked a turning point in the fortunes of their organizing. Indeed one could argue that the relegation of the "Hong Kong problem" to the status of a secondary contradiction made a great deal of sense, as the political balance tipped noticeably in favor of the Peking government after 1971 with the resolution of a higher order contradiction, i.e. the seating of the Peking government at the U.N.

These developments have helped the Woodwork Carvers' Union immeasurably in its attempt to organize an increasingly proletarianized work force according to principles consistent with Maoist ideology, although the apparent contradiction between genuinely class oriented, as opposed to nation oriented, loyalties and its peculiar configuration in Hong Kong remains.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
96

EUGENE COOPER

thoughts of the younger worker actually were on the matter, it was apparent that the older fellow eventually carried the day. His younger colleague eventually joined the union. Nor would he have done so simply on a whim. Association with a communist cause is not something casually assumed in the Hong Kong context. The episode shows clearly how the membership drive in progress was implemented at the factory level.

In the foregoing, one gets a feel for the role of the Woodwork Carvers' Union both as a carrier of a proletarian message and as an agent of Peking policy. Its close association with the Federation of Trade Unions is also highlighted. The union premises are the site of meetings of various kinds, political discussions and planning sessions all of which are oriented in one way or another toward the promotion and consolidation of a unified class conscious labor force, with the Peking government the object of its members' patriotism.

The use of the union premises as a center of recreation, the provision of board to its indigent members, the linkup with Communist Chinese bureaucracies like China Travel Service, are all examples of ways in which the union can cater to its members' needs.

The operation of a school in the union hall is particularly noteworthy. Traditional Chinese guilds often provided charitable services to their members, such as medical care, proper burials and relief to workers during periods of unemployment. It was not unusual for guilds to establish schools for children of their members (Gamble, 1921: 198) so that they might be able to better themselves, or more properly, the fortunes of their families. In this sense, the use of the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises as a site for the operation of a small primary school may be seen as a significant continuity with traditional guild practice. With curriculum updated in political content, and text and reading materials from the Mainland, the small patriotic school in the union premises turns our attention to the ways in which the union has adapted the practices of traditional guilds to the contemporary scene and incorporated them into its organizational repertoire.

There are two other occasions which are of special interest in highlighting this process. The first is the Woodwork Carvers' Union
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063
127

continued the guerilla war from bases in the nearby Nanlin Hills (Paul, 1982). As a revolutionary base was established, workers' and peasants' democratic governments were formed at the county level throughout Hainan, the first being set up in Lingshui County amongst the Li community (Gao, 1981).

Threatened by the possible emergence of a unified China, Japan, which already had a firm foothold in northern China, landed troops in Shanghai in 1928 in order to weaken Chiang Kai-shek's power and prolong the onset of the inevitable Sino-Japanese war. Taking advantage of the rift between the KMT and Communists, Japan strengthened her influence, first by invading Manchuria in 1931, and finally, by means of a number of orchestrated landings in 1937, secured the whole of the coast of China, effectively severing all major supply arteries to the country: China was no longer a dangerous adversary (Eberhard, 1969). As part of this offensive, Hainan was first attacked in August, 1937 (Clark, 1938), and Japanese forces quickly occupied the coastal fringe. By February, 1939, Hainan, like the mainland, was subdued (Wigmore, 1957).

Remnants of the old Red Guard units, hardened by 12 years of battle with the KMT, took up positions around the island immediately behind the Japanese and used their guerilla tactics to harass the intruders, while the KMT held defensive positions in the central mountains (Fairtex-Cholmeley, 1963). It appears that a non-interference agreement was quickly ratified between the Japanese and the KMT, leaving the Communist guerillas to pose the chief threat to the invading Japanese (Paul, 1982). Although Mao Tse-tung committed the Communist Party to collaborate with the KMT, conflict continued between the two factions even in Hainan where in 1943, the Li leaders, Wang Guo-xing* and Wang Yu-jin, led 20,000 tribesmen in an armed foray against KMT troops entrenched in the Five Finger Mountains (Gao, 1981). In spite of these "domestic" conflicts, the combined Chinese forces tied up two Japanese divisions in Hainan (MacCrae, personal communication).

Due to its strategic location, Hainan became a training and staging area for the Japanese southward thrust, with components of the XXV Japanese Army being exercised on the island during
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986
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129

proclaimed in October, 1948, it was almost a year later that units of the People's Liberation Army from the Leichow Peninsula joined the 10,000 Communist guerillas already on Hainan in routing the KMT forces and liberating the "Shore of Pearls" (Fairfax-Cholmeley, 1963).

Due to twenty-seven years of civil unrest and Japanese occupation, the island was in a terrible mess: there was no industry to speak of because post-war forays between the KMT and Communist guerillas destroyed many of the enterprises established by the Japanese. Communication and transport networks were in tatters with highways and ports in a state of dilapidation, while the railway link between Ba Suo and the southern port of Yulin was completely destroyed.

The situation on Hainan improved somewhat after Liberation. Like the mainland, mass land reclamation campaigns were the hallmark of the post-1949 regime in Hainan. Teams of land reclamation specialists dispatched to Hainan developed 120 state farms and 308 communes with the help of the local people and the 100,000 Chinese who returned from overseas to build the “New China”. Over a thirty year period, investment by the Central Government in agriculture and industry totalled 4.33 billion yuan (US$ 2 billion) for which the island has returned an abundance of iron ore, timber, salt, pepper, rubber and coffee (Wu and Zhi, 1981). Some 14,000 km of roads were built to link all but one remote commune (Chin, 1962), and the surviving sections of the Japanese railway grid were converted to standard gauge in the late 1950's (Anon., 1982a).

Of the agricultural activities commenced, rice growing was emphasised in the hope that self-sufficiency in grain production could be quickly attained. By 1958, a total area of 190,000 ha was under paddy (Iskoldsky, 1958) which increased to 157,000 ha of early rice and 225,000 ha of late rice by 1965 (Kirk, 1965). The remainder of Hainan's arable land was used for production of sugar, rubber, coconut, sisal hemp, cotton, palm oil, jute and tropical fruit. Rubber trees occupied the largest area of cultivated land after rice with the estimated tree population of 4 million present in 1965 doubling since 1954 (Kirk, 1965). The new gov-

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
38 

48 

festivals in the nineteen eighties. These communities are of different occupational (agricultural, fishery, market town), ethnic (Punti Cantonese, Hakka), territorial (a village, village cluster, local territorial alliance) and descent (single-lineage, dominated, multi-lineage) natures. Diachronic and synchronic comparative studies of Jiao festivals celebrated by communities of different natures in Hong Kong before and after 1997 will show how local traditional values and customs are preserved and modified in changing social and political environments. Moreover, such studies can also pinpoint which elements are essential to the lives of the villagers.

IV. Jiao Festivals after 1997

As Dean suggested, the impact Jiao festivals have on the communist mainland can only be observed through a comparative study of the same Jiao (celebrated by the same community) over different time periods. A different situation exists in Hong Kong where the approach of 1997 threatens the survival of the Jiao. Scholars like Segawa, asked an essential question as to whether or not the festival will continue to be celebrated after 1997 when Hong Kong is officially returned to China." A villager in Fanling told me that they certainly would continue to celebrate the Jiao festival once every ten years even after 1997. “However, he said, "the magnitude of the celebration may be more restrained unless the Chinese government is totally 'open"”. To terminate a religious activity like the Jiao festival is not an easy thing, for no villager would like to bear the sole responsibility. After the 1981 celebration, rumours spread that committee members of Lam Tsuen had decided not to celebrate the Jiao festival any more. On Dec. 1 1990 when I arrived at the Jiao area of Lam Tsuen, I saw rituals and decorations not very much different from the 1981 one. The only notable difference was that the priests were replaced by some younger ones. Mr. Cheung [Zhang] the JP and senior elder of Lam Tsuen told me that in fact not one of the villagers dared to speak out about discontinuation of the festival,

We do not have sufficient evidence to prove that every village in the New Territories celebrated the Jiao festival, as an independent community or as a member of an alliance at one time or another. We know however, that Jiao festivals developed differently from one community to another. Some communities, such as Ping Shan and Pat Heung, have completely abandoned the festival. Others like
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
311

spite of his deep love for his motherland.

Naturally, his pictures take pride of place in the 'Overseas Chinese Museum' which has over 6,000 exhibits portraying the Ming and Qing diaspora. The building was completed in 1956, endowed by Tan and other overseas donors. Like most similar establishments in China, information is available in Chinese only. If the People's Republic really wishes to attract overseas visitors, is it too much to ask that literature and captions be printed in English as well?

The Group also made a visit to Huli Shan Fortress, completed in 1823, which protected the entrance to the fine, deep-sea port in the lead-up to the First Opium War. The island of Quemoy, from which the Nationalist Government relayed propaganda with loudspeakers during the 'cold war', lies only 2.4 kilometres off the Communist China Mainland near this fortress.

The RAS Party later went to the Nanputuo Temple, under the towering 'Five Old Men Peak', which is an architectural masterpiece and crammed with Buddhist statuary. Renovations were in progress. It was encouraging, too, to see the local People's Patriotic Church had recently been given a facelift by the provincial government.

But impressions lie in the senses of the beholder. Some RAS Members may especially remember Xiamen for its reasonably priced seafood available, with over 600 varieties of fish compared to Hong Kong, or the edible frogs or fine noodles. There was even champagne available with the buffet breakfast!

―

Nevertheless, for the author, the most treasured recollections are of banyans and buildings. Some of the former, with labyrinths of contorting, twisting roots, were probably growing a century-and-a-half ago, before the island became a Treaty port. The town is also a 'museum' of vernacular and colonial architecture.

Whether the vantage point is Bill Job's workshop or the hotel window, a vista of old, mellowed, orange, Chinese 'roll and trough' roof tiles, with some roofs of interlocking tiles, blend in reasonably well with new structures erected often from overseas remittances. Although the more ornate, gently sloping, swallow-tail roofs were traditionally reserved for temples, official buildings, and residences
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g
The MacIntosh Cathedrals

R.G. Horsnell

171

Introduction

The author of this article has been working in Hong Kong since 1971. He started in the Architectural Office of the old Public Works Department, and is at present a Chief Maintenance Surveyor in the Architectural Services Department which celebrated its Tenth Anniversary in 1996. He has been assisting the Antiquities and Monuments Office in recording historical buildings and structures since 1992. In this article, he gives a brief history of the police border observation posts known as the MacIntosh Cathedrals, which were named after Commissioner of Police, Mr. D.W. MacIntosh, whose idea it was to build them. The article has been compiled from information in the Hong Kong Police Force Library, also the Force Museum in Coombe Road to which due acknowledgements are made.

In 1945, when Hong Kong was liberated, the population was estimated at 500,000. As the Territory regrouped and normality returned, it saw an upturn in immigration and by the end of 1947, the population had increased to an estimated 1,800,000. In 1948/49, as a result of unsettled conditions in China caused by the civil war and the increasing successes of the communist armies, a large influx of refugees from the mainland commenced. Approximately 750,000, mainly from Kwantung Province, Shanghai, and other commercial centres, entered Hong Kong during 1949 and early 1950. This reached its height in the Spring of 1950, when the estimated population was 2,360,000.

Amongst the refugees were the defeated remnants of the Kuo Min Tang Nationalist armies and also a fair number of common criminals. Arms of all descriptions were available, and gangs of armed men raided villages near the Border. There were frequent gun battles between the police and gangsters, and there were several cases of policemen being killed and their revolvers stolen. In May 1949, two incidents occurred on the Border, which were to lead to a change of design and use of police posts in that particular area.

On May 2, 1949, a four-man police patrol left Ta Kwu Ling Police
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
characteristic of the British poking fun at themselves. The tie's background colour is black, like the outlook during the Hong Kong 1967 riots. The dull, thin diagonal red lines represent the communist propaganda which was blared out from loudspeakers situated in the old Bank of China building in Central District. The three figures on the tie depict the inhabitants in Hong Kong in those troubled days: the 'white-skinned pigs' (the expatriates, largely British); the 'yellow running dogs' (the local Chinese working for, or co-operating with, the British); and the 'big, red, fat cats' (the Mainland Chinese who were posted from Red China to do business in Hong Kong, driving about in limousines, living it up). But, if you turn the necktie inside out it has a silver lining (even if every silver lining has a cloud)! 

Being able to laugh at British or American jokes does not come automatically with being able to speak English. A Hong Kong Chinese told the author that he was making a farewell speech, on being posted away from Beijing, and he told the tale (in Putonghua, translating the sense, not word for word) about a pilot, the American President, a priest and a hippie in an aeroplane. The pilot turned to the three passengers and told them the plane was going to crash and that they had only three parachutes. 'I have my life ahead of me. I'm taking one,' said the pilot, and he jumped. The American President said, 'I'm the most important person in the world. I cannot be spared,' and he too jumped. Then the priest turned to the hippie and murmured, 'Look here, son, I am an old man, you have your life in front of you, take the one remaining parachute.' But the hippie replied, 'Don't worry Father, there are still two parachutes left. The President of the United States jumped by mistake with my rucksack!' Unexpectedly, the Hong Kong Chinese who told the joke said that the Beijingers laughed, much to his surprise, when he told the joke. But he thinks it may have been because the President of the United States had made such a fool of himself. 

Some people certainly pick up a language, an accent or a sense of humour quickly. Appreciating another form of humour is like learning to appreciate another form of beauty or art. It is an 'education process'. One does not change one's sense of humour but one develops an 'extension' making one a more interesting person. Certainly, however, speaking English is not the same as being English, with all the nuances of the language, and subjects like Princess Diana are still touchy long after her death. How can you expect the Chinese, who
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188

cults. Popular religion is an amalgam of Chinese peasant beliefs with shamanism and the use of magic. The reason for the interdict on popular religion, apart from the reference to it as "purely superstition," would appear to be because it is not in any way an organised religion with a controlling malleable body and having to obey orders in a chain of control.

In the first flush of the Communist victory in 1949-1950 temples in a great many places were closed down, taken over and used for community purposes such as granaries, police and even local military barracks, schools or créches, or destroyed. The few that remained, having been allowed to lie unused and untouched, were mostly laid waste during the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976] when the young Red Guards saw it their duty to destroy all elements of old ways. Since the early 1980s more and more religious establishments within Mainland China have opened or, in the majority of places, re-opened. They have been refurbished and new statuary made to replace those destroyed during the early days of communist rule or during the Cultural Revolution.

Many temples have now been renovated and restored to their old glory with statuary created by young artisans guided by the elderly whose memories of the iconographic detail has proved, on the whole, to be comparatively poor. As an example we can see in Kuan Hsien near Chengtu in Szechuan province, the former image of the major local deity, Li Ping, the official who designed and arranged the irrigation system which made the Chengtu plain the major agricultural region it is today. Previously he was portrayed as a standard scholar-official, sitting, dressed in robes and cap but without a unique characteristic. Today, however, he is depicted as a politicised middle-aged man, standing in a Stakhanovite pose typical of the nineteen fifties and sixties. This in no way inhibits devotees today from kneeling before and revering him.

Many of the new images depict dynastic scholars, officials or women, with well formed and not unattractive heads and faces, and swathed in silken robes which conceal a basic frame constructed of slats of wood unlike pre-1949 images the bodies of which were made in the whole. The images of small children usually accompanying the image of maternity goddesses are almost without exception modern children's dolls without their clothes whereas during dynastic times the children were all equally well carved as the major deities. It is worth adding how truly hideous and garish some of the new edifices are.
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for

many years. Although the government had turned a blind eye to such activities in the past, mainly in the name of making tourist dollars, it now focused attention on these 'superstitious rituals' which were said to be daily corroding the ideology of the people. The magazine, saying that market forces had prompted a resurgence of 'backward' religious practices, described how the system of traditional beliefs which had been finding fertile ground in the countryside was now creeping towards urban centres. This would seem neither to have inhibited nor prevented Taiwanese pilgrims flying into mainland China bearing Taiwanese images of deities to their particular cult centres in Fukien and Chekiang provinces for their 'power' [ling] to be renewed. It has to be remembered, however, that Taiwanese visitors are treated as privileged guests.

Problems of luck and fate are as real today in China as they are in any rural society, and as they were in pre-communist China. Some private firms are reported maintaining altars on company premises and are making offerings to the traditional God of Wealth in the belief that this would help ensure their success in business. Buddhist statues have been placed in cultural centres and tutelary deities adorn the roofs of schools. Children too seem to have succumbed to the craze. A survey of 1,622 children between 11 and 12 in Changchun showed 50 per cent believed in fate and 40 per cent believed in the immortality of the soul. A further 40 per cent of boys and nearly 60 per cent of girls believed in spirits and in Heaven and Hell. It went on to describe the resurgence of superstitious practices and the appearance of several 'reactionary sects.' The September 1996 issue of Democracy and Legal System magazine said that tens of thousands of temples dedicated to China's colourful assembly of gods were being illegally built or restored. It quoted 20,1692 in Fukien province, 9,000 in Honan and 10,000 in Shansi provinces had been destroyed, and even 597 state-run restaurants in Peking had taken down and removed Buddhist shrines during one month alone. A further report described a similar crackdown in Hupei province where 1,600 'pagan' shrines, mostly dedicated to the Earth God, had been destroyed as part of the nation-wide crackdown. Similar action had been taken in Kueichou province where nine illegal temples had been closed in one month. A report about Chekiang province about the same time claimed that provincial officials had brought under control 17,900 Taoist, Buddhist or Christian [sic] temples and monasteries.

The mainland newspaper, Paok'an Wenchai, had about this same time criticised the widespread superstitious practices in the building
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These communist iconoclastic campaigns are by no means unique in Chinese history. Over the centuries one or other of the beliefs have found favour at the expense of others, temples have been razed, religious communities dispersed and images destroyed. Within the past century and a half we have seen the Taiping Rebellion of the mid 19th century which covered much of central-southern China; the Boxer Rebellion of the turn of the century in northern China; and the nationwide Anti-Superstition Campaign of the Republican Kuomintang in the late 1920s, all of which destroyed temples and their contents. From an historic preservation point of view it is worth recalling that temples within the two foreign colonies at the mouth of the Pearl River, held by Portugal and Britain, remained unscathed during these years and, in Macau for instance, some of the images and temples date back three to four hundred years.

We look forward then with great interest to see what will happen in the future to the urban and rural temples and shrines in Hong Kong and Macau. They are sure to survive though I have a horrible suspicion that sooner or later they might be converted to electronic devices.

NOTES

It is not difficult to see how the confusion rose in Chinese minds. During the 19th and early 20th centuries Catholic and Protestant missionaries rarely co-operated and, in many places, actually denounced the other as heterodox. Also, the Catholic priests, berobed bachelors, with prayers and chants in a dead language, with church images and incense, were sufficiently similar to the Buddhists for the Chinese to empathise. Protestant missionaries on the other hand tended to be married and live isolated from their parishioners; they dressed either as pseudo-Chinese or in dark heavy western suits, and lived frugally whilst preaching of hell fire and damnation. To the Chinese these were two entirely separate religions.

If we take as a very rough estimate 6,000 temples in present day Taiwan where religious freedom is permitted and temples have been flourishing, then the figure of 20,000 in the coastal province in mainland China opposite to Taiwan across the Straits must include every possible shrine, never mind how small.

3 I have to thank Professor K Dean of McGill University for this observation.
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of those who use it. Places, their layout and furnishings, and their associated activities, are crammed with meanings that can be identified and analysed for what they tell us about people's beliefs. Thus, the sociologist Anthony Giddens suggests that one way to look at place is as a 'locale', a 'setting for interaction'. Activities come and go, but places remain, with the traces of what has happened there. And meanwhile, the shaping of a place will continue, both in terms of the physical qualities of that place and in its image in the minds of those for whom it has some significance.

As a result of my visit to Wo Hop Shek, and subsequently to many of the other urban cemeteries in Hong Kong, I wrote several papers about Hong Kong's urban cemeteries and columbaria. In 1999, curious to know how fifty years of Communist rule had affected the spatial manifestation of death in a metropolitan landscape in mainland China, I extended my research to Guangzhou. And, equally curious to find out how a modern East Asian society with an uninterrupted tradition of Confucian beliefs and customs was coping with the expression of death in the landscape, I also arranged to carry out associated research in Seoul, South Korea.

I refer to each paper below. In the published versions, each has a long list of references. These are a valuable dimension of the published work, as they offer a sound starting point to those wanting to carry out related research. These lists represent hours of leafing through back issues of journals, combing bookshelves, following up other researchers' reference lists, collecting newspaper cuttings (and, in one case, employing a Chinese-speaking research assistant to access a Guangdong evening paper online), and using electronic search tools to search and download. The website of the Korea Herald was especially useful. As well, of course, I used — especially for theoretical approaches — articles in recent issues of those professional journals to which I subscribe. Very important were the occasional and invaluable recommendations of 'You had better get hold of this....' from RAS members! Personal introductions have helped, too.

In fact, several members of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) have been consistently generous and encouraging since I began this research, and I owe a lot to them. Dan Waters, James Hayes and Patrick Hase have kindly read several of the papers listed below and
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