RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 159 STRICKLAND, Mrs. P. G. c/o Caldbeck Macgregor & Co., Ltd., H.K. SWIRE, A. C. * TALBOT, H. D. TANG, Shiu-kin * THOMAS, L. F. + THOMAS, Dr. O. L. Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K. Department of Geography, The University, H.K. The Kowloon Motor Bus Co., (1933) Ltd., 505, Pedder Building, H.K. Co-operative Development & Fisheries Department, Li Po Chun Chambers, 11th Floor, H.K. 17, Magnolia Road, Yau Yat Chuen, Kowloon. THOMPSON, Lt. Col. P. H. CRE Hong Kong B.F.P.O.1, H.K. THOMPSON, R. W. - TILL, The V. Rev. B. * - TOPLEY, Dr. Marjorie TREGEAR, Miss M. TRISTRAM, M. P. W. - TSEUNG, Dr. F. I. TURNER, Sir M. * VETCH, H. - VETCH, Mrs. H. VIO, Dr. E. G. VISCHER, Mrs. H. B. VISICK, Mrs. Mary WADDINGTON, Mrs. A. WALDEN, J. C. C. WARD, Miss J. E. A. WARD, W. L. - WARNER, J. M. WATSON, K. A. WEI, Dr. Tat + Dept. of Modern Languages, The University, H.K. The Dean's House, H.K. 6, Peak Mansions, H.K. c/o Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, Oxford, UK. Rating & Valuation Dept., Murray House, Queen's Road E., H.K. China Building, 4th Floor, H.K. "Whispers" Riversdale, Boume End, Bucks, U.K. c/o H.K. University Press, H.K. c/o H.K. University Press, H.K. 315, H.K. & Shanghai Bank Building, H.K. A-23, Estoril Court, 15 Garden Road, H.K. Department of English, The University, H.K. 9, Middle Gap Road, H.K. c/o Commerce & Industry Department, Fire Brigade Building, H.K. 51, Buxey Lodge, Conduit Road, H.K. Apt. 3, No. 7, Magazine Gap Road, H.K. City Hall, H.K. c/o Lammert Bros., Pedder Building, H.K. H.K. Anti-Tuberculosis Association, Queen's Road, East, H.K. *Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 88 Our principal concern has been to document and explain the rapid growth in popularity in Hong Kong since the 1940's of the cult of Huang Daxian (on which, see Lang and Ragvald, "Upward mobility of a refugee god"). However, we have also been trying to trace the origins of the cult in Guangdong province, hence the research trip to the village. A report on this visit, and on the first author's initial visit to the village in 1985, has also been prepared. We are now working on a book on the history of the cult in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Probable cases of the mergings of deities include, from ancient Greece, the merging of two incarnations of Zeus (Gilbert, Murray, Five stages of Greek Religion, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1951, p. 48; H.J. Rose, Religion in Greece and Rome, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 48-49), and of various female deities in Aphrodite (Paul Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1978, ch. 2); from Rome, the blending of Roman with Greek deities, and the subsequent apparent merging of some Roman deities with Celtic deities (John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 211-220); from the early Christian era, the probable absorption of elements of the cult of Diana into the cult of Mary (Herbert Muller, The Loom of History, N.Y. New American Library, 1958 p. 173; Durant, 1939: 183); from Mexico, the absorption of elements of the Indian goddess Tonantsi into the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Ena Campbell, “The Virgin of Guadalupe and the female self-image: a Mexican case history", in Mother Worship: Themes and Variations, ed. by Richard Preston, University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 9 This translation strangely enough contains one serious (the failure to recognize Dongtian Fudi [Cavern-heavens and blessed spots] as a general Taoist concept) and a few smaller mistakes. These, however, do not affect the arguments made in this paper. 10 This probable origin of the autobiography was pointed out to us by Dr. S.H. Wong of the Department of Chinese, Hong Kong University (see Wong, "A study of Huang Ta-hsien"). There are several slightly different versions of Shenxian Zhuan. For this translation we have used the relatively early (Song dynasty) version in Biji Xiaoshuo Daguan (A Parade of Note-form Fiction), Taibei, Xinxing Shuju, volume 4. 12 Essentially the same story is related in Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan, compiled in the 16th century by Wang Shizhen (reprinted by Zhongwen Chubanshe in 1971 on Taiwan). This is one of the major reference works on Taoist saints, with capsule biographies on some 500 of them, and covers the entire period from the beginning of Taoism until the last year of the reign of Hongzhi (1506 A.D.). This source adds only the information that during the Song and Yuan dynasties, both Huang Chuping and his brother were awarded honorary titles by the state. The story of Huang Chuping also appears in Jinhua Fuzhi (the prefectural gazetteer of Jinhua), volume no. 22 in the subsection "xian shi" (on fairies). 13 Ge Hong was a native of Jurong in Danyang (present day Jiangsu province). His career included service as assistant to prime minister Sima Rui, and as counsellor and military staff officer. He was honoured by the state for his services in the suppression of the peasant revolt led by Shi Bing. However, he was also very interested in Taoist alchemy. He was a grandson, on the fraternal line, of the famous necromancer and alchemist Ge Xuan (164-244), and from a disciple of Ge Xuan's, he learned the art of refining cinnabar. When word spread that cinnabar sand had been found in Jiaozhi (the ancient name for part of Guangdong and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT ............. HON. TREASURER'S REPORT HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ARTICLES: • Dian H. Murray, Pirates in the Pearl River Delta ... Dan Waters, A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong • Steven A. Leibo, Not So Calm An Administration: The Anglo-French Occupation of Canton, 1858-1861 Wei Peh T'i, Through Historical Records and Ancient Writings in search of the Giant Panada • Carl T. Smith, The First Child Labour Law in Hong Kong vii xviii xxiii • 1 10 16 • 34 44 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Tai Po 70 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Castle Peak 26 76 Sung Hok-P'ang, Ts'in Fuk 86 Violet Mebig Chan Lew, A Sentimental Journey into the Past of the Chan and Jong Families 94 Harold M. Otness, "The One Bright Spot in Shanghai" A History of the Library of the North China Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society NOTES AND QUERIES: • David Faure, The Man the Emperor Decapitated Carl T. Smith, The Archives of the Basel Mission 185 198 203 P. H. Hase, The Lanterns of Chuko Liang O. William Borrell FMS, A Silver Bracelet with an Ancient Greek Coin found in Wewak, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea · 207 212 James Hayes, The Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Temple, Chai Wan 217 • E. W. Wright, The Hongkong Milling Company's Failure 218 P. H. Hase, A Traditional New Territories Latrine James Hayes, A Note on Rice Hullers 222 226 James Hayes, A Glimpse of the Land Settlement at Shek Pik Village, Lantau Island, Hong Kong 228 BOOK REVIEWS 234 · vi Page & ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q PIRATES IN THE PEARL RIVER DELTA DIAN H. MURRAY* This study of “Pirates in the Pearl River" was a multiarchival research project whose goal was to piece together information on a group of Chinese non-elites who had hitherto escaped the attention of historians and to turn our attention seaward from the Chinese mainland in order to place our understanding of land-sea relations within a broader ecological context. The research drew upon documents written in Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Portuguese, Japanese and English and involved visits to archives in Washington, D.C.; Taipei, Taiwan; Beijing, China: Macao, Hong Kong; and London. Almost at its outset my investigation revealed a significant growth of piracy within the Pearl River Delta and along the entire South China coast from Chekiang to Vietnam between 1796 and 1810. Within Kwangtung province alone a confederation of several thousand pirates and a fleet of 1,200 junks dominated delta and coast alike forcing all who set sail, regardless of whether they were merchantmen, fishermen, salt distributors or opium smugglers, to purchase passports for immunisation against attack. The military prowess of the pirates was such that they successfully fought the Ch'ing government fleet, in the form of the Kwangtung provincial water force, to a standstill and involved themselves in both battles and negotiations with the Western foreigners then on the scene. Yet, during 1810, at what seemed to be the height of their power, the pirates disappeared almost overnight from the sea. It then became my mission to understand both their rise and fall. Initially, I had intended to investigate the entire phenomenon and to account for all of the pirate activity along the southeast littoral. In the end, however, I discovered that just as there were economic macroregions within which life was lived on the continent, so, too, were there similar regions or 'water * Professor Murray, of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, is author of Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790-1870 (Stanford University Press, 1987). This talk was delivered to the Society on August 1st, 1983. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 234 BOOK REVIEWS Dian H. Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast 1790-1810 (Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. viii, 243. In 1813, there appeared in English a translation by the European scholar Neumann of a Chinese work on pirates: more specifically, on that particularly large group which infested the China Sea from 1807-1810. Dian Murray takes a look at them over a longer period of twenty years, to give us the first modern work on the subject. She uses a wide range of sources in Chinese and Western languages, the subject of a useful bibliographic essay towards the end of the book. At their peak, the pirate bands numbered between 50,000 and 70,000 men and women, organized into a confederation of six fleets and 20,000 junks: surely a horrifying prospect for officials and villagers and townpeople alike, not to mention other seafarers. And so it proved. The author gives many examples of defeats inflicted on Ch'ing officers, and the killings, abductions and sackings to which the inhabitants of many places were subjected over the period of greatest piratical activity. Chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 99-136) contain many examples of the kind, in colourful detail often culled from county gazetteers. In the end, the pirate menace was removed by a combination of greater force and foreign aid, together with application of the well-known expedient of buying over the leaders with money and titles, which resulted in the surrender of the last fleet, leaving the way open for the Ch'ing navy to overcome the remaining smaller groups piecemeal (Chapter 8). Other chapters deal with the milieu in which the pirate menace originated: the (Cantonese) "Water World" as Professor Murray entitles it (Chapter 1), the Sino-Vietnamese piracy of the late 18th century whose leaders were enlisted by the rival claimants to the Vietnamese throne (Chapters 2 and 3), the "Professionalization of Piracy", which gives an account of organization, leadership, recruitment and life at sea (Chapter 4), whilst another chapter is devoted to the manner in which piratical operations were conducted, including information on ships and weapons (Chapter 5). A "Conclusion" surveys the era and the pirate phenomenon under ================================================================================