RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
28 

T. C. CHENG 

NOTES 

1 During these early years, schools like the Morrison School, operated by the Morrison Education Society founded by Dr. Robert Morrison, the Anglo-Chinese School (or Ying Wah School) operated by Dr. James Legge of the London Missionary Society (Dr. Legge is best known for his translation of the Chinese classics and for his appointment as the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University in 1874), and St. Paul's College operated by the Anglican Bishop, were dismal failures whether from the missionary or from the educational point of view. In 1855, the Governor Sir John Bowring had this to say about St. Paul's College: "For the last six years, £250 a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of 6 persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake the meanest department of an interpreter's duty

See E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London; Luzac and Co., 1895, p. 349.

2 On p. 60 of Fragrant Harbour by G. B. Endacott and A. Hinton, a statement was made that Ng Choy was "educated at the old Central School (Queen's College)". I find no evidence to support this.

3 As a result of the founding of the Government Central School (the present Queen's College) in 1862, a number of educated Chinese well-versed in both Chinese and English had been produced, who began to regard Hong Kong as their home town and who began to develop a keen interest in the welfare of Hong Kong. Thus leading Chinese founded the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870 and the Po Leung Kuk in 1880. It is of interest to note that in the 1870's, the educated Chinese actually pressed for the election of representatives to form a Chinese Municipal Board. In 1878, when the foreign community protested against Sir John Hennessy's policy of lenient treatment of prisoners, the Chinese in Hong Kong for the first time despatched an address to Queen Victoria which was in effect a vote of confidence in the Government.

4 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94. *G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 94.

6 In 1862 an Institute of Foreign Languages was founded in Peking and translation bureaux were established to translate scientific books into Chinese. In 1866 the first modern shipbuilding yard was started in Foochow, Fukien, and from 1872 to 1875 four batches of selected young Chinese scholars, totalling 120, were sent to the U.S.A. to further their studies.

7 General Chan (陳炯明, Chen Chiung-ming) revolted against Sun Yat-sen in Canton in June 1922. For details about this revolt, see Tang Leang-li's The Inner History of The Chinese Revolution, London, p. 140.

8 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 199.

9 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 98.

10 After 2 years there, Yung Wing (容閎, Rong Hong) went to Yale University and was the first Chinese to graduate from that famous institution in 1854. Yung later became a famous person in the history of modern China, being responsible for the opening of the first school of mechanical engineering in Shanghai; the formation of the China Merchant Steamship Navigation Company; the translation of many scientific books into Chinese; and the sending of young Chinese scholars to the U.S.A. for western studies in the 1870's. In the case of Wong Foon, after 2 years' study in the U.S.A., he crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and entered the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with honours in medicine and surgery. He returned to Canton in 1857 and distinguished himself as a surgeon. See also Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Western Cultures, Honolulu, East-West Center, 1964, Chapter 4, "Yung Hung (Yung Wing) and Foreign Schemes".
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE

135

4 The first census of the Island in 1841 gave a population of 5,650. In 1844 the population was given as 19,009. See Historical and Statistical Abstract of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1841-1931, Hong Kong, Noronha, 1932. The validity of the first census has been questioned by G. R. Sayer in his Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 104.

5 The China Review, vol. 1, 1872/73, p. 333.

6 Ibid., p. 334.

7 E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1895, p. 282. The Man Mo Temple stands at the western end of Hollywood Road. It was originally a shrine patronised mostly by fishermen before 1841. For a description of the temple see Charles J. H. Halcombe, The Mystic Flowery Land, London, Luzac and Co., 1896, ch. xxvii. The temple was run by a committee appointed by the Five Districts and the committee used to hold an annual ceremony at Mount Davis for the dead... in celebration of the gods of literature and war: see the Hongkong Government Gazette (henceforth cited as the Gazette), 12 February 1879, p. 52. The properties of the Man Mo Temple were transferred to the Tung Wah Hospital by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, No. 10 of 1908. Before the committee of the Tung Wah Hospital was organized, the Man Mo Temple Committee appears to have been recognised as representing the opinions of respectable Chinese.

9 J. W. Norton Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1898, vol. 2, p. 86. See also the reports of the Registrar General for 1866 and 1867 in the Gazette.

9 Ibid., p. 86.

10 In 1867 the police force consisted of 89 Europeans, 377 Indians (chiefly Bombay sepoys) and 132 Chinese, many of whom were employed as marine police. See Eitel, op. cit., pp. 445-6.

As late as 1893 there were only two European policemen who could act as proper interpreters and only five who could speak some Chinese. See the Report of the Commission on the Po Leung Kuk, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1893, p. 81.

12 Correspondence on Hong Kong Gambling Houses, London, H.M.S.O., 1869, p. 21.

13 Eitel, op. cit., p. 447.

14 Gazette, 6 January 1872. The Police Commission set up by MacDonnell was not unanimous: broadly it agreed to recommend an Anglo-Chinese police force. The recruitment of Chinese police had been strongly advocated by Dr. Legge, as most likely to bring good understanding between the government and respectable Chinese', G. B. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, London, Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 160.

13 Osbert Chadwick, Reports on the Sanitary Conditions of Hong Kong, London, H.M.S.O., 1882, p. 42.

16 'Registration of Chinese Partners', Hong Kong Sessional Papers (henceforth cited as Sessional Papers), No. 43 of 1901, p. 22. The text reads: 'Head and District Watchmen employed to patrol the streets by day and by night, are to be recommended by the Chinese themselves, because they know whether they are trustworthy or not. If these men, however, should fail to maintain their good character and should be found to be unfit for the post by the Chinese residents of the district to which they belong, they should be dismissed at any time, in order that they may have something to fear'. The translation is clearly a bad one.

17 In 1883, the Registrar General, Frederick Stewart, used the district watchmen to conduct an enquiry into all Hong Kong schools. In the 1897
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SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART

73

tions, being a translation of the Ch'eng Yu K'ao by Ch'iu Chin (A.D. 1419-1495), a famous scholar of the Ming Dynasty. It is, in Herbert A. Giles' words: 'usually the first work of reference suggested by the teacher when his pupils' acquaintance with book-Chinese passes from mere acquisition of individual characters in simple locutions to the study of the figurative and allusive language which forms the backbone of general literature'.47 The first edition of 300 copies was published in Hong Kong by Kelly and Walsh and was well received at first by such reviewers as E.J. Eitel and E.H. Parker; but an unsolicited, detailed and acerbic review by the relentless controversialist and sinologue, Herbert A. Giles, gave rise to a lengthy debate in the China Review, which reverberated through three volumes of the journal.48 This debate on the meaning of certain Chinese characters is a splendid example of odium sinologorum and furor academicus. Lockhart, after suffering Giles' first furious onslaught on his credentials as a Chinese scholar, asked Ho Kai for an opinion on Giles' linguistic strictures and the obliging doctor responded with a short letter to the China Review in which he stated of Giles' review that about one-third is correct and consequently valuable, another one-third on doubtful and trivial points not altogether right; the remaining one-third is totally wrong.”49 Giles rushed into print in a further lengthy article to crush the very judicious Ho Kai. He wrote: 'Of Dr. Ho Kai as a "competent native scholar" I had never before heard; and as he has not yet thought fit to submit to public approval any specimens of his scholarship, competent or otherwise, he may be dismissed incontinently from the case.'50 Dismissed he was for Ho Kai did not venture to re-enter the lists.

The controversy centred, among other linguistic problems, on the meaning of the characters, translated by Gustave Schlegel as 'cowcloth'. This eminent Dutch Professor of Chinese at Leyden University, co-editor with Henri Cordier of T'oung Pao, provided a magisterial summing-up in 1897 of the linguistic issues involved.51 There the controversy came to an end with, it would seem, the contestants mutually exhausted. Lockhart, who was a warm-hearted and balanced man, appears not to have borne Giles malice. In 1931 he paid Giles, by now Professor of Chinese at Cambridge University, the tribute of producing a compilation of the Chinese texts which underlay the passages published in the prose volume of Giles' Gems of Chinese Literature, the first edition of which appeared in
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82

HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE

It is an interesting comment on Johnston that he visited England only twice in twenty-eight years of residence in China. See Johnston's obituary in the Times of 8 March, 1938.

37 R. F. Johnston's, Twilight in the Forbidden City, London, 1934, describes his experiences as an Imperial tutor.

38 Much information on Johnston's experiences as District Officer and Magistrate are given in his book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China.

39 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921, p. 3.

40 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1903, p. 5. From time to time the Magistrate's office issued proclamations in Chinese, notifying the people of the wishes of the Government. All the villages of the Territory were provided with large notice boards on which such proclamations were posted. The style of governing in Weihaiwei owed much to Chinese example.

41 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1904, p. 26. The statement is taken from Johnston's 'Report of the Secretary to Government for the Year 1904'. This is a most interesting report on Chinese society in Weihaiwei,

42 The China Review was founded in 1872 by N. B. Dennys. The publication terminated with vol. xxv, 1901. It was published bi-monthly.

43 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1937, pp. 391-3.

44 In his obituary notice of E. H. Parker, E. T. C. Werner wrote: "The editor's request to write this notice puts me in a rather awkward position, for I cannot but refer to the very great amount of valuable sinological work which has been done by members of the British Consular Service in China. Considering its relatively small size, the Service has produced proportionately more brilliant sinologists than any body connected with the Far East.” See Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (henceforth cited as JNCBRAS), vol. lvii, 1926, p. vi.

45 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at Oxford. Hong Kong cadet in 1899. Governor of Hong Kong 1925-30. He published, among other books, The Chinese in British Guiana, Georgetown, 1915, Cantonese Love-Songs, Oxford, 1904, and Summary of Geographical Observations taken during a Journey from Kashgar to Kowloon, 1907-8, Hong Kong, 1911.

46 Lockhart's interest in the Chinese language is recognised in the dedication to him of Mok Man-cheung's Tah Tsz Anglo-Chinese Dictionary, 2nd edition (Chinese foreword dated 9th October, 1914). Mok had served in the Registrar-General's department with Lockhart, and moved to the Supreme Court as an interpreter in 1891. See also note 71 below.

47 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 405.

48 Vols. xx to xxii. The disputants included E. J. Eitel, E. H. Parker, E. D. H. Fraser, H. A. Giles, and Lockhart. The first edition of Lockhart's book was dedicated to Dr. John Chalmers, the distinguished sinologue, and the second to Dr. James Legge as well. Lockhart spoke of them as 'two famous Aberdonians'.

49 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 412.

50 China Review, vol. xxii, 1893/94, p. 547,

51 T'oung Pao, vol. viii, 1897, pp. 412-430.

52 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6, 1930-32, p. 812.

53 Chinese Recorder, Sept. 1903, p. 464.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r
CHINA MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY

23

• Lancer and cross: biographical sketches of fifty pioneer medical missionaries in China, comp. by K. Chimin Wong [Shanghai] Council on Christian Medical Work, 1950, p. 14-16.

Europe in China: the history of Hongkong from the beginning to the year 1882, by E. J. Eitel, Hongkong, Kelly & Walsh, 1895, p. 180.

* Information on the officers and committee members during the brief history of the Society in these two paragraphs, except where otherwise noted, derives variously from the Friend of China, the Hong Kong almanack and directory for 1846, and the Hongkong register, as well as the Transactions.

9 As well as in the Transactions, p. 1-2, the record of this first meeting appears in the Friend of China, v. 14, no. 40, May 17th 1844, p. 754, and the Chinese repository, v. 14, 1845, p. 245.

10 Presumably John Williams & Co., Book Sellers & Publishers, 18 Wellington St. "next house to the Roman Catholic Chapel.". From an advertisement in the Hongkong register, v. 18, no. 40, Oct. 7th 1845, p. 162, it appears that the shop also sold everything from fowling pieces to "rare old aniseed brandy".

11 Royal Society of London: Catalogue of scientific papers, 1800-1900, London, 1867-1925.

12 U. S. Surgeon-General's Office: Index-catalogue of the Library: authors and subjects, Washington, 1880-1950.

Periodical articles are entered only under subject.

13 The chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, by H. B. Morse, v. 5: Supplementary, 1742-74. Oxford, 1929, p. 101.

14 Trans. p. 27 gives June 8th, but this must be an error, as Dr. Hobson's letter was dated June 15,

15 "The history of medical education in Hong Kong" by Sir Lindsay T. Ride, in Inauguration of the Li Shu Fan Medical Foundation, 3rd March 1963: commemoration volume [Hong Kong, 1963] p. 41.

16 The medical missionary in China... by William Lockhart, London, 1861, p. 141.

17 Royal Asiatic Society. China Branch, Transactions, v. 1, 1847, p. 76.

18 Chinese repository, v. 14, 1845, p. 288-91.

19 Anonymous writer quoted by V. H. G. Jarrett in the South China Morning Post; and H. A. Rydings in JHKBRAS, v. 8, 1968, p. 63.

20 Catalogue of works in the Morrison Library, City Hall, Hongkong, including also a synoptical index. Hongkong, printed at the China Mail Office, 1873.

21 The names adopted were, successively, the Philosophical Society of China (5 Jan. 1847), the Asiatic Society of China (19 Jan, 1847), and the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (7 Sept. 1847).

22 Royal Asiatic Society. China Branch. Transactions, v. 1, 1847, p. 71.

23 Ibid. p. 23.

24 J. R. Jones, op. cit., p. 2.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
104

H. J. LETHBRIDGE

recommend that the remedy for Hong Kong destitution be left in the main to private charity and to private effort, but that the Government should do everything in its power to organize by law private charity which may then be supplemented by State aid.25

The government's main contribution was the burial of defunct paupers and the shipping home of destitute British seamen. As Dr. Eitel concluded in 1880, all that the law offered European destitutes was 'fine or imprisonment, with or without hard labour'.26

The Europeans who worked as overseers in the dockyards, factories and other industrial enterprises, the ships' captains, mates and engineers, all led more circumspect lives in their Kowloon terraced homes than the soldiers, sailors, and merchant seamen. They looked down on the destitute, improvident, or wandering portion of the European community with all the fierce contempt of the British lower middle classes. Their values were those of the skilled mechanics and clerks of Greenwich, Woolwich, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. Their wives entertained other wives and their families to high tea, the table set with fish-paste sandwiches, jellies, custards and cakes; they attended religious services regularly, though usually at a nonconformist chapel, and if Scots, at the Presbyterian Union Church. Their children went to the Kowloon British School (for foreign children only).27 They looked forward to retirement, a pension, and return to the homeland, having bettered themselves in the colonies. They formed the elite of the European lower classes in Hong Kong; but they were excluded, nonetheless, from the grander world of Taipan, administrator, and professional man.

The question why lower class Europeans came to, or remained in, Hong Kong is not difficult to answer. Some, such as beachcombers, were at the end of the line, at the end of their tether; they were trapped there (temporarily at least) by poverty, circumstance, and character. Soldiers, sailors and merchant seamen were transients or temporary sojourners; and the decision to come to Hong Kong was made not by them but by their superiors. Inspectors, supervisors and overseers stayed in Hong Kong primarily because most experienced a degree of upward mobility. They formed an intermediary class—an amorphous middling class—between the Chinese masses and the Taipans and officials. In Hong Kong, they were no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. Some, of course,
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135

Julian Arnold et al, Commercial Handbook of China, US Department of Commerce, Miscellaneous Series No. 84 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919) Vol. 1, p. 181.

Ibid. It is, however, only fair to record that E.J. Eitel Europe in China: the History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Hong Kong 1898) pp. 130-134 gives a more balanced picture of Hong Kong before 1841.

9 The Chinese characters for most of these places can be found in the Hong Kong Government's Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer, n.d. 1960) but variously at pp. 90-98, 103-106 and 114-117. See also “Original Gazetteer and Census, May 15th 1841" at Appendix II of Geoffrey Robley Sayer, Hong Kong 1841-1862 Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (Oxford, University Press, 1937), p. 203.

10 The extracts from the Collinson letters reproduced here are taken from transcripts in preparation kindly made available by Mr. Ian Diamond who advises that they should be checked against the originals. For the owners of the letters, and their whereabouts, see file MSS23 at the Public Records Office of Hong Kong.

A reference to Collinson's military mapping of Hong Kong, described by Mr. Diamond in an unpublished memoir as follows:

"Collinson completed his survey at the end of October, 1845. The work had taken him almost exactly two years. The survey was principally of Hong Kong Island but the resulting map took in also the islands immediately adjacent to Hong Kong, Kowloon Peninsula and the coastline of the mainland as far as Tsuen Wan in the West and Fat Tong Point in the east,

Drawn to a scale of 4" to one statute mile (1/15840) the finished map was on four joinable sheets covering north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east Hong Kong respectively. The map is meticulously detailed and very finely drawn.

One of the most interesting features of Collinson's map is that it employs contour lines instead of shading, or hatching, to show land heights and is said to have been the first such map ever to be published. Collinson did not invent the technique. Contour-line mapping was first employed by military engineers in France, but it seems to have been used there largely in the siting and planning of fortifications. By the early 1830s the concept had been taken up by the Royal Engineers who, especially after about 1834, began to give it a more general application, largely in connection with the great surveys of England and Ireland,

His map was published by the Ordnance Map Office, Southampton in 1846, prior to any contoured map of the United Kingdom, the first not being printed until December, 1847.

Collinson submitted, together with his map, a portfolio of "Ten Outline Sketches of the Island of Hong Kong". These were pen and ink drawings of the Island landscape viewed from ten locations and were designed to illustrate its salient topographical features and the nature and location of important buildings and settlements."

12 Ibid. A few years earlier, Dr. Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., also recorded a visit to a village school, under date 7 April 1841. "Went into the village school where we saw a lot of moon-faced urchins were acquiring the rudiments of the celestial learning and put one in mind of some of the village schools at home." (ed) Michael Levin, The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree. Surgeon R.N., as related in his private Journals 1837-1856 (Exeter, England, Webb and Bower, 1981)
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984
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138

JAMES HAYES

37

CO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864.

38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45.

39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149.

40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308.

41

e.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there.

42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258.

43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151.

44

**科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78.

45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12.

46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132.

47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11).

48

Unpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17.

49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983).

50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3

51

52

53

Friend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith),

Ibid.

See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10.

54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill.

55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above.

56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843.

57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522
58

Furthermore, Mok himself does refer to his participation in the pupil teacher scheme of 1885. This is particularly interesting on a number of grounds. First of all, there must be some doubt about the precise veracity of Mok Man Cheung's 1906 entry in Who's Who in the Far East. His name does not appear in the Hong Kong Government's Blue Book of 1885 as one of the pupil teachers, but it does appear in that year's Blue Book as Third Assistant Chinese Master.26 In the 1884 Blue Book, Mok Man Cheung is recorded as "Fourth Assistant” in the Central School, appointed on 23rd September, 1884. It appears certain, therefore, that, having completed Class 1 at the Central School in 1884, he was appointed directly to the staff of the school, rather than to the pupil-teacher scheme. He may well have taken a Class 1 examination in Pupil-Teacher's Method and his monitorial duties may have included the supervision of some of the junior classes. The records indicate, however, that he was not formally appointed as a Pupil-Teacher at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885 and that the normal length of a Pupil-Teacher course was three years.

27

The pupil-teacher scheme is itself of considerable interest and an association with it may have been regarded by Mok Man Cheung in 1906 as face-enhancing. A slight diversion from the personal snapshot may, therefore, be justified in order to consider the provisions for teacher education in Hong Kong in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

28

The first provision of formal teacher education in Hong Kong was similar to the "Monitorial System" of Bell and Lancaster in Great Britain. In the early days, however, Frederick Stewart, the first Headmaster of the Central School, who, for many years, doubled as the Inspector of Government Schools, became discouraged by the way pupils who were trained in school to become teachers "cashed in" their improved fluency in English by leaving school and taking up employment as interpreters, translators, or other types of middlemen in commercial undertakings or in government service.29 In 1881, an experiment with a discrete teacher education establishment was launched in Hong Kong, thanks to the enthusiasm of the new Inspector of Schools, Dr. E.J. Eitel, and the forceful, but controversial Governor of the time, Sir John
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59

30

Pope Hennessy. This was the Normal School, which was opened in Queen's Road East, Wanchai, on 12th September, 1881, under the headmastership of A.J. May, previously Acting Third Master at the Central School. Partly because Hennessy had not taken the precaution of gaining the prior approval of the Colonial Office in London, and partly because several members of the Education Commission then sitting to consider the elevation of the Central School to collegiate status were unconvinced of the necessity for separate provision of teacher education, the scheme failed. On the recommendation of Dr. George Bateson Wright, the Acting Inspector of Schools who, as Headmaster of the Central School, was normally in a state of dispute with the substantive Inspector, E.J. Eitel, the Wanchai Normal School was closed in October 1883. A.J. May returned to his ordinary teaching duties at the Central School, at first as merely an “extra-master” and, according to Gwenneth Stokes, “always very much on his dignity.”

31

And of the original 1881 intake of ten students, only two eventually became teachers. Meanwhile, the failure of the Normal School project led to a resumption of the pupil teacher scheme at the Central School. To avoid the problems faced earlier, first by Stewart and then by May, the revised pupil-teacher scheme gained additional stability by the requirement that each pupil-teacher articled had to deposit $100 with the Government Treasury. Further progress in the field of teacher education in Hong Kong was slow, the next major step being the establishment of “evening extension courses” in 1906, the formalization of these under the aegis of the newly established Technical Institute in 1907, the running of teacher education courses as a part of the Arts Faculty curriculum at the University of Hong Kong from 1916 onwards, and, finally, the establishment of the first permanent training college for teachers in Hong Kong in 1939.

32

Although the Normal School was shortlived and made only a minimal contribution to the teaching supply of Hong Kong schools, it was an interesting experiment. Comparable British colonies in Asia, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States launched no such experiment to supply teachers capable of using English as the medium of instruction. Instead, for these colonies, a Select Committee of 1870 recommended reliance on
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70

32

For further details and comments about the establishment and failure of the 1881-1883 Normal School, see CO129/197, p. 326f. In this file, Colonial Office minutes are critical of Hennessy's extravagance, note that "the scheme is evidently Dr. Eitel's with Governor Hennessy's fiat" and other correspondence (e.g., Eitel first report on the Normal School, in Eitel to M.S. Tonnochy, Acting Colonial Secretary, 19th January, 1882, and his second report enclosed in his letter to Tonnochy of 19th January, 1882) shows that Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, felt that there would be very unfortunate repercussions if the school were to be closed and that the headmaster, A.J. May was even prepared to take a salary reduction (from the original proposal of $2,400 a year to $1,600) rather than see the Normal School break up. In later reports (contained in CO129/202 p. 532f.), Eitel compared the Normal School, with its "special private tuition and instruction" in pedagogy, to the pupil-teacher scheme at the Central School to the disadvantage of the latter, and May, in his letter to Frederick Stewart of 19th July, 1883, mentioned the virtues of being able to utilize simulation techniques for the preparation of teachers at the Normal School. The actual end of the Normal School, which had been dismissed as unnecessary in the Education Commission Report of September 1882, was precipitated by A.J. May's insistence, in September 1883, that the students agreed to a bond to teach for five years at a salary rate of $25 per month on their completion of the course. The immediate result was that four of the ten students left for the Medical College at Tientsin, three joined commercial firms, and one became a government interpreter, leaving only two of the original intake, as mentioned above, to become teachers.

33

In Singapore, a central training college for men teachers using English as the medium of instruction was proposed in 1904 and again in 1910, but the scheme was aborted because of the lack of applications. In Kuala Lumpur, an experimental teacher training course began in 1905, proved successful, and was followed by a two-year course in Penang in 1907. See Wong Hoy Kee, Francis, and Gwee Yee Hean, Perspectives: The Development of Education in Malaysia and Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd., 1972), pp. 12-14.

34

What is certain is that his name does not appear in the Blue Book as one of the Pupil Teachers at the Central School at any time between 1880 and 1885. As noted above, Mok Man Cheung won the Class 1 Mathematics prize in January 1884. He was employed as "Fourth Chinese Assistant" at the Central School from September 1884. He did not, therefore, have the time to be enrolled in a pupil teacher's course, which customarily lasted for three years, but he might have taken an examination in "Pupil-Teacher's Theory" while studying in Class 1.

35

The dispute over the opening hours at the City Hall Museum had come to a head in 1880 when the Executive Committee of the City Hall Museum, led by its chairman, William Keswick, attempted to restrict the entry of Chinese to the afternoons. They were opposed by the first Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ng Choy, and by the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy. See CO129/189 p. 476-614 for correspondence, largely unsympathetic to the Committee's discriminatory proposal and including an extract from the Hong Kong Hansard for 1880 reporting a speech by Ng Choy, and CO129/192 p. 438-446 for correspondence which includes Keswick's opinion that racial distinctions should not be abolished with regard to admission to the Museum of the City Hall. The call for separate schools for the different races had been made on a number of occasions in the past, most notably in 1845, 1856, and 1870-1872, but the most recent resurgence of interest and argument about the issue had been provoked by a speech made by the Anglican Bishop Hoare at the Prize Distribution of the Diocesan Boys' School in January
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522
71

1901 (see below).

36

Brewin, who was promoted to Registrar General in 1901, had also served briefly, from 1897 to 1901, as Inspector of Schools in succession to E.J. Eitel. His endorsement was, therefore, particularly valuable. He had been appointed, together with his successor as Inspector of Schools, E.A. Irving, and the Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ho Kai, to the 1901-1902 Education Committee, the report of which contains blatant calls for the separate educational treatment of the different races and a clear recommendation, compatible with the extremes of colonialistic paternalism, that, as far as Chinese education was concerned, the Government should concentrate its efforts and finances on the education, in English, of the few who could be regarded as potential leaders. Interestingly, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at this time, Joseph Chamberlain, totally rejected this recommendation (Chamberlain to Sir Henry Blake, Governor of Hong Kong, 12th September, 1902, in CO129/311, p. 481).

"For certain individuals, this explanation is something of a euphemism since the “medical and sanitary precautions" involved burning down their homes.

The Plague first broke out in Hong Kong in the Spring of 1894. The death rate for the first five or six months was over 2,500, and, though, it was the Chinese population which was most affected, the Europeans were not untouched. Lady Robinson, the wife of the Governor of Hong Kong, was, for example, a victim. Dr. E.J. Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, provided details of the rumours circulating among the less educated Chinese, and their effects, in a memorandum to the Colonial Secretary on 22nd May 1894. Eitel wrote to report and explain "the panic which has suddenly decimated the attendance in the local Chinese Schools" and noted that the rumours began to spread in districts affected by the Plague on Sunday, 20th May and reached other districts the next day. The principal rumours were (a) that "the Government intended to select a few young Children from each School to subject them to a surgical incision of the liver in order to obtain bile, this being the only known remedy for curing the plague”; and, (b) that "every School would be visited by officers who would examine every child and send to the "Hygeia" anyone having the least boil or pimple on its body". Eitel speculated about the origin of the panic, attributing it to "the malicious distortion of the native medical fraternity" and concluded: “I do not think anything very effectual can be done to remove the suggestions of native malice to native ignorance and suspiciousness. Distrust of the Government is still rampant among the lower classes of Chinese. Education will remove it in time. (Memorandum No. 38 of 22nd May, 1894, by Dr. E.J. Eitel, Inspector of Schools; in CO129/263, p. 190-193). 39 In Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the Other Treaty Ports of China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources (London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd., 1908), p. 182, for example, Mok Tso Chun, “a native of the Heungshan district" and formerly one of the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital, is described as the Chief Compradore of Butterfield and Swire. In the Anglo-Chinese Commercial Directory of circa 1915 (Chief Editor, Jan George Chance), a Mok Jao Chuen, clearly the same person as Mok Tso Chun, appears as Compradore for Butterfield and Swire, while a Choi Kung Po and a Mok Kon Sang appear as Assistant Compradores. Mok Man Cheung acted as witness to the will of Mok Tso [or Jao] Chun and the will, itself, makes it clear that Mok Kon Sang was Mok Tso Chun's eldest son. It was certainly not unusual for Compradores at this time to find positions for younger relatives.
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