RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author 44 of the religious system. They have always had to walk carefully in their relations with the vested interests of the orthodox church, represented principally by the abbots of the three great monasteries, Drebung, Sera and Ganden, which housed among them 25,000 monks and were known as the Three Great Pillars of the State. Then there were rivalries between one sect and another; there were rivalries between great monasteries of the same sect; there were even rivalries between colleges within the same monastery; and there was a subtle distinction between monks and abbots in the monasteries and the monastic administrative officials of the Tibetan Government, who were a sort of monk civil service. There was a parallel lay civil service, so that if there was, say, a Chief Secretary who was a monk, he was balanced by another who was a layman. Such civil monastic officials were rather a special breed and looked on with some suspicion by the people in the monasteries. There was also an undercurrent of jealousy of the monasteries' power on the part of the displaced lay nobles, who recalled quite clearly the tradition of their past greatness. They had still a leading part in the administration and in general they were more progressively minded than the monks; in fact, I should say that the monks usually lagged a generation behind the progressive laymen. Yet in spite of all these factions and divergencies of feeling, there was remarkable agreement, really remarkable agreement, of the whole people in their complete devotion to their faith and in an affectionate veneration of their ruler. Religion quite simply was all in all to every Tibetan: there were no dissenters and no critics. Every Tibetan without complaining took his place in the social set-up. This was partly due to his acceptance of the teachings of Buddhism with its doctrine of karma and partly to his conviction that by doing so he was serving his Dalai Lama. All the actions and policies of people and government were viewed in the light of the effect that they would have on religion. Church and state really were interchangeable terms. The monasteries and the monks played an important part in the social life of the country; they were bankers, landlords, and, to some extent, school-masters. It is of course quite easy for the Westerner to adopt an attitude of intellectual superiority and say that religion was the opiate of the people. It is possible to point to idle, worldly, and comparatively worthless individuals among the monks: so indeed it was possible during the Middle Ages in Europe. On the other hand, also as in the case of the Middle Ages, one can point in Tibet to churchmen who were sincere, devout, saintly, and profoundly learned. I am convinced that there was no conscious exploitation of religion by the Tibetan church. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 100 J. W. HAYES exerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati "have hitherto lived by irregular "squeezes" from the people" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to "gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554. 26 Papers 1899 p. 194. 27 Papers 1899 p. 554. 28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121. 29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon. Piracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925. 30 Papers 1899 p. 528. 31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894. 32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs. **F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895. 34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896. 33 Papers 1899, p. 540. Brenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly "The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37. 31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 106 J. W. HAYES 30 The Tung Kwun association note book says that there was a Po On Wui Sor ★ ★ ƒ in the Ch'ing dynasty, but since this had always led to confusion their association (the Po On Shuc Shat) was renamed the Tung Kwun Wui Sor in the 12th year of the Chinese Republic (1923). 31 A tablet (1953) in the Free School says that this institution dates back to 1921 and local leaders say that the kung sor was rebuilt at this time. The old kung sor was also known as the hon kaam lau ★ ★# or watchmen's building. ** On the other hand it is unlikely that it predates the defence bureau (1863-70) as this would have been a suitable subject for the Kaifong to organise (there is no mention of it on the tablet). 33 Mr. LEUNG Yau recalls that there were two Kaifong junks operating a daily service between Cheung Chau and Hong Kong before the lease (1898). One left Hong Kong (Sai Ying Pun) at 11 a.m., whilst the other left Cheung Chau at the same time. Both were sailing junks and took three hours to make the journey under good conditions and the whole day if otherwise. They were subscribed and run by a number of local gentlemen for public use. A steam Kaifong vessel was bought with public subscriptions in 1910. Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories, 1910. & 34 There are now eight district associations on the island for natives of the districts of Po On; Tung Kwun; Wai-Chiu combined ✰✰ *#; Sei Yap ("The Four Towns') i.e. Toi Shan 4, Sun Wui. Hoi Ping, Yan Ping; Ng Yap ♣ (“The Five Towns") i.e. Hok Shan plus the towns of Sei Yap, Shun Tak: Chung Shan ✈ and Chiu Chau (separate), the four last named formed since 1945, all offering a variety of social, educational and charitable services to members. 35 HSIAO, in his interesting and lengthy study of rural China in the 19th Century, does not deal specifically with the internal organisation of the market towns. The market town of Tai O at the south west end of Lantau island (land population 2248 in 1911) would provide an interesting local comparison, though material is not so readily available as for Cheung Chau. I hope to write a similar outline account at a later date. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841 - 1962 99 was actually protecting local Chinese. The Colonial Office had no desire to see the indigenous population handed over to the power of the Hong Kong British business interests. It was not considered until the 1870s that the Chinese might have a part to play in the function of government, the Colonial Office believing that "the testimony of those best acquainted with them represent the Chinese race as endowed with much intelligence but very deficient in the elements of morality" (Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir John Bowring). The first Chinese member of the Legislative Council was not appointed till 1880, and he, so a Colonial Office minute tells us, was a cipher. While obviously it was not practical to give much in the way of electoral power to either the British or the Chinese communities in the nineteenth century, it seems a pity that more was not done between the two world wars when it might have been feasible. There was a certain broadening of the Executive Council by greater community representation soon after the first war, and significantly, as Mr. Endacott points out, what had been the continuous representation on the Council since 1850 of Jardine, Matheson was interrupted in 1921. But the slump in Europe, its effect on the Colony's trade, and the rising militarism of Japan all discouraged progress. It is true that the Colony has gained some measure of independence over the years from control from London. It is financially self-supporting, and since 1958 the annual estimates have no longer been submitted to the Secretary of State. Representation on the two Councils, Legislative and Executive, has been broadened, though there is still no elected element. Furthermore, an effort has been made to bring local people into the ranks of the Civil Service, though it has not met with the success of similar efforts in, for example, former African colonies. Mr. Endacott notes that in 1952 for the first time a locally recruited officer was promoted to be the head of a government department; unfortunately, he does not tell us which department, or how often this has happened again in the succeeding thirteen years. For many and various reasons, the recruitment of Chinese to the Administrative Service in particular has been slow. At first sight, though a self-governing Hong Kong is an impossibility in view of the international situation, a largely Chinese territory might ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 120 OLD BRITISH KOWLOON JAMES HAYES On 19 January 1861 a ceremony took place at Tsim Sha Tsui, a village on the Chinese mainland directly opposite the British Colony of Hong Kong. On that day a mandarin of the provincial government at Canton handed over a paperful of soil in token of the cession of the Kowloon peninsula to Great Britain. In this way a tiny fraction of Chinese territory passed under British rule. It is not the object of this article to give a comprehensive account of the development of Old British Kowloon as the area became known after 1898 when another treaty transferred the adjoining area of Chinese territory to England; for this could not be done within the confines of a short article. Rather, it is my intention to give a short description of the peninsula and then to turn to a more detailed examination of some of its villages, with special reference to the origins of the settlers, their way of life, and their local institutions. What was the Kowloon peninsula like in 1861 when it passed under British rule? A contemporary description reads: 44 The land may be briefly described as being about 2,366 yards in length and 966 in breadth: its surface being extremely rugged from the presence of numerous small hills divided by ravines and patches of marshes and rice fields; rocky and precipitous on its southern and eastern shores and gradual shelving off on its western one to a fine sandy beach. A good idea of the unpromising terrain may be had from a drawing by Lieut. Collinson made from the Kowloon foothills behind Kowloon City about fifteen years earlier (see the illustration to this article). A specialised account of the newly acquired territory was sent home to the British Government. This was the report of the Anglo-Chinese Land Commission of April 1862. Due to the The author is an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Government service. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI 73 evidently of later date. The sherds with partially preserved glaze appear to represent a local attempt to imitate Yüeh ware, while one or two of the smaller glazed fragments are of better quality and may be imported from kilns further north and are definitely of T'ang date. It need only be added that one fragment, of soft pinkish earthenware, is certainly proto-historic; and that the attribution of the whole of the fragments to the T'ang Dynasty or earlier raises the question whether the earthwork, or at least that part where the cutting was, may not date to the troubled period at the fall of that dynasty. If so, it might be that the Sung army re-used and strengthened an old fortification, very likely adding the high rampart with its ditch, counterscarp, and glacis at the north end, where an attack was evidently expected. The total absence of Sung pottery is certainly an unexpected feature, and if any part of these earthworks still survives, a few trenches dug across them would reveal enough pottery to prove or disprove this view. The turf and spoil removed could easily be put back, as is done in most modern excavations. One thing is certain: the work at the north end faces Kowloon City, so cannot be a defence work for the salt depot there, as the wall on the Kowloon T'ong gap west of the city was. There was Sung pottery on the hill when the writer saw it, so that an earthwork thrown up in 1276 should contain some pieces of it. The small number of 13 pieces found may well be not enough to yield a satisfactory basis for a conclusion: yet the total absence of both Sung and later porcelain among them points at least to the extreme scarcity of such porcelain at the time the earthwork was thrown up. As the evidence now stands, it is reasonably likely that the earthwork is connected, like the watch-tower recorded as erected on the summit rock, with the defence of the palace of the last Sung emperors. Acknowledgement My thanks are owing to the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, for their expert advice on the pottery from the beach and the earthwork cutting, to which this paper owes much of its value. Biographical Note Mr. Schofield served in Hong Kong as a Cadet (Administrative) Officer in the Civil Service between 1911-38. He is well-known for his published articles on the archaeology and geology of the Colony in pre-war years, and is M.A. (Liv. and Oxon). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS JI13 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 205. 29 12 Now known as the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital. Its subsequent history is described in a brochure privately published by the Hospital in 1957, enlarged and re-issued for the eightieth anniversary in 1967. 13 區德,又名區仰德,列字澤民, 14 The Government took over the project in 1927 and turned it into the Kai Tak airfield which came into being in 1928. 15 G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, p. 200. 16 Ho Kai's sister was married to Wu Ting-fang, i.e. Ng Choy. 17 韋寶珊 18 G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong, pp. 120-124. 19 Chinese members of the Legislative Council were ex-officio members; the other members were elected by the Chinese Justices of the Peace, 20 Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, p. 39. Wei Yuk is, however, wrongly described as a member also of the Executive Council. 21 The Hong Kong Government later built the Kowloon Canton Railway which was started in 1906 and completed in 1910. It may be of interest here to mention that the Beacon Hill Tunnel was designed and constructed by Mr. F. Southey, a former student of Diocesan Boys School who won a Hong Kong Government Scholarship in 1890 to study in England. 22 Named after the first and outstanding headmaster of the Central School, Dr. Frederick Stewart who later became Colonial Secretary in the years 1887 and 1888, under the Governor Sir George William Des Voeux. 23 G. Stokes, Queen's College, 1862-1962, Hong Kong, p. 221. 24 Among his grandchildren whom I know personally are the following distinguished officers in the Hong Kong Government Service: Dr. Ho Hung-chiu, O.B.E., Senior Specialist in Radiology, Mr. Eric Ho, Staff-grade Administrative Officer, Miss Daphne Ho, M.B.E., Principal Social Welfare Officer and Miss Helen He, O.B.E., Senior Medical Social Worker, Mr. Stanley Ho, a prominent businessman in Hong Kong and Macao, is also his grandson, 25 The ages of the boys ranged from 10 to 16. It is said that because of their pig-tails, they were often mistaken to be girls and had often times to fight very hard to repel the advances made to them by the American boys! 26 On p. 294 of Endacott's A History of Hong Kong, it is stated that "a Chinese member was added to the Executive Council in 1921". This is presumably a typographic error, 27 Sir Robert Kotewall left eight daughters and one son. His son, Cyril, is now practising as a solicitor in Hong Kong and one daughter, Bobbie, is the principal of the well-known St. Paul's Co-educational College. 28 Sir Alexander Grantham, Via Ports, p. 110. 29 Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, London, Victor Gollancz, 1964. 30 At one time, a director of the Bank of East Asia. Educated at Queen's College, Mr. Chan was a generous benefactor of education. In 1917 he donated HK$50,000 to the University of Hong Kong for the erection and equipment of the School of Pathology. He also endowed prizes in all the faculties of the University. 31 Father of Sir Tsun-nin Chau, 32 Father of Mr. Li Fook-wo, O.B.E., Deputy Chief Manager of The Bank of East Asia, and Mr. F. K. Li, Staff-grade Administrative Officer in the Hong Kong Government. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG CADETS, 1862-1941 H. J. LETHBRIDGE* The British Civil Service contains administrative, executive and clerical classes. The administrative class in Britain and the colonies was an elite generally recruited directly from the universities. The term 'cadet officer' denotes the administrative grade of officer in the Hong Kong Government Service in the period under review. It remained in official use for almost a century, until 1960. Altogether 85 cadets were appointed in the period 1862-1941. 9 died in office, 12 transferred or were seconded, and four resigned or retired on medical grounds. Three became governors of Hong Kong - Sir Francis Henry May (1912-18), Sir Cecil Clementi (1925-30), and Sir Alexander Grantham (1947-1957); and five became Governors or High Commissioners of other territories - Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (Straits Settlements), Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (Weihaiwei), Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (Weihaiwei), Sir George Murchison Fletcher (Fiji, Western Pacific, Trinidad) and Sir Alexander Grantham (Fiji, Western Pacific). Two became Chief Justices of Hong Kong - Sir James Russell (1888-92) and Sir Joseph Horsford Kemp (1930-33). Four others attained the rank of Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong before retirement - Norman Lockhart Smith (1936-41), David Mercer MacDougall (1946-49), Claude Bramall Burgess (1958-63) and Edmund Brinsley Teesdale (1963-66). The number of cadets on the establishment in any one year was never large: only 7 in 1880, 13 in 1900, 31 in 1920, and 37 in 1941. Even these figures are deceptive: they report the strength on the books but not the strength in the field. We must deduct from such totals the number of 'unpassed' cadets2 (cadets engaged in the full-time study of the Chinese language) * Mr. Lethbridge is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong. He is the author of several articles on Hong Kong subjects. His "Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation: Changes in Social Structure" appeared in I. C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, Hong Kong, A Society in Transition — contributions to the study of Hong Kong Society (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) pp. 77-127. Another article, on the Tung Wah Hospitals 1870-1970, will appear in a second volume edited by I. C. Jarvie and Marjorie Topley to be published soon. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941 37 and those on leave, in order to discover, at any moment in time, the actual number of cadets administering the affairs of the colony. However, they formed an administrative corps d'élite: a minuscule band of officials with the same values and from the same social background. They were always in short supply: but in time they changed the style of government in 19th century Hong Kong and routinised its operations. The object of this paper is to examine some changes brought about by the introduction of Sir Hercules Robinson's cadet scheme in 1861,3 and to explore the lives of a few expatriate officials, those who formed the apex of a colonial society with its complicated gradations of race, caste, class, occupation and office. Such a research task is not a supererogatory one: Sir Ralph Furse, Director of Recruitment, Colonial Service 1931 - 48, affirms that 'in most colonies the Civil Servant is the Government, and not the servant of Government'24 Sir Ralph's obiter dictum is particularly applicable to Hong Kong in the late nineteenth century. At that time it was a small territory with a population squeezed into a few urban enclaves, where everyone lived cheek by jowl and officials were highly visible and often met in the street. In such a constricted society the quirks of an official, given the system of government, often influenced important administrative decisions, over which the general public could exercise little control. The inclusion of the New Territories in 1899 within the administrative framework of Hong Kong did not substantially alter these facts of life; for a long time, certainly until the re-establishment of British rule in 1945, the New Territories remained curiously peripheral to the older, established areas of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula. The cadet scheme instituted by Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of Hong Kong from 1859 - 1865, grew out of a pressing need for correct interpretation and translation in government, especially in the courts. For the first twenty years of its existence, the Colony had very few officials apart from the notorious and devious D. R. Caldwell (at one time General Interpreter to the Government and Registrar-General) who had adequate command of Cantonese and were able to communicate with the mass of the immigrant Chinese population, most of whom were Punti and Hakka. The actions of government were stultified by the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 48 H. J. LETHBRIDGE elsewhere and in the discharge of different duties he will gain the confidence of the Government under which he serves, and thus possibly build up a claim to promotion hereafter'.47 Wodehouse and May were also criticised but less severely, and Ripon acknowledge that May, who had already been spotted as a 'coming man', 'showed zeal and capacity in other respects during his short tenure of the office of Treasurer'. Poor Mitchell-Innes, who was a popular figure in Hong Kong society, did not leave Hong Kong at once. The fine was paid by local subscription and the Chinese petitioned the Secretary of State that he should not be removed from the Colony. The petition was successful and he remained temporarily in the Treasury; but on it becoming known in the Straits Settlements that it was the intention of the Home Government to appoint him to the position of assistant Protector of Chinese in Penang which had become vacant, vigorous opposition on the part of the Straits Settlements authorities was brought to bear, and the intention afterwards abandoned'.48 In 1895 Mitchell-Innes proceeded to England on leave of absence and in 1897 news reached the Colony that he had received appointment as Deputy Governor of a large gaol in the North of England.49 The Mitchell-Innes case is instructive. It throws light on administrative practices in Hong Kong at that date and on the scarcity of trained administrative officers. There were only 8 cadets in office in 1893 and these were often shuffled from department to department for short periods of time and expected to master the details of their jobs in a matter of weeks. The tradition of 'omnicompetent generalism' was already believed in by Government and cadets were expected to do all things equally well. Mitchell-Innes was a victim of the system and the tradition. He had been, as the Marquis of Ripon noted, ‘a gentleman who after a comparatively short service had been promoted to a new important position'. The case also throws light on the influence the Chinese notables could exercise on certain occasions: their plea was listened to and as a consequence Mitchell-Innes continued to act as Treasurer for a further two years. Mitchell-Innes is also unique in that he is the only cadet out of the eighty-five appointed to be sacked, for all intents and purposes, from Government. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941 49 The staffing situation improved between 1897 and 1901 and 12 more cadets were recruited from England, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States including Reginald Fleming Johnston, Cecil Clementi, A. G. M. Fletcher,50 and Geoffrey Norman Orme. The incorporation of the New Territories into the Colony meant that more recruits would be needed for district administration and as members of the Land Court set up to determine thorny problems of land ownership and tenancy.52 However, 17 cadets were recruited between 1901 and the end of 1914. There were losses of course: notably the gifted Stewart Lockhart who was transferred in 1902 to Wei-hai-wei as H.M.'s Commissioner, and the equally gifted R. F. Johnston who was also transferred to Wei-hai-wei as District Officer in 1904. A posting in the New Territories provided for some younger cadets an escape-hatch that removed them from office life in the Colonial Secretariat and other departments in the Central District. Service in the New Territories, a mainly agricultural area dotted with small village communities and small market towns, had more in common with colonial service in Africa and South-East Asia, and the cadet was left comparatively free to go his own way, lead an open-air life and exercise judicious authority. The job demanded initiative, stamina, and magisterial skills; and, if one is to believe Mr. Austin Coates,54 a cadet at a much later date, it was a deeply rewarding life which allowed a cadet to become involved in the lives of simple people, farmers and fishermen, small shopkeepers and craftsmen. Certainly, the report of the District Officers for the New Territories, such as those written by Stewart Carne Ross, have a little more colour than the stilted administrative reports presented annually by heads of departments. By the 1920s cadets had become entrenched in most government departments and they filled all the senior posts in the Colonial Secretariat, the directing and co-ordinating agency of government. The exceptions were some departments, such as the Medical and Sanitary Services, Public Works, the Royal Observatory, and Marine Department, which necessitated at the top someone with specialist knowledge. The Inspector General of Police (also in charge of the Fire Brigade), the Director of Education, the Postmaster General, and the Superintendent of Imports and Exports, however, were all cadets, but not the... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941 NOTES 51 1 Since the end of war with Japan in 1945 both Hong Kong and its Government Service have experienced major changes of circumstance and outlook. Whilst the cadet or administrative grade continues in being there are now (April 1970) administrative officers in a total permanent Civil Service establishment of there are Chinese officers, the first of whom was appointed in 1948. 2 The title was later changed to "Cadet on Probation". In 1862 cadets received a salary of £200 per annum on arrival in the Colony and at the end of two years' study or as soon afterwards as they were declared qualified by a Board of Examiners £400 per annum. In 1924 the salary was still only £350 on arrival and £400 after passing the final examination; in 1936 the amounts were £450 and £525 respectively. Information on the Cadet Service is to be found in the various General Orders of the Hong Kong Government. 3 The following books have information on the origin of the scheme: E. J. Eitel Europe in China, Hong Kong, 1895, p. 365; G. B. Sayer Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, 1937, p. 194; J. W. Norton-Kyshe The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1898, vol. 2, pp. 8-11; and Sir Charles Collins Public Administration in Hong Kong, London, 1952, pp. 126-127. 4 Aucuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer, London, 1962, p. 164. Major Sir Ralph Furse was Director of Recruitment, Colonial Service, 1931-48; and Adviser to the Secretary of State for Colonies on Training Courses for the Colonial Service, 1948-50. 5 For a sketch of Caldwell's career see G. B. Endacott A Biographical Sketch-book of Early Hong Kong, Singapore, 1962, pp. 95-99. Daniel Richard Caldwell was of mixed blood, born at Singapore, and married to a Chinese. He was a brilliant linguist and occupied, at one time or another, various senior posts in the Hong Kong Government. His proved association with Ma Chow Wong, a frequenter of pirates, ruined Caldwell's career. Caldwell was found unfit by a Commission of Inquiry to continue in the public service. He died in 1875. 6 E. J. Eitel "Chinese Studies and Official Interpretation in the Colony of Hong Kong”, China Review, vol. 16, 1877-8, p. 5. 7 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit., vol. I, p. 579. 8 January 28, 1867, 9 See note 6. 10 Norton-Kyshe, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 8-9. 11 Ibid., p. 10. The revised regulations for Hong Kong Cadetships, published in the Government Gazette, 7 September 1872, gives the heads of examination as follows: "(A) Obligatory — 1st. Exercises designed to test Handwriting and Orthography; 2nd. Arithmetic, including Vulgar and Decimal Fractions; 3rd. Latin, and one of the following languages: Greek, French, German, Italian; 4th. English Composition, including Précis writing; (B) Optional 5th. Pure and Mixed Mathematics; 6th. Ancient and Modern History, and Geography; 7th. Elements of Constitutional and International Law, and Political Economy; 8th. Geology, Civil Engineering and Surveying". Every candidate was expected to show a competent knowledge of the first four subjects, but could select any two of the optional subjects. 7 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 REMOVING SOME BARRIERS TO COMPREHENSION: A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES K. M. A. BARNETT, O.B.E., E.D., M.A.(CANTAB.)* (A lecture delivered to the Branch on 8 April, 1969) SUMMARY: Between languages of the Indo-European family and those of the Chinese family the differences in organisation, not only of sentences and phrases but of words themselves are so wide that before anyone familiar only with the former can acquire a competent knowledge of the latter, or vice versa, he must learn to rearrange his thoughts into a new set of patterns. Mr. Barnett examines some of these patterns and suggests new methods of analysis which may help speakers of English or Cantonese to attain better comprehension of each other's languages. "Pray, my masters, defer that angry argument which I see you are about to commence." LREORNGWRAIV CEARNG ZRAAMSRIH MRHCROW-ZRY.1 Before I explain these two appeals for temporary peace I had better make clear what I am not intending to cover in this talk, so that any who were expecting something different may leave, and not remain out of politeness to sit through something they do not want to hear. I do not intend, except in one respect because it has escaped notice in other people's work, to deal with matters of pronunciation. I do not have anything polite to say to those who regard "Europeans" and "Asians" as separate species, like the witnesses in a case I heard 32 years ago almost to the day, in which the ten passengers in a New Territories bus were described by * Mr. Barnett is well known to readers of this Journal. Various contributions from his pen have appeared in earlier numbers. He retired recently from the Hong Kong Civil Service after 37 years' service in the Administrative (Cadet) Grade, his last post being Commissioner of Census and Statistics. ...†. In this paper the SOAS romanization is used, except where noted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH Being a local history of the region of Hong Kong and the New Territories before the British occupation S. F. BALFOUR (Editor's Note. In recent years the Journal has reprinted selected items of enduring interest to those interested in Hong Kong and its past. The following article first appeared in the T'ien Hsia Monthly, published in Shanghai, in vols. 11-12, 1940-41, pp. 330-352, 440-464. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Mr. Balfour's widow, Mrs. William Glock. Stephen Balfour was a Cadet i.e. Administrative Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service*. He served here from 1929 until his tragic death in an air raid on the Stanley Internment Camp during the war-time Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong, The article is reprinted as it stands in the original, and no gloss has been attempted or additional references given to books cited or to the source of the illustrations). I. ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE REGION Local history in China has always been considered one of the functions of the officials administering each province or district; it has thus come about that there is not a single corner of the Chinese Empire that has not at least one local history, recounting its antiquities and its aspect at the time of writing, and many places have several of these topographies, as they are called, compiled about them at different dates. The region in which Hong Kong and the New Territories lie is described in the Topography of the San On (now Po On) District. This book, which is dated 1820, is a revised version of earlier editions stretching back to the 15th century, and it would have been interesting to consult the earlier versions, were they accessible, not so much for the information about local antiquities and traditions, for that has probably all been reproduced in the last edition, as for the details of contemporary life described by the official in charge of the district at that time. However, the topography in its later edition contains a great many valuable texts, reproduced from inscriptions or other books that have since disappeared, authentic information about the district itself and almost everything in local tradition that was considered worth printing. *See Mr. Lethbridge's article on Hong Kong Cadets, 1862-1941 elsewhere in this issue. Ed. 新安縣誌 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 NOTES AND QUERIES 197 took place locally, in the areas just across the Sino-British border at Sha Tau Kok. The villagers of these three places became alarmed for the fate of their cherished Tin Hau image and brought it into British territory for safety. They also brought back two incense burners (†) dated in the 2nd and 3rd years of Kuang Hsü (1876-78) that had been donated by local shops and fishermen in one case and by Lin Ma Hang (A) natives then in Australia (J). The leaders of the three villages then combined to form the Sha Tau Kok Three Villages Tin Hau Temple Building Committee (沙頭角三鄉籌建天后廟委員會) and obtained a temporary building permit from the Tai Po District Office to erect a temple for the image. The temple is situated at map reference KV 140962 at the west end of Kong Ha Village in the Frontier Closed Area. It is under the management of a special trust, the Sam Wo Tong (*) constituting one manager each from Tong To, Tan Shui Hang and Sha Tsui villages. Photographs of this new temple and of the Tin Hau image which inspired such devotion can be seen at Plates 30 and 31. Place names used in this note can be found in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (H.K. Govt. Printer, n.d. but 1960) pp. 216-218. Hong Kong, 1970. JAMES HAYES PILE HOUSES AT TAI O, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG, 7TH JANUARY 1937 Editor's Note The following details of some of the interesting pile houses or matsheds on stilts that survive in considerable numbers in Tai O Creek to the present day are taken from one of Mr. Walter Schofield's notebooks, under the date given in the heading. Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) served in the Hong Kong Cadet (Administrative) Service between 1911-1938 in various posts, including those of District Officer South, Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs and First Police Magistrate. He was also a well- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g A SHORT HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN HONG KONG JAMES HAYES* On the occasion of the disbandment of the Hong Kong Volunteer Corps in May 1866, His Excellency, after expressing his thanks for time, exertions and money spent for objects so essentially Public, went on to express his belief that the spirit which originated the Volunteer movement would be found to exist fresher and stronger than before, if any real and urgent necessity were to arise for defending, by force of arms, the rights of the Crown, or maintaining the supremacy of the Law in this Colony. The Hong Kong Volunteers would doubtless in such emergency come to the front again more numerous and efficient than ever! INTRODUCTION There have been military volunteers in Hong Kong for almost as long as there has been a Colony. Hong Kong was occupied in 1841 and the first volunteers were established thirteen years later, in 1854. However, the existence of a Volunteer force does not make Hong Kong unique. In this respect, as is shown below, it takes its place in the great movement which, in its modern re-incarnation, was created by patriotic fervour in the British Isles * Mr. Hayes is a member of the administrative branch of the Hong Kong Civil Service. He is a reserve officer of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) and has been Hon. Editor of this Journal since 1966. 1 The Hongkong Government Gazette, 26th May 1866, G.N. No. 81. The footnotes to this article are given at the foot of each page. The following abbreviations are used:- Vol — The Volunteer, the current journal of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force published annually since 1950. Y.B. = Year Book of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps 1934-40. S.P. = Printed Sessional Papers of the Hong Kong Government, being papers presented to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Han. Hong Kong Hansard, being the published proceedings of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. These were printed in the Government Gazette and the Hong Kong Daily Press. There are bound annual volumes in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 70 HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE depressed and the Grant-in-Aid was increased, but not to its original figure. Lockhart had received the administration of a territory that could never be a great financial success. Except for two periods of leave, in 1909 and 1918, and short absences from the Territory, such as ceremonial visits to the Chinese Governor of Shangtung at Tsinan, Lockhart was continuously in charge for nearly nineteen years. Weihaiwei was an extremely healthy place, free of malaria, with a climate like that of a northern European country and Lockhart was able to indulge in the recreations he loved most. He rode nearly every day or played a round of golf on the mainland on Yuan Shih-k'ai's parade ground. The dedication to Lockhart of Johnston's book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, reads: 'In memory of two moonlit nights at Lutao-k'uo, five frosty mornings at Pei-K'uo Temple and a hundred breezy gallops over the hills and sands of Weihaiwei.' In 1904, Johnston, then Acting Assistant Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, had been appointed to Weihaiwei and the two men, who had worked together previously in Hong Kong, soon became close friends. In 1919 Johnston accepted an appointment as tutor to the ex-Emperor of China, P'ü-i,37 and Lockhart in his report for that year spoke of the 'great loss to the service. He had served uninterruptedly in Weihaiwei since 1904 and had proved himself an officer of exceptional administrative capacity, his intimate knowledge of the Chinese, their customs, and their language having won for him a high place in the esteem of the native population with which his duties brought him into such intimate contact.'38 They were both Scots but their friendship, it would seem, was based not on tribalism but on a mutual admiration for Chinese civilisation. Lockhart left Weihaiwei on 23 April, 1921, on H.M. Ship Cairo, a passage having been placed at his disposal by the Commander-in-Chief, China Station. His popularity with all classes of the Chinese population 'was evidenced by the erection of two "Pei" (commemorative tablets) in his honour and the presentation of numerous addresses and scrolls, two "myriad name" umbrellas, one dress of "myriad name robes" and a bowl of pure water (the symbol of purity of administration).'39 Lockhart had been popular mainly because he understood the Chinese and left them alone. As he wrote: "There is in China a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Hong Kong Region: Its Place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573 James Hayes* Hsin-an is a coastal county The edge of a coat is called pien, edge or border. A coat always starts to get worn at the edge: an article begins to wear at the edge. In the same fashion, if an officer is posted to a border district, his responsibilities are ten or a hundred times as heavy as his colleague's in an interior district. It is therefore very difficult to understand people who belittle such government posts, These lines are taken from an inscribed tablet dated autumn 1847 commemorating the opening of the Lung-ching charitable school (i-hsüeh) in the Kowloon walled city. They were from the brush of the then magistrate of Hsin-an, Wong Ming-ting, an officer who believed in the burden of his responsibilities. This article seeks to examine the historical background of the Hong Kong region as seen in Chinese traditional historiography,1 and to describe the main events of the local situation over the course of some three hundred years. A recapitulation of this kind may be useful, because Hong Kong's past is still inadequately recorded in English (or yet in Chinese), and is too easily imagined, or glossed over, as being of no consequence. The region does possess a considerable and interesting history; though to gain the necessary perspective this has also to be seen in the context of the historiography of the neighbouring counties of this part of Kwang-tung. Ideally, this statement should be set against an account of the peoples and settlement of the area, but to provide an authoritative description here would be to lengthen this article to double its size if anything like justice were to be done to the course and com- *Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service since 1956 and is a Vice President and Hon. Editor of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. 1 As defined in Chapter VII, 'Formal Classification' of Charles S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional Historiography, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961). The full references to other works cited in the footnotes will be found at the end of the article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 DO WORDS FROM EXTINCT PRE-CHINESE LANGUAGES SURVIVE IN HONG KONG PLACE-NAMES ?* By K. M. A. BARNETT Introduction Anybody whose work takes him into the rural parts of Hong Kong will soon be made aware of the badness of the maps. The errors in topographical detail I must leave to the cartographer to explain. The errors which concern me are those in the nomenclature. It is apparent after the most cursory check that a large proportion of the place-names are incorrect — either the wrong name, or the right name wrongly spelt, or the right name in the wrong place. Putting the right name in the wrong place is presumably due to the misreading of field notes. Wrong spellings are always to be excused in the absence of a generally accepted, scientific method of transliteration. And even the registration of a wrong name is not so easy to avoid as might be thought. In the past, many field workers were entirely ignorant of the local languages and had to rely on interpreters. There are good interpreters in Hong Kong — in 24 years' service I have met four... but they are not available to accompany field survey parties. Field survey parties have to rely on less than the best interpreters, or even on pidgin English, with some amusing results in the early days. It was for this reason that the island of Ma Shi Chau1 is still marked on some maps as No Kot Choi — i.e. No got choy, pidgin English for 'No food to be had'. Later, the field workers themselves had some knowledge of Chinese, but even that had its pitfalls. For the Chinese they would know is Cantonese, either the Sai Kwan162 or the Pun Yue161 dialect. But the languages of the New Territories are Nam Tau156 Cantonese, *This article is reprinted, with some revisions and additions by the author, from pp. 1-13 of T. R. Tregear's Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong University Press, 1958). Mr. Barnett is well known to readers of this Journal. He served for 37 years in the Administrative Branch of the Hong Kong Civil Service from which he retired some years ago, his last post being Commissioner of Census and Statistics. Superior figures refer to characters which can be found in the Notes and Character Index at pp. 157-159. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 155 in my mind that the Colony could not hold out long against an attack. After France fell in June 1940 the outlook darkened further. At this time I was a major of 22 years service but I held a lowly position in the Army List for my Corps, being near the bottom of a block of officers who had been commissioned during the First World War. I had prepared for a career in Surgery and I also had experience of administration. In theatres where the army was expanding, promotion for officers in my position was nearly certain but in Hong Kong there was no such possibility. For a time I hoped I might be posted elsewhere, and while I never thought it possible that I might get home the Middle East seemed just a possibility. The likeliest destination for me if I moved at all seemed to be Singapore where my friends told me of the huge increase of strength in the army there. I was never moved. I had no part in preparing the army's plans for increased hospital accommodation in Hong Kong in war. Some of the buildings it was sought to use were occupied by religious orders, some of which were Italian and I understood that Colonel John Simson, the Assistant Director of Medical Services, China Command found difficulty inspecting these and met a blank refusal to a request that we might be allowed to make a preliminary accumulation of medical stores in some of these buildings. The Hong Kong Government was, I believe, unwilling on grounds of policy to overrule the objections. The Indian Army Hospital which was in Kowloon and which accommodated some British patients as well, was on the outbreak of hostilities to close, cross the harbour and reopen on the Island of Hong Kong in the Chinese Hospital, Tung Wah East. With the frontier so close to the harbour this would obviously be a difficult operation and I was sorry for the A.D.M.S. who had to plan under these conditions. I have been able to obtain through the courtesy of Colonel R. H. Freeman and Brigadier John Lapper, a postwar aerial photograph of the Military Hospital buildings in Bowen Road, which I reproduce here (plate 17). The photograph shows that new buildings have been added since the war and does not show the hospital reservoir. The hospital was built in two wings each containing a ground floor and two storeys, and these wings were connected by a central block which held the administrative offices. To the north there was a magnificent view over the harbour to the mountains of the New Territories while in the rear of the building the ground rose ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 201 in the recreation room and put disinfectant in a bowl outside the Japanese office. The general spoke to nobody. Two months earlier, in March I had been ousted from my office in the front of the building and this pleasant room henceforward became the headquarters office of the Japanese within the hospital. I was surprised that they had not seized this earlier. On 23 August 1943 the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society, Prince Shimatsu, inspected the hospital. At all times the appearance of the hospital was good, but at this as at all inspections the Japanese laid great stress on having the recreation room looking specially well. In addition to white cloths on the tables and vases of flowers all the musical instruments and equipment for indoor games had to be laid out on display. As usual the inspecting officer had no parley with patients or staff. I have records of only three occasions on which British doctors from P.O.W. camps were allowed to visit Bowen Road. Major Ashton Rose, Indian Medical Service, was the doctor accepted by the Japanese as being in administrative medical charge in Sham Shui Po camp. I believe he had considerable influence with them, in so far as any prisoner could have influence. On 5 March 1943 he visited the hospital bringing with him some patients for admission and came again on 23 March with an officer patient for specialist eye examination. On the second occasion he stayed to lunch, a phrase which of course indicates a higher degree of sophistication than in fact we deserved. It was however something for us to be able to entertain a guest at all. We learned from Ashton Rose that the general state of prisoners in Sham Shui Po was improving and that the men were fitter. On 13 May Captain Woodward, an Australian serving with the I.M.S., came over from Kowloon to have medical advice about himself and on this occasion Saito came too. It seems curious now to look back upon such things, but up to March 1943 the bomb and shell damage to the hospital inflicted fifteen months earlier had gone substantially unrepaired. The top floors were badly damaged and as I reported earlier the kitchen in the middle section connecting the two blocks of wards was completely destroyed. Rain poured in at these places as well as at other damaged areas and the recreation room below the kitchen was unusable in wet weather. The fact that we did not carry out repairs earlier probably resulted from our preoccupation at that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 247 run by as entirely separate institution. After the Canadians moved from North Point we drew our patients only from Kowloon and I suppose that the prestige of adhering to the Geneva Convention outweighed in Japanese minds the administrative drawbacks of our site in Bowen Road. As time went on the need to supply and guard a unit widely separated from the main body of prisoners must have become more onerous. Increasing shortages and difficulty in supplying electricity and water to Bowen Road were probably instrumental in finally bringing about our transfer to Kowloon. 24 MARCH -- 9 SEPTEMBER 1945 We now moved into the last few months of our captivity. At first, staff and patients were accommodated in Sham Shui Po camp and from there working parties of our staff went out daily to prepare the hospital. It was on that day that I got my only view of the Heep Yunn School and I did not like what I saw, but the same day I learned that we were to have the Central British School for use. This looked and proved to be a suitable building and we began to move our gear there. A little later Saito told me that the staff would be reduced to 40 all ranks though previously he had said that there would be 40 other ranks. On 9 April 6 officers and 34 other ranks moved in to the Central British School. Besides myself there were Major G.F. Harrison, Major J.W. Anderson, Captain A. Coombs, Lieutenant (Q.M.) F.J. Campbell and the Rev. James Squires our padre. There were five Royal Engineers, M.S.M. Sims, Q.M.S. Tyas, and sappers Samways, Carvell and Climo, and there were 29 other ranks R.A.M.C. and R.A.D.C. headed by Sergeant-majors Muxlow and Bartley. On 10 April 62 patients of whom 58 had been in Bowen Road and four were newly arrived in the hospital. There were at first no non-medical workers though these had been promised. On 12 April a further 62 patients arrived, 31 of these being crippled but in fair general condition and a further 31 being what we then called old men (i.e., unfit for service by reason of age). Two army officers and some American and British merchant navy officers were included, but we had no special accommodation for officers. The Japanese ordered that all patients were to have white beds, another example of window dressing. The hospital provided for 34 beds for patients on the ground floor and 81 on the first floor which also housed the operating theatre, X-ray room and laboratory. Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 36 DOUGLAS W. SPARKS The 1961 Census and 1966 By-Census include "place of origin" and "usual language" as variables and cross-tabulate them with a number of other variables, including age, education, number of children, place of residence in Hong Kong, length of residence, etc.1 The two variables are not cross-tabulated, however, with occupation and income. The only sources of information concerning Teochiu occupational structure are unpublished data from the 1971 Census, provided by Mr. M.C. Leong of the Census and Statistics Department, and data from Teochiu publications. Tables III and IV provide occupational information from the 1971 Census. The first category in Table III includes unemployed women and children. Many of these women, who may have been represented as unemployed housewives to the census interviewers, are in fact doing piece work in their homes. The largest category is "craftsmen production workers and laborers" which reflects the large number of Teochiu semi-skilled factory workers and coolies, and represents 20% of all employed Teochiu. The next largest category is "clerical and sales workers" which represents over 29,000 workers, followed by "service, sport and recreation workers" (17,581), transport and communication workers (9,460), and then the smallest significant category — administrative, executive and managerial workers (8,826). The large number of transport workers recorded in the census reflects the fact that probably a majority of mini-bus drivers in Hong Kong are Teochiu. Table IV classifies economically active ever married men by occupation. The same ordering of categories is found in this table as in Table III. It should be noted that many unmarried, young men and women are employed as unskilled and semi-skilled workers in large factories. These tables suggest a preponderance of Teochiu in relatively low paid and unskilled jobs. Unfortunately, the occupational classification presented in these tables do not include ownership of businesses, particularly ownership of small shops, small workshops or flatted factories, and large-scale factories. There are numerous Teochiu owned light industrial firms, including plastic factories, machine tooling factories, garment factories, aluminum factories, as well as many import/export trading firms, banks and financial companies, stock companies, insurance companies and restaurants (Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1961; Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1971). 1 A more extensive analysis of the census statistics appears in my dissertation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q # THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG ## TABLE II 51 Number of Land Domestic Households (household head being of Teochiu origin) By Type of Living Quarter (data from the 1971 Census) Type of Living Quarter No. of land domestic households Apartment flat 10,653 Tenement flat 16,508 Resettlement Estate 31,193 Government low cost housing 1,792 Housing Authority or Society housing 3,867 Stone Structures 4,780 Houses of one or 2 stories 474 Temporary Housing 8,099 Others 651 Total 78,017 ## TABLE III Teochiu Population Living on Land by Occupation 1971 Census Occupation No. of person Armed forces, unclassified, economically inactive & job-seekers 243,133 Farmers, Fisherfolk, etc. 3,155 Miners etc. 497 Service, sport and recreation workers 17,581 Transport and communication workers 9,460 Clerical and sales workers 29,113 Craftsmen, production workers & labourers 74,203 Administrative, executive & managerial workers 8,826 Artists, draughtsmen and technicians 2,173 Professional & technological workers 1,639 Total 389,780 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS REMEMBERED: AN APPEAL FOR ORAL HISTORY IN HONG KONG Luke S. K. Kwong* The Chinese Maritime Customs has been called "one of the great administrative achievements of the nineteenth century." This favourable appraisal in comparative history could hardly impress nationalistic-minded Chinese, who have since the late-Ch'ing period tended to condemn the same administration as a mainstay of Western imperialist aggressions in China. Chief among their complaints is that for ninety years since its inception in the late 1850s, the Chinese Maritime Customs had been controlled by a foreign Inspectorate, an arrangement which further violated China's sovereign rights in its own revenue matters. While the imperialist character of the Inspectorate is more often assumed than carefully defined, Chinese indignation does point to a real problem in the Service's past history. Not only had the Inspector-general of Customs always been a foreigner, but also, up until the late 1920s, when reform was introduced to improve Chinese personnel representation, nearly all senior posts in the Service had been staffed by foreign employees. It was only after foreign predominance in this respect had ended that more Chinese began to fill such key positions as commissioners and deputy commissioners. By mid-1948, they had come to occupy a great majority of these posts. The experience of these highly placed Chinese who now enjoyed career opportunities previously denied their compatriots, ought to make interesting data for the historical record. In summer, 1979, this writer had the opportunity to interview three such former officials living in Hong Kong. All are at an advanced age: one is 90 and the others in their early eighties. They had been with the Service for 35 years or more before retiring in 1945 and in the early 1950s, respectively. One of them got to be Port Preventive Secretary at the Canton Customs, whereas the others rose to become full commissioners. Their long careers were * Dr. Kwong is Lecturer in History, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m THE HONG KONG ORIGINS OF DR. SUN YAT-SEN'S ADDRESS TO LI HUNG-CHANG 175 college. He therefore laid emphasis on the proper training of talents along Western lines and the full utilization of these talents as essential means of bringing progress to the nation. He advocated education opportunities for all, establishment of different types of schools for people of different potentials, award of academic titles and honours to people with achievement in different subjects of learning, setting up societies of learning, and publishing journals to promote advanced knowledge in various fields. These were, as Sun explained, important reasons which accounted for great advance of new knowledge in the West. He stated, "The system of recruitment in the West was to some extent similar to what was intended in the ancient times of T’ang and Yu; people with training in different fields were selected and assigned to relevant posts of state affairs, so that those learned in the arts were given appointments in the civil service, those from military academies would be in the army service, agricultural colleges in the agricultural department, technical colleges in engineering and commerce in the trading departments ...". Such information and ideas must have been derived from his personal observation in Hong Kong. The principle of universal education was introduced in Britain by the Education Act of 1870. The award of academic degrees, the establishment of academic societies sponsored by high officials and patronized by the monarch were features of the British system. Since Sun could not, by nature of this presentation, speak critically of the Ch'ing government and its institutions, his emphasis on the selection and appointment of officials from specialists in relevant fields was in effect a proposal for change in the administrative system. Therefore the full utilization of human talent was the first of the four measures which he considered essential for the modernization of China. Human talents were not only to be properly trained but also to be properly used. Arguing for the full utilization of the land, Sun's special concern was the modernization and improvement of agriculture. He emphasized the need for the appointment of officials with such knowledge to be in charge, provision of modern education for such knowledge and also the use of modern Western techniques. Sun's interest in agricultural improvement, which was later to be further demonstrated by his proposal in 1895 for the formation of an agricultural learning society, seems to have little connection with his urban educational background. It was nonetheless in line with his primary concern for the welfare of the people, as peasants then made up the overwhelming majority of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 HELEN F. SIU social networks, they allied with top government officials to support the status quo. They had benefited the most from Hong Kong in the last few decades. Their conservatism was backed by owners of small-scale enterprises who desperately tried to keep their hard-gained independence. Another 37 percent of the working population were topped by a professional elite of lawyers, engineers, educators, administrative civil servants, and business executives. They were supported by a cast of technical staff with post-secondary education. Both strata belonged to the post-war generation, received and accepted the Western-style value system as provided by the colonial environment. Li argued that they had also benefited from the general prosperity of Hong Kong. The last 52 percent of the working population consisted of a labouring stratum with varying skills. The skilled workers gained more from the demands of an increasingly technical-intensive industrial sector, while the unskilled not only faced the prospect of becoming redundant, but also faced competition from the influx of Chinese immigrants in the late 1970s.10 Therefore, between the first wave of immigrants in the late 1940s and the last wave in the late 1970s, a generation of local residents grew up in Hong Kong to become its social mainstream, though polarized. The elites had Western education and a cosmopolitan outlook. They were tuned to urban living and worked comfortably within a modern economic infrastructure, the construction of which the Hong Kong government (despite its hands-off attitude) had taken a major part in.11 By the late 1970s, they had assumed important positions in the media, educational institutions, business, and the civil service. They also took for granted the role of the government as "provider" of many public services, however inadequate the services had been.12 Their outlook and life-styles shaped and were shaped by an emerging but unique Hong Kong culture they identified with and to an extent were defensive of. They were farther removed from the uprooted cultural values of their parents, and were most nervous over their futures at the time of political redefinition. In sum, Hong Kong culture and society in the 1980s have been characteristically "Chinese" but not quite so, owing to adaptations to unique historical circumstances. This is the reality recent ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 ciation go principally to Dr. Elizabeth Sinn as Chairman of the Programme and Activities Committee, and to our speakers and tour leaders. As a gesture of the Society's appreciation, all our speakers have been invited as guests to attend this evening's dinner, an innovation that I hope will become a regular feature of this important event in our calendar. Back-up Organisation The Hon. Secretary and Assistant Secretary have been very busy during the year, coping with the paper work associated with new membership and support services and with the many enquiries and arrangements connected with our programme of activities. In this regard we owe special thanks to Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Bruce. They provide an efficient service to members and to the Council, and keep us all informed through the Newsletter which is now a regular feature. Mrs. Bruce and her husband Phillip, a co-opted Councillor, have made a special effort to provide information on publications and to improve sales. Whilst this is proving very successful in earning revenue, it does involve Mrs. Bruce in a lot of extra work. In consequence, the Assistant Secretary's monthly salary will be increased in line with work done on behalf of the Society, backdated to 1 January this year. The heavier burden of secretarial work apart, the new wave of interest shown in the Society in the past three years made it necessary to review our organisation in order to keep up with demand. We found that it was no longer possible to make all arrangements through and by the Council, as hitherto. At the same time we were also concerned with the Society's situation in changing times and needed to consider how, together with the rest of Hong Kong, we could best prepare ourselves for the future, especially in these transitional years before the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997. This led to the Symposium on the Society's Future held on 9 May last year. Symposium on the Society's Future The symposium was attended by over 70 members, justifying the organisers' belief that such an event would be well supported. In addition, a detailed questionnaire sent to all members before ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 OBITUARY: K. M. A. BARNETT, O.B.E. Three contributions to the memory of a remarkable man, Fellow of the RAS of Great Britain and Ireland (1949) and a founding member of the Hong Kong Branch: from James Hayes, Derek Davies, Solomon Bard. Three weeks ago one of the most distinguished retired members of the Civil Service passed away in England. Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's death was noted in the South China Morning Post on 30 October 1987. A factual account of his services was provided, beginning with his posting here as a young Cadet Officer in 1932 and ending 37 years later with his retirement from Hong Kong, but with a further 10 years' service for the United Nations Organisation in Malawi and Bangladesh on duties connected with the census. It is difficult to do justice to this exceptional man. Few friends of his own or a later generation could claim to have covered quite the same ground, or in the same way. For this reason, letters of appreciation have to come from several persons, and not from one pen alone. Dr. Bard's letter printed on 20 November is a case in point, (see pp. 8-10 below). As a Hong Kong civil servant his greatest achievement was probably the 1961 Census, the first for nearly thirty years. He established the office (the present Census and Statistics Department) and was its guiding genius. The work suited him to a “T”, for he was able to bring to its organisation and subsequent reporting, all the knowledge, experience and intellectual qualities that make it a lasting and major landmark in the history of Hong Kong's post-war development. Each segment of the land and sea population, by origin and occupation, each type of dwelling place (and they were legion in those hard times), education, marriage and much else was covered in the 3 volume report, and he personally wrote the manuals for the field staff and supervisors. He conducted further investigatory work, including the 1966 By-census, before retirement in 1969. My own association with Ken Barnett stemmed from our being colleagues in the Administrative Grade of the Civil Service, and from shared interests. He was District Commissioner, New Territories when I was posted to the District Office (South) in 1957, and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 During the hostilities, I believe he was the first to spot the Japanese crossing the Lei Yue Mun passage to land on Hong Kong Island; unfortunately, his report of the landing went unheeded. In the PoW camp he and I often played chess. He was a very good player, yet another one of his achievements. I recall those surprise roll calls which the Japanese always called at night; Ken and I contrived to stand next to each other and passed the time by playing mental chess. I could seldom get beyond eight or 10 moves, after which Ken would continue making moves for both of us. It was in camp, later on, when he spoke up to the visiting Swiss Red Cross officials about a shortage of food and medicine, an act of great courage for which he was severely beaten by his captors. After the war, when Hong Kong had begun to recover from the ravages of occupation, a fresh spirit of idealism and cultural aspirations started to grow. Ken Barnett embraced the new mood with enthusiasm and dedication. He became the moving spirit behind and the first chairman of the newly-established Sino-British Club, whose noble object was to bring together Chinese and British people in a mutual spirit of tolerance and understanding. Alas, the idealism did not last long in our all-too-materialistic Hong Kong. The Sino-British Club today is but a memory, but at least one of its seeds has thrived and grown to maturity. I knew him less well in his capacity as a senior administrative officer in government service and have not touched on his achievements there, but perhaps one of his former colleagues might do this. A big and jovial man, he was kind and considerate; a brilliant raconteur with a marvellous sense of humour. He visited Hong Kong regularly to stay with his daughter and son-in-law, Sai Chan and David Roseveare, and renew old friendships. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g Book Review 217 JAMES HAYES (1996), Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 11 chapters, appendix, glossary, index, 320 pages. James Hayes needs little introduction to most members of the Society. He was a former editor of the Journal and President of the Council for many years. He is also an extraordinarily nice human being with a passion for bow-ties. He allegedly retired, to Bondi Beach, Australia, in 1987 but there is little evidence that he is taking this seriously. Au contraire, he continues to write prolifically for the Journal and has also added many new books to the Society's collection through his constant forays into used-book shops. All-in-all, James spent 32 years in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Administrative Service of the Hong Kong Government from August, 1956 (he was here briefly in 1953 with the Army). Although he had the varied career that characterises the Service, he spent almost half his time in the New Territories as District Officer South (1957-62), District Officer (and Town Manager) Tsuen Wan (1975-82), and Regional Secretary, New Territories (1985-87). He was, and remains, a noted sinologist and accomplished in the Chinese language. Academically, he was very sound with a PhD from the University of London and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters bestowed by the University of Hong Kong in 1992. James has decided to share his memories of his service in Hong Kong with us in a new book. Autobiographies by former Hong Kong Government civil servants, and by Hong Kong people generally for that matter, are relatively rare events, almost as if the majority are reluctant to write their memoirs for fear of criticism or ridicule, or have little in their careers worth writing about. James has no problem on either count. His career was rich and varied, filled with achievements and may truly be said to have added value to public life in Hong Kong. As for the telling of it, he has avoided the inclination to embark upon a literary ego trip although he is not averse to describing the highlights in detail. Few will be offended by the style. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 218 The book is a remarkably accurate and sensitive account of life as a public servant in the Colony of Hong Kong (this term with its perceived pejorative overtones was de-emphasised in the eighties in favour of Territory; Now, of course, we have become a Region) in the decades after the Second World War. Hong Kong in the fifties, when James arrived, was far from what we know it to be today: still recovering from the ravages and privations of the Japanese occupation; swamped with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war and subsequent revolution in China; tuberculosis and other diseases rampant; people living from hand to mouth; the squatter areas - the list of maladies could go on. Amongst other things which come out vividly in this book is how well Hong Kong has done. There has always been a tendency amongst Westerners to compare the worst in Hong Kong with the best elsewhere, which is unfair. Hong Kong has had more than its share of problems but now has the money to minimise them. In the fifties and sixties, the wealth was simply not there. The author came to Hong Kong as a “Cadet”, the rather noisome name given to members of the Administrative Service. As such, in James' words, he “…belonged to a grade of the civil service that was generalist in nature, whose members were moved around, filling middle and upper level posts in key departments and in the Government Secretariat.’ The Administrative Service is a proud, elite force which produces most of Hong Kong's public sector leaders but it is often criticised for this 'Jack of all trades, master of none' mentality; its members being likened by its more vocal critics to 'lighthouses in the desert' (brilliant but useless). This is going altogether too far. Like all organs of Government, the Service has had its share of incompetents, but James was demonstrably not one of them. James also accurately describes the ethos in post-war Hong Kong and how it has evolved. Many, if not most, expatriates existed in small, enclosed, expatriate ‘rings’, almost completely cut off from the real Hong Kong. It was rather like living in a cocoon. To the modern-day observer, this lack of contact, other than professional, between the main ethnic groups seems amazing. But when you get down to it, have things changed that much? There was also, at any rate below the surface, a fair amount of racism, parochialism and delusions of grandeur around. It has been said more than once that many allegedly competent and successful, and certainly senior, British Hong Kong civil servants ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 A. Trevor Clark, C.B.E., L.V.O., M.A., F.S.A.Scot., served in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service in Nigeria, and then in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1977, being seconded to the Western Pacific for constitutional duties from 1972. Since retirement to Britain he has been an elected local government councillor, and a member of non-departmental public bodies and trusts, especially museums, and has contributed book reviews on Hong Kong affairs to various publications. Dan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time Member of Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (HKSARBRAS) and became President in 1997, having acted since the year before. He has written prolifically on the history and culture of the HKSAR. Keith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history generally, and has written prolifically on these subjects. Jennifer W. Welch, M.A. now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests are varied and include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history. Kwok-shing CHAN is a post-graduate student at the Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Thomas Kvan, M.A., M.Arch., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong. Justyna Karakiewicz, A.A. Dipl., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong and an urban designer who has designed towns and landscapes in Malta, France and England, amongst others. ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 Africa and South-east Asia to be suspicious of the pretensions of local leaders whose personal interests were not always easily identifiable with those of the common man—or, in their new surroundings, the worker in the plastics factory and his family. They had been conditioned by British policy and practice elsewhere to accept a goal of parliamentary democracy and self-determination as the norm; and while admitting that Hong Kong was, in the other cant phrase, “unique,” they saw no reason for it to be utterly different in ethos. Someone who appreciated the subtle differences within colonies and between their officials was the last Colonial Service Governor, Sir David Clive Crosbie Trench GCMG MC. Trench had started his service in the Western Pacific, where as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands he had been a wartime "coastwatcher" in the mountains, reporting on Japanese activity, and had earned a military decoration during the Allies' reoccupation. He was one of the few Administrative Officers to benefit from the old Colonial Office's unspoken "seven year rule." Under this, those who had spent that length of time in the supposedly enervating climate and mores of the Pacific should be sent to more politically and mentally bracing parts of the empire, the better to come back refreshed when more senior (determined Resident Commissioners in the Western Pacific, who thought seven years only just enough to train their juniors in the proper ways, usually managed to circumvent this best-laid plan.) Trench came to Hong Kong after the war, where he acquired a strong and popular reputation, notably in the Labour Department, as reorganiser of the Fire Brigade and as Deputy Colonial Secretary (DCS). It was no surprise when he went back to the Western Pacific as High Commissioner; there he presided over the creation for the egalitarian Melanesian society in the Solomon Islands of a novel democratic form of government based, via a constitution already adapted for Ceylon, on the pre-war London County Council, with committees instead of ministers (some of whose chairmen, however, inevitably assumed ministerial pretensions.) After three years, he returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1964. Before he had left, Trench had naturally always shown greater sympathy with and understanding of the "interlopers," as the aforesaid subset was vulgarly known, than did some of his senior colleagues. Although relations with a governor were inevitably more remote than those with a senior secretariat officer had been, he contrived not to be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 the Social Welfare Department), co-ordinated by regional generalist officers comparable with NT DOs, leading to advisory Regional Councils which might eventually become the main report's Local Authorities. They pointed up more outspokenly than the emollient main report the shortcomings of an out-of-touch government administering a non-English-speaking population that was only too open to misunderstandings and misconceptions (such as that taxes levied were drained off to the UK Treasury.) Interim steps should concentrate strongly on building up public confidence in the unaccustomed principles and practice of popular elected representation (the ‘political education' mentioned above.) The provisional system of regional advisory councils, coupled with departmental decentralisation and administrative co-ordination, should then lead to full local authorities in about six years. Meanwhile Tsuen Wan was indeed a unique opportunity for immediate action (the new towns to come of Tuen Mun, Sha Tin, Tai Po et al had yet to be envisaged.) These three semi-dissenters did not co-ordinate their Note with the other. Dickinson has been described by one of his working party as “the least understood and worst treated member of the Cadet Service" (the original title of Hong Kong's Administrative Branch of the HMOCS, which survived in common parlance long after the absorption into the Colonial Service of the pre-war Eastern Cadetships.) He chose to retire early for personal reasons. It is ironic that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution overspill, when special duties officers in the defence branch of the secretariat, the SCA and the Information Services Department became so active in devising new ways to win hearts and minds, to keep in touch with the people and to encourage the use of Chinese language, so much of what had been adumbrated in the Working Party Report re-appeared; but because the new ideas now came from well-established senior sources, they became respectable and it was to be long before they offered electoral participation in executive decisions. The SCA became the Secretariat for Home Affairs; City District Officers were created in ten urban districts, and found much to do that had not been done before; City District Committees were established in 1972; a Tsuen Wan District Advisory Board was at last set up in 1977, followed by others; in 1980 a new pattern for district administration was at last suggested, with direct elections to District Boards. But in all these and still later developments that affect present history, there was no official backward recognition that the ground ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 90 water with a swinging or lifting central span. Nevertheless, the scheme was not proceeded with, and Hong Kong had to wait another 70 years before a fixed cross-harbour connection was constructed. The main road network in Kowloon continued to expand, with Sham Shui Po being linked to the then-existing road system in 1916 with a 6m-wide, 700m-long road, part of which was formed on a 3.4m-high embankment. The first section of Waterloo Road, Argyle Street, and much of Prince Edward Road were completed by 1924. At this time, Nathan Road had already been extended by Coronation Road (later also part of Nathan Road) nearly up to the old international boundary. By the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, part of Kowloon Tong, then a garden city, was developed to the west of Waterloo Road together with an adjoining section of Boundary Street, and extensive additions were made to the subsidiary road networks, in particular, in the Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, and To Kwa Wan districts. When the New Territories was leased in 1898, it was a quiet rural area with a scattering of small market and fishing towns which depended on a network of footpaths and ferries for access. Shortly afterwards, a good deal of road construction was begun, partly for military and civil governmental purposes, and partly to enable farmers to bring their produce more easily to the urban areas. The first section of the New Territories ring road, that from Kowloon to the administrative centre Tai Po, comprised a 4.3m-wide carriageway following the zig-zag course of the old footpath and was completed in 1900. Au Tau creek was bridged in 1916 with an 11-span, 95m-long reinforced concrete structure supported on hollow 340mm concrete box piles, where previously a local punt service was available, to join the 6m-wide stretches of road from Fan Ling and Castle Peak (Tuen Mun). Two years later, the coastal road from Sham Shui Po to Castle Peak was started, which at the time was aptly considered to be Hong Kong's La corniche, and, in 1920, the whole of the 90km-long New Territories ring road was finally completed. About 1927, the Tai Po road bridge adjacent to the railway was reconstructed with a 7-span reinforced concrete structure. Improvements were carried out to the Fan Ling/Sha Tau Kok road in 1929, much of which had only been in service for two years, generally making use of the disused railway formation. Subsequently, a new road was built from Au Tau to Shek ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 13 227 Control', Yeoh describes in detail how, in the late 1880s, the Chinese population in Singapore hindered the advance of Western sanitary methods by refusing to comply with the many regulations introduced by the Municipal Branch. ibid., pp. 119-125. Government Notification No.223, HKGG, 23 June 1883, pp.538-544. 14 Yeoh, op. cit., p.110. Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital, (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1989), p.152. 16 Registrar General's Report for 1891, Hongkong Government Legislative Council Sessional Papers, No.19/92, p.241. Henceforth HKGLCSP. 17 Ibid., p.257. 18 Colonial Estimates for 1870-1873, (Hong Kong, Noronha), Miscellaneous expenditure. 19 "The matter is important enough for the District Watch Committee to have authorised the extension of their system of watchmen by opening a new station in Kowloon.' Hongkong Hansard, 9 October 1913, p.71. 20 Stubbs to Churchill, 18 March 1922: CO129/474, p.221. 21 Ibid., (enclosure). 22 Between 1912 and 1925 Claud Severn administered the colony on ten separate occasions during the absence of Governors Sir Francis May and Sir Reginald Stubbs. Hong Kong Civil Service List for 1935, pp.46-47. 23 Severn to Churchill, 22 August 1922: CO129/476, p.96-98. 24 E.R. Hallifax, C.Mcl. Messer and R.O. Hutchison, 'Report on the searching of passengers on arrival at and departure from Hongkong', 17 March 1917, HKGLCSP, No.8/17, p.44. 25 Hong Kong Hansard, 6 November 1930, p.235. 26 Police Report for 1933, Administrative Reports for 1933, p.K12. It was not only ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 225 A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong Old people recall the past gladly and shrink characteristically from contemplating the future. But obviously things are going to continue to change, just as some of us in the 1970s could visualise that an organisation similar to the Vocational Training Council (VTC) was not so far away. But just as in the colonial 1950s and '60s 1997 was seldom mentioned, looking into the crystal ball today to decide what technical education will look like half a century from now has to be another story. Thank you again for inviting me to share this very special day with you. About the Speaker Dr D D Waters, who was born in 1920, sailed from England for Hong Kong in 1954. It has been his home ever since. He taught building at the old Technical College (now the Polytechnic University) becoming Head of the Building Department in 1963. In 1968 he was appointed Principal, more than one year in advance of the opening of Hong Kong's first Technical Institute at Morrison Hill. In 1972, he was transferred to the Education Department Headquarters to oversee the setting up of additional Institutes. He later became the Assistant Director (Technical Education) and responsible to the Director of Education for Hong Kong's technical education system. Dr Waters served as a Justice of the Peace in the 1970s and was made a Companion of the Imperial Service Order by Her Majesty the Queen in 1981, largely for his work in technical education. In 1998 he was awarded a Bronze Bauhinia Star, by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, for his work in heritage conservation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 393 Service and was posted to the British Consulate in Beijing. He was interned by the Japanese during World War II but was then exchanged for Japanese diplomatic staff and made his way to India. He spent the War serving in various capacities with the Indian Army. In 1940, he met the German photographer Hedda Hammer and they married in Beijing in 1946. Due to the increasing instability of the political situation in China, they left Beijing soon after. The Morrisons spent six months in Hong Kong before relocating to Sarawak, in the north-west of the island of Borneo, where Alastair was appointed to the British Colonial Service and later became a district officer. Throughout her 20-year residence in Sarawak, Hedda accompanied Alastair on all his official journeys and made numerous independent photographic tours. From 1960 to 1966 Hedda was employed by the Sarawak government to work part-time in the photographic section of the Information Office in Kuching. Her duties included taking photographs, establishing a photographic library and training government photographers. Hedda wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962). Jennie Morrison, 1912, (Mitchell Library) In 1967 the Morrisons settled in Canberra, Australia. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991, at the age of 82. Alastair lives in Hughes, Canberra. His Fair Land Sarawak: Some Recollections of an Expatriate Official (Ithaca, Cornell University) and The Road to Peking (Canberra, Highland Press, private distribution), both appeared in 1993. Mr. Morrison's other brother, Colin Morrison was born in April 1917. He joined the Administrative Service in Hong Kong and was also a member of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which held out valiantly for 17 days against the Japanese in December 1941.2 He was interned by the Japanese at the Shamshuipo camp for the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 427 D.C. Bray, Hong Kong Metamorphosis, Hong Kong University Press, 2001, pp 245. index, plates. Denis Bray was born in Hong Kong, and entered the Hong Kong Government in 1950 as a Cadet Officer, retiring in 1985 as Secretary for Home Affairs and Deputy to the Governor: since his retirement, he has continued to live in Hong Kong. Given this history, he is uniquely qualified to speak about the development of Hong Kong in recent decades. His book, however, is not a history. It is a series of reminiscences. Many parts of his career are passed over. He does not produce any deep analyses of events; nor does he philosophise on what it was that inspired and motivated him. He merely describes those events which, looking back, he remembers with affection and continuing interest. The book opens with one of the best and sunniest descriptions of a happy childhood that I have read for many years. His home in Foshan, in the centre of Guangdong Province, where his father ran a missionary hospital, his holidays in Hong Kong, his schooling in North China, and the journeys to and fro, are all remembered and described well. His family's return to England as war approached, his education at Cambridge, and his discovery of rowing, follow, in an almost equally beguiling account. This was first given as a lecture to HKBRAS, as is handsomely stated in the book. The central half of the book relates scenes from his early career in Hong Kong before he reached the level of Secretary for Home Affairs with a seat on the Legislative and Executive Councils. Few personal details intrude, apart from occasional glimpses of Denis on his dinghy, or, later, his yacht. What we see is Denis the administrator, and what a splendid glimpse he gives of a classic Colonial Service administrator of the best type! He notes that a Colonial Service officer could be assumed to 'be used to championing the interests of the people where he was working against the tendency of London to give more importance to the interests of Britain' (p. 171), and, again, ‘everyone knew that our job was to look out for the ordinary citizen' (p. 138). Time and again, Denis describes situations where hide-bound bureaucrats, anxious only to "play it by the book,” and to maximise Government income, were creating unfairness for ordinary people. Denis, once and again, comes up with some scheme to eliminate the unfairness, often by bending the rules, or introducing some extra-legal administrative procedure, which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 428 could be slipped past the powers-that-be. Slaughterhouse butchers, villagers in New Territories villages, hawkers in urban street-markets, taxi-drivers, factory-hands forced to commute on wildly inadequate bus-services, all were helped by schemes introduced by Denis. When I first joined the Hong Kong Administrative Service in 1972, I heard a good deal about the problems these "Bray-waves" caused to the bureaucrats who were teaching us the ropes, and who wanted nothing so much as a comfortable life, bolstered by rule-books which never needed to be questioned, but, having looked at what Denis did, and how he did it, I have no doubt at all that what he did was politically essential, well thought out, practicable, and necessary. Letters "B," the Small House Policy, the Hawker Control Force, the Mutual Aid Committees, and so much more, were the right solutions to real problems, and genuinely did alleviate real unfairness. All too often, after Denis moved on, his successors would hamstring his reforms by refusing to implement them in the spirit in which they were introduced, unfortunately, but I do not believe anyone reading in an unbiased way Denis' account of the introduction of Letters "B" (p. 76), or the Small House Policy (p. 163-166) could fail to see the need for the new policy, nor the skill and intelligence with which Denis undertook the work. Reading this book, I was amazed to see just how many of the policies I attempted to implement had been introduced by Denis. In the Urban Services Department, the Home Affairs Department, and as District Officer in the New Territories, almost all the policies that governed my life had been introduced by him. The later part of the book, on the years when Denis was "near the top," and at the top, will prove of interest to political historians in later years, giving glimpses of an insider's view of the negotiations on the future of Hong Kong. I personally found this part of the book duller and of less interest. Loyalty to the system makes the descriptions thin and the reticence is widespread. Nonetheless, this part of the book is without doubt of considerable historical value. At the end of the book is a short “Epilogue” in which Denis gives his views on the political development of Hong Kong after his retirement. His utter rejection of the Patten position is made very clear, and his espousal of a slow-but-steady development towards universal suffrage for the Legislative Council and for the election of the Chief ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 429 Executive, with what he sees as the inevitable concomitant to these developments of a ministerial system - are made fascinatingly clear. Hong Kong was immensely lucky to have had Denis in senior positions throughout the formative years of modern Hong Kong. Without innovative, intelligent, and vigorous officers like him, what would the place have been like? At the same time, Denis, too, was lucky. For much of his early career, he had the sympathetic support of Ronald Holmes as his immediate superior: almost the only man with the imagination to countenance Denis's guerrilla attacks on the shibboleths of administration, and, more importantly, with the intelligence and drive to support them when he was satisfied they were needed. Had Denis had a succession of stolid and lazy lame-brains as his superiors, how long would it have taken for him to have been black-listed as just someone who "rocked the boat," who was "too clever for his own good”? I wonder if anyone with his flair and instinctive feel for the needs of ordinary people could survive in the Administrative Service of today? Denis comes over in this book as a man of great intelligence and charm, wit, and decency. His 'horror and disgust' at the things disclosed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption come through, for instance, very clearly. Having worked for him for a couple of years, I know that the book shows the real Denis. The book is very well printed by Hong Kong University Press. There are a few errors that should have been caught by the copy-editors (for instance, 'Rodean School' and 'the Ordinance Survey,' both on p. 151). Denis states that he is no historian, and there are a few places where there are minor errors of historical fact, although none that affect the overall value of the book. Among them are the names of the Seven Yeuk of Tai Po (p. 96), the date of the New Market at Tai Po (founded 1892, and not after the building of the Tai Po Road a decade later, as suggested on pp. 96 and 170-171), and the date of the Tolo Harbour arable reclamations (almost all in the nineteenth century, rather than the late eighteenth as suggested on p. 61). All in all, this is a book of considerable charm; thoroughly to be recommended to anyone interested in today's Hong Kong. PATRICK HASE ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 ship. His final seagoing appointment was in command of the experimental deep diving ship HMS Reclaim. After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972, he joined the secretariat staff of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland administering the 1,800 or so Rotary Clubs in GB&I from which he retired as Secretary to the Association in 1996 (michaelgillam@compuserve.com) James Hayes, Ph.D., (London), Hon. D.Litt. (Hong Kong), spent his working life as an Administrative Officer in Hong Kong. He is a noted scholar and local historian and has contributed prolifically to the Journal. Among his books are The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Country (Hamden, Archon Books, 1977) and the memoir of his Hong Kong service, Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996). His most recent book, a volume in OUP's Images of Asia series entitled South China Village Culture, was published in 2001. Dr Hayes is a Past-President and former Hon Editor of HKBRAS (mouseh1@bigpond.com). David Mahoney, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS. He joined the Crown Lands Office of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong Government, 1964, and moved to Swire Properties in 1973 where he spent the next 20 years looking after Taikoo Shing and Taikoo Place. A keen collector of medals, he has just celebrated 50 years of membership of the Orders & Medals Research Society. Specialising in awards to Britons who served in China, Mr Mahoney addressed HKBRAS on the subject in 2000. Having previously served on the committees of various societies, his only remaining commitment is to the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, an organisation which locates, identifies, records and restores European cemeteries in India, Pakistan and South East Asia (davidwmahoney@aol.com). Lan Li, Ph.D., is an anthropologist working at Queen's University Belfast as a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Anthropological Studies. She also lectures in Chinese Culture and Society at the Institute of LifelongLearning was corrected to Institute of Lifelong Learning. Her research interests are Chinese popular religion, history, politics, and ethnic minorities. She was a co-organiser of the international conference on 'The Career and Legacy of Sir Robert Hart,' which took place in Belfast between 26 and 27 September 2003 (lan.li@gub.ac.uk). xvii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 215 basis of the 'School for Language in Education' (p. 229) that she mentions as the first of the Schools formed in the Institute of Education. It is not true that the British Hong Kong Administration considered that knowledge and use of the Chinese language were not necessary to their work in Hong Kong (p. 244). From the beginning, there was considerable consciousness of the need for Chinese Language skills, and considerable effort was made to provide for appointees who would study the language and also, whenever pragmatically possible, to appoint persons who had studied Chinese already. At the time of the return of Hong Kong to Mainland China, westerners in the Administrative Service and the Police Force were still required to have or to acquire these skills. —— It is not true that 'the policy of mother tongue instruction' (i.e. the policy of using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction) in Hong Kong was ‘introduced only in 1997' (p. 244). The policy had been in place for decades, but in the face of parents' and teachers' objections, the British Administration had judged it inappropriate to do more than highly recommend compliance. Introducing her earlier book, the highly-commended China's Universities, 1895-1995, Hayhoe explains (new edition of 1999, p. xiv) that her objective is to tell a story, not a history, and she admits that, while she had conducted hundreds of interviews with well-informed, relevant witnesses, she had not burrowed in the archives as a historian needs to do. To some extent her Autobiography seems to have followed a similar method and to be based on the same assumptions. For this, however, she did have the inestimable treasure of all her letters home to her Mother, written twice-weekly in her early years away, and handed over to Hayhoe not quite six years after her Mother's death. -- Her own diary, unfortunately, Hayhoe lost during a move. -- But she also had her early, unpublished creative writing, written in 1970s Hong Kong and the 'torrent' of her published academic writing. Whether writing history or story, however, a mind trained by a Classical education to operate like a steel trap (Full Circle, p.196) can lead to discomfort for its owner as well as for others if the facts it bases its operation on are not scrupulously correct. An exclusive or very heavy reliance on oral history (China's Universities, op. cit., p. ================================================================================