RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 112 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 The Nim Ts'z Primary School, also operated by the Lotus Association, opened during December 1960 in Blocks P and Q of the Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate. It accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, is government subsidized, with a tuition fee of HK$50 a year. Plans for another school, to be called the Ts'z Yan Primary School, are still in the initial stage. It is to be housed in a new building, built specially for the purpose, that will not be ready before the end of 1961. The government has made the necessary grant of land on Kwong Lee Road in Kowloon and will provide a HK$300,000 construction loan, interest free, for repayment over 11 years. The remainder of the $450,000 construction cost will be donated by Buddhist laymen, especially the members of the Lotus Association. The operating expenses will not be government subsidized, but will come in part from donations and in part from fees of HK$120 a year (i.e., $70 more than in subsidized schools). The enrollment will be 1,890 boys and girls. 4. HONG KONG BUDDHIST BOOK DISTRIBUTOR This organization operates a non-profit publishing house and second-hand book store. It publishes reprints of the Chinese Buddhist sutras as well as contemporary Chinese works on Buddhism. It also collects used copies of Buddhist sutras (many of them out of print) and sells them at just above cost. Its stock of 20,000 volumes fills the walls of a large room in the western district of Hong Kong (42 Bonham Strand West, 2nd floor). The staff of three are all volunteer workers. Since it was founded in 1945, the Hong Kong Buddhist Book Distributor has published some 228 items in 600,000 copies at a total outlay of HK$500,000. About 30 per cent have been distributed free of charge and the rest at cost. The expenses of the entire operation are borne by a small group of Buddhist laymen in Hong Kong. VII. ROLE OF BUDDHIST ORGANIZATIONS IN HONG KONG Buddhist organizations in Hong Kong do not play the economic, political, and cultural role that is played by their counterparts in Southeast Asia. In particular, they attempt to avoid politics. The closeness of the Communist Chinese mainland means, first of all, that few if any Buddhists here entertain illusions about the nature of the Peking regime or its policy towards Buddhism, and second, that they feel an underlying uncertainty about their future and prefer to do nothing and say nothing that would prejudice it if events took an unexpected turn. Although anti-Communist efforts have been made by a few Buddhist groups, the majority concentrate on religious activities and social welfare. The welfare activities of Buddhist organizations have been described above at some length. Of the 15 Buddhist schools now in operation, 12 are subsidized and 1 is partly subsidized. This means that for about 7,000 pupils plant, textbooks, hygiene, and methods of instruction must conform to standards set by ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 82 J. W. HAYES 10 standing in loco parentis to the people of his district. An instance of this outlook is a proclamation issued by the Canton Viceroy in April 1899 in which he told the people of the New Territory that the English government had agreed that "the people are to be treated with exceptional kindness ".10 On the reverse side of the medal the magistrate could also, like his followers in the tribunal, use his authority to evil purposes and be referred to as being as (fierce as) a tiger" 如虎 or a dog-official"35 whose extortions and venality were a byword 44 in the district.1 C4 + 17 In his government the Magistrate was usually assisted by an indoor and outdoor staff. The former might consist of personal adherents from his own home district who followed him from post to post, and partly of local personnel of the tribunal or yamen4 such as a legal adviser, secretaries, and land clerks, whose local knowledge it would be difficult to dispense with. All these were entirely dependent upon the magistrate for their livelihood, and upon what they could pick up in the course of their duties. To maintain his position and put food into the mouths of the members of his personal staff and their families the magistrate was given an inadequate salary by government. There were in addition the outdoor staff which comprised a considerable number of police, watchmen, runners and the like, who may have been paid by Government despite what Lockhart says to the contrary, but used their opportunities as they came, In the San On district the Magistrate's yamen was at Nam Tau, which lies beyond the northern or further shores of Deep Bay on the far side of the Nam Tau peninsula. This was the district city where the treasury, jail and examination halls were also situated. It also contained a Confucian temple. The seat of government therefore lay outside the borders of the New Territory which, however, was served by several of his subordinate officers. He was assisted by an assistant magistrate10 whose office was at Tai Pang north-east of Mirs Bay and outside the New Territory and two deputy magistrates, one of whom was stationed within the walled city of Kowloon. They had power to make arrests and conduct preliminary enquiries but were bound to refer most cases to Nam Tau for final decision. The Kowloon deputy, like his colleagues, had a lock-up for detaining persons pending trial and there was also one each for the local ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 102 J. W. HAYES there are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence. 53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years. 54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies. 55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away. 56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 164 MCCRARY, M.* MCDOUALL, Hon. J. C. MACK, A. M. MCELNEY, B. S. MCKEIRNAN, V. Rev. M. J. MACKENZIE, J. MACKENZIE, Miss S. MALLORY-BROWNE, G. E. 25-A Robinson Road, Top floor, H.K. Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, Connaught Road, C., H.K. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Banking Corpn., 9 Gracechurch Street, London, E.C.3., England. Johnson Stokes & Master, H.K. Bank Building, H.K. St. Peter in Chains Catholic Church, Kowloontsai, Kowloon, Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 17 Chater Hall, Conduit Road, H.K. 15, Cooper Road, H.K. MALLORY-BROWNE, W. Asta Foundation, 2 Old Peak Road, H.K. MANEELY, R. B. MARSHALL, Dr. Patricia M. MARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J. Anatomy Dept., The University, H.K. Zoology Dept., The University, H.K. P. O. Box 472, Macau. MAYNARD, Prof. D. M. Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, U.S.A. MIDDLEBROOK, R. W.* 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A. MILBURN, K. MILLER, C. F. O.* Marine Dept., 102 Connaught Road, C., H.K. c/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, C.P.O. Box 255, Seoul, Korea, MINETT, Lt. Col. F. R. D. British Military Hospital, Rinteln, Weser, MORGAN, L. G. MOSCROP, Miss M. E. MOYLE, G. C. NABHOLZ, Mrs. M. E. NEWBIGGING, D. K. NG, Peter Y. L. NG, Ronald, C. Y. British Forces Post Office 29, West Germany. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Bank, 9 Gracechurch Street, London, EC.3., England. 76, Peak Road, The Peak, H.K. c/o Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd., H.K. 820-823, Union House, H.K. Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd. (Shipping Accounts Dept.) H.K. Dept. of History, The University, H.K. 164, Prince Edward Rd., 1st floor, Kowloon. * Life Member Please notify the Hon Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY 11 found. The explanation for this is that this part of South China has been rising relative to sea level. This positive rise is connected with isostasy and eustatic movements of the oceans that cause cycles of submergence and emergence. Assuming a rise of one foot every hundred years then, Hong Kong in the last 2,500 years has risen 25 feet, Dr. Heanley and his friend Mr. Walter Schofield, a government administrator, gathered a large and varied collection of celts from Kowloon, Cheung Chau and Lantau Island. Examination of this collection by experts soon established that they were not just freaks of nature but definite human artifacts. Since Heanley's first notification, other workers have found them in practically every part of the Colony, and contrary to his belief that they were principally found on granite hills, they have been found often in abundance on every other rock outcrop represented in the area — especially volcanic rock. It may be that because of the extreme susceptibility of granite to erosion, which causes 'badland country' with thin or no vegetation cover, the celts can be seen more easily, Including the places mentioned by Dr. Heanley, celts can still be found in the fields, on raised beaches or on low hills at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan, Aberdeen, Tai Po, Castle Peak, San Hui, So Kun Wat, Tsun Wan, Shatin, Shataukok, Man Kok Tsui, Ha Tsuen, Sheung Shui, Shek Pik, Sai Kung, Lai Chi Chung, Sok Ku Wan, Fanling and Kau Sai Chau. Much is owed to Dr. Heanley, Mr. Schofield and Professor J. L. Shellshear, who was head of the Anatomy Department in the University of Hong Kong, for their conscientious and patient work in combing the Colony for other archaeological remains and sites after the celts had been identified. I have been told by our Vice-President, Sir Lindsay Ride, who knew all three intimately and often accompanied them on their field trips, that they were superbly energetic and covered tremendous distances in a day at great speed. Only fit and enthusiastic walkers could hope to last a whole day with them. They located several prehistoric sites, the most notable being So Kun Wat, Shek Pik and those at the northwest end of Lamma Island. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 16 S. G. DAVIS The findings of the Man Kok Tsui site showed similar remains to those reported by Father Finn and Dr. Schofield at Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan and Tai Wan on Lamma Island and Shek Pik on Lantau Island. There was also a similarity of seashore settlements on raised beaches and low hills. Geologically however the sites are dissimilar. The Lamma sites are on granodiorite, Shek Pik on volcanic rock and Man Kok Tsui on porphyritic granite. Although the finds at Man Kok Tsui were not as varied as those from the other sites mentioned above, the area of study was wider and closer attention was given to the relative position and distribution of finds. These showed a rough zoning of finds leading to a possible theory of "working", "dwelling" and "burial" areas. The map of archaeological sites and positions of discovered remains indicates the richness of our Hong Kong area. Recent site studies have been made at Ha Tsuen, Deep Bay; Fanling; Upper and Lower Shek Pik villages, Lantau Island; and at Kau Sai Chau, Rocky Harbour (27). During the levelling of the Shek Pik Reservoir in March 1962 the bulldozing machines brought to light coins clearly dated in age from A.D. 713 to 1226 (Tang Dynasty to Sung). Also found were richly glazed potsherds, These finds come from poor farming land, until recently malarial and with no nearby natural resources of economic value. They might have been the property of a rich man (or party) who was possibly in transit or resting, or as has been suggested was the property of the court of the boy Sung emperor, Ti Cheng. In A.D. 1277 when the Mongols were extending their control over China, Ti Cheng in his flight stayed for some time in Kowloon City. Later he crossed the mouth of the Canton River over to Chung Shan, and thus probably travelled along the southern shore of Lantau Island, going ashore for food and rest. In 1954 when the Shek Pik area was being surveyed for a reservoir, the University Team was first to do archaeological work there by trenching across the sandy raised beach, where in 1938, Professor W. Schofield had reported artifacts. During the work, a rock carving behind the beach was found about 200 yards from the seashore on the east side of the valley. It was cleaned up and later in 1958 had a protecting wall built round it, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 The Five Great Clans 33 tried to retain and modernise this tradition by building modern schools for their children and teaching a curriculum equal to that in the cities of Victoria and Kowloon. The Tangs of Kam Tin and the Lius operated schools with a modern curriculum at least as early as the 1930s, and have since installed them in modern buildings. Other modern schools may be seen at Ho Sheung Heung, Kam Tsin, Tai Po Tau, and San Tin. Usually, the schools have been built on lineage initiative and money, with the Government meeting a proportion of the cost. Boards of Governors are generally composed of lineage members only, though teaching staff may be drawn from any surnames. But far from consolidating the position of the clans, as education did in the old days, the new education has cut off the young men (and the young women) from their lineages by educating them up to a level where they are employable only in the city, where they quickly learn to renounce village values and the lineage way of life. Some of the older men recognise the danger which this constitutes to the lineage system, and they try hard to reconcile the modern education with old values, striving to keep the young people based on the village even if facing towards the city. The Lius have recently initiated the practice of sending all their school-children to take part in the worship of the First Ancestor's grave on the 9th of the 9th month,80 a practice which certainly would not have been permitted in the past. Ancestor worship in its manifestations above the level of the family was and is on a larger scale in the five clans than in smaller clans. The five own large ancestral halls (often as large as three M) for the corporate worship of their founding ancestors, and most of their villages have more than one hall, often as many as three or four, each one serving as the focal point for a branch or sub-branch of the lineage. Comparatively few lineages or clans outside the five have ancestral halls of any size; in many, a converted house does duty as the hall, while perhaps no other lineage is able to boast of more than one hall. Wealth again is the factor which enables the five to build and maintain halls. All of these clans observe ancestral rites on a large scale and at great expense. The major ceremony of the year is Chung Yeung, on and around the 9th day of the 9th month, when the grave of the founding ancestor is worshipped. Since these graves ================================================================================ 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-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 122 JAMES HAYES permitted to settle there, and stringent measures will be taken to prevent its becoming as heretofore a resort for thieves and outlaws, who are hereby warned that they will be proceeded against with severity if they attempt to conceal themselves within the above-mentioned limits **6 Who were these people? Most of the inhabitants of Old Kowloon at this time were Hakkas, whereas the earlier inhabitants of the flatter and more fertile areas of the peninsula, especially round Kowloon City, not far beyond the northern boundary of British territory, were Cantonese. The major Cantonese settlements in the area south of the Kowloon hills date back to the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368) and even before, whereas the Hakka settlers of the southern part of the Kowloon peninsula are of much more recent origin. Most of them appear to have come into the area in the first half of the 19th century, especially after 1841. Several factors can be said to have operated in bringing Hakkas into the area in the middle years of the 19th century. In the first place, there appears to have been a continuing movement of Hakkas early in the century, seeking to settle on new land. Then, after 1841, there was the attraction of nearby Hong Kong with its opportunities for work, and perhaps wealth. The development of Victoria, the capital city, brought a demand for granite and this was readily available in the rocky outcrops of Kowloon, from which it could conveniently be transported across the harbour to the new building sites. In 1871 there were no less than eighty-one stone quarries in Kowloon more than for the whole of Hong Kong island. Quarrying is traditionally work in which Hakkas engage: they pride themselves on their strength and ability to engage in such strenuous labour.10 Thirdly, the prolonged unrest of the Taiping Rebellion forced many individuals and even whole families to leave their homes and settle in British territory." One of the more picturesque settlers in Ho Man Tin Village in the 1860s was a Hakka who had allegedly been one of the Taiping generals and rejoiced in the nickname "Seven Legged Heavenly Flying Tiger". A contemporary observer who had spent nearly thirty years in South China described these people as follows: 12 Parties of tramps, called Hakkas or ‘guests' roamed over Kwangtung province squatting on vacant places along the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 OLD BRITISH KOWLOON 135 24 With regard to the quantities of firewood brought on foot into Kowloon from as far afield as Sha Tin, see Sessional Papers 1903 p. 209 which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each estimated at 70 piculs (approx. 93 lbs.) as being carried over the hills in 1902. The Sham Shui Po Kaifong, through operating the Mo Tai (A†4) temple's public weighing scales, got its revenue from the vegetable and livestock market there. Much of the produce sold there crossed the harbour to Hong Kong. (See the Registrar General's Report for 1907 in Sessional Papers 1908, p. 194. Other information supplied by elders). I am also informed by Mr. WAI Tau Shue (b. 1885) that in his youth the Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in the Kowloon City market. In each case the proceeds were supposed to swell public funds for charitable work. For social advancement see the career of WONG Lan-shang described in this article. 25 The Third or Kowloon Police Magistrate was not appointed until 1925 (Colonial Estimates 1924-1926). For an example of police assistance in an emergency see the press reports of the two big fires at Hung Hom village on 11 and 16 December 1884 (Hong Kong Daily Press). 26 See Report from the Hong Kong Land Commission of 1886-87 on the History of the Sale, Tenure and Use of the Crown Land of the Colony published in Sessional Papers 1887 pp. XXVI-XXVII. 27 Between 1853 and 1862 the Hong Kong government paid village elders as tepos (18) in an endeavour to enlist their services in the public interest. See G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong 1841-1962, Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong Press, 1964, pp. 37-38. The Colonial Estimates for the period, under Registrar General's department, show that payment was not extended to the elders of the Kowloon villages acquired in 1860. 28 Eitel, p. 160. 29 See, for instance, pp. 8 and 9 and note 40 of my typescript article "Some villages in the North Western Part of the Kowloon Peninsula in 1898” presented to the International Conference on Asian History held at the University of Hong Kong, August 30-September 5, 1964. See also note 37 below. 30 The temple was re-erected in Shantung Street Kowloon in 1927 on a site provided by Government which also gave a grant of $6,000 towards the reconstruction. The rest of the money required for the new building was supplied by the Kwong Wah (Tung Wah group) Hospital, to whom the management of the temple was entrusted. 31 Shui Yuet Kung (KA) is an alternative name for a Kwan Yin temple. See S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, Canton; Office of the Chinese Repository, 1856, p. 650. See also E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, New York; The Julian Press, 1961, pp. 225-227. 32 See E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese, London; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920, pp. 196-197, and S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary under p. 308 and p. 581 under A. 33) E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London; T. Fisher Unwin, 1905, p. 86. See also W. Stanton, The Chinese Drama, Hong Kong; Kelly & Walsh, 1899, pp. 5-6 for a brief description of the position in "China and in the villages of Hong Kong". 34 Robert Morrison, A View of China for Philological Purposes. Macao; Hon. E. I. C. Press, 1817, p. 105. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 24 II. KUAN-FU JEN YU-WEN Where was Kuan-fu Ch'ang? It can be definitely identified with no other place than the eastern side of the Kowloon Peninsula. For several hundred years from Sung to mid-Ch'ing Kuan-fu was the official name of the area, while Kowloon was the vernacular name used by the local people. To avoid confusion, we must carefully differentiate Kuan-fu Ch'ang from Kuan-fu Tsai (stockade), Kuan-fu-shan (mountain) and Kuan-fu hsun-ssu (sub-district). Kuan-fu Ch'ang meant Kuan-fu Field, one of the four salt-producing fields in the Tung-kuan District amongst the thirteen fields of the whole province of Kwantung in the Sung Dynasty. The area of the Field covered not only the entire peninsula but also the nearby islands, including the present Hong Kong. It was under the administration of an office in the stockade called Kuan-fu Tsai, the present so-called Kowloon Walled City. During the last years of the Emperor Tu Tsung (1265-75) the administrator of the field was Yen I-chang of Kaifeng, Honan Province, who had the engraved stone made at North Fu-t'ang in 1274, less than three years before the royal visit to Kuan-fu.6 My interpretation is that the name Kuan-fu has a political and economic meaning: “Kuan" means Tung-kuan District and "fu" means rich. The field was thus christened by officialdom to signify the rich resources of Tung-kuan. Or else, it might signify the riches of the Emperor, for Kuan Chia was a popular term for the emperor. Anyway, it could not be a natural name and it may be inferred from this that the name of Kuan-fu Mountain, which was a long range of mountains with many hills, was adopted from the Kuan-fu Ch'ang and not vice versa. Researches into the Gazetteer of Hsin-an District, the writings of some historians and maps furnished by the Public Works Department of the Hong Kong Government lead to the conclusion that the Kuan-fu Mountain was along the western side of the Kowloon peninsula (see Plate 12). There were a number of hills of various heights inside the area and the highest, the rocky peak west of Ma-tau-wei Road, reaches a height of 405 feet. On the plain and in the valleys at the foot of the hills were separate salt-producing fields. Certainly, there were other such fields all over the Kuan-fu ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 74 L. G. AIJMER 16 The still wider surname groups, hsing (M), in Chinese society, based on entirely fictitious agnatic relationships, expressed in at least preferred exogamy, have often indiscriminately been designated 'clans'. See e.g. Lee 1960, p. 134f. and Willmott 1964, p. 33. This purely conventional consanguinal kin group comes close to the sociological concept of 'phratry', and kin group constellations of this kind may be described better as units of this higher order. The Hakka nomenclature may vary but the units discussed are always conceived of, 17 Freedman 1958, pp. 47, 129. 18 Census 1911, p. 103f. 19 Nine villages with Cantonese-speaking Punti population in the same district at the same time display numbers ranging between 346 and 9, with an average of 108. 20 However, Jean Pratt, in her account of a Hakka village to the north of Tolo Harbour in the New Territories, gives an example of a non-symmetrical segmentation, reflected in the establishment of a new ancestral hall; Pratt 1960, p. 148. 21 This also applies to the Hakka village studied by Miss Pratt: 'The three lineage halls are merely buildings in a row like an ordinary dwelling house'; Pratt 1960, p. 148. 22 Freedman 1958, p. 50. 23 Skinner, in discussing the importance of marketing communities, points out that in Szechuan there existed organizations of Hakka 'composite lineages', with headquarters in teahouses in the market towns (Skinner 1964/65, p. 37). I have no knowledge of similar organizations in the New Territories. One would have expected something of this kind in a portion of China where the Hakka groups suffered political strain from the Punti population. Local groupings on a non-kin basis may sometimes have fulfilled a protective function. Such local organizations, with headquarters in small temples, are for instance to be found in the Sha Tin Valley, and in the Three Fathom Cove area. All three villages studied belonged in pre-British times to an administrative organization called Luk Yeuk, focussed on the old government centre of Kowloon City. Freedman (1966, p. 86) sees yeuk organizations as means for weak communities to seek 'protection against being molested by local powers'. For a discussion of yeuk see op. cit., pp. 82-89 and for the Luk Yeuk especially pp. 85f. 24 A map of Hakka migrations is, for instance, provided by Kuo 1964, facing p. 6. But there are also other views as to the origin of the Hakka, see e.g. Barnett 1958, p. 2. 25 Izikowitz 1963, p. 171. 26 One man from Grass Field Village has settled for good in Borneo. He has taken his wife and children there. This is the only instance of permanent overseas settlement I have come across. 27 This particular migration is said to have been encouraged and even given financial assistance by the Chinese Government as an aftermath of the war mentioned below; Dyer Ball 1925, p. 282. Another author thinks less of the generosity of the government: 'Comme ces tribus Hak-ka se montraient particulièrement turbulentes, les mandarins chinois ne pensaient qu'à les éloigner de leur territoire; c'est ainsi qu'en 1864 et 1866, à la suite de nombreuses revoltes, ils furent expulsés dans le sud du Kouang-Si, vers ces marches frontières qui, comme la province de Moncay, étaient peu habitées et dans un état habituel d'anarchie politique.' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 199 MCCABE, Donald C. - MCCABE, Mrs. S. J. - MCCOY, John MCCRARY, M.* MCDOUALL, J. C.* MCELNEY, B. S. - New Asia College Chinese University of Hong Kong, 6 Farm Road, Kowloon, Flat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Division of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A. 25-A Robinson Road, Top floor, H.K. 13, The Green, St. Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, England. Johnson Stokes & Master, Hong Kong Bank Building, H.K. MCFADZEAN, Prof. A. J. S. The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MCKEIRNAN, V. Rev. Michael J. St. Peter in Chains Catholic Church, Kowloon Tsai, Kowloon. MCLEVIE, J. G. Dept. of Education, The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MADING, Dr. Klaus c/o German Consulate General, P.O. Box 250, H.K. MANEELY, R. B. Anatomy Dept., The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MANSFIELD, Miss M. B. c/o Diocesan Girls' School, Jordan Road, Kowloon. MARSHALL, Dr. Patricia M. Zoology Dept., The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J. P. O. Box 104, Macau, MAXWELL, D. P. F. Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. MAYNARD, Prof. David M. Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, U.S.A. MEFFAN, Mrs. N. I. 92 Kitano-cho, 2-chome, Ikuta-ku, Kobe, Japan. MEIJER, Dr. M. J. Consulate General of the Netherlands, Room 1505, Central Building, H.K. MICHAELIONES, Miss E. O.* c/o The British Council, 1, St. Mark's Avenue, Leeds 2, England. MIDDLEBROOK, R. W.* 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A. MILBURN, K. Marine Dept., 102 Connaught Road, C., H.K. MILLER, A. C.* Union Research Institute, 9 College Road, Kowloon. MILLER, C. F. O.* c/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, C.P.O. Box 255, Seoul, Korea. Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 67 FURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI W. SCHOFIELD* The very interesting paper by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin on the Sung Wong T'oi and the travelling courts of the Sung Dynasty, in Volume III No. 2 of the Journal of Oriental Studies,† and the partial wrecking of the historic site by the Japanese in the war,‡ have prompted the writer to put on record some notes made during the years 1918 and 1937 on the earthworks, inscriptions and relics found by him on and near the site, which may help to supplement Professor Lo's paper. In what follows the hill is described as it was in 1937, as the writer has not seen it since 1938. It is a crescent-shaped hill, convex towards the east, where it rises steeply from the beach to a height of nearly 40 metres. It commands a good view of the south slope of the Kowloon hills and the plain beneath, the east half of the harbour, and of Lyemun channel and the west end of the Fat Tau Mun channel beyond, except for a few hundred metres at its north side by Slope Island (see Plate 5). A watch-tower on its summit would provide an observation post well over 40 metres above sea level. The concave side, on which lies the main path to the top, is terraced for cultivation up to 15 or 20 metres. The objects investigated on and near the hill can be classed in three categories, earthworks, inscriptions, and pottery and other objects, and will be dealt with in that order. The Earthworks (see sketch plan at Plate 3) There are signs that the hill was formerly fortified. On its top from the south end above the 20 metre contour as far as the great inscribed rock on the summit, there is a gentle rise from which the ground falls away steeply to the east, and rather less so to the west and south. At the south end of the ridge traces of a bank at the edge appear to form a rough semicircle, presumably as a flank defence, for a clearly defined earth bank about a metre high by three or four wide at the base runs northward from it nearly straight along the centre of the hill crest to a point near the south- *See biographical note at the end of this article. † Published by the Hong Kong University Press, May 1958. [See also Mr. Jen Yu-wen's article "The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 21-38. Ed.] Mr. Schofield writes in the present tense, Unfortunately the hill has now disappeared completely, what was left by the Japanese being removed for the airport extension about 1958. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 135 NOTES AND QUERIES NOTES ON SOME VEGETARIAN HALLS IN HONG KONG BELONGING TO THE SECT OF HSIEN-T'IEN TAO: (THE WAY OF FORMER HEAVEN)* On Saturday, March 16, 1968, members of the Society visited four vegetarian halls at Ngau Chi Wan, Kowloon, belonging to a religious sect called Hsien-t'ien Tao. These notes are based on materials provided for the visit, which we have rearranged and expanded slightly, and they include also a brief account of the visit itself. We chose vegetarian halls for our visit because they are, to many members of the public in Hong Kong, less known places of worship than the more popular temples, and the monasteries and nunneries of Buddhism. When we first came across these particular halls in Kowloon and discovered they were of the Hsien-t'ien Tao sect they seemed to us to be an obvious choice for another reason: they follow an ideology standing outside Buddhist and Taoist religion and again far less known to most people in Hong Kong than these faiths. A field study will have to be made before a full account can be written up of either vegetarian halls or of the Hsien-t'ien Tao and its operation in Hong Kong today. These notes are intended to provide the reader with some general outline information and are based on information already obtained by Marjorie Topley here, and in research elsewhere, and by James Hayes in interview with members of these Kowloon halls prior to the visit. The short bibliography of works which we have appended provide more detailed material on the background of this and similar religious groups, and their vegetarian halls in China in traditional times. We refer the reader also to an article by Marjorie Topley elsewhere in this volume on matters of religion in the nineteenth century.† I. THE VEGETARIAN HALL AND ITS PURPOSE Vegetarian halls (chai-t'ang) form part of the organization of more than one Chinese religion. They are found, for example, in * The illustrations to these notes are at Plates 14 to 19. † See pp. 9-43 above. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 142 NOTES AND QUERIES It is clear from these comments that the Government of Hong Kong at that time was uncertain of the religious affiliations of these halls and it is not possible therefore to say with certainty whether or not they were all sectarian or how many were of the Hsien-t'ien sect. Nevertheless, from the remarks made about the secretiveness of the promoters and managers as to their objects, one must assume that some at least belonged to the sects. It is particularly interesting to note the reference to the opinion of the Government of Kwangtung, and one may wonder how far traditional Chinese ideas of unorthodoxy influenced the ideas not only of the Chinese citizens commenting and who may have known more of their true nature, but also, more subtly, those of the British officer in charge of the District in which the vegetarian hall boom was being experienced. One can of course appreciate Kwangtung's feelings about this boom. Expulsion of sects from its territory would be of little avail if they were planning to set up establishments not far away and from where they hoped to conduct work for the millennium! It is interesting, perhaps, to compare the situation here with that in Singapore about the same time, where it is clear from evidence collected by Marjorie Topley there was a similar boom in development. The Singapore Government was clearly unaware of the sectarian connexions of halls built at that time, and indeed is still unaware, as far as she knows, of such connexions with halls built also in the thirties when there was another boom associated with the influx of unattached working women from Kwangtung at that time. Presumably, these developments were too far away to concern the Government of China, or perhaps they were unaware of them also. Today, in Hong Kong, the Hsien-t'ien sect of concern is a registered company, going under the name of the Sin Tin Taoism Association Ltd. (“Taoism” as used here comes from the term Tao used in the sect's name: Hsien-t'ien Tao, and should not be confused, as in fact it sometimes is, with the religious system of this name). It does not appear to be militant today in its search for its religious goals but, on the contrary, does much valuable charitable work. In 1943, during the Japanese Occupation, the Sin Tin Taoism Association raised money to provide a home for the aged, which it established at Tung Choi Street, Kowloon. In 1945, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d NOTES AND QUERIES 147 It is in connexion with worship of “Mother” that the lay-out of the shrine rooms in vegetarian halls of the sect is important. Mother must be placed higher than any other deity and should occupy a room to herself (or occasionally shared with Kuan-yin with whom, as we have said, she is sometimes identified). This means that halls of the sect should whenever possible be built on two storeys, with "Mother's" room on the upper storey. This was so in the case of all the halls visited. Usually, one of the popular triads is housed in the main downstairs shrine-room (occasionally one finds an image downstairs of the many-armed Chun-t'i: “Goddess of Dawn" supposedly of Buddhist origin, but she was not present in the halls visited). Upstairs besides the room dedicated to “Mother" there is often a shrine also for the soul-tablets of past members. Members of the Society were fortunately permitted to visit all shrine rooms (some halls do not permit outsiders to enter the "Mother" room). Relations between the Halls and the Ngau Chi Wan Village There is a certain amount of inter-action between the halls at Ngau Chi Wan and the village of this name which, though on the fringe of urban Kowloon and augmented by neighbouring squatter huts and factions, is still largely inhabited by the descendants of founding Hakka families who came to this spot in the mid-eighteenth century and after. The annual festival of the god of the main village temple (said to be a Ch'iu Ch'au deity whose image was brought up from the sea off Ngau Chi Wan by village fishermen a long time ago) occurs on the 25th of the 2nd lunar month. At this time the inmates of the halls visit the opera performance that is held in a matshed on open ground in front of the KAM HA CHING SHE and worship at the portable shrine that is brought on these occasions from the temple half a mile away. Our visit took place just before this festival and already the bamboo structure on which the matshed for the opera was to be built, was being erected. A large temporary cooking stove had also been constructed for the occasion for serving vegetarian food (which Marjorie Topley gathered in conversation with some of the inmates was contracted for by the village temple association from the vegetarian halls). Again, at the Festival of Hungry Ghosts on the 7th of the 7th moon, it is “traditional” practice for about 100 students from the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 211 MANEELY, R. B. Anatomy Dept., The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MANSFIELD, Miss M. B. - c/o Diocesan Girls' School, Jordan Road, Kowloon. MAO, Dr. Philip Wen-chee + 326-8 Tung Ying Building, 100 Nathan Road, Kowloon. MARSHALL, Dr. Patricia M. MARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J.- MAXWELL, D. P. F. · Zoology Dept., The University, Pokfulum, H.K. P. O. Box 104, Macau, Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. MAYNARD, Prof. David M. Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, U.S.A. MCBAIN, E. B. MCBAIN, G. T MCCABE, Mrs. S. J. MCCOY, John MCCRARY, M.* MCDOUALL, J. C.* MCELNEY, B. S. c/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K. c/o Imperial Chemical Industries (China) Ltd., 16th Floor, Union House, H.K. Flat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Division of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A. 25-A Robinson Road, Top floor, H.K. 13, The Green, St. Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, England. Johnson Stokes & Master, Hong Kong Bank Building, H.K. MCFADZEAN, Prof. A. J. S. The University, Pokfulum, H.K. MCKEIRNAN, V. Rev. Michael J. MCKENNA, Sister M. P. - St. Peter in Chains Catholic Church. Kowloon Tsai, Kowloon. Maryknoll Sisters, Waterloo Road, Kowloon McKEIRNAN, Sister Agnes - As above. MCLEVIE, J. G. MEFFAN, Mrs. E. I. - MEIJER, Dr. M. J. MICHAELIONES, Miss E. O. - ► MIDDLEBROOK, R. W.* - MILBURN, K. T Dept. of Education, The University, Pokfulum, H.K. 92 Kitano-cho, 2-chome, Ikuta-ku, Kobe, Japan. Consulate General of the Netherlands, Room 1505, Central Building, H.K. c/o The British Council, 1, St. Mark's Avenue, Leeds 2, England. 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A. Marine Dept., 102 Connaught Road, C, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d # PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1968 The Society is now in its tenth year since its revival in 1959. Its membership at the end of 1968 was 437 - an increase of 17 over 1967. Despite the loss of 47 members mainly owing to their departure from the Colony, we gained 63 new members including 5 life members, one of whom was already an ordinary member. We have now reached the point where our gains over our losses each year are not great but are steadily maintained. During the year, the Society met fourteen times, at which addresses of a high standard were given both by eminent scholars from overseas and a welcome number of scholars living or working in the Colony. The crowning and most popular activities of the year were the two symposia organized under the chairmanship of Dr. Marjorie Topley. Firstly, in March last year, we had the weekend visit to Chinese Vegetarian Halls of the Sect of Former Heaven in Kowloon. Then, on November 2 and 3, the Branch held a Weekend Symposium organized by Professor D. J. Dwyer of the Department of Geography and Geology of the University of Hong Kong, which had for its subject "The Changing Face of Hong Kong". The programme included six lectures with illustrating exhibits by Professor Dwyer himself and members of the staff of his department and of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department, followed by a panel discussion of members' questions. On the second day, there were three field trips under the specialist lecturers for further study of the subject on the spot. The Society is deeply indebted to Professor Dwyer and the specialists who took part in this most edifying and highly successful study, and to those who were responsible for its organization. The Journal of the Society deserves special attention. With Mr. James Hayes as Editor, the Journal has not only maintained its standard of scholarship but has increased in popularity and repute, especially among scholars and readers overseas, and we have built up a valuable library of journals which other societies with similar objects have been keen to exchange for ours. The sale of our Journal last year was more than twice that of the previous year. There is a greatly increased demand for back ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d # MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 49 The resistance movement had now reached a state of readiness. Further subscriptions of silver were obtained and responsibility for provision of rations allocated. On 13th April Ping Shan supplied pigs as food for the militia. By 14th April an advance force was in position on the hills overlooking Tai Po. It was composed of units from Fan Leng, Kam Tin, the Lam Tsuen valley, and Pat Heung. A British party making preparations for the flag raising saw about 150 men on the hills to the northwest. Four or five standards were seen, and the Chinese "kept up an incessant yelling, beating of gongs, and firing of crackers, or guns, probably jingals ..." 64 When the Governor heard of these events at Tai Po he decided to station a force there immediately. On the morning of 15th April, two units were dispatched from Hong Kong. Captain Superintendent May, in charge of 22 policemen, left by launch for Tai Po. A company of the Hong Kong Regiment* — comprising 125 officers and men — set off overland from Kowloon, with orders to rendezvous with the police that afternoon. When the police landed near the matshed hill they were fired upon by forces from the Lam Tsuen valley, Tai Hang, Pat Heung, and Kam Tin. The militia of Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan had not been committed, although Ha Tsuen was, on this day, responsible for rations. By this time the infantry company was only a short march from Tai Po. Its commanding officer, Captain E. L. C. Berger, could see that the hills were crowded with several thousand militia, displaying six or seven different banners. As they approached the market he noted that the Chinese were uniformed and that the units nearest him occupied good tactical positions. The soldiers joined the police on the matshed hill and found their situation difficult. The hills to the west and northwest were occupied by militia. To the east was Tolo Harbour. Twelve pieces of light artillery — probably jingals and mortars — kept up a steady fire on them from two positions. There was also continuous musketry fire. If the aim of the militia had been better, the casualties would have been heavy. Shortly thereafter the militia began an advance but were driven back by volley fire. This was the situation when H.M.S. "Fame" arrived late that afternoon. * A regiment of the Indian Army, with British officers and Indian (Pathan) other ranks, not to be confused with the volunteer unit of this name in present day Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 50 R. G. GROVES Her 12-pounders returned the fire and forced the Chinese gunners to abandon their positions. The British advanced under cover of "Fame"'s guns and drove the militia from the surrounding hills. During the withdrawal the Tai Hang militia lost its flag, which was subsequently found by the British.65 Faced with these developments the Governor decided to hoist the flag the next day, 16th April, a day earlier than originally intended. He also ordered reinforcements to Tai Po. By mid-day on 16th April, the force there had been substantially augmented. It now comprised an artillery company and 500 men of the Hong Kong Regiment. H.M.S. "Brisk", accompanied by "Fame", stood by offshore. The flag was hoisted during the afternoon, salutes being fired by the artillery and by the ships, which were dressed overall. The pleasure of the occasion was diminished by fears that attacks would be made against both Tai Po and Kowloon. Reconnaissance patrols sent out from Tai Po had failed to make contact with the enemy and this seemed to strengthen the possibility of an assault on Kowloon. That evening the destroyers returned to Hong Kong and took up stations on either side of Kowloon peninsula. Both ships spent the night searching the hillsides with their lights. Detachments of Hong Kong Volunteers and the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, took up positions at the old northern boundary, emplacing Maxim guns to command the main approach roads. These precautions were unnecessary. The Chinese were preparing for battle at Tai Po the next day (17th April). A supply of pigs was arranged and letters dispatched from an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen, giving troop dispositions. The militia of Shap Pat Heung were told: "We beg that the armed men of your worthy district will take rice in the 4th watch (i.e. about 3-4 am), and proceed to Ha Tsun, to be ready to fight. Do not wait for the signal drum." Another letter was addressed "to our clansmen of the Ping Shan district." It directed: "we hereby inform you that 7 o'clock of the morning of the 8th [day, 3rd moon 17th April] has been fixed up as the date for commencement of the battle. The armed men of your worthy district should have their early meal at the 4th watch, and proceed at daybreak direct to Castle Peak ... Do not wait for the signal drum." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 65 TUNG KWU ISLAND: THE TYPE SITE OF HONG KONG'S OLDER PRE-HISTORIC CULTURE INTRODUCTION W. SCHOFIELD* The present paper describes the writer's investigations of the large site revealed from 1925 onwards by sand diggers on the island of Tung Kwu beyond Castle Peak,† This dumb-bell island, which is formed entirely of Hong Kong granite and the sand which links its two portions by an isthmus, has not only yielded pottery of the historic period in one area of its western beach, but a great many remains of a culture obviously earlier than that of the Bronze Age in Lamma described by Father Finn.‡ DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND (See Plates 1 and 2) Tung Kwu is a typical single dumb-bell with an isthmus joining a large northern hill ridge 76 metres high to a smaller southern one of 68 metres. These hills show all the signs of early loss of their original woods, followed by washing away of most of the thick subsoil of clay full of quartz grains which formed beneath their cover, some of which remained on the isthmus and beaches. Much of the hill surface is occupied by large masses of granite boulders formed by chemical action in the clay, and left behind when it was washed away. A noteworthy feature of the northern hill area is the 35 metres hill that rises just north of the isthmus and is surrounded by a * Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) served in Hong Kong between 1911-1938 as a Cadet Officer and Police Magistrate, He was noted for his work pre-war on the geology and archaeology of Hong Kong, in which fields he was a pioneer scholar. More recently his article "Further Notes on the Sung Wong Toi" appeared in the 1968 Journal. Ed. †This island has long been misnamed on local maps. The Hong Kong Government's official Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (no date, but 1960), p. 161, calls it Lung Kwu Chau (##) and describes it as "an uninhabited island in area 0.158 sq. mile off the west of the Castle Peak Peninsula, incorrectly named TUNG KWU (Tongku) on the 1:25,000 official map. (Sheet 13, 1957 edition)". ‡ The photographs which illustrate this article may be found at Plates 1 to 9 at the rear of this volume. They are representative, and not ordinarily related to items mentioned in the text because Mr. Schofield died before we had chosen and discussed the illustrations. I am greatly indebted to Mr. James C. Y. Watt, Assistant Curator of the Hong Kong City Hall Museum and Art Gallery and Hon. Sec. of the Hong Kong Archaeological Society, for much help and advice with the sketch-map, charts and plates. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 79 or saucer, painted with an open flower in underglaze blue, crudely executed and very badly glazed; and the third, found at 78 cm. in the sandbank, was a bronze button wrapped in a fragment of coarse cloth, hollow and containing a small object which rattles. I interpret this as a fragment from a modern burial: its depth is noteworthy. A group of late pottery fragments is recorded on my last visit but one to the site. Three of them were at 69, 71 and 76 cm. from the surface, and one, probably a piece of tile, at 61 cm. They were near the north end of the west beach, where rainwash from the hill has increased the depth recordings compared with those on the sand isthmus. Other pieces of tile, with textile impressions on their concave sides, and gray in colour, apparently old-fashioned, lay at 1 m. depth in rainwash 25 m. north of the group described. These tiles evidently mark an occupation level, most likely fishermen's huts of the Yuan or later period; some of the fishermen may even have been using pieces of porcelain left behind by the Sung court after its retreat from the Kowloon district to its final end on the Ngai Mun mouth of the West River. The accumulation of rainwash over this level points to the island's deforestation as having started about the Sung period, when Chinese immigration from the north had increased the population, and with it the demand for timber and firewood, as the log runways on the Lantau hills testify. PUMICE An interesting feature of the site is a layer, roughly 32 cm. thick, and from 75 to 107 cm. from the surface, containing fairly numerous rolled pebbles of pumice, stained yellow by the sand. It is confined to the east shore of the isthmus. This layer evidently points to an eruption that took place in Japan or the Philippines, possibly submarine, and coming from a magma of the acid type rather than the basic, from which the 'froth' was expelled by explosions, and was drifted by wind and currents on to the Tung Kwu beach. Similar beds of ancient pumice are found at eight other sites in the Colony, very likely more, and give a very useful datum line for correlation, like a zone fossil in geology. This holds good also in some sites on the Tonkin (North Vietnam) coast visited by Dr. Andersson in 1938; his results were published in the Stockholm journal of the Museum of Far Eastern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d BOOK REVIEWS 173 and their connection with the militia movement rather confusing. (See pp. 39-40 and 62-64 and Appendix II.) It seems that they could be long-established schools with pupils and teachers whose buildings were from time to time used by the local gentry for meeting purposes when such matters as local defence might be considered; or could be restored or newly set up schools which, at the time, were intended as meeting houses, drill halls and armouries first and as academic institutions after, because this was a convenient 'cover'. It also appears that they could be local schools (she-hsüeh) or charity schools (i-hsüeh) the two being apparently of much the same academic level at this period. It would have been useful to have had more detailed information on some of these establishments. Writing in Hong Kong, there is one example of a large charity school in Kowloon which may serve to illuminate the position a little. This was the Lung Chun Yee Hok (**龍津義學**) in Kowloon City (九龍城), one of the sub-administrative centres of the San On District. This building was erected in 1847 and fortunately the text of the wall tablet commemorating its establishment has been preserved, though the stone itself is now buried under concrete laid after a fire. This indicates that the school project originated with local officials who each contributed money to assist its progress and (reading between the lines) encouraged local gentry to participate. At this time its stated object was 'to stimulate the morale of local inhabitants and set a good example for the foreigners to follow'. Whether this school served as a headquarters for local militia in the 1840s and 1850s is not known; but it is reported that at the end of the 19th century just before the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898, this school, in addition to being a reputable academic institution, was also the meeting place of officials and local gentry when there were matters to discuss. Why and how often these meetings took place can, at this distance of time, hardly now be determined but it is likely that the two-fold use of the premises, and the interest of officials and gentry in both sides of its activities, paralleled those of the she-hsüeh. In an earlier review of this book (Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1967, p. 728) Dr. Hugh Baker asks "But of what area of organisation was the local school a manifestation? Was it based on a marketing area or on an administra- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 193 LOFTS, Prof. B. - LOSEBY, Miss P. LOTHROP, F. B.* + LUCAS, Col. E. S. S. - LUM Miss Ada - LUPTON, G. C. M. LUTZ, Hans F. - MA, Prof. Meng - MACK, A. M. MACKEITH, J. S. MACKENZIE, J. MACLEAN, Mrs. M. - MAGEE, M. W. P. MAHLKE, W. J. - . · Dept. of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, H.K. c/o Russ & Co., Rooms 523/5 Gloucester Building, H.K. 176 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, U.S.A. 94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K. 142, Boundary Street, Kowloon, c/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K. Tak Wai Mansion, Flat B, 3rd Floor, Man Fuk Road, Kowloon. Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Hong Kong, H.K. No. 34 Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1., England. 80 Robinson Road, H.K. Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 5, Peak Pavilions, The Peak, H.K. Operations, Cathay Pacific Airways, Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon. 19, South Bay Close, Repulse Bay, H.K. MANSFIELD, Miss M. B. c/o Diocesan Girls' School, Jordan Road, Kowloon. MAO, Dr. Wen-Chee, Philip 326-8 Tung Ying Building, 100 Nathan Road, Kowloon. MARSHALL, Dr. P. M. MARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J. MAYNARD, Prof. D. M. McBAIN, E. B. McBAIN, G. MCCABE, Mrs. S. J. McCOY, Dr. John McDOUALL, J. C.* c/o Dept. of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, H.K. + + P. O. Box 104, Macau, + Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, U.S.A. c/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K. c/o Imperial Chemical Industries (China) Ltd., 16th Floor, Union House, H.K. Flat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Division of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A. 13, The Green, St. Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, England. Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 226 LOTHROP, F, B.* LUCAS, Col. E. S. S. LUM Miss Ada G LUPTON, G. C. M. LUTZ, Hans F. MA, Prof. Meng MACK, A. M. MACKEITH, J. S. MACKENZIE, J. MAGEE, M. W. P. MAHLKE, W. J. + - - 176 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, U.S.A. 94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K. 142, Boundary Street, Kowloon. c/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K. Tak Wai Mansion, Flat B, 3rd Floor, Man Fuk Road, Kowloon. c/o Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Hong Kong, H.K. No. 34 Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1., England. 80 Robinson Road, H.K. c/o Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. c/o Operations, Cathay Pacific Airways, Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon. 19, South Bay Close, Repulse Bay, H.K. MANSFIELD, Miss M. B. c/o Diocesan Girls' School, Jordan Road, Kowloon, T MAO, Dr. Wen-chee, Philip 326-8 Tung Ying Building, 100 Nathan Road, Kowloon. MARTINHO-MARQUES, E. J. - MAYNARD, Prof. D. M. McBAIN, E. B. McBAIN, G. + McCABE, Mrs. S. J. McCOY, Dr. J. McDOUALL, J. C.* McCRARY, M. McELNEY, B. S. - P. O. Box 104, Macau, c/o Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, USA. c/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K. c/o Imperial Chemical Industries (Japan) Ltd., Central P.O. Box 411, Tokyo, Japan. Flat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Division of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A. The Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England. Flat 6A, United Mansion, 7 Shiu Fai Terrace, H.K. c/o Johnson Stokes & Master, H.K. Bank Building, H.K. McFADZEAN, Prof. A. J. S. c/o University of Hong Kong, H.K. McGEE, Mrs. Joan S. - Flat A, 134 Pokfulum Road, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g THE COLONY OF HONG KONG 189 good effects. It would have been more fruitful, however, if it had been better carried out, first by Sir Hercules Robinson, and then by Sir Richard MacDonnell. The materials supplied to them from home, in one relay of students and another, were excellent; but there should have been no diverting them away from their proper business of study, until they had given proof of their proficiency by actual interpretation in the Supreme Court; after which, every other office in the Colony, under that of the Governor himself, should have been open to them according to their aptitudes. To Sir Hercules also we are indebted for the beginning of our Water Works; and if they were not constructed at first on a sufficiently large scale, where are we still, after so many years, and so continued an expenditure? With all their deficiency, they are a great boon; and when I have read the lucubrations of grumbling complainers, I have laughed in recollecting the scenes of early years, when, every night in the dry season, hundreds, of a small population comparatively, might be seen streaming on the hills with pitchers and buckets, searching for the precious element. In Sir Hercules' time also it was that the present Gaol was built, to take charge of which there came out in November 1863, its model governor, Mr. Douglas. Then came gas to illuminate our streets and houses, and a commencement of the Public Gardens was made. The conception of the Mint always appeared to me admirable, and I thought there would be in it an institution that would greatly contribute to the prosperity and influence of the Colony. It has not turned out so. The refining of sugar is a good thing, but I had much rather that the buildings had continued to be employed for coining money. In two only of his undertakings did Sir Hercules fail,--the building the prison on Stonecutters' Island, and his management of the newly-acquired territory on the Kowloon side of the harbour. I have heard that he could not get his way with that through the clashing of his views and those of the naval and military Authorities. However that was, the delay in offering the ground for sale to the public, which was done at last at upset prices absurdly high, allowed the ebbing of the tide of factitious prosperity to set in. Perhaps it was well. The impulse from abroad once removed, there was nothing in the Colony itself to sustain ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 200 NOTES AND QUERIES ains in Kiang-Si, the charcoal burners constitute the population of almost all the villages. The houses of these landowners may be at once recognised by the vast piles of charcoal in front of them.' ** Gray may be right in implying that charcoal was in great demand for domestic use at the time he wrote, but observation and enquiries in New Territories' villages show that wood has long been in general use at the kitchen stove and even in the portable earthenware stoves known as fung lo () in this area. The observant traveller on the local hills can still find evidence of charcoal burning in the past, but first-hand information is now hard to come by. This note only deals with a few areas where I am familiar with the older local people. On Lamma, for instance, an old person born in Yung Shue Long Village about 1887 recalls that there were a lot of charcoal burners on the island when she was a girl, mostly outsiders who employed the village women and girls to carry the charcoal from the kilns to the waiting junks or to barges towed by steamboats. These Lamma kilns were mostly situated in the more wooded south of the island, at the village localities of Mau Tat, Yung Shue Ha and Tung O. Too young to help, she followed her mother and her aunt there from their village in the northern part of Lamma. Along with other villagers, they were paid 2 cents (sin) a day for the work. On the south coast of Lantau Island an old villager of Tong Fuk, born in 1889, recalled, as a boy, having seen charcoal burners at work near his village and on the hills above. He said that (as on Lamma) these were not local people. A few miles east, there are pits on the hills above the Pui O group of villages; but though linked by village tradition with charcoal burning, the oldest men said they had not been worked in their lifetime. In the first few decades of this century charcoal burners were still to be seen on the hills behind north-west Kowloon, near the present Shek Lei Pui reservoir, formerly the site of a Hakka farming village of that name removed for the water scheme in 1923. An old village woman from Cheung Sha Wan, born 1892, recalls seeing them there as a young girl when grass cutting in the area. A second woman who married into another of the Cheung ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g NOTES AND QUERIES + + + 201 Sha Wan villages about also remembers them. When I asked these ladies whether the charcoal burners were village people or outsiders, their reply was typical, and to the effect 'they weren't from our villages and probably not from adjacent ones either, but we didn't go near them to ask.' I have seen the Lantau and Lamma pits only, all linked with charcoal burning by the local people. The kilns, or rather the pits that remain, vary in size. Most are circular and fairly small, about 7 to 8 feet in diameter and a few feet deep at the present time. One of the Lamma pits, near Mau Tat, styled as ‘a big kiln' by the old village person mentioned above, is larger, being 15 feet across. Its earth walls are smooth and impregnated with tell-tale carbon. All these pits are cut into low banks or into the ground. Perhaps the last kilns to be operated in the Hong Kong area are some near the Shek O Road. According to Hok Tsui and Lan Nai Wan villagers living nearby, these were opened and operated by the Japanese during the war-time occupation of the Colony between 1941-45. They recall passing them and seeing them in operation when on their way to market in Shau Kei Wan, though giving them a wide berth for fear of trouble. Shau Kei Wan people say that the kilns were used to provide fuel for the electric plant at North Point, to which the charcoal was transported on little wooden trucks hauled by local men and women workers engaged by the Japanese. These pits differ from the others in that they are domed, being cut into a high bank. They are apparently very similar, though newer, to those north of the Kowloon hills described over twenty years ago by G. A. C. Herklots in The Hong Kong Countryside (Hong Kong, S.C.M.P. Ltd. 1947). His description is worth quoting in full, though he was not clear whether or not the pits were used for charcoal burning and he had not sought to ask in the villages of the area. "There are some curious dome-shaped holes by the path, one is actually immediately under the path. They are roughly six feet high in the centre and nine feet across. The sides are vertical, the roof domed and the floor space circular. The holes are holes in the ground and their roofs are level with the surface of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 237 MCCABE, Mrs. S. J. McCOY, Dr. J. 2 McDOUALL, J. C.* MCCRARY, M.* McELNEY, B. S. Flat 1, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. Division of Modern Languages, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. The Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England. Flat 6A, United Mansion, 7 Shiu Fai Terrace, H.K. c/o Johnson Stokes & Master, H.K. Bank Building, H.K. McFADZEAN, Prof. A. J. S. c/o University of Hong Kong, H.K. McGEE, Mrs. Joan S. MCGEE, Dr. T. G. Flat 1A, 134 Pokfulum Road, H.K. Dept. of Geography, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulum, H.K. McKEIRNAN, V. Rev. M. J. Maryknoll House, Stanley, H.K. MEFFAN, Mrs. I. E. MICHAELIONES, Miss E. O. MIDDLEBROOK, R. W.* MILBURN, K. MILLER, A. C. MILLER, C. F. O.* MOLTKE-HANSEN, Mrs. O. MOSLER, Mrs. M. MOYLE, G. C. MUNN, Mrs. Elizabeth NEILD, Mrs. C. NEWBIGGING, D. K. NG, Dr. Ronald C. Y. NG, Peter P. K. NICHOLS, E. H. NICOL, C. A. A. NIXON, F. A. B10, Repulse Bay Mansion, Repulse Bay, H.K. The British Council, Halls Croft, Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A. c/o Marine Dept., 102 Connaught Road, C., H.K. 34 Kennedy Road, Block C, 9th Floor, H.K. c/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, C.P.O. Box 255, Seoul, Korea. A-4, Repulse Bay Mansions, 117 Repulse Bay Road, H.K. 3, Macdonnell Road, Flat 602, H.K. 64 Mile, Taipo Road, N.T. c/o Taikoo Dockyard, Quarry Bay, H.K. 1201 Manson House, Nathan Road, Kowloon, c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., P.O. Box 70, H.K. 164 Prince Edward Road, 1st Floor, Kowloon, 304, Man Yee Building, H.K. 11, Queen's Gardens, Old Peak Road, H.K. No. 8 Abermor Court, 15 May Road, H.K. Room 63, Hong Kong Club, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 198 Chinese Woodcuts NOTES AND QUERIES by Max Loehr (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 1. Columbia University, 1971. L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH UNUSUAL TREES IN HONG KONG: THE CANTON WATER PINE If you leave Kowloon and proceed along the Tai Po Road, shortly after passing the Hong Lok Yuen orchard, you will come to an open area with villages and flower farms by the roadside and with hills in the background bounding the valley. Near milestone 184 on your left is a large Cantonese village, Tai Hang, and in this village at the back of Fei Sha Wai, there are two fascinating but often overlooked trees standing at no great distance from the road. These are Chinese Deciduous Cypress, or Canton Water Pine as it is sometimes known. The scientific name is Glyptostrobus pensilis. Belonging to the family Taxodiaceae, Glyptostrobus is a genus which contains only the single species pensilis. Its distribution is confined to the Provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in South China, and mature specimens are very uncommon in Hong Kong. The tree may be recognised by its light-brown, fibrous bark, and its foliage which demonstrates two types of leaves: overlapping scales on fruiting twigs and thin needles on the sterile twigs, both of which are a delicate green in spring, turning brown and falling in autumn. The long-stalked cones are pear-shaped and about one and a half inches long. These two old specimens are said to have been planted by one of the ancestors of the village. On asking about the possible age of these two trees, the Village Representative Mr. Man Tse-leung said that they had been planted by one of his ancestors in the Ming Dynasty with seedlings from Law Fu Shan, Canton from where the Man family came some 400 years ago. The Village Representative's account of the origin and age of these two ancients is not without precedent. It is a world-wide practice for an emigrant to take something representative of his old country with him to his new home, in order to give later generations something from his country of origin. Mr. Man's ancestor apparently did just such a thing. ================================================================================ 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 113 fu. In the long entry on hills and streams, which covers three chuan (6-8), only one local feature is named: the Pui To or Castle Peak hill. There is another single entry, for Tuen Mun—the old name for the settlement at the foot of Castle Peak—in the chüan (10) dealing with customs and check points. Only one monastery, the Hai-kuang Ssu of Hsin-an city, is included in the chüan (14) dealing with Buddhist and Taoist temples: by comparison, 37 columns are given to those of Kuang-chou, Nan-hai and P’an-yu, and no doubt with good cause. Only when we come to the chüan dealing with residences (13) and tombs and graves (15) does Hsin-an attract a little more attention from the compilers. The entries in chüan 13 and 15 identify those items that most interested scholars attracted to local history and show how Hsin-an has been notable for two widely different topics. It had been one of the areas that had sheltered the last two boy emperors of the Sung in their flight and final struggles against the victorious Mongol invaders of their empire: and it was a coastal district that had forever been plagued by pirates and bandits. These entries are typical items of Chinese historiography and relevant to the scholar official view of Hsin-an. One item, in chuan 13, relates to the temporary stay of the Sung court and army in Kowloon in the winter months of 1278. A watchtower had been constructed as one of the measures taken to deal with the near-starvation conditions that afflicted the fugitive army. The tower was used as a vantage point from which to look over the encampment. Relief visits were made to any dwelling from which no kitchen smoke was seen to rise in the early morning. This is a graphic and unusual way of conveying an impression of impermanence and suffering. The second entry on the Sung is in chüan 15 which deals with noted graves and tombs. It relates to the grave of Lady Chin-fa, also in Kowloon. The brief statement is that the empress Chi-yuan lost her daughter by drowning, and that she ‘filled the body with gold' for burial at Kwun Fu Mountain.2 1KTKKCY 13/5. Two Sung 'travelling courts' are also recorded for the Hsin-an district in this section. See also Lo 1956. 2KTKKCY 15/2. Lo (1963) renders this as 'made a gilt statue', p. 67. The Government of Hong Kong established a Sung Wong Toi memorial park in Kowloon in 1960, and to mark the occasion the Chiu Clansmen's Association published a memorial volume edited by Jen Yu-wen entitled Sung Wang T'ai Chi-nien Chih which usefully brings together many old writings on this subject. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 NOTES AND QUERIES 221 (4) Diocesan BOYS SCHOOL AND LA SALLE College, KOWLOON SATURDAY, 4 May, 1974 The purpose of this visit is to see and enjoy the grounds and buildings of these two major Hong Kong schools and thereby to learn something of the history of education in the Colony. The visits are entirely due to the courtesy and cooperation of their Head-masters. The sites are extensive (23 and 10 acres respectively) and the buildings are of interest. 'DBS', as it is familiarly known, originated in 1869 with the Diocesan Home & Orphanage for English, Eurasian, Chinese and other scholars (male and female) which links with an earlier body, the Diocesan Native Female Training School of 1860-68. (From 1880 no more girls were received as boarders, though they still remained as day scholars. All girls left when Fairlea Girls School was opened in 1892. In 1900 a Diocesan Girls School was opened.) Located for many years at Bonham Road, the school moved to its present site in 1926. It may be truly said that its history is that of Hong Kong itself. The La Salle College is much newer, opening in 1932. However, its connection with Catholic education in the Colony is much longer. The La Salle Brothers had a record of 42 years' work in St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong when they opened their Kowloon Branch in 1917, and after two of the Fathers had 'gone together over the hills and lowlands of Kowloon' (as they then were) they found and purchased a 10-acre site by auction in 1928. Its premises are architecturally striking. As the then Roman Catholic Bishop said at the time, “Great though my hopes and expectations of the Christian Brothers were, I never dared to expect from them such a magnificent building as La Salle College."* Among the points to be specially noted on the visit are the following: DBS 1. the extensive grounds and playing fields (also made available to primary schools from resettlement estates). *Thomas F. Ryan, The Story of a Hundred Years: the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions (P.I.M.E.) in Hong Kong 1858-1958. (Hong Kong, Catholic Truth Society, 1959) p. 199. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 222 NOTES AND QUERIES 2. the tunnels and execution ground used by the Japanese military authorities during the Occupation 1941-1945. 3. the small exhibition of photographs to be shown in the staff room. (from the School and from the Anglican Bishop's House in Hong Kong) 4. the very long history of this multi-racial major educational institution of Hong Kong. La Salle 1. the excellent all-round vistas formerly enjoyed from the school site before the extensive redevelopment of the past 15 years. They included a view straight down the Lye-mun passage and the main runway at Kai Tak. 2. the high quality of the Chapel and its fittings, particularly the furniture. 3. the excellent record of the Salesian Brothers in local educational work since 1875. For Both 1. The buildings were designed as schools, and by the same firm of architects (Messrs Little, Adams and Wood, Hong Kong). 2. the faith and vision of the founders who placed the schools in their present locations in the 1920s at a time when (as Carl Smith's note shows) this part of Kowloon was wholly rural and undeveloped. Diocesan Boys' School, La Salle College and their Neighbourhood - Carl T. Smith The Diocesan Boys' School (D.B.S.) is situated south of Boundary Street and west of Waterloo Road. La Salle College is north of Boundary Street and east of Waterloo Road. Thus, D.B.S. is in Old Kowloon and La Salle College in New Kowloon. Both schools are built on hills. The D.B.S. site was behind the old Mongkok village. The La Salle site adjoined the paddy fields of Kowloon Tsai Village which was situated to the north-east of the present College. Somewhat more distant to the two schools was the Chinese village of Kowloon Tong facing south-west at the foot of the hills upon which the present Yau Yat Tsuen is located. The site of the village is now the Police Recreation Ground on Boundary Street. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY 95 entering the harbour, George Woodcock affirms of seamen in the Far East that they 'provided its nearest equivalent to a European proletariat; out of their ranks emerged its shifting population of poor whites and also a high proportion of its adventurers'. He concludes that 'on shore the status of the seamen remained, as it always had been, anomalous. His occupation was essential to the very existence of British communities in the Far East, and yet he was always an outsider, disturbing and distrusted',10 The author of a booklet issued in 1891 to commemorate the jubilee of Hong Kong claimed that the practice of the handicrafts in Hong Kong appears to be entirely in the hands of the Chinese; there is a considerable European population, but few are mechanics, and the Portuguese decline all forms of labour, the aspirations of both running towards the counting-house and the banker's desk.11 The suggestion that there were few European mechanics in Hong Kong is incorrect if we realise that many European overseers in the dockyards and other industrial undertakings and utilities were expected not only to supervise the labour force but to look after and repair machines. Many overseers in such enterprises were skilled engineers, who had served their apprenticeship in the engine-rooms of the British mercantile marine. The Taikoo Sugar Refinery at Quarry Bay, owned by Butterfield and Swire, gave direct employment to fifty or sixty Europeans as well as many hundreds of Chinese. A journalist, J. S. Thomson, wrote of this refinery that it was a marvellous study in Scotch sociology. There is a company reservoir and hospital in the hills; a cable to carry European overseers five hundred feet over the gullies to the fever-free bungalows on the cliffs; Company model tenements at inexpensive rents; a Company loan fund for overseers to bring out Scotch wives...12 The China Sugar Refinery, owned by Jardine, Matheson, also utilised the services of at least twenty-five European engineers, mechanics and overseers. At the end of the century, the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company employed about 800 Chinese, chiefly natives of Swatow, supervised by European overseers, many of whom were skilled mechanics. Other undertakings, such as the Green Island Cement Company, the Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 172 DONALD C. BOWIE Great problems arose from dysentery. During hostilities that part of the Island's water supply that came from the mainland was cut off about 18 December 1941. Enemy shelling and bombing fractured many water mains and sewers on the Island; the civil health service was affected; the Japanese brought in many horses; and human bodies were still being picked up in the hills as late as March 1942. Canadian troops were herded into a camp at North Point which had been constructed originally to house refugees from mainland China. This lacked all equipment and myriads of flies made life a misery both there and in camps in Kowloon. Conditions were near ideal for the outbreak of dysentery and this soon appeared. I was never allowed to visit North Point camp, but I learned from patients admitted to Bowen Road from there that there were huge sick parades, that large numbers of men were very ill indeed and that many died. Some patients with dysentery came to us from Kowloon but most were admitted from North Point. A number, of which I have no record, had been admitted before I took over but this number was swelled substantially in August and succeeding months. The table which follows illustrates very clearly the rise in the deficiency diseases when infections were superimposed upon undernourishment. Admissions — Infectious and Deficiency Diseases August-December 1942 Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Diphtheria 18 59 Dysentery 37 91 16 3 7 Deficiency Diseases 17 21 58 66 50 The infecting agent in the cases of dysentery was rarely identified for our laboratory, though well equipped, had no bacteriologist. When patients were treated early control was soon achieved by the use of sulpha drugs which we had in our own stock in the hospital, and these same drugs proved to be very efficient also in more chronic cases which had not yet produced too serious general effects. I must here express my personal deep admiration for the Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 214 DONALD C. BOWIE serve for Japan?". We either left this particular question unanswered or replied that we were unwilling to serve for Japan. One young man who had put down roots in Hong Kong before the Far East war, in answer to this question gave a detailed account of his qualifications which were substantial. As the replies passed through my office I saw his answer and persuaded him to leave this question blank in a new form which I gave him and I left him to tear up his own original completed form. Each month all in hospital received what we called necessities. The items varied but as a rule there were a couple of cakes of coarse soap, an envelope of tooth powder, a packet of toilet paper, and a fandoshi. This last looked like a triangular bandage and was tied round the waist, the point being passed back between the legs to be secured to the waistband behind, thus preserving the decencies. From time to time there would be an undervest or stockings or a toothbrush. In September 1942 we were able to restart our gramophone concerts broadcast to the wards during permitted hours after a stoppage which had lasted for several weeks. Also in September we equipped and opened a barber's shop served by men who could shave those unable to do so themselves. Thereafter growing beards, an affectation much in favour soon after our surrender, but already dying out, was forbidden! Ten Canadian combatant soldiers who volunteered for the job came to us as orderlies. Two wounded Chinese members of the H.K.V.D.C. whom we had been caring for were removed by the Japanese. By this time they were reasonably fit to leave and we were told that they would be released in the town. I only hope this was so. In October '43 all our staff received ten yen each from the Red Cross Society and we began to receive three or four copies daily of the Hongkong News free. We were also given twelve X-ray films, and having previously been given glass for windows but having no putty, we eventually obtained a supply of thin wire which our sappers made into nails and re-glassing broken windows began. On the afternoon of 26 October a single American plane flew low over the harbour and rose steeply to the north to disappear over the Kowloon hills. There were further raids during the nights of 27 and 28 October. No bombs were dropped, but thereafter I thought it wise not to remove the ‘Mimi Lau' concrete blocks protecting the ground floor wards on the harbour side. At this time we had beds on every verandah in the hospital in order to gain as ================================================================================ 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 33 between Hong Kong and Thailand was at its height during two periods of several years following the two World Wars. Teochiu import/export firms trading with Thailand established a commercial association in 1946 (Hung, 1961:4). In the 1920s there were at least 21 Teochiu firms involved in trade with Singapore, and in 1930 these firms established a commercial association which by 1951 had 41 member firms (Hung, 1961:2). Teochiu trade between Hong Kong and Vietnam began in the last years of the Ch'ing Dynasty and became substantial in 1914, apparently as a result of World War I. This trading gradually increased until the involvement of the U.S. in the war of liberation at which time the importation of goods into Vietnam from China ceased. This drastically curtailed the importing activities of Teochiu firms in Hong Kong exporting Chinese commodities to Vietnam (Hung, 1961:7). After the opening of Swatow as a treaty port in 1858, Teochiu firms in Hong Kong became active in importing Teochiu products from there and then re-exporting them to Southeast Asia, primarily for Teochiu consumption. In 1946 there were at least 20 firms involved in such trading and by 1948 about 100. Many of these were evidently forced out of business or into other areas of business after 1949, although there were still about 20 firms still involved in Swatow/Southeast Asian trading during the 1950s. These firms were evidently forced to operate with a very low profit margin (Hung, 1961:8). Immediately prior to World War II there were perhaps 20,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong, many living in Western District. During the 1930s, however, some Teochiu began to move over to the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, particularly Haiphong, Hankow and Canton Roads (Lee, 1969:55). Many of these people were employed as coolies in the Kowloon Godown, which still today employs predominantly Teochiu laborers. Most, however, were forced to move out of the area after World War II with the commercial and tourist development of Tsim Sha Tsui. Another area of Teochiu concentration prior to World War II was in the hills around Kowloon Walled City where Teochiu squatters raised pigs and poultry (Lee, 1969:56). This early concentration was undoubtedly a factor in the later heavy concentration of Teochiu in Kowloon City in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1961, according to the government census, there were 257,319 Teochiu in Hong Kong and by 1971 the figure ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q NOTES AND QUERIES 283 From Eastern No. 88, Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907), Enclosure D in No. 59, Governor Sir M. Nathan to Mr. Lyttelton, 11 January, 1905. "Tsun Wan-Two passage boats ply daily between Hong Kong and Tsun Wan; the number of passengers carried each way averages about 60. The principal goods carried are rice, pineapples when in season, grass and wood in connection with the 24 sandal-wood mills, worked by water power, and situated in the various valleys of the Tsun Wan district." From G.S.P. Heywood, Rambles in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 2nd Edition 1951, p. 19. "Tsun Wan has several local industries; silk-weaving is carried on in an up-to-date mill next door to the primitive and unhygienic sheds where noodles are made from powdered beans. In the valley running up into the hills to the south-west of Tai Mo Shan there is a village consisting entirely of watermills, where wood is ground up for the manufacture of joss sticks. This picturesque place is easily reached from the road; the path starts at the bridge about half a mile beyond Tsun Wan, near the 9th milestone, and follows the stream upwards, first on one bank and then on the other. The first watermill is reached in 5 minutes' walk from the road, and beyond are a dozen more little houses perched on the sides of the valley, each with its waterwheel busily turning. For a small tip the owner of one of these mills will show you inside; the atmosphere is thick with fragrant dust, and through it you can dimly see great stone-headed hammers pounding away at the aromatic wood."* Hong Kong, 1974. JAMES HAYES CHINESE IN THE VOLUNTEER FORCES OF HONG KONG In my article "A Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong" (Volume 11 of this Journal, 1971: 151-171) I mentioned the uncertainty which surrounded the membership of the successive volunteer units by local Chinese (pages 164-5 refer). I suggested that it was possible that the late Sir Man-kam Lo was the first or among the first to join, in the 1920s. * Plate 26 illustrates this Note. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG W. SCHOFIELD My first introduction to the Southern District took the form of journeys by Water Police launches to various parts of it during the summer of 1919, when I lived for three months in the Water Police station quarters before my first leave. After it I sometimes repeated such voyages for purposes of geological research, on which I embarked with Government encouragement. A professional geological survey of the Colony was being planned in order to help in developing the resources of the Empire after the 1914-18 war, and to most people the Colony's geology was, quite understandably, a sealed book. The coasts and islands of the Southern District afforded many instructive sections, often showing the relations of different rock and mosses in a nearly undecayed state, which except in stream beds could hardly be seen anywhere else in the days before great motor roads cut the hills. This work enabled me to prepare a preliminary report on the Colony's sedimentary rocks and granite batholiths which was presented in 1923 not long before the Canadian geologists began their labours. In 1922, while I was working as second assistant to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and deputy registrar of marriages, on the first floor of the Post Office building, Mr. Wynne-Jones, the D. O. South, whose office was just above mine on the second floor, went to hospital with appendicitis, and I was instructed at ten minutes' notice to go upstairs and do his job till he got better. As I had coveted the job for some time, and had told my chief so (then the late E. R. Hallifax), I was delighted. In those days one of the D.O.'s duties was to sit in his office as magistrate for the Southern District, excluding New Kowloon and the Lyemun area.† This court usually functioned from 9 to 10 a.m. * 1888-1968, Cadet Officer, Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-38. This article was written in response to my request to Mr. Schofield and others for memories of their service in the Southern District of the New Territories for which I was then (1958) District Officer - Hon. Editor. † Place names may be found in the official publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer 1960, since reissued). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH 155 crews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. One of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. As I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap * Public Works Department. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY - VISIT TO TAI MO SHAN, 3RD APRIL 1976 SCIENTIFIC NOTES L. B. THROWER & STELLA L. THROWER, Department of Biology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tai Mo Shan (A), the highest mountain in Hong Kong, is only 958 metres high, yet it dominates the New Territories to a remarkable degree. This is partly because its total height is attained from sea level in a horizontal distance of only about 4.5 km, so that its full effect is obvious. The mountain itself and the hills around it, which might be called the Tai Mo Shan complex, amply reward either a short visit or exploration of longer duration. These notes are an expansion of a brief field guide that was prepared for the Society's visit in April 1976, and may serve as both an introduction to the area and as a statement of its condition in 1976-77. A sketch map of the Tai Mo Shan complex is given as Figure 1. In April 1976 the route was from Tsuen Wan to the junction of Route Twisk* and Tai Mo Shan Road (Stop A), and then to the upper car park (Stop B). Climate and Weather: Measurements are available for a site near the present Youth Hostels Association premises, close to Stop B. They may be compared with records for the Royal Observatory in Kowloon. Tai Mo Shan Royal Obs. Annual rainfall: (cm.) 303 215 Mean max. temp. (hottest month): °C 24.1 30.7 Mean min. temp. (coldest month): °C 8.3 12.7 In fact, the summit of Tai Mo Shan has probably the highest rainfall of any place in Hong Kong; moreover, both the maximum and Strictly speaking, TWSK=Tsuen Wan-Shek Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 168 NOTES AND QUERIES ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY VISIT TO TAI MO SHAN, 3RD APRIL 1976 HISTORICAL AND GENERAL NOTE 1. Tai Mo Shan is 3,140 feet (957 metres) in height, the highest mountain in Hong Kong territory. 2. It is a curiously unimpressive mountain at close quarters. Viewed from Tsuen Wan, the former small market town at its foot on the southern side, the visitor could be forgiven for not noticing the mountain at all. It is, from there, only part of a large hilly area that arises quickly from sea level and extends in all directions, with occasional higher points of which the Tai Mo Shan summit is only one, in no way outstanding or separating itself from its neighbours. 3. From a distance, however, the true splendour of its peak and general mass is revealed. A visitor looking north from Magazine Gap or Wong Nei Chong Gap on Hong Kong Island, some 10-12 miles distant, cannot fail to notice, to the north, the bulk and height of the mountain, overtopping all around. The Lion Rock range of hills behind Kowloon Peninsula, closer to the viewer and usually so impressive from low ground, then appears in its true and diminished scale. 4. Mountains figure prominently in Chinese historical geography. There is, in every district, prefectural, provincial or general gazetteer, a section devoted to Shan-chuen - 'Hills and Streams'. As befits its size, Tai Mo Shan always receives a notice in the local works. The earliest mention I can find so far is in the 1688 edition of the Sun On District Gazetteer. This is repeated with much the same text in the 1819 and last edition, and in the 1822 and 1879 editions of the provincial and prefectural gazetteers respectively. The 1688 notice may be translated as follows: Tai Mo Shan is 50 Chinese miles east of the District City. It has the shape of a big hat. It extends south and west from Ng Tung Mountain. Its peak measures 2,000 Chinese feet. It is a big mountain in the Fifth Division, with a stone pagoda and many tea plantations. 5. So far as I know, there never has been a separate gazetteer of Tai Mo Shan such as has been provided for the more famous mountains of the Province; e.g. the White Cloud Mountains near Canton or ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 187 The villagers turned to a variety of other employment; in Govt. service (because of obligations felt to and claimed by the villagers), in Kowloon, locally and even abroad. The villagers decreased in numbers after the move and this was attributed to ill-fortune (bad fung-shui in their new houses), disease, and the rigours of the Japanese occupation and probably, too, to the traumatic shock of the uprooting from their old houses. It led directly to the neglect of the 3 ancestral halls erected to one side of the new village and to the establishment of a church of the Hong Kong Basel Mission in a converted village house just after the war. The halls were requisitioned by the Japanese during the Occupation and the altars and ancestral tablets put out, but thereafter they were not replaced in the period of pessimism, eroded spirits and lack of faith (and of hard cash), and they have not been put back since. Consequently, there have long been no ancestral halls in operation, despite the existence in a reasonable state of these large and carefully constructed buildings which now house the kindergarten of the village school. The halls still show, in good preservation, much of the decoration worked by skilled craftsmen in stucco and paint on the interior and exterior of the buildings and are evidence not only of the conservatism and loving care of the village leadership of the time but also of the continued existence at that time in the Hong Kong region of a body of craftsmen capable of fine work in the traditional local style. The old village houses number some 120. As many of them are still in their original or slightly altered state, they too, show the interesting style and extensive decoration of the masons and craftsmen who built these to the demands of the villagers. In contrast to this tasteful and substantial style of reprovisioning, there is a group of single-storey white walled structures to the S.W. of the main settlement. This is said to have predated the houses built by the villagers and to have been constructed by the Hong Kong Government to serve as examples of a planned rehousing programme. The offer was declined, and the present 2 storey houses were constructed instead with public funds (and perhaps additional money from the village). Today, these earlier buildings are used to house Govt. workers still employed in the locality. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 217 is formed on top. Then pick out the thin layer with a bamboo stick, upon which it is allowed to dry. The end-product will be the delicious and nourishing bean skim. Being performed entirely by hand in the past, the whole process was not so simple as this brief description suggests. Over eighty years ago, my great-grandfather with his two sons and their wives fled from famine-stricken Chi Kam hsien in Wai Chau prefecture, Kwangtung, and reached Pun Shan Village, Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan where they started their occupation of bean skim making. At that time, there was no highway linking Tsuen Wan with Kowloon. In order to sell the bean skim and buy more yellow beans, my ancestors had to climb over rugged hills every day. In those days, the yellow beans were first exposed under hot sun (or heated in a pot in case of dull weather). The impurities such as sand and stalks were carefully picked out from the beans, then the beans were crushed by manual labour until the husks were separated from the beans. Beans and husks were then poured into a bamboo container which was tossed up and down with both hands so as to cast out the husks. The pure beans were then put into a tank and soaked in water for four hours (six hours in winter). Then the beans were ground into a paste by pushing hard at the stone-grinder. The amount of beans could not be in excess of forty catties if the whole process was to be finished within one day, and one had to rise about 2 a.m. to start grinding. This paste was then wrapped inside a cloth bag and the fluid squeezed out. The refuse was then filtered off, while the pasty fluid was poured into twelve flat-bottomed metal pans and boiled, using grass as fuel. (The smoke as emitted from the fluid and the burning grass is not unlike tear gas, giving one a suffocating feeling.) The surface foam was removed, and the fluid kept at a temperature that kept it near boiling. A thin layer of membrane formed on the surface, which was taken off with a bamboo stick and allowed to dry. This process of heating, layer-forming and taking off was repeated again and again, until the paste in all the twelve pans became membrane i.e. bean skim. This process must have required the longest working-hours of the world, for one had to work at it twenty-one hours on end every day, from 2 a.m. to 11 p.m. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 218 NOTES AND QUERIES Once this trade was taken up, not a single family member could sit idly by. If the family consisted of only five members, all five had to be mobilized: first of all, to grind the beans and then boil the paste. After the paste was hot enough, one member had still to keep heating it to produce the layers of bean skim. Another member carried the products prepared the day before to Kowloon where he sold them to the shops and bought more beans. The remaining members, after finishing their breakfast, had to climb the hills to look for dry grass which they fetched home for fuel. This was the hard way by which our ancestors managed to make a hand-to-mouth living and rear us. Nowadays, we have electricity, motor and transport facilities and the manufacturing process has mostly been mechanized. The kind of hard life that our ancestors once led will never be repeated. ADDENDUM The brief account that follows is taken from Peng-chun Chang's China at the Crossroads (London, Evans Brothers, 1936) p.145. An example of a type of manufacturing common in the villages is the preparation of tofu, or bean curd. A tofu shop may be seen in nearly every village. In this shop is the mill used for crushing the beans. This mill is run by human or animal power. The beans are ground in the mill and then mixed with water. The liquid, called bean milk, is squeezed from the mass and boiled in a boiler which is part of the shop's equipment. This boiled milk is frequently eaten. If, however, certain chemicals are added to the boiled liquid, it solidifies and is known as bean curd, or tofu. The tofu manufacture represents a rough, everyday type of manufacture common in the villages. It exhibits the skill of accumulated experience, for this food has been common in the diet of the Chinese people for centuries. Tofu is high in protein and takes the place of dairy products and meat in the diet of the people. Recent scientific experimentation in China is endeavouring to find a commercially profitable way of reducing the bean milk to a powder to take the place of imported powdered milk. Chang was a native of Tientsin and presumably is referring mainly to North China. For a recent detailed account from Hong Kong based on field work in 1961 and 1963 see Vol. One, Part III, 27, "The Bean Curd Maker" of Cornelius Osgood's The Chinese. A Study of a Hong Kong Community (Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Press, 3 vols, 1975), pp. 393-404. These volumes contain a wealth of information on many traditional economic undertakings. FOUR CHINESE ‘BANKS' FAIL, PARTNERS BLAME HEAD The following is extracted, in part, from a report in The Washington Post Metro for Sunday 26 February, 1978. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 92 EUGENE COOPER instilling old social forms with new revolutionary content, making them serve new purposes. The current premises of the union are in an apartment block in Tokwawan in Kowloon. They occupy a flat decorated with Communist slogans and a picture of Chairman Mao Tse-tung flanked by two Chinese flags. The Federation of Trade Unions runs a small school for children of "patriotic" workers in the union headquarters, although the children are not generally those of art-carved furniture workers. The union premises are seldom used by the workers before the evening as they are all off working; thus the flat was made available to the Federation for the operation of the school. Curricular and extra-curricular activities are structured around revolutionary and pro-Peking themes with texts and reading materials published in Peking. Shortly before my departure from Hong Kong this school was discontinued and the teacher, a middle school graduate, went to work in a factory. Other Federation affiliated unions have also used the union's premises for meetings and other activities such as preparing for the celebrations of October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The premises are, however, under the control of the Woodwork Carvers' Union, and it is my impression that any such use of their premises by affiliated Federation unions must be agreed to by them. The flat serves as a place where workers without means to afford a private apartment in Hong Kong's over-inflated real estate market, and without family in Hong Kong to take care of them, may sleep at night. However, one must be prepared to put up with the regulations, which include lights out and lock up at 11:00 p.m. One worker friend of mine, forced by circumstances to stay temporarily at the union, had a serious falling out with the union because of these regulations. Nevertheless, during the year that I was acquainted with the union, two or three workers made the union premises their more or less permanent dwelling place. There were no bunk beds in the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises, although I observed them built into the walls of other union halls I visited in Hong Kong. Workers just unrolled their bed-rolls across boards which had been laid across the students' desks. Once every week or two these same desks were pulled together to form a long table and the officers and activists in the union ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 128 REVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS going its trial run. Quite a string of small landing barges were once seen leaving the harbor. At Aberdeen in the narrow channel there are a number of small river steamers sunk or scuttled, and the Japanese are attempting to salvage them. They have also succeeded in raising the river gunboat Moth, and its recommissioning was given quite some space in the local English paper. During our stay at Bethany we had a number of visitors: the Jesuits from Wah Yan College, as also from the Seminary at Aberdeen; Father Haughey from the Salesians, some Italian Fathers from the Cathedral and the French Fathers, as also a few laymen, friends of Camp days, among whom was our genial chef, Mr. Gingles, with his side-kick, Dr. Molthen. Across from Bethany is Nazareth, the polyglot printing press establishment, and there we found the Superior, Father Biotteau, still holding the fort, along with one companion, Father Morel. Needless to say, the Printing Press is not now in operation, and the other Fathers normally stationed here left some time previous to our arrival for Indo-China. Later on, also, a number of French Sisters left St. Paul's Hospital for Indo-China. Shortly after the occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese announced that they intended to build a large shrine just above the Botanical Gardens to commemorate the heroes of Hong Kong. They began surveying the site, beginning quite close to the Cathedral, and evidently it was to be a wonderful affair. Subscriptions were asked for from the local Chinese and everybody was expectant. However, as time wore on, the project seemed to have gotten out of the limelight, and now it seems it has been abandoned. However, a small monument was erected on one of the small hills facing the harbor. The 25th of October was the Feast of Christ the King. On that day, there is an outdoor procession at the Cathedral to which the faithful come from the various parishes both in the city and from Kowloon. As we had received an invitation to participate, we started out for the city. As we neared the city we noticed an unusual number of Japanese planes in the air. This was not out of the ordinary as planes were more or less constantly flying about for various purposes, and we did not attach any special significance to this increased number on this glorious afternoon. As the Holy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 13 two temples are alike. The interior decoration and content of temples tend to reflect their keeper's foibles, whims and beliefs, and whilst some temple keepers offer special rituals, others are thoroughly disinterested and their temples often bare and ill-kept and bereft of any spark of life. Rural temples are considerably barer than their urban equivalents. In some, poverty is stark and all that can be seen is a well-nigh empty hall, with an ash container for incense sticks and perhaps a paper plaque or two, with possibly an image and, if it is at all possible, electric illumination even in fairly remote areas. At the other end of the scale some of the urban temples are cluttered with objects of every kind, with the cool courtyard being used as a social gathering place. Incongruities abound such as, not uncommonly, sweaty vests drying on hangers suspended from the front edge of the altar, and the blaring gramophone record of church bells which greeted several surprised Westerners when they entered a small temple in Kowloon. Many temples have private courtyards for use by the keeper and his family. Visitors touring the Far East frequently compare the spacious, light and clean Thai Buddhist temples with Chinese folk religion's dark and grimy temples. Many Chinese Buddhist monasteries and temples, not usually on the itinerary of tourists, are also bright and clean whereas the religious edifices in which folk religion deities dwell and which are visited by tourists in Hong Kong central and Kowloon, appear quite forbidding. Traditional folk religion temples consist of a single-storey building with windowless outside walls and one large dark, cavernous entrance, through which one can see oil lamps flickering in the gloom. Inside the temple the altars at the far end of the dimly lit halls may contain a single deity, a small group of deities or hosts upon hosts of them. Clouds of incense with its soft fragrance adds to the eerie dimness and in time blackens the gods. It also makes one's eyes water! One aspect obtrudes during certain seasons - open drains in the older traditional temples. The basic urban, village and coastal traditional temple is a one-roomed “box”. It can be a traditional building (Illustration 4) or a simple old cottage. It might even be an old two or three bedroomed two-storey house or, if the founder has been fortunate with his sponsors, it will be a purpose-built construction. The main doorway of the basic traditional temples at the front is normally the only entrance. It has large inward-opening doors ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 19 God and tutelary deity of the village) sits in a niche inside the ground floor of the tower of the gateway, watching over his parishioners. In the attic of the gateway of some of these villages, out of sight and only accessible by a rickety ladder, is an image of Gui Xing, one of the Gods of Literature, placed there for students to pray to prior to taking an examination, and for parents to pray to for the blessing of a bright child. The majority of more recent temple structures, mostly built on hillsides during the past twenty-five years, mainly by Chaozhou immigrants and a few by Min An immigrants, have been extended room by room over a period of years and may be any shape and size, according to the possibilities of the site, and may have a dozen or so rooms for one use or other. Quite a few of the temples constructed by ethnic minorities contain very local cults brought to Hong Kong from the area in China from which the emigrants came, and the temples themselves are a focus for the ethnic or sub-ethnic groups concerned. Thus, in Hong Kong over the years, separate shrines, halls, and finally complete buildings have been built by Chaozhou, Min An and Hoklo immigrants. There are even a few built by refugees from Shanghai and the north. A unique structure in concrete, shaped and moulded to look like rock, was demolished in 1979 in Tsuen Wan to make way for a major new housing estate. The building, a squatter temple built by immigrants from Swatow, covered a large area and had three major and four minor altars. The inside of the temple was shaped to resemble a large rocky cavern with the altars shaped like small caves, fronted with glass and illuminated with neon lights. The outside walls were painted smooth concrete. The roof, however, was a phantasmagoria of small concrete figures from Chinese legend amidst miniature buildings, more caves and grottoes, all painted in vivid colours. The whole was over-shadowed by a large vividly crimson concrete structure which can only be described as a massive red pepper standing vertically on a greeny-blue base, and punctured by small holes to act as windows. Although the building looked a ghastly monstrosity to foreigners, it had a unique character and was very popular amongst the Chaozhou immigrants of Tsuen Wan and Kowloon. * It has been resited, and is in course of redevelopment, but alas not in such a picturesque form! Hon. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p No first-hand information concerning female education of the time has yet been obtained as the small number of women who then attended classes in Sheung Shui left the village upon their marriage, and have not yet been located for interview. According to the account of their male contemporaries, however, 'the small classes in the Christian-run girls' school (Fu Yin T'ang 女校) were mostly from humble families, but those who were later admitted into classes in the study halls were mostly daughters of wealthy families. These girls were usually bright and diligent and showed deep interest in learning. Their average attendance was shorter than the boys', starting normally from the age of nine and none stayed beyond fourteen when they began to prepare for marriage.' "The experience of the two daughters of the founder of the Fu Yin T'ang was, however, exceptional. They never attended class in the village but were sent to a Christian school in Kowloon at the age of 10 and 9. It was a subsidized boarding school for girls (Fairlea) where the Bible, English, arithmetic, biology, hygiene, geography, history, and music as well as the traditional primers were taught. The fee was $5 a month per pupil." "It was a big sum of money, as the fee in the village schools was then from $2 to $5 per year," one of these two ladies, now aged 78, told us in an interview. The elder sister died young but she herself, after completing the upper primary class at Fairlea, received training in nursing at the Nethersole Hospital and then worked as a nurse in Hong Kong until retirement. While the above case was exceptional for women, it was less so among the men. Changes of the 1910's and 20's brought opportunities as well as new demands. Traditional education, though modified to a certain extent, began to seem steadily more inadequate to cope with the conditions of the time. Those who formerly would have sought a literate career in classical learning turned to the new facilities available. According to our findings from the Oral History Project, between 1913 and 1932, at least twenty young men from the village and almost certainly more were known to have received a Western education at the Tai Po Government School or at the Anglo-Chinese schools in urban Kowloon and Hong Kong. Most of these people had thereafter successful careers as government clerks, interpreters, teachers, headmasters, and businessmen. They were also viewed as elite. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 268 NOTES * A general study on traditional education in the New Territories before the arrival of the British is given in another paper, "Village Education in the New Territories under the Ch'ing" shortly to be published by the Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong University. This present article is a related study on a single village in the N.T., with the purpose of seeing how and why education changed from its traditional pattern to a modern structure in the late 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. * Sheung Shui is a large single surname village consisting of eight sub-villages lying at the heart of the Sheung Shui/Fanling plain (originally called Sheung U Tung [上烏塘] in Chinese). The village lies in a fertile low-lying river valley some twenty miles north of Kowloon and four miles south of Sham Chun. The village has been discussed in detail by Hugh Baker in his book, A Chinese Lineage Village, Frank Cass, 1968. * We were told by the village elders that their ancestors made special efforts to convert their dialect and custom into Punti shortly after their settlement in the district, just to be qualified to partake in the imperial examinations, for it was not until 1802 that the Hakkas were given a small quota in the examination, see also Hsin-an-Hsien-chih, 1981 reprint of the 1819 edition, Hong Kong, vol. 9, p. 99. According to the Liao genealogy and records on the ancestral tables (神主牌), the number of first degrees (生員) won by the lineage by generation were as follows: no of Sheng-yuan Generation 9 1 17th 10 century 11 12 10 Enw. 2 13 13 18th century 14 8 15 4 16 12 19th century 17 4 18 3 These data are not completely reliable, especially for those before the 14th generation, when the genealogy had not yet been written. Yet the numbers can be taken as an indication of the academic success of the Liaos. According to official records, there were at least three chu-jen degree holders from Sheung Shui in the 19th century. The six halls included the Ming Te Tang 明德堂, Hsien Ch'eng Tang, Yun Sheng Chia-shou 潤生齋, Tu Nan Tang 圖南堂, Ming Te Chia-shou 明德齋, and Yen Siu Tang 延壽堂. The Liaos stood next only to the T'angs of Kam Tin and Ping Shan within the New Territories in possessing such a number of halls for studying purposes. The Wan Shih Tang, unlike the other ancestral halls, was seldom used as a classroom as it was reserved for ceremonial functions. But in 1932, the building was re-modelled to accommodate the Fung Kai School, the first modern school set up in the village. For the history of the Wan Shih T'ang and founding of the Fung Kai School, see Liao Yin-sen. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 96 In the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung. A very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down. Tour of the Islands To get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun ("Rushing Water Channel") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour. Stonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau ("High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think. Tsingyi: (literally "Green Clothes": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka. In 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch: In proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 212 THE KWUN YAM AND TUNG SHAN TEMPLE OF EAST KOWLOON 1840-1940 J. W. HAYES This note details the origins, rise and fall of a temple, over the course of a full century, in what was originally a rural district of East Kowloon. The community connected with the temple originally comprised farming villages and stone cutters' settlements. To this core, urban and suburban elements were more and more added until they eventually came to dominate the area entirely. These changes led to the virtual extinction of the original community and, with it, its temple. The Tung Shan Temple is now in ruins; only the walls remain. It became derelict during the Japanese Occupation, and was not repaired after the war. There are, in fact, two temples, standing side by side. The stone inscription above one door states that it is a Kwun Yam (*) or Goddess of Mercy temple, rebuilt in the 13th year of the Kwang Hsü reign (1887). The inscription above the main door of the other states that it is the Tung Shan (*) or Eastern Peak temple, dated the equivalent of 1904. The two are here treated as an entity, as (it is stated) they were always under the same management. According to two elders from the Chu Family (朱) of Tai Hom village (born in 1891 and 1896; interviewed 1967-1968), the Kwun Yam temple is built on land belonging to their clan. The Chu's were Hakka latecomers to rural east-central Kowloon, arriving in the 18th century and taking up higher land under the encircling hills. The spot where the temple was constructed was originally padi land, growing poor quality rice; but after a great grandfather had placed an image of the Goddess of Mercy near the fields they began to yield good crops. At the insistence of this same man, the village elders erected a small temple there in the Tao Kuang reign (1821-1850). My informants had this story in their youth from their clan uncles. The next chapter in the history of the Kwun Yam temple opens with its repair in the Kwang Hsü reign (1875-1908). No ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 121 British ignorance of their position under Chinese law and practice, and incoming Chinese settlers' disregard of it. In 1858, their land at Tsim Sha Tsui, on account of its proximity to Hong Kong and its fine position on the harbour, was being occupied for all manner of business by persons who gave no thought to paying rent to the Tangs. They caused a public notice to be prepared, which found its way in translation into the English language paper the Friend of China on 24th July 1858. This was two years before this part of Kowloon was first leased, then ceded, to Britain in the course of the year 1860. The printed version was as follows: "Tung Wing-Fook-Tong [sic] of the Sun On district, was formerly sole proprietor of the Island of Hong Kong, and of the hills and coast of the North Side of the Harbour under the general name of Tsin Shat-Choy Lately Tung Wing-Fook-Tong petitioned the Magistrate of Sun-On to examine Tung's claim to Tsin Shat-Choy and the Magistrate issued a proclamation declaring that Tung Wing-Fook-Tong is the real owner of the Property. 51 The editor of the newspaper was not sympathetic, being downright sceptical of the Tung (Tang) claims to Hong Kong: "As to his having been a Lord of this Isle, as well as of Tsim-shat-choy," he wrote, "in a word, we do not believe a word of it". Indeed, he went further, dismissing the unfortunate Tangs as being 'mythical as the Hong Kong agents for Holloway's pills' 52 Yet the fact remains that the Chinese records corroborate the Tang family's claims to Hong Kong and much else, and their exchanges with the various Chinese authorities at the district, prefectural and provincial level in the 1840s reveal some essential characteristics both as to their own situation as owners of Hong Kong and as to the mind and operation of the imperial bureaucracy. The Tangs were essentially absentee owners, entitled through the registered ownership to be regarded as the true owners of the sub-soil and eligible to exact a rent charge from tenants on it."3 The officials with whom they dealt in the course of pressing their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 131 alike, they made their own arrangements for self management in clan, village, sub-district, coastal centre and market town. So long as they paid their taxes and did not commit crimes or affrays they were left alone by the authorities. Being settled, in many cases, for so long, the inhabitants had intermarried over generations, sending their daughters to other villages and taking wives from neighbouring settlements as well as from further afield, from Kowloon and nearby places in the present New Territories. Some villages were linked by blood ties in the male line, as at Little Hong Kong and Pokfulam where the Chans and Chaus had settled or branched off, and some Wong Nei Chung clans had male cousins at Little Hong Kong. These links made it natural for the villages to join together in periodic communal protective rites like the ta chiu (打醮) which according to old residents still persisted into this century; whilst the temples attracted large gatherings at major festivals, especially on the birthdays of their patron deities. This is not the place to provide yet another description of the forms which the local village communities used to provide for the regulation of their society. Full descriptions have been given elsewhere of the role of the clan, centred on the ancestral hall and the ancestral graves; of the village, centred on the earthgod shrines, village school, and the village fields and water supply; and of the market town and the nexus of villages it served, centred on the kaifong, the temple and its management committee, and the ta chiu.1 All that is needed here is the emphatic confirmation that all the parts of this traditional system, so well-known from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Territories, were present on Hong Kong Island in and before 1841. 79 80 Ancestral halls certainly existed in all the major and some of the minor villages although few now survive. Tai Tam Tuk and Law Uk (Chai Wan) both had one, and there were others at Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung, and the Tai Tam villagers had two, although it is likely that both were built after 1841. Earthgod shrines equally certainly existed - the very name of To Tei Wan village ("Earthgod Bay") suggests this, and we have seen that the Hung Shing Temple in Wanchai probably originated in an earthgod shrine. Several of the quarry hamlets in the Quarry Bay to Shaukeiwan area had shrines, and others survive built into the BL ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 264 Notes and Queries TRADITIONAL TEA GROWING IN THE NEW TERRITORIES P.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES, K.C. Iu* Following the establishment of the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware interest was expressed in the indigenous tea growing and preparation customs in the New Territories. A visit was paid to one of the villages where traditional tea growing is still practised to ensure that a photographic record of the process was taken. A written record was also taken, which appears below as section 1 of this Note. Section 2 is a selection of notes on traditional tea growing elsewhere in the southern part of the New Territories, and section 3 is a note on the Mountain Begonia, which was also used to make tea, at least on Lantau. (1) Traditional Tea Growing in Mau Tso Ngam (PHH) Mau Tso Ngam Village is a Hakka village inhabited by members of the Cheng and Lau clans situated high up on the slopes of Kowloon Peak in the upper reaches of a stream that eventually reaches the sea at Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin. This village is one of the few left in the New Territories which still grows and prepares its own tea in the traditional way. This note briefly describes the tea preparation processes in use at Mau Tso Ngam as seen by the author on a visit to the village on 26th April 1986 and as described further to him by the Village Representative, Mr. Cheng Kau-hung.' Tea trees2 are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village: most families own a few trees, while others are owned by the Ancestral Trusts of the village. Tea from the trees owned by the Ancestral Trusts is used for offerings to the gods and spirits. There are no tea plantations as such, since each family keeps its trees scattered at traditional sites on the hills near its See Plates 33-41 Page 265 Page 285 Page 286 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1986-1987 The Society Library has purchased many out-of-print items through Dr. J. Hayes' effort this year. Besides gifts from Dr. Hayes, the Library has received gifts from Mr. David Liu, Mrs. Valerie Garrett, and Mrs. M.L. Winkler. Mr. Walter Greenwood has also donated to the Library his article in manuscript entitled "John Joseph Francis, citizen of Hong Kong: a biographical note". The Council is considering including it in the next issue of our Journal. Nearly all the books in the last two years have been catalogued and shelved in the Kowloon Central Library. An additions list is available from the Hon. Librarian on request. The Library has donated two items of its duplicates to the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, and made an offer of permanent loan of McMullen Bills of Lading to the University of Hong Kong Libraries. Regarding the usage of the Society Library, Mrs. Barbara Luk, the Chief Librarian of the Urban Council Public Libraries wrote: "As at 28.2.87, there were 18 requests for information, 17 of which were from members of the Society. A total of 37 books were consulted during the year." To maximize the use of the Library, Dr. Hayes has sent the Catalogue of the Library to about twenty librarians, with his covering letter giving a brief description of the Library. The Kowloon Central Library is planning to have an exhibition of books from our Collection in the coming September to make the general public more aware of the Library. The Council is looking into the question of insurance for books in the Society Library. March 1987 xvi Peter Yeung Hon. Librarian ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 32 looking as though they would roll down any moment, it formed a dramatic and distinctive backdrop to the Walled City. The City was primarily a garrison town. In 1898, the garrison numbered 544, with a civilian population of only 200, largely dependents of the military. By then the watch towers were being used as family dwellings. Besides the several official buildings there was also the Lung-chin i-hsüeh ## (Lung-chin Communal School), named after the small Lung-chin river nearby. The school's raison d'etre is significant. Just as the British presence in Hong Kong had necessitated strengthening the civil and military establishment at Kowloon, so had it highlighted the need to strengthen the inhabitants' moral fibres against Western decadence and materialism. The Hsin-an Magistrate, commenting on the founding of the school in 1847, declared that since Kowloon had become a point of interaction with barbarians, the inhabitants needed to be fortified morally, thus making a school necessary, and he even hoped that they might exert a civilizing influence on the intruders. 10 Built of blue baked bricks on a granite foundation, with granite lintels and frames to the entrance, the school was an imposing building with two main halls and two courtyards, much like the grander ancestral halls of the New Territories. Local literati were elected to the school board each year. The source of fund was irregular. A generous official occasionally made a donation; in the 1880s, a special rate was levied on the sale of suckling pig meat to subsidize the school expenses. Characteristically, public meetings, often attended by officials, were also held there. Its reflecting wall bore the characters "Hai-pin Tsou Lu" to denote a place of high moral and academic excellence by the sea, emphasizing how strongly Confucian orthodoxy still prevailed in this outpost of Empire. In 1897, an annex, a fine two-storeyed building called the K'uei-hsing ke (Kuei-hsing pavilion) was added, K'uei-hsing being the god who protected the literati. This shows that fifty years after its foundation, the school was still a going concern. 14 A small paper-burning pavilion stood near the East Gate. Traditionally, the Chinese literati revered the written word and, to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 35 Kong except for a short interval between 1867 and 1871, was a major attraction of Kowloon City.” Gambling houses fronting the beach offered free launch services and carried on a thriving business. This caused so much consternation in Hong Kong that, after a series of stunning embezzlement cases and a connection with the gambling "hells” of Kowloon had been established, the Hong Kong government passed an ordinance making it an offence for civil servants to visit Kowloon for the purpose of gambling. Under pressure from the Hong Kong government in the late 1890s, Chinese officials actually suppressed gambling. Ironically, it was under “British rule” in the twentieth century that gambling was re-introduced. But it was only after the Second World War, when Hong Kong prohibited brothels and opium that the Walled City was transformed into the squalid enclave of vice for which it later became notorious. 36 The City had other attractions. Both the Walled City and the fort had been frequently visited by foreigners since the 1850s. It was the terminal point of several interesting walks on the mainland popular with European residents. They were not required to produce passes or go through other kinds of formalities normally required in a garrison town. Often at the end of an excursion, visitors took a quick walk around the wall, snapped a few pictures of "this curious and particularly dirty town", and left for the Island by launch from the Lung-chin jetty. The great change came in 1899. In the previous year, the Convention of Peking had been signed between China and Britain leasing territory south of the Shumchun river to Britain. However, in face of strong Chinese insistence on retaining jurisdiction in the Kowloon Walled City, the British agreed to include a clause that "within the city of Kowloon the Chinese officials now stationed there shall continue to exercise jurisdiction except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirement to the defence of Hong Kong." This reservation of Chinese jurisdiction upset many sectors of British interest, not least of all, foreign residents in Hong Kong, all seeing this Chinese enclave in the midst of a British administered territory a security risk. The matter came to a head in 1899. The Hong Kong govern- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h and a treadmill was in operation for punishment up until the early 1900s. Prisoners were escorted to Court, so it is believed, by a tunnel. Although the author went to Victoria Prison in the 1970s, on Justice of the Peace visits, he is unable to substantiate this. A few colonial-style buildings, such as the Helena May Institute (completed 1916) on Garden Road, and the old Supreme Court building (foundations laid 1903, completed 1912) in Central District, are still in use. The latter is now the Legislative Council Chambers, and has been described as "Lutyens classical revival style adapted for the tropics". In spite of forceful protests by the Heritage Society which was wound up, despondently, in 1983 — and the Conservancy Association, the Repulse Bay Hotel, the previous Hong Kong Club building, and the old Kowloon Railway terminus (except for the tower2) have all succumbed to the wrecker's hammer. The average Hong Kong citizen, it seems, has limited interest in conservation. He or she believes that a building has an economic life span, and, after that, it should go. To be fair, the Government, advised by the Antiquities and Monuments Office and the Antiquities Advisory Board, has declared a number of structures, for instance the Stanley Police Station (1859)13 as Monuments under the Antiquities Ordinance. Other Monuments include the steps and gas lamps in Duddell Street, Central District; rock carvings and inscriptions; old villages, for example Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan; and the District Office, North, building at Tai Po in the New Territories. The Territory also possesses a variety of other old structures, such as the fort and battery at Tung Chung and the fort at Tung Lung. There are also ancestral halls and study halls, like Shut Hing Shue Shan, at Ping Shan, and Chou Wong Yi Kung Shue Yuen, in Kam Tin. Among other declared historical Monuments are Wan Chai Post Office (1915)1* in Queen's Road East, Western Market in Sheung Wan, and the Pathological Institute,1 in Caine Lane. As of 1990, such Monuments totalled 43. One of the most famous of Hong Kong's old buildings was Murray House (circa 1843).1 It was demolished carefully in 1982, and the parts were labelled, numbered and stored. The intention is to re-erect it on another site. In 1935, the then new 66-metre high Hong Kong Bank (the third bank on that site) was fully air-conditioned (the first large building in Hong Kong). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 8 from being obedient subjects into "righteous people". It was possible, as Stuart Schramm has so aptly said, "to be a rebel within the framework of tradition". It was this tradition that accounted for the people's readiness to identify unjust actions as "unrighteous" and to combine in opposition to the local authorities. Many examples of indignant or infuriated action by the populace can be cited from the Ch'ing period alone. It is hardly surprising that among them we should find a few local instances. A case in point from Tsuen Wan itself comes from Ma Wan. When the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs took over the duties of the Canton Customs post on Ma Wan in 1897, there were soon serious differences with the local villagers. A large stone inscription in the village, bearing the enigmatic words "Seven English Feet of Leased Land to the Kowloon Customs" is a memorial of the dispute. Fortunately, because the tale that emerges has epic qualities, its enigmatic wording can be supplemented by another old text which explains what happened on that occasion: An access road was needed from the Kowloon Customs Station to the hills behind it and the sea beyond, and [the authorities] began excavation work without any announcement. Private land was utilized at will, and the objections of the villagers were not heeded. It was intended to build a [new] customs station also. At this time the people's tolerance had been strained to the maximum and furious anger was sparked off. Neighbouring villagers willingly joined in this righteous cause. The head Customs Office heard of this incident and feared that the incident would develop into an uncontrollable one. A special mediator was sent to the Heung [Ma Wan] to settle the dispute on the following terms: 1. Land could be leased for constructing the road, provided it was not more than seven feet wide and that its route was not circuitous. 2. The site of the [new] station should be kept close to the hillside and [boundary] stones should be erected to mark the four corners. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 117 Hotel, was Japanese. So were the majority of the photographers' shops. It was known that a proportion of the workers in the Royal Naval Dockyard were Japanese, passing themselves off as Chinese. Even the Chinese could not distinguish between one of their own countrymen and a Japanese after he had lived amongst them sufficiently long to speak the language fluently. There was a police regulation under which all persons entering the Colony of nationality other than British or Chinese must register. But Koreans were classed as Chinese, and so Japanese, who wished to avoid observation, described themselves as Koreans. To overcome the difficulty it would have been necessary to make registration of Chinese compulsory, and that was a task beyond the capacity of the existing police personnel; moreover, the Chinese might have resented such a regulation as a slight on their dignity. The Hongkong weekend continued much as usual. You could run your car onto the vehicular ferry, take it over to Kowloon, and drive the 17 miles to the border of the New Territory, either by the road which wound in and out amongst the bays along the coast, or by the road which followed the railway gap through the Kowloon hills; and play golf at the Royal Fanling Golf Club where there were two eighteen hole, and one nine hole, courses. Or you could bathe from one of the numerous beaches, or go on a launch picnic. These last were popular. On Sunday morning the time would be spent taking turns on a surfboard towed behind the launch, or sunbathing on top of the awning; in the afternoon a heavy lunch would offer the lazy an excuse to sleep. The Japanese were bombing the railway line between Hongkong and Hankow. In those days the confidence of air enthusiasts in regard to the results which could be achieved by desultory bombing had not yet been discounted by the hard test of experience. Moreover, we were yet to learn of the devotion and sacrifice, the skill and efficiency, of the Chinese railway repair gangs. With a minimum of equipment they performed wonders, and through traffic was seldom interrupted for more than a few hours. I was instructed to reconnoitre an alternative route for the despatch of supplies from Hongkong to Central China against the time when the railway might be finally disrupted. It was a thankless task because opinion in Shanghai continued to assume that the Chinese government would soon collapse under Japanese pressure. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 143 THE USE OF HILL LAND FOR VILLAGE FORESTRY AND FUEL GATHERING IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG. RICHARD WEBB While recent economic and social changes in the New Territories of Hong Kong have wrought irrevocable changes to the rural villages, until perhaps twenty years ago, villagers appeared to have used the hillsides much as they pleased, even though some of the larger clans claimed payments for hill land. The villagers of Cheung Sha Wan, west Kowloon, for example, paid regular sums in silver to the Tangs of Kam Tin for their forest land. The Liu family of Sheung Shui was leasing forest land to the villagers of Long Keng under a deed of 1867 (Hayes 1983). However, hill and forest land was usually annexed by the nearest village. Each village had its forestry lot, apportioned to families according to natural boundaries. There was a major difference in people's minds between land under pine tree cultivation (Pinus massoniana) and other hill land used for fuel gathering, grass cutting, and grazing. The British administration carried over the common usage of hill areas for pine cultivation into their village forestry licenses, or "t'sung shaan p'aai", which allowed villagers to occupy Crown Land for the purpose of growing these trees on which they relied for fuel, poles, and timber. It was the 'pine hills' that mattered more to the village families, even though they possessed no proper title to them, save under British rule, an undifferentiated notional share in the village license through being part of its community. Like houses and fields, hillside plots could be passed from father to son. Daley (1975) provides an account of forestry activities, although it is not clear if this refers to village forestry, in which 211,015 trees were planted in 1880, rising to 1,157,609 in 1883. The British administration established the Botanical and Forestry Department in 1880, with the objective of planting the badly eroded areas and water catchments. From 1881 to 1891, an average of around 647,223 trees were planted every year, of which 95% was Pinus massoniana, a local pine which can establish on very poor soil. By 1938, 70% of Hong Kong island had been afforested with government plantations, and 200 km2 of the New Territories were occupied by leased forestry lots used as a source of firewood. By this time, the government plantations were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 146 to get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!'. Also according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, "nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years." Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside'.” Tea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green "cloud and mist tea", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et al. (1988). Hill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 64 District, however, the total recorded urban population of males is far smaller than the recorded numbers of men in "urban" occupations. Clearly, many men traditionally went home to their native villages to sleep who worked by day in the Northern District towns and, probably, many craftsmen worked at home in their native villages, only occasionally going to sell their wares in the towns. This suggestion, of a more intimate and closely integrated urban/rural society in Northern, and a more thoroughly urban society in Southern, is likely to be correct. By day, the Northern towns may well have been twice as large as the figure given in the census, but, even if this is so, the difference between the tiny market-villages in northern District and the genuine towns in Southern remains stark. The high number (376 in 1911, 378 in 1921) of masons and allied trades in Northern District, is to be explained, in part, by the construction of the roads, and the other public works projects the Government had begun after taking over the New Territories, but even more by the very large quarry at Lung Kwu Tan, which, as is made clear in the Village Population Table in the 1911 Census, employed 215 stonecutters and others. In Southern District there were 766 males working as masons or in associated trades in 1911 (6.9% of all males with recorded trade), and there were 989 in 1921 (the 1911 and 1921 figures for Southern District both including New Kowloon); in both 1911 and 1921 these people were mostly working in the large quarries at Chek Lap Kok off Lantau, and in the “stone hills” in New Kowloon, as well as in private and public construction projects. Stonecutters clearly tended to live apart from their families at the quarries where they worked. In 1911 in "Lung Kwu Tan Quarry”, 215 males were recorded, but no females, and in Southern the quarries at Chek Lap Kok and at the "stone hills” in Kwun Tong stand out. Chek Lap Kok had 55 males recorded, with only 22 females, while Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Lei Yue Mun and Cha Kwo Ling - the villages of the "stone hills" - had 625 males between them, but only 339 females. The Quarry Bay villages of Hong Kong Island, and the Shek Shan village in Kowloon, are other cases in point. The censuses are unrevealing on the other known village industries. Up to 1917 there was a major pottery at Wun Yiu near Tai Po, and incense mills at several places, especially Tsuen Wan: none of the workers in these trades are specifically recorded either in 1911 or in 1921, unless under the “general labourer" category. However, the lime ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 126 47 form of incense ashes rather than tablets suggests that the ancestor halls did not use tablets to represent ancestors individually. It is also found in the Yingsheng ("Reception of the Holy") dedicated to the main honoured gods during the Jiao festivals, and the Yingshen Guiwei ("Escorting gods to their places") during the Hongchao festival of Fanling, both conducted by Cantonese Daoist priests in the New Territories. An elder of Kam Tin compared the Yingsheng ritual with the ancestral hall ritual found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, to which I shall refer below. I am not sure if a cloth “bridge” is used in this ancestral hall ceremony. Op cit pp 142-144. In a recent visit to Cheng Tau, a woman in her 60s referred to the ancestral hall as a-gong ha ("the Place of Ancestors"), which seems to have been the more usual expression for ancestral halls among the Hakka. Compare the expression with Bak-gong ha ('the Place of the Bak-gong earth god'). It is interesting that the title of this category of earth god, whose territory is more limited than the dawang, shares the expression for "elder brother of grandfather". ibid p. 224 » 10 174 ibid p 160 Discussion of this aspect of ancestral worship is summarized in C Fred Blake, Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town, The University Press of Hawaii, 1981, pp 92-93, 115 n 1, 116 n 2. A possible example is the case of Wo Hang, N. T. where an ancestral hall of the second fang houses the spirit tablets of the first and second generation. See Allen John Lueck, Lun Chun, Land is to live: A study of the concept of isu in a Hakka Chinese village, New Territories, Hong Kong, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1985, p 273. Compare H G H Nelson, "Ancestor Worship and Burial Practices", in Arthur P. Wolf ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 263-267, on the shen-ting which fulfilled the functions of domestic altars for the households in each area” in a Cantonese village in the New Territories. He observes that the shenting "occupy a place half way between [tang ancestral halls] and domestic altars”. Vol under Donga jie ("Winter festival") TON Op cit. pp 147-148 Op cit. p 12 Op cit. p 176 100 It is interesting to note the distribution and context of Mountain Songs. It is interesting to note that Mountain Songs were sung only by the male villagers (in some festivals with women hired from other villages) in the Cantonese villages whose dialect is known to others as daaih ga wo ("big family language"), and which correspond to the area of the five big clans. In some of the other Cantonese villages, e.g. in Shatin and Saikung, Mountain Songs were sung by the women on the eve before a wedding at the bride's home. Mountain Songs, and related pre-marital courtship, was more popular among some female Cantonese villagers in the Kowloon area who cut grasses for sale as fuel. The livelihood of these women, like that of the Hakka immigrants, depended more on the city. I know much less ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 11 government would not surrender responsibility for, say, Immigration or Inland Revenue; but that other duties were either less clear-cut or simply so expensive as only to be borne by Government - this did not mean that they were not of great interest and concern to local residents. The report proposed that local authorities must be consulted, and enabled to make their views known, on the adequacy of Government’s arrangements or proposals for police and fire-service 'cover', medical, housing and educational facilities (which must silently stretch to financing policy), town-planning and development plans, and public transport. 'Mandatory' executive functions which should be devolved to all local authorities would include: Public Health Control and provision of cleansing & sanitary services; latrines, bath & wash houses, laundries, labourers' lines, swimming pools, offensive trades & markets, hawking, ventilation, overcrowding, advertisements, slaughter houses, cemeteries & mortuaries. Licensing & control of restaurants, tea-houses & cooked food stalls. Notification of infectious diseases and public vaccination. Other Licensing Liquor, barber shops, bars, billiard saloons, bowling alleys, cinemas, dance halls, mahjong shops, money-lenders, pawnbrokers, skating rinks & table tennis saloons. Housing Management of Government low-cost housing estates. Other Weights & Measures & naming of streets. At first sight this miscellany hardly seemed of major public interest, apart from housing management and sanitation, and certainly no more likely to inspire civic consciousness than did the Urban Council which already had these powers in Victoria and Kowloon (its unofficial membership doubled as the Housing Authority.) However the supplementary list of 'permissive' functions which councils could undertake within laid-down standards promised much more delegation of visible powers from central social service Departments. Under Public ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 82 two long roughly-hewn granite slabs. Near villages adjacent to the sea stone jetties were built, the largest almost certainly being that at Kowloon City with its 21 spans, each with five longitudinal slabs supported on granite piers, which was completed in 1875 with a wooden extension added in 1892, and connected to the older Walled City by a wide road. Reclamations were formed, for example, at Sha Tau Kok, Nam Chung and Luk Keng (near Starling Inlet), Shuen Wan and Yuen Long. These were sited on the tidal flats behind rock/mud/stick bunds located at low water level, and incorporated horizontal timber plank sluice gates. It took seven years for the salt to leach out of the sea bed with quarterly flushings before the land could be put to agricultural use. Irrigation schemes were constructed throughout the rural areas involving construction of temporary dams across streams, simple pedal-operated wooden paddle-belt machines for raising water (usually around a metre), small bunds, catchwater channels and even bamboo pipe-aqueducts to cross low-lying ground. To provide power for traditional village industries, wooden water-wheels were installed adjacent to streams. Harbour Works On the signing of the Convention of Chuen-pi in 1841, Captain Belcher of HMS Sulphur undertook a hydrographic survey of Hong Kong Island and the surrounding waters with separate scales indicating sea miles and cables, statute miles and furlongs, and yards. The chart's emphasis was on water depths in fathoms, rocks and coastlines with the general shape of the hills and prominent landmarks shown only for navigational purposes. As the years passed, the benefits of Hong Kong's natural deepwater harbour were exploited and, by the turn of the century, some 40% of China's foreign trade was passing through Hong Kong which had by this time become one of the world's principal ports with its fine dockyards and excellent workforce devoted to shipbuilding and repairing - indeed "a sort of Far Eastern Marine Clapham Junction”. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 98 province. In 1941, construction of a 457m-long tarmac-surfaced runway at Kai Tak for military use on an approximate south-east/north-west orientation, which had already necessitated the dismantling of the RAF hangar, was due to start on 8th December 1941, the precise day on which the Japanese invaded the New Territories and attacked Kai Tak airport. Military/Defence Works Prior to the British administration, there were several forts in the New Territories going back to the early years (17th century) of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the oldest existing fort (1717) probably being that on Tung Lung Chau overlooking the narrow Fat Tong Mun passage in the eastern approaches to the harbour, and the largest still remaining at Tung Chung (60m by 80m) on the northern coast of Lantau, which was completed in 1832. Little remains of the old 4m-high walled Kowloon City, a garrison fort (120m by 230m) with its sturdy granite parapet wall complete with embrasures and watchtowers, which was finished in 1847 soon after the British established themselves on Hong Kong Island. Subsequently, the British military have been involved in a considerable amount of civil engineering. The Royal Engineers were first involved in 1841 in the early construction of Queen's Road in Victoria. Perhaps their most impressive roadworks over the years, constructed before the Pacific war, have been Jat's Incline, which provides access to the upper levels of the steep hills overlooking Kowloon. Nevertheless, the main military engineering effort was expended on providing defences and back-up facilities (for example, naval dockyards, aviation needs, storage depots, barracks, and hospitals), principally against possible seaborne attack by Russia last century and later against the increasingly land/sea invasion threat by Japan in the 1930s. Novel defence measures included excavation of a cavern at Lei Yue Mun towards the end of the nineteenth century to house the sophisticated Brennan torpedo, which, after launching down a ramp, was controlled from the shore with a wire attached to the rudder. Regarding defence facilities, at the outbreak of the Pacific war in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 99 1941 there were thirteen operational batteries (complete with underground ammunition magazines, living quarters and access roads) on the Island, the earliest emplacements for these being built around 1895, an underground battle headquarters off Queen's Road near the naval dockyard (completed in 1940) and scores of reinforced-concrete structures comprising pill-boxes, observation posts, searchlight positions, anti-aircraft sites, bunkers, shelters, ammunition and stores dumps, tunnels and water tanks. On Stonecutters' Island the Royal Navy built between the World Wars a huge ammunition depot which included eleven large underground magazines; earlier the first land-based explosives' depot was completed here in 1876 from where it was transferred to Green Island in 1906. Of the original six battery emplacements designed and constructed on Stonecutters' Island during the period 1880-1905, only one remained commissioned at the outbreak of hostilities. The two battery positions on Devil's Peak in Kowloon overlooking Lai Yue Mun gap were constructed soon after the New Territories' lease was signed in 1898 and a redoubt on top of the hill was completed by the Royal Engineers in 1914. The guns however were removed in 1936 and transferred to the Island. Subsequently the 18km-long Gin Drinkers' defence line was constructed during the mid-1930s across the hills to the north of the Kowloon peninsula and comprised a series of pill-boxes, trenches, bunkers and tunnels, the key feature being the underground Shing Mun Redoubt covering some five hectares on the northern flank of Smugglers' Ridge. The decision to construct air raid shelters so that the whole urban population could be protected was not taken until 1940. In the space of about a year some 22 kilometres of 2.5m-size tunnels (of which about 80% still exist) were constructed on the Island and in Kowloon, including one adjacent to the Secretariat in Lower Albert Road which extended to Government House causing structural damage. In view of the urgent need for these tunnels, the project was arranged on a cost-plus basis and gave rise to rampant corruption, one architect involved even committing suicide to avoid giving evidence. The sub-standard pre-cast concrete breeze blocks made by the Director of Air Raid Precaution's girlfriend's firm are still (or at least until recently) known in the trade as Mimi blocks. Unfortunately the report on the Commission of Enquiry was never made public; it was taken into the Stanley internment ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 151 from the Colonial Office, in London, for the setting up of a Botanical Garden. This garden, which still flourishes today, finally came into being in 1862. But, skipping a hundred years to the Branch's second time around, quite a lot else has been achieved. For example, the RASHKB has built up a respectable library of books on Asia. This is on permanent loan to the Urban Council, at the City Hall, and members of the general public are welcome to refer to it. On the shelves of the RASHKB Collection one can find many old, valuable titles, such as: A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, by Aeneas Anderson (1795) (then in the service of Earl Macartney), and Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, by Captain Sir Edward Belcher RN (1843), in two volumes. Some books in the RAS Collection bear interesting chops (stamps), such as from the old Canton Reading Room and the South China Morning Post's pre-World War II Library. In addition RASHKB Archives, including files, photographs and papers, are deposited with the Government Public Records Office (PRO). Other Branch possessions are on long-term loan to the Hong Kong University. These include the F.A. Nixon, Buddhist, Tang Dynasty Scroll and the 38 M.A. McMullen Bills of Lading, relating to shipments in China from 1825-73. Also held by the University on behalf of the RASHKB are microfilms of 1847-59 Branch procedures and the Nixon Photographs of 991 bronze Nestorian crosses. Although the Society is basically apolitical, and occasionally thought of as being pro-establishment, it has not been afraid to take up cudgels when it felt there was a cause. As examples a letter was sent, in May 1995, to the Hong Kong Government pressing for the retention of the spirit hall and historical and architectural artefacts when the old Nga Tsin Wai Walled Village, in East Kowloon, is demolished. Also, because of some government intransigence at the time, a small group of RASHKB members appeared twice before a Legislative Council committee to press for a properly established Public Records Office. When a purpose-designed, reasonably accessible, PRO opened in June 1997 at Kwun Tong, many members liked to think the RAS played a part in this successful outcome. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 265 THE STORY OF GUN CLUB HILL BARRACKS R.G. HORSNELL Anyone who walks or drives along Austin Road, Kowloon, past the Kowloon Bowling Club towards Chatham Road, cannot fail to notice the imposing entrance to Gun Club Hill Barracks. The old cannon on its granite base at one side of the iron gates guarded by a sentry, and the massive granite retaining wall resembling the wall of an unassailable fortress, make a fitting entrance to the barracks. Yet it did not always look like this. The granite retaining wall was built when the cutting for Austin Road was made, and the main entrance to the barracks originally was from Chatham Road. In the old photograph one can see what the entrance looked like at the turn of the century. Colonnaded buildings stand on the site of the present WOS and Sergeants' Mess, a building in the centre stands on the site of the present Record Office and Training Centre, and a building on the right is where the present Officers' Mess now stands. This building is still there although somewhat remodelled with a front entrance wing added in 1935. It is not known for certain when the barracks were established, but in early 1860, before Kowloon was ceded to Britain after the China Wars, several areas had already been mapped out as possible sites for military barracks. A memorandum from the Secretary of War, dated 1860, stated "The necessity for increased accommodation for the garrison has long been apparent to the military authorities, and the acquisition of a healthy site like that of Kowloon, points at once in the direction in which accommodation must be found." One of the sites which was mapped out was Whitfield Barracks, named after Maj. Gen. H.W. Whitfield, Maj. Gen. China, Hong Kong and Straits Settlements (1869-1874) to the west of Nathan Road in Tsimshatsui. Another site was Gun Club Hill, probably one of the nine hills which gave Kowloon its name. The site then encompassed the Kowloon Cricket Club ground, but the present 25 acre site is bounded by Chatham Road, Austin Road, Jordan Path, Jordan Road and Gascoigne Road, this last road named after another CBF - Maj. Gen. Sir W.J. Gascoigne KCMG, Maj. Gen. China and Hong Kong (1898-1903). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x # ARTICLES # BESIDE THE YAMEN: NGA TSIN WAI VILLAGE # P.H. HASE ## Topography and Early History of the Area The north-east part of the Kowloon Peninsula was, before it became developed as part of the City, a broad flat plain, well watered by a series of streams coming down from the hills, and generally fertile. The coastline (running close to today's Prince Edward Road) was fronted by shallow water, with substantial areas of tidal marsh and mud flats offshore. The area was closed in by hills on all sides except that facing the sea: these hills were high and steep to the north and east, more broken and lower to the west and south, but everywhere formed a clear boundary to the area (see Map 1). The first settlement of Han Chinese in this plain probably dates from the early second century BC. During this period (206-111 BC), the Kwangtung area formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanyueh (南越), centred on Canton. It is known that the Nanyueh Emperors established a Salt Monopoly within their Empire, and it is very likely (although there are no contemporary written records to substantiate this) that a Salt Sub-Intendancy office was founded at Kowloon City shortly after 200 BC, to supervise salt-fields established along the shores of Kowloon Bay and in Mirs Bay, supervised by a Salt Intendant whose office was probably at Nam Tau (Nantou, 南頭), just outside the area of today's New Territories, on Deep Bay2. The Salt Intendants and their subordinates all had garrisons of soldiers, to stop salt-smuggling, and Kowloon City would have become a military post from the date that it became a Salt Monopoly centre. The great tomb at Lei Cheng Uk, which dates to the Nanyueh period, is certainly that of a senior Nanyueh official, and the only senior officials of the Nanyueh at all likely to have been stationed in the Kowloon City area at that date would have been salt officials supervising salt-fields in the Kowloon City area. While there is no specific documentary evidence of salt-working in the Kowloon City area as early as the Nanyueh, a record from AD 265 specifically mentions salt-officials active in the general area east ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 25 Seven, rather than into any relationship with Po Kong. Tai Hom was the only Hakka village in the League of Seven. It was probably this Hakka ethnicity, their rejection by Po Kong, and their relative isolation from Nga Tsin Wai that led the Tai Hom villagers to establish a temple of their own outside their village, somewhere in the period 1821-1850, probably late in the period: it was greatly expanded in 1904. This temple, the Tung Shan Temple (it was dedicated to Kwun Yam) became, for a short period during the 1920s and 1930s, the main religious focus of the "thirteen villages of Kowloon", that is, the villages of both the League of Seven and of the Six Villages Alliance, but it was left ruined in the War. The land south of Ma Tau Kok formed part of the Alliance of Three (三聯盟) of Hung Hom (Hung Hom including Tai Wan, Hok Yuen including Shek Shan, and To Kwa Wan, probably including Ma Tau Kok). The land east of Ngau Chi Wan and Pak Uk Tsai formed the inter-village alliance called "The Four Stone Hills" (四石嶺). This was a sworn alliance of the quarry-villages of this mountainous and infertile area (Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Cha Kwo Ling, and Lei Yue Mun). Inter-village alliances normally centre on joint worship by the elders, either at the higher earth god of the area, or at the local temple. Nothing is now remembered in Nga Tsin Wai of any inter-village worship by the elders of the League of Seven as a group at any higher earth god shrine, nor of any She, * , Feast of the elders in front of the shrine. However, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers do not now even remember where their earth gods used to stand - they were all removed by the Japanese, except for the earth god of the Village Gate - so too much should not be made of this. The elders of the villages of the League of Seven did and do worship the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau, however, on her Birthday each year (the Tai Hom elders consider the villages of the League of Seven as "belonging to the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai"): it is likely that this was the ritual focus of the League, and that the meetings of the elders of the district took place after the worship. The elders hold a feast today after the worship of Tin Hau, and this is probably a very ancient tradition. The Temple, however, was the property of Nga Tsin Wai alone (it is owned by all three of the Nga Tsin Wai clans, and the Manager of the Temple, chosen by the elders of the three clans, is the Village Headman): it was probably for this reason that, on her Birthday, the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 45 Market at Kowloon City grew, so, too, did the numbers of villagers able to get work there as shop-keepers, shop-assistants, or general coolies. It is, again, a mark of the prosperity and local importance of Nga Tsin Wai that villagers from the village were very important in the foundation (1880) and early history of the Lok Sin Tong. This important charitable organisation was founded with the encouragement of the Sub-Magistrate and local Military Commander, with enthusiastic input from merchants in the Market, and local village leaders. The Ng clan of Nga Tsin Wai donated the land on which the Tong stood at its foundation. Prominent among the Tong's early Directors were Ng Shue-fan, RM, (1848-1906) and his first cousin Ng Shue-tong (44) from Nga Tsin Wai. Ng Shue-tong had been the leader of the villagers in the 1854 fight against the Taiping bandits, and must have been in his 60s when the Lok Sin Tong was founded. Ng Shue-fan was a scholarly man. He acted as the accountant of the Ng clan. He bought himself a degree somewhere in the late nineteenth century. The Chans and Lis were also closely involved as early Lok Sin Tong Directors. Chan Tak-hang (1828-1892, also known as Chan Jit-ming) was a Founding Director. He came from the Tseung Kwan O branch of the clan, but was resident in Kowloon Market, where he ran a general store, the Yi Hing Store (H). Since he was living nearby, he was probably regarded by the Nga Tsin Wai community as being "one of their own people". He was a prominent leader of the Kowloon City Kaifong. He also owned a shop in Fatshan, and four shops and a house in Hang Hau Market. He had a cargo junk which was busy in the stone trade, carrying cargo from the Kowloon area, especially stone from the "Four Stone Hills" in the Kwun Tong area, to Fatshan. He prospered greatly, and bought himself a degree in the late nineteenth century. He was a man of great charity, and built a guest-house and school for his clan at Tseung Kwan O, and a number of bridges and piers at various places, especially the great stone pier at Hang Hau Market, and paved the footpaths from Hang Hau to the summit of the pass to Sai Kung above Tseng Lan Shue (these paths and pier were critical to the prosperity of Hang Hau, much of whose trade consisted in handling fish carried from Sai Kung, and then sent on to Hong Kong by Hang Hau merchants). He amassed a large area of agricultural land near Tseung Kwan O (2.3 acres), and was the trustee of a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 50 better wooded - seven hundred years of cutting fuel by Nga Tsin Wai villagers on Lion Rock had left that mountain rather bare of wood). Their mountain could not supply all the fuel the village needed, given its bareness, and the villagers had to buy fuel in Kowloon Market from the hillside villages in Sha Tin which brought it there for sale. When the British closed the hills to wood and grass-cutting after the Lease, in order to undertake a major programme of re-afforestation (several hundreds of thousands of new trees were planted in the Kowloon Hills), this caused major problems to the villagers, since they now had to buy all their fuel (each village was given a fuel reserve to cut fuel from, but these had to be left until the trees there had grown). Illegal fuel gathering was endemic, and led to brawls between villagers and Forest Warders. One villager, at Ngau Chi Wan, according to the Ngau Chi Wan elders, shot and killed a Forest Warder who interrupted him while he was illegally cutting wood - the village, with considerable trepidation, decided to fee an expensive European barrister, who, to the village's vast delight managed to get him off (the village is still speaking of this 80 years later). Villagers often went down sick (the average age of death in the New Territories in 1911 was about 20 years of age, and those who survived to 16 could expect to die by about 45-50). There were several dozen doctors in Kowloon City, but they were very expensive, and the villagers rarely used them. The Lok Sin Tong would give free medicine as a charitable act in certain circumstances, and the villagers would sometimes go there, but usually the villagers used their own village remedies, using herbs from the hills, which were boiled up to make medicinal teas or used to make medicinal washes or baths. Not all the village families knew which herbs to pick - village families with this knowledge kept it secret as it represented good income. Some village remedies were fearsome - a tea made from boiling up bat-dung scraped from the floor of the Ancestral Hall was used to cure certain childhood fevers, for instance, and a split pod of wild black pepper was bound round the wrist of children seriously ill with malaria, and left there until it had eaten its way deeply into the flesh. Witchcraft, involving secret prayers and incantations, and strange ritual acts, was often used as well - there were several village women who knew how to "call the spirits" in this way. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 57 and patchings. It was at this date that the village started to look generally run-down. Despite the obvious problems, the displaced villagers who took up the empty premises inside the walls managed to survive the War. Although the village had lost many fields to the new Airport and the new nullah, nonetheless, what was left enabled the village to survive - just by growing vegetables for the market at Yaumatei. The villagers all starved, but not quite to the point of death. This is unusual - very few villages in the New Territories were able to survive the War without even one person dying of hunger. Many of the villagers, in their blazing hatred of the Japanese, however, joined the guerrillas who were active in the hills behind Kowloon. As a result, there were several raids by the Japanese on the village. Several villagers were taken and executed (by beheading, usually in front of the village) for assisting the guerrillas. The villagers say that between a minimum of three and perhaps as many as seven village men were executed in this way. The present Temple Keeper of the Tin Hau Temple had her husband of less than a year beheaded in this way. By the end of the War, the village was on its last legs. "If the War had gone on another year, we would all have died": this statement is heard from all over the New Territories, including very definitely Nga Tsin Wai. At the end of the War, the village looked to an improvement. The returning British felt they had to keep the Airfield as extended by the Japanese, but they paid solid compensation in cash to all the villagers whose land or houses had been taken by the Japanese. Some years later the "Model Village" was closed down, but compensation was, again, paid to those living there. New work opportunities began to open up. The village was able to find funds for a full-scale restoration of their Tin Hau Temple, in thanksgiving for the favours shown them by the goddess during the years of hardship (1948). Before these improvements could bring about any major changes, however, the Revolution in China sent another wave of refugees into Hong Kong. As in the late 1930s, many of these settled around Nga Tsin Wai, on what was left of the villagers' fields. From Diamond Hill to Kowloon City, there was, by the middle 1950s, a solid mass of squatter housing interspersed with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 59 size of the old Hall), and the Government built a new school behind the village, and handed it over to the villagers to manage. At about the same date, however, the Government included all the remaining houses within the walls in its Squatter Survey, giving them the Squatter Survey numbers they still show painted on their outer walls. By thus classing the ancient houses in Nga Tsin Wai as squatter structures, the Government made it difficult, or even impossible, for the houses to be rebuilt, or even to be given anything other than the most cursory of repairs. As a result, the village, already very run-down in the mid 1950s following the Wartime emergency repairs to the houses, became slowly more and more shabby. By the 1960s, very little survived to remind visitors of the proud and prosperous village of a half-century before. The incident in 1967, when the villagers closed their gates and readied themselves for a possible defence of the village against the rioters in San Po Kong was the last flicker of the old village pride. Almost all the Nga Tsin Wai clan ancestral graves have been cleared for development in the last 45 years. Resites have proved very difficult to find. The Ngs have re-buried many of their disturbed graves in a single site near Shap Yi Wat village, high in the hills behind Kowloon. The clan have, however, been forced to store many other sets of remains within their Ancestral Hall, a sad abuse forced on the clan because of these resite problems. The area within the semi-circle of Choi Hung Road, which had been taken by the Japanese for the extension of the Airport, in turn was developed for industrial and residential use in the early 1960s. A major programme of expansion was undertaken at the Airport, around a huge reclamation project involving a new runway extending out to sea (1956). The seaward end of the Japanese nullah was re-laid further to the east (this did not affect the part close to Nga Tsin Wai village). When this was completed, Prince Edward Road was extended across the old Japanese Airport site, to allow development to start at the Kwun Tong New Town. The area between the new Prince Edward Road and Choi Hung Road became superfluous to the Airport, and thus was freed for re-development. The new re-development area was given the name San Po Kong, "New Po Kong"), although few people realise today the significance of the name. Thus, year-by-year, the old village communities of Kowloon ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 62 market clearly grew in the later nineteenth century, but it was already large and prosperous by 1846. "The map is the Coastal Map of Kwangtung of 1553 of Ying Ka (MW l), reproduced in Hal Empson, Mapping Hong Kong: A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong, Government Information Services, 1992, Plate 1-2. Kowloon is not included in the list of Markets in the 1688 San On County Gazetteer (at least, not under an easily recognisable name), but both a "Kwun Fu Village" (九龍墟) and a “Kowloon Village" (九龍村) are, as well as Nga Tsin Wai, Po Kong, and Ma Tau Wai Villages. Despite this, however, it seems likely that a market was in existence at Kowloon City from well before the late seventeenth century. The Kowloon City Market is equally not included in the 1819 County Gazetteer, by which date there can be no shadow of a doubt that the market was very well, and very long, established. The earliest surviving land-deeds for the market date from 1751 and 1755, by when, clearly, the market was well-established: see J. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside, Hamden, Connecticut, 1977, p. 235, n. 14. In 1822, when the Hau Wong Temple near the market was restored, 85 shops from Kowloon City Market donated to the restoration, together with 5 (probably apothecaries), 31 quarries (石場), presumably from the surrounding hills, 4 ferryboats and 29 fishing-boats, as well as 8 shops from other markets. Clearly, the market was, in 1822, a vital and very well established place. See D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit. Vol. 1, pp. 75-78. WE The dates of 1354 and 1724 are included on a tablet giving the history of the village placed by the villagers in the Tin Hau Temple in the village. The details of the three founders' connections with the late Sung court are from statements made by village elders to Dr Hayes, and again to me, at various dates. 14 I have used a copy of one of the Nga Tsin Wai hand-written versions (kindly given to me by Mr Ng Hung-on, 吳雄安), the (privately printed) Nga Tsin Wai Wai Clan Genealogy (寶安縣衙前圍吳氏族譜), and the hand-written version from Siu Lek Yuen, a copy of which may be found in the “Historical Literature of Sha Tin" series in the library of United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. 15 A copy was kindly given me by Mr Chan Wai-hong (陳偉康). This Tsuk Po was produced some years ago, from genealogical information written on the back of the clan Ancestral Tablets. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 89 called. 'hair vegetable), is a homonym for 'get rich'. This basin-meal lunch was the final item on the agenda for the day that the main ceremony was held. With this having taken place on the Wednesday at Sheung Tsuen, and the god, Taai Wong Ye, having been burned the same evening, the bamboo-framed matshed was dismantled the following day. As follow up, the Author thus decided to return to the village three days later. The five tun fu pots filled with sand, with a single, split-bamboo talisman with prayers written on it in each pot, had been placed circling the old banyan tree (see Plate 7). Tied to the top of each talisman was a golden (foil) kam fa and a red ribbon - both auspicious colours. There were remains of joss sticks burned by villagers. 10 Further follow up visits by the Author revealed that, on the 1st and the 15th of every Chinese month especially, joss sticks are burned near the tun fu pots largely by elderly women on behalf of their families. Nevertheless, the pots often give the impression of not being particularly well looked after. The site is untidy. This is a pity. The new West Railway line, of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, is planned to come into operation in November 2003. The tunnel is due to be finished in 2002. The pots will be left for the full duration of its construction and, if they cease to be effective, a nuen fu ('warming' of the talismans) "revival ceremony" may be needed. If so, Taoist priests will again officiate. Comparisons of various tun fu ceremonies How does the Pat Heung ceremony compare with other tun fu ceremonies that have been conducted elsewhere (Baker; 1980, 21)? Unfortunately the Author has not been able to find any written information, nor has he heard any oral accounts of tun fu ceremonies conducted outside Hong Kong although he gathers they do take place in places like Taiwan. Often in Hong Kong, like the one mentioned earlier (see Endnote 1) on Ma Wan Island, or those that the Author has seen in places like Sha Tin and Kam Tin, the pots were placed near earth-god shrines. All these ceremonies were much smaller than the main ceremony at Pat Heung described in this paper. No matsheds were erected at these smaller gatherings. Sometimes ceremonies are held close to tsz tongs (ancestral halls), although not normally inside. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 126 indicated in Table 1, the Japanese outnumbered the Hong Kong garrison by 3.09 (X). However, they could only inflict a casualty rate of 2.11 (Y). The Singapore garrison, by comparison, fared better than its counterpart in Crete. Some Speculative Thoughts Regarding the Merits of the Defence Constrained by the statistics available to the author, the above analysis is crude indeed. However, it raises the point that the Hong Kong garrison, however unprepared and poorly equipped, had fought quite well. There are indeed sources that suggest a much higher casualty rate for the Japanese. Why was this the case? Any answer to this question surely requires a much more rigorous study. A number of speculative points and observations worthy of attention are raised below. Firstly, the geography of Hong Kong rendered defence more effective than that of Singapore. It is a cliché that the Japanese forces were well trained and prepared. Yet, they did suffer great losses. Most such losses were incurred when they made attempts to cross the harbour and in fighting for control of the hills and gaps on Hong Kong Island. In both the Battle of Singapore and the Battle of Hong Kong, the Japanese forces aimed at capturing reservoirs as their tactical targets, as they had anticipated long resistance and the loss of water supply would erode the morale of the defending forces and their ability to continue fighting. Unlike the Island of Singapore, Hong Kong Island is much larger in size, and is highly rugged in relief with several reservoirs in different parts of the upland areas. Secondly, the size of the garrison was also a factor. Comparing again Hong Kong and Singapore, a smaller garrison operating in a more defensible topography proved to be more battle worthy than a large number of troops congested in a much smaller flat island devoid of air cover and was running out of fresh water. Thirdly, notwithstanding criticism of the design weakness of the Gin Drinkers Line, the Hong Kong garrison fought in an orderly manner according to a pre-conceived plan with defence structures well in place. As soon as the under-powered Shing Mun Redoubt was lost, the garrison evacuated the New Territories and Kowloon to prepare for ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 169 the hills. In temples in and around Hsintien and Mucha Wang Gong is revered as the protective deity (with the pair being revered in a few places but still known as Wang Gong) with his [their] annual festival celebrated on the 10th day of the fourth lunar month, but largely without the great majority of devotees realizing the original identity of the deities. Wang Gong A is also referred to as Weng Gong and Huang Gong A, both of which are almost certainly erroneous titles due to mistaken homophones. In and around Hangzhou they are known together as Er Da Ming Huang [The Two (Generals) of Tang emperor Ming Huang]. A fierce image of Zhang, with his mouth wide open used to stand on a minor altar in a small temple near Donghu, a city some sixty miles upstream from Hangzhou. Devotees there believed that pain could be cured merely by touching the abdomen of the image whilst throwing a few coppers into its mouth. Two large images of Zhang and Xu in an old temple some fifteen miles east of Hangzhou, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been replaced with modern images with the image makers being guided by the elderly from memory. This temple stands out in the countryside with the nearest village some half a mile away and with the catchment area for contributions for the rebuilding extending some ten miles in all directions. The refurbished temple has yet [early 1994] to have the two dozen aides flanking the side of the main hall completed, though the images of their main deities and their consorts have been finished. They are regarded as the local protective deities. In 1963 in Hong Kong, in a Chaozhou community squatter-shack temple on Lion Rock hillside above Kowloon [now long demolished], the two deities, represented on a framed paper icon on the main altar as two relaxed, seated mandarins in floral robes, were first identified as "The Two Loyal Dukes" or "the Two Loyal Saintly Lords". The two deities were later identified by several devotees as Wang Zhang Ek and Wang Xu Elf. The two mandarins, with long black beards, were identical and were prayed to as the patron deities and protectors of Chaozhou people. In 1927 Goodrich in Beijing recorded seeing images of “two famous generals of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan” in the Dongyue Temple to the east of the city.13 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 272 on the events of that time It seems that the Japanese authorities, strict though they were, did take the initiative which led to the provision of Model Village, and that it was they who had appointed contractors to carry out construction, and had allowed those involved to work on the project and to receive a payment in rice for a day's work. Such payments were received on other projects of the time. One such was the construction of the new stormwater nullah that ran alongside Nga Tsin Wai - referred to in Patrick Hase's article on the village. Two ladies from Ngau Tau Kok village in East Kowloon, interviewed in 1967, had both worked as earth coolies on it, and also on the demolition of houses and the lowering of small hills for the extended airfield. Stones from the houses had been used to build the nullah. The two had carried the 100 piculs of soil and stones needed to earn one catty of rice, but said that men who could manage 140 or 150 piculs would earn proportionately more. The working day was 7 am until 12 noon, and then 1-5 pm. At that time, rice was precious, and more useful than money. As one village woman told me (born 1880), 'you could buy 40 catties of rice for a dollar when I was young, but during the Occupation, one catty cost two dollars - if you could get it.' Another villager, one of the elders of Nga Tsin Wai, born in 1884, said that 'people would sell a whole roof of tiles and wooden beams to contractors, for two dollars.' I also spoke to two ladies at Chuk Yuen Village in 1963, who had described the removal of the large and old village of Po Kong, in its entirety, along with the nearby hamlets of Ta Kwu Ling, Shek Kwu Lung and Kak Hang, to make way - as they said - for a road and the airfield extension, adding that the Japanese built new stone houses for them and gave rice compensation instead of cash; which 'was much more useful to us at that time, when money was worth very little.' Other information was available that embellished the account of this difficult time. A man of 52, born at Ta Kwu Ling in 1915, told me in 1966 that part of the village was demolished, not for the airfield extension but because they were too close to it; the Japanese military authorities thinking that it might harbour guerillas who could damage ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 248 The Chinese Burial Ground having become offensive in consequence of the corpses being so close to the surface it was found necessary to spread a quantity of quick lime over the whole area at a cost of £20.16s this was provided for by Requisition 5 of 1856. In was in the same year that an ordinance was passed to regulate Chinese Burials, and to prevent certain Nuisances, within the Colony of Hongkong. This Ordinance 12 of 1856 became the first step taken by the government to regulate Chinese burials by the establishment of special Chinese cemeteries. In addition to regulating the burial grounds, due to the 'nuisances' described above, the ordinance also stated that 'a Grave of less than Five Feet in depth from the ordinary surface of the ground to the uppermost side of the Corpse or Coffin therein deposed, shall for every such Offence forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding Fifty Dollars, nor less than Five Dollars.' 58. However, it was only fifteen years later in 1871 that the first designated Chinese burial ground was created, which was located in Kowloon. The plot of land was ‘situated about one Quarter of a mile to the North-east of the Village of Yau-ma-Tee.' It became the only lawful place for the Chinese inhabitants of British Kowloon to inter their dead until the establishment of another cemetery in 1885. But no designated Chinese burial ground on the island has so far been traced prior to this announcement. The first Chinese cemetery on the island was selected and appointed in 1882, at Mount Davis ‘measuring on the North thereof 40 feet, on the South thereof 40 feet, on the East thereof 60 feet, and on the West thereof 60 feet.”59 In 1882, the first two cemeteries for Chinese Christians were authorized. The first one was located ‘on the Eastern slope of the Shaukiwan Hills, on a contour line about 300 feet above the level of the sea, marked by four boundary stones and measuring on the North thereof 200 feet, on the South thereof 200 feet, on the East thereof 400 feet, and on the West thereof 400 feet." The second one was on the west side of the island, ‘on the Western slope of the Hills below the Pokfulam Road, marked by five boundary stones, and bounded on the North by Mount Davis on the South by Crown Land, on the East by the Pokfulam Road, and on the West by the Sea (Sandy Bay) high water mark, and containing about 43 acres. 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 273 * For instance, HKGG Notices 423 of 13th August 1920 and 44 of 4 February 1921. The old Kowloon Tong Village was located about the present Tai Hang Tung Recreation Ground site. HKGG Notice 369 of 16 July 1926. 93 See Empson, p. 181. » HKGG Notice 540 of 23rd December 1921. Removal of some graves in Kowloon Tong Cemetery was ordered in 1924 for the laying out of roads and building sites, see HKGG Notices 366 of 20th June and 712 of 19th December 1924. 95 HKGG Notice 936 of 30th September 1949. SI 9 HKGG Notice 1020 of 1 September 1950. 97 Around the present Wah Fu Estate area. The cemetery had also been referred to as MARK'in some government notices, e.g., HKGG Notices 420 of 18th July 1924 and 253 of 29th April 1927 etc. 98 The road was later renamed Victoria Road. 99 The origin of this early Kai Lung Wan Cemetery is not known yet. 100 HKGG Notification 692 of 17th August 1906. Similar to Chai Wan Cemetery, a very large section of the Kai Lung Wan Cemetery was later under the management of the Tung Wah Hospital, the cemetery was called 'Tung Wah Hospital, Kai Lung Wan'. But the detail for this development is not known. In 1939, there were 10,679 interments in the Tung Wah section of the cemetery, see Annual Report of the Chairman Urban Council Hong Kong for the year 1939, p. M(1)17. Also, according to a 1951 stone inscription at the Chiu Chow section of the Wo Hop Shek Cemetery, another section of the Kai Lung Wan Cemetery was reserved for the Chiu Chow dead in about 1923. 101 In a 1978 government map (HONG KONG STREETS & PLACES VOLUME 2: THE OFFICIAL GUIDE KOWLOON & THE NEW TERRITORES, p. 83), Tseung Loong Tin (Cheung Lung Tin) is referred to a hillside area between Lam Tin and Yau Tong. 102 Cha Kwo Ling was one of the 'Four Hills' (194) villages in eastern Kowloon. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 338 our concrete framed building, where I lived in Argyle Street, Kowloon, swayed. You could hear glass breaking, there was a constant job of mopping up. Water seals were sucked out of toilets. A problem of people As Claude Burgess, Colonial Secretary from 1958 to '63, was fond of saying, Hong Kong has a problem of people. They have swum in on pigs' bladders across Mirs Bay and Deep Bay and come in by just about every means possible. Up until 1980 there was a touch base policy. Any illegal immigrant who reached the urban area was allowed to stay. But after that date all illegal immigrants caught have been repatriated. In 1962, the Communists had a trial run and opened the 'flood gates.' Over a period of 25 days something like 70,000 men, women and children were allowed to surge into Hong Kong. The communist guards stepped back and directed the masses. They walked over the hills. Hong Kong was overwhelmed. And then, just as abruptly as they had opened, the flood gates shut. It seems to have been a move by the People's Republic to embarrass the colony. They wanted to show that they could take over Hong Kong at any time. Water shortage Hong Kong was invariably short of water, from the early years of British rule when everyone depended on streams and wells. Up to comparatively recent years the water supply situation was a common subject of conversation. In 1963, 'the year Hong Kong ran dry,' we were down to four hours of water on tap once every four days. In resettlement estates people started queuing for water eight hours before it was turned on and at Diamond Hill, it was reported, 20,000 people were dependent on one hydrant. Thieves stole water. Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and Christians all prayed for rain. Water was shipped in by tankers from higher up the Pearl River. People would say at a reception, 'I must slip off early. Our water is turned on tonight.' Of course we, who lived in flats, also stored water. Bathing in a small amount of water was an art. Children went in the ================================================================================