RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d
22 

T. C. CHENG 

In May 1915, Japan forced the Republic of China, then under the premiership of Yuan Shih-kai, to accept the "Twenty-one Demands". Four years later, in 1919, the Chinese delegation failed at the Peace Conference in Paris to prevent the "transfer" of Germany's "rights and privileges" in the Shantung Province to Japan. As a result of this complete disregard of China's sovereignty by the foreign powers, thousands of students took part in processions demonstrating against foreign militarism and oppression in China on 4 May 1919. In response, students, merchants, and workers throughout China also staged demonstrations and strikes, thereby sparking off in China the "May 4 Movement". Chinese national feelings were also stirred by the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (or K.M.T.), who now pressed for the abolition of extra-territorial rights and unequal treaties and the retrocession of foreign concessions. All these had serious repercussions in Hong Kong, and in 1922 the first of a series of seamen's strikes began. On 30th May 1925, certain Chinese demonstrators were shot and killed by British policemen in the International Settlements in Shanghai. This led to more serious strikes and demonstrations in Shanghai, Canton, and Hong Kong, culminating in an economic boycott which paralysed Hong Kong.

During this period, the Chinese unofficials, viz., Chow Shou-son, Ng Hon-tsz (who died in May 1923) and Robert Kotewall (who succeeded Ng Hon-tsz), and other prominent Chinese leaders, including Sir Robert Hotung and the directors of Tung Wah Hospital, stood solidly by the Government. Some of them actually acted as unofficial middlemen in negotiations between Hong Kong and the seamen's representatives in Canton. The services rendered by Chow Shou-son and Robert Kotewall during this crisis were so valuable and outstanding that speedy recognition was accorded to them. In 1926, Chow was created a knight. Kotewall was given the honorary degree of LL.D. by the University of Hong Kong, and the following year was awarded the C.M.G.

It may be of interest to quote here the Governor Sir Cecil Clementi's remarks made in early 1926 at a Legislative Council meeting about the big strike of 1925 and the boycott that followed: "We are determined to give full protection to the people of Hong Kong, and to put down with a firm hand any conspiracy to intimidate or otherwise to cause trouble among labourers and
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
The District Watch Committee

125

Chinese Affairs, spent most of its time in session discussing social and economic problems. In 1913, for example, among subjects discussed at its deliberations were the regulation of Chinese theatres, the prohibition of the circulation of foreign notes and silver, and means for the more effective regulation of Chinese householders; in 1914 the prohibition of all new Chinese restaurants in the Central District, the licensing of singing girls, and the classification of boarding houses (emigration houses and hotels); and in 1915 the restriction on the numbers of clubs and societies, the appointment of midwives, the question of payment of wine and spirit licenses, and the question of new legislation for money loan associations33. It is not surprising, then, that the Secretary for Chinese Affairs was pleased to write in 1918 that 'the loyal advice and assistance of this important Committee (which deals with every kind of question affecting the Chinese community) continues to be of the greatest value to Government'. The stabilising role of the Committee is also made clear by its activity during periods of intense crisis in the Colony. Thus the Committee was extremely active during the period of ebullition following from the 1911 Revolution in China; it also helped to prevent violence during the short time when diplomatic relations between China and Japan were strained in 1915; it played a part in bringing to an end the bitter seamen's strike of 1922 and the strike and boycott of 1925-192634. It was a Committee, as Lockhart probably intuited it would become, that allowed the Chinese to 'regulate' themselves within the fairly broad limits set by government,

The committees of the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the District Watch Force, together with those of some other associations such as the Lok Sin Tong and the Chung Sing Benevolent Society35, formed a system. The system was, in terms, of prestige, influence and power, an hierarchical one. The Tung Wah Board of Directors was usually recruited from ex-committeemen of the Po Leung Kuk; and the District Watch Committee always contained a very large number of former members of the Po Leung Kuk and the Tung Wah Hospital. The District Watch Committee thus formed the apex of a pyramidal and hierarchical structure, at the base of which were local-based associations such as Kaifong, and also district and clansmen associations, and guilds of employers36. But the prestige
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
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
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
102

H. J. LETHBRIDGE

Row in Tai Ping Shan was then known as 'Samshu Corner' because many Europeans resorted to it for cheap topping. The commissioners ascertained that much drinking went on in barracks, troops sending Chinese 'boys' out to buy bottles of samshu or whisky for them. Drunkenness was a direct consequence of boredom and idleness.

The problem of venereal disease was related to that of drinking, for bars and brothels clustered together. From 1867 to 1887, the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, patterned on the English act of 1866, was in force in the colony to protect the health of British servicemen. Briefly, the 1867 ordinance made all prostitutes working in licensed brothels for Europeans only (Chinese brothels for Chinese only were exempted) subject to compulsory medical inspection at the Lock Hospital. European prostitutes, on the other hand, could undergo examination at home. It was claimed that the repeal of the Hong Kong ordinance in 1889, following the repeal of the English act in 1886, led to an upsurge in the rates for venereal disease. In 1895, admissions into hospital for venereal infection in the home army were 173.8 per 1,000; in India, 522.3; in Hong Kong, about the same figure.

It follows, then, that the chance of a male member of the European lower orders becoming infected with venereal disease was always high during the period under review here, 1842-1900. The police, for example, were so prone to catching this social disease, almost an occupational disease for them, that at one time they were also subject to compulsory medical inspection. The practice was stopped in 1873, but before that date, there was a monthly examination of all foreign members of the force.

Middle-class Europeans did not escape entirely from all these afflictions from alcoholism, syphilis, boredom, and loneliness. Both classes Taipans and pong-paan — also fell victim at times to a variety of diseases, such as malaria, typhus, cholera, and bubonic plague, as the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley amply testifies. But the well-to-do could at least escape to the Peak from Hong Kong's enervating summer, or recuperate in cooler latitudes, in Japan or northern China; and since many of the prosperous were respectably married and lived a normal family life, cosseted by a houseful of servants, they were protected to some degree by domestic circumstances from the temptations that soldiers, sailors, seamen, and their kind, had to face day and night in the city.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY

103

The European lower orders were not, of course, totally neglected by their superiors. The church and the various missionary societies, such as the Mission to Seamen, did their best to elevate the moral tone of the less fortunate. Various institutions were established to cater to their needs—a Sailors' Home at West Point, close to the Seamen's Church, St. Peter's, and a Soldiers and Sailors' Rest at East Point. By the end of the century, there was also a Union Jack Club, a Royal Naval Seamen's Club, a United Services Club, an Institute of Marine Engineers, complete with technical library and librarian, and a branch of the British Mercantile Marine Officers' Association (the last two catered for a merchant navy elite). A Seamen's Hospital had also been opened.

The military authorities, in turn, strongly backed the work of the Army Temperance Association and the Independent Order of Good Templars, a society of abstainers formed in America in 1851, which had ramified over the Anglo-Saxon world. No doubt all these associations, societies, and clubs did sterling work and restrained some servicemen from seeking the scabrous temptations offered by Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai; but they did not offer enough to the average soldier or sailor, only tea and buns, prayers and uplift, draughts and dominoes, and the ministrations of lay missioners, missionary ladies, and army and naval chaplains.

In 1889, the Hong Kong Ladies' Benevolent Society was founded 'for the purpose of rendering assistance in cases of sickness, want, poverty, or distress arising from time to time amongst persons other than members of the Portuguese or Chinese communities'. The society helped defray the passage home of destitute Europeans and educated orphaned European children; in some cases, it paid the rents of the hard-up and obtained employment for those stranded in the colony.

What the government felt about poor whites is mirrored in the report prepared by Dr. Eitel in 1880 on the treatment of paupers in Hong Kong:

In the case of British destitutes, anything done by the Government over and above what is now being done in furnishing such destitutes with board and lodgings in the Gaol, would tend to make the condition of a 'beach comber' or destitute here more eligible than the lot of the hardworking seaman or stoker, and consequently put a premium on loafing and idleness... I would
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m
THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAJ QUESTION IN THE 1920'S 109

the YWCA, the Seamen's Union and a large representation from other unions. The unions were again expressing themselves after the 1921 seamen's strike.

Twenty speakers secured the floor to present their views. All but three were in favour of the Bill. One of the speakers in favour was Mrs. Ma Ying-piu, representing the YWCA. For a woman to address a mixed public meeting of Chinese was an unusual event in conservative Hong Kong.

As soon as the meeting opened under the Chairmanship of Mr. Lo Chung-kiu, the Chairman of the Tung Wah Hospital Directors, there were signs the meeting might not be as smooth as its organizers had planned. A question of procedure was raised regarding the Chairmanship: why should not the meeting elect its own Chairman as it had been convened by the Kai Fong and not by Tung Wah? The Chairman replied it was invariably the practice for Tung Wah to appoint the Chairman for meetings held on its premises. The matter was not pushed.

Then began a succession of speakers supporting the Bill. Their remarks were frequently punctuated by applause initiated by the large section representing the Seamen's Union. They particularly acclaimed the speech of Mrs. Ma. She put forth the thesis that it was women who were principally responsible for the system. They did most of the buying and selling and were responsible for the mistreatment of the girls.

Mr. M. K. Lo spoke in favour of the Bill. Although the Hon. Mr. Chow Shou-son and Mr. T. N. Chau were present, they remained silent.

A speaker from the YMCA attacked the rich, instructing them that they should use their wealth to develop industry to provide employment for the poor instead of selfishly hoarding their wealth and using labour in their homes they need not give wages to.

Things began to get out of order when a speaker against the Bill asked why everything was being done for women when men coolies were being sold daily. Voices were raised demanding the Chairman rule the speaker out of order. But he was allowed to continue though he could hardly be heard above the uproar of protests. He eventually had to stop. At this point there was a stamping of feet and repeated cries of "vote".
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m
172

NG LUN NGAI-HA

The person in Hong Kong who had the most direct influence on Sun's thought was Ho Kai, a founder and also a teacher of the Hong Kong Medical College, teaching medical jurisprudence and physiology.1 Ho was the son of a missionary of Cantonese origin who later settled in Hong Kong and became a businessman. Ho himself received his early education at the Central School and then left in 1872 to continue his secondary and then university education in Britain. He returned in 1882 as a qualified medical doctor and barrister. As a prominent civic leader, he served as the Chinese representative in various Government councils and boards, including the Legislative Council and the Sanitary Board. He was a great promoter of Western medicine and education for the Chinese in Hong Kong. In addition to the Alice Memorial Hospital and the Hong Kong Medical College, he was also a founder of the University of Hong Kong and patron of a number of Anglo-Chinese schools. In the Sino-French war of 1884-1885, when China failed to protect Annam, the Chinese seamen and coolies in Hong Kong reacted patriotically in boycott against French ships. Ho began to be concerned with the fate of China and the need for her modernization. From 1887 onwards, Ho began to contribute articles to the local English language newspapers, expressing his views on affairs in China. Most of his reformist essays were translated into Chinese or rewritten by Hu Li-huan and published both in Hong Kong and in China.2 Hu also received part of his education at the Central School both as a student and then as a student-teacher between 1862 and 1872. Unlike Ho, whose education was mainly in English, Hu had received very solid education in classical Chinese, and later won great fame as a gifted prose writer, scholar and poet. He was also a comprador and a very successful businessman.

Because of Ho's and Hu's prominence in Hong Kong, their essays must have caught the attention of many intellectuals. Ho's first essay was a long critical review of Tseng Chi-tse's article, "China, the Sleep and the Awakening". The review was published in the China Mail on February 12, 1887, three days after Tseng's article appeared in the same paper. Ho argued that the real cause of China's troubles lay not so much in her military weakness as in her "loose morality and evil habits, both social and political". He strongly emphasized complete and sweeping reforms in China's administration. More specifically, Ho demanded a new basis for recruiting officials as the existing civil examinations involved no knowledge of modern science or arts and were worthless as a test of real ability and talent. He also considered
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641
Council Member, together with his wife, back to Hong Kong last December. We hope Immediate Past President David Gilkes will also come back to see us. We sincerely hope, too, that he and Edith, who also attended so many of our functions, will enjoy a long and happy retirement together.

Personalities are obviously important. They help to make a society. That is why it was especially interesting, in December 1996, when Professor P. S. Erasmus G. Harland lectured about his forebear, Dr. William Aurelius Harland, who took up a position in 1843 at the Seamen's Hospital in Hong Kong. He served in the Colony as a prominent physician until 1858 and translated several Chinese medical works into English. During his time in the Colony he was, of course, a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, first time around. That is from 1847 to 1859. During that period the Society proposed that the Botanical Gardens be established. It was a pity our Branch slumbered for a century.

Membership

Your Council decided, in January 1997, that, with manageability being a consideration, the optimum membership was probably about 650. But with so many leaving Hong Kong with the change-over, this figure is largely academic. The President, Dr. J. R. Jones, wrote in his 1960-61 Branch Report.

As we are a Royal Society, we do not go out into the highways and byways to recruit members.

Since then, conditions have altered. We need to keep membership up to ensure adequate funding. In this regard public relations, including radio, television and press interviews, play a part. As at 22 March 1997 the membership stood at 500 locally, with an additional 85 members overseas. The number of local members could, in fact, be fewer than 500 as, unfortunately, some members do not inform us when they leave the Territory.

With a spirit of localisation prevailing in Hong Kong, but within the framework of an English-speaking Society, we have, over the past few years tried to encourage more Chinese to become members.

xi
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579
91

Kong village in 1936, thus providing access to the proposed second airfield site at Pat Heung. In the following year the first roadworks on the outlying islands were undertaken at Muk Wo (Mui Wo) on Lantau, primarily to provide access to the ferry pier.

Drainage

In 1843, a particularly bad year for disease, some essential drainage was begun and, by 1847, 740 metres of city drains had been laid in Victoria. At Happy Valley the muddy waters discharging from the surrounding hills via Wong Nei Chong (literally yellow mud stream) created swamp and healthwise lethal conditions, in particular following heavy rain. By 1846 the rice and sweet potato farmers at Happy Valley were bought out and the flat land drained, thus making the area less unhealthy than before. In spite of drainage improvements in and around the city, the mortality rate amongst European troops remained exceptionally high, for instance in 1851 it reached 24% compared with 10% for the civilian population, this latter percentage being swollen by the deaths of seamen. In the early days, to avoid flooding in low-lying areas, main drainage nullahs (large open channels) were constructed, the earliest in the central district probably being the Murray Barracks Nullah, which ran through the naval dockyard area, and the winding Victoria Barracks Nullah. At East Point, an impressive 6m-wide and 3.6m-deep nullah, the Bowrington Canal (now decked and located under Canal Road) which carried the run-off from the Happy Valley catchment area was planned as early as 1842. In Wan Chai, Stone Nullah Lane was located above a stream which ran below Hospital Hill (to the east of Morrison Hill).

The quality of design/workmanship in the original drainage system clearly left a lot to be desired as, in 1860, a very heavy rain storm is reported to have burst most of the drains and also caused the collapse of some houses in Canton Bazaar (off Queen's Road opposite to the naval dockyard). During the violent typhoon in 1874, mounds of soil were again thrown up by bursting drains. The sewers also had other uses, for instance in 1863 twenty-two prisoners were known to have escaped from the old gaol in Hollywood Road by way of the monsoon drains whilst, in the next two years, the ingenuity and engineering skill displayed by “drain gangs" was such that a godown, jewellery store and even the vaults of a bank were entered by using storm-water drains.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579
153

a Chinese novel into English.

Other eminent persons who were Fellows of the RASHKB first time around were Dr James Legge, of the London Missionary Society, sinologist and headmaster, who has been described as,

...perhaps the most important intellectual, among both foreigners and Chinese, in 19th century Hong Kong (Pfister 1993: 180).

One of his most important works is the eight-volume set of translations of the Chinese Classics.

Another Fellow of the RAS was Thomas Wade, the celebrated interpreter and envoy to China, who invented the Wade system of romanisation of Chinese. In 1887, as Sir Thomas, he became President of the RAS in London.

In 1996, Professor P.S. Erasmus G. Harland came from England to deliver a lecture to the Hong Kong Branch about his forebear. RAS Fellow Dr William Aurelius Harland MD, came to Hong Kong in 1843 to fill a post at the Seamen's Hospital. He also translated several Chinese medical works into English and later served as Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS. He died in September 1858 and was buried in the Colonial Cemetery (now the Hong Kong Cemetery).

With the departure of Sir John Bowring and the death of its devoted Secretary, Dr W.A. Harland, the Hong Kong Branch collapsed. This came at an unfortunate time and deprived the RASHKB of prestige it would shortly have gained. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translations of the Chinese classics. Another member, T.W. Kingsmill, in 1865 had to obtain the help of the Shanghai Branch of the RAS to publish his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.

What about personalities connected with the RASHKB after its "reincarnation"? Although Walter Schofield was one of Hong Kong's first archaeologists, who served as a Government Administrative Officer from 1911 up until 1938, his main achievements were largely accomplished before the Branch was re-established, in 1959. But, from then on, in retirement in England, Schofield did write papers which were published in the Branch's journals. While he served in Hong Kong
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x
44

The lychees at Po Kong are really abundant.

Of these verses, the reference in line 169 is to a temple near Ma Thu Wai. The reference in lines 170-172 is probably to the ejection of the Ch'ing officials from the Kowloon Walled City. In line 174 the reference may be to the prostitutes' quarter in the Market. The "hospital" in line 175 is the Lok Sin Tong.

For three villages - Po Kong, Sha Tei Yuen, and Yuen Ling - the poet singles out the orchards and vegetable fields he saw there as particularly significant and worth comment, and at Ngau Chi Wan it was "herding" - presumably of meat animals for the market - which he noted as interesting and special. The vast majority of villages visited by Hui Wing-hing were rice-subsistence villages, with almost every inch of arable land used for rice, and the Kowloon villages clearly looked very different. While Hui Wing-hing's attention at Nga Tsin Wai was taken up by the British takeover of the New Territories, there can be no doubt that Nga Tsin Wai, too, was to a large degree a market-gardening area in his time.

Almost all the coastal villages in the New Territories area had sampans, and added inshore fishing to their subsistence. It is a measure of Nga Tsin Wai's general prosperity that the Nga Tsin Wai village elders believe that their ancestors did not do this: the village had no sampans, and bought its fish - probably mostly from the coolies carrying fish from Tolo Harbour past the village to Kowloon Market. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers did, however, dig clams from the mud flats offshore, together with the villagers of all the other villages in the Kowloon Bay area. They also reared carp in the village moat, and possibly in other fishponds, for sale in the Market.

Nga Tsin Wai was never a poor village, but it prospered noticeably during the later nineteenth century. 1902, the date of the Block Crown lease must have been about the most prosperous period of this village community. The village fields were fast being converted to market gardens as the village faced their sellers' market in the growing City. The village had developed good contacts with shipping companies, so that many of the men were able to get good jobs as seamen. Many villagers were also getting good jobs in the Whampoa Docks, where, again, the village developed good contacts in this period. As the
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